Arguments of an Agnostic. Dialogue 3: The shaky foundations
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 7:37 am
Dialogue 3: The shaky foundations of Monotheism.
Siddhartha: if we trace the evolution of monotheism, we would find it similar in some ways to other forms of religious thought. I can imagine what that could be and we discussed this earlier. The experience of fear and awe of early man in relation to phenomena or nature that could threaten his existence. The final threat was death. To face this fear of annihilation early man invented a God that would save him provided he worshipped and obeyed him. That’s what is happening today in the majority of religions – worship of a God, his appeasement, obeying rules and regulations, following rituals etc. And on the negative side, fear remained. If one doesn’t obey God, pray to him, carry out his order, live a good life, then one would be damned to punishment and hell, and suffer eternal pain.
Nagardharma: The whole thing sounds primitive and monotheism seems to be the crowning of these primitive thoughts. It has insisted that there is only one God whom we have to worship in awe. I remember this sort of belief being made fun of by the standup comedian George Carlin. But there is one more interesting twist of history to this concept. I feel strongly that monotheism is also a product of patriarchal societies across cultures. Language gives us ample clues. God is addressed as ‘He’ in monotheistic traditions not a ‘she’. This also has serious consequences.
Siddhartha: Yes, we can see the traits of male-domination in monotheism. God is the sole authority like the man/king in family/society. All have to obey and respect his authority like how family members/citizens have to respect the male-head of the family/kingdom. Those who disobey will be punished, banished and driven away (hell) and those who obey will be rewarded (heaven). There is a lot of similarity. When you look at this concept closely, it does smell of force/compulsion/authority etc. Man is like a puppet in the hands of God. He has no choice but to love Him. Otherwise, he is damned. He is to love Him, because He loves. Not really, because you are his slave or he has created you without your consent.
Nagardharma: Almost all monotheistic traditions have their own superstitions and idol worship though they claim not to have any. The scripture of each of these are considered holy. Islam which comes down heavily upon idol worship, superstitions and religious rituals has all of them: rituals and rules of praying 5 times a day, fasting during Ramdan, the superstitious belief that a trip to Mecca would gain someone heaven, believing in a black rock that represents something etc. Also in most monotheistic religions, women don’t have an equal place with man. In Christianity, women had to cover their head in the church in the past and even now Catholicism doesn’t allow women to be ordained priests.
Siddhartha: I think in the Jewish Morning Prayer, a man says thanks to God for making him a man and not a woman. Women aren’t allowed to pray alongside men in the synagogue. And in Islam, in most parts of the world, women aren’t allowed in the mosques during prayer time. The women are obliged to cover their faces too in the presence of men as they could lead to temptation. By and large, in most parts of the Islamic world, women don’t enjoy equal rights with men. In traditions with a monotheistic leaning in Hinduism, women are not allowed into the innermost parts of a temple and there are lots of rules if she is undergoing menstruation. She is considered dirty or unholy when menstruation is probably the most natural of cycles i.e. of reproduction. Man wants woman for sexual gratification and reproduction. During menstruation she is useless in these two things and hence ‘unclean’ and ‘unholy’.
Nagardharma: Also male-dominated societies, as I mentioned earlier, have strict rules, laws and codes of conduct. There is the male logic-centered rigidity. There is hardly tolerance for divergent thought. I’m reminded of the Ten Commandments common to the Jews, Muslims and Christians: “Thou shall not … .” This sums up monotheism – primitive societal male dominated authority. In short, monotheism is the refined residue of primitive thinking. The consequences of such a lop-sided thinking have been disastrous throughout history. The reason is that the female principal has been suppressed in monotheistic cults. The Chinese philosophy of yin-yang insists that the whole of creation is a balance between the male and female forces of the universe. There could be domination of one but never at the expense of or without the other or for an unduly long time.
Siddhartha: It’s interesting to use the yin-yang concept in this context. You were talking about the consequences. I can sense that one such consequence is fear. There is fear of God, of disobeying his authority, of hell fire, of damnation. The whole thing has a negative effect on the psyche of man.
