Journey through Time: Polytheism to Monotheism to Atheism

Richard Dawkins, a fervent contemporary Atheist, quipped teasingly as follows. He said (wording my own) that originally people believed in multitudes of gods; as people progressed they evolved to recognize the fallacy of their misguided beliefs, and painfully began disbelieving in more and more gods. Today, we have narrowed it down to one. Alas, only one more god needs to be rejected and we would be entirely free of this primitive superstition!

Although his perspective is amusing, this is not a proper conceptual representation of the evolution of god(s). Monotheism and Atheism are not the result of simply disbelieving in gods. In fact, it is a great conceptual progression, worth meditating on, the progression of Polytheism to Monotheism to Atheism.

In early times people saw the world as wholly mysterious and divine; the world appeared to them to be full of gods. Further, they could only relate to things in terms of themselves and so assumed that things, specifically the powerful ones, were beings like themselves.

Monotheism wasn’t the result of viewing the gods as baseless and unnecessary, but the result of the contrary; an increased awareness of the mysterious and divine nature of the world led people to realize that the gods were inadequate explanations. The difference between Monotheism and Polytheism is not one of quantity but of quality, not one of degree but of type. Polytheism assumes the existence of gods in the world. Ultimately, however, the gods are a part of the world, as are all things. So Monotheism was born, preaching that the gods are not merely beings within the world but rather the entire universe, including even space and time, is nothing but the creation and continuous production of a god. The plurality of gods is a nuisance to such an understanding; when gods function within the world then just as the world contains many powers, so too the gods must be many, but when god is seen as being the cause and authority behind the world, as a far greater god which is omnipotent, there is only place for one perfect god.

Until Monotheism, when the world was thought to be subject to various gods, there was no belief in the symmetry and perfect unity of the world. Further, it was absurd to imagine natural explanation of phenomenon, the very concept of Naturalism was absurd; where would such power come from? Only a god was attributed with power. With the advent of Monotheism the world was seen as the production of one perfect god, as such unity was expected, and natural explanation, now having a god behind the structure, was to be expected. The world was gods designed machine, it would be reasonable to understand how that machine functions. As such, monotheism gave birth to modern science which relies heavily on both the belief in the unity of the world and the belief that the world is a machine which can be understood (notwithstanding confusion of QM). In a sense, Monotheism gave birth to Naturalism; Naturalism is the structure God has created and designed.

Eventually, as the machine was revealed to be more and more sufficient for accounting for the events in the world, people began to view God as superfluous, He was no longer needed for anything, the machine seemed to run great without His intervention, and people began to wonder why the wondrous machine needed a god behind it at all. As a result of Monotheism God emerged, not merely as a part of the world, but as its creator and master, as such he permeated all of existence. Since God came to be understood in terms of all of nature, people began to wonder why nature herself could not be god. Because god was everything and everywhere in the view of monotheism, there suddenly was no need for the actual god, it was redundant. Enter: Atheism. In a sense, then, Atheism is simply an abridged Monotheism.

Although I do agree with Dawkins that it’s high time we reject this primitive superstition…