Nagardharma: Yes, you are right. The whole concept of sin comes in. Fear has a lot of psychological consequences. It brings about an unhealthy guilt feeling not because one really feels at the gut level that one has done something wrong but because one has gone against God’s authority or the universal writ or against religious laws and one would suffer in hell. Guilt and fear can lead to all sorts of mental disorders from neurosis to psychosis.
Siddhartha: As you said earlier, the whole concept of fear of God and hell fire seems to have a negative effect on man. But couldn’t an absence of fear lead to social, moral or religious disorder?
Nagardharma: Yes, it can, but the consequences in both cases are the same. What is important is a balance – the feminine principal. It looks as though this is also present in monotheism when God’s other qualities like love, care, tenderness etc are stressed. But as we said earlier, all these are human qualities that we have projected on God and so limited.
Siddhartha: Doesn’t Catholicism, a monotheistic religion, have the female principle, in the form of the Virgin Mary?
Nagardharma: That’s true. Other than Jesus Christ, Mary occupies an important role and seems to give some balance. Also, I’d like to point out that Christ as a monotheistic teacher was very different. He was born into a people who were purely monotheistic and into a religion that practiced an outcome of a male-dominated society i.e. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even today this monotheistic principle is followed in some middle-eastern states – cutting off of hand for theft, execution for murder, stoning to death of adulterers etc. There isn’t much softness or forgiveness of the female there. Christ reversed this whole concept when he preached love, God as love, love of neighbor, love of enemies. Even on the verge of death on the cross he forgave those who crucified him. A non-violent monotheist which is a contradiction of sorts.
Siddhartha: So, are you suggesting that Christianity is in some sense a different monotheistic cult?
Nagardharma: In some sense. That way, there have always been people in each of these cults who have tried to elevate monotheism from its male bias. The teacher himself in Christianity rose beyond it. Unfortunately, the religion that got formed after him had the trappings of the negatives of monotheism. That leads us to the second consequence of wielding authority. The church, priests/imam, the governing body, the head had absolute authority as they represented the authority of God and the flock had to obey them. Otherwise they were damned.
Siddhartha: I guess that once a person or a group gains authority that too sanctioned from the heavens and the scriptures, it could be disastrous. Heavenly and earthy authority could easily mingle and interchange and we have had a number of ‘holy’ wars of history unleashing death and destruction.
Nagardharma: Yes, take for instance, the love dominated monotheistic cult of Christianity. It began with love as its centre as opposed to ‘an eye for an eye’ and claimed followers on the basis of this revolutionary idea. But once an authoritative body with a head was formed and it became a political entity with the sanction from the Roman Empire, the authoritarian monotheism reared its ugly head. Christians who were persecuted became the persecutors.
Siddhartha: You remind me of the holy or the rather unholy inquisition where anyone basically Christian who preached contrary to the dogma of the church was ruthlessly hunted down and burnt at the stake. The novel “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco and the movie very graphically describes this.
Nagardharma: Very true. St. Francis of Assisi, with his advocacy of poverty and simplicity, was a revolutionary and a challenge for the political heads of the church as they were glutting in wealth. Fortunately, he and his followers were finally accepted because in all ages, I think, there existed balanced personalities.
Siddhartha: Yes. It looks as though in every era and every culture there have been people who transcended the existing norms and beliefs.
Nagardharma: I would like to relate this with psychology. I think monotheism basically operates on the thanatos or death principle. The Eros or life principle is often dominated and controlled by thanatos, the death principle. Herbert Marcuse, a Neo-Freudian, outlines this well in his book ‘Eros and Civilisation’. Life is killed in deference to an unreal, unknown ‘authority’, ‘morality’ ‘heaven’ or ‘God’s will’. A glimpse at what is happening today in the world is ample proof of carrying out the dictates of an authority sanctioned from above. Killings are ordered in the name of God. There is so much of anti-life sentiment in the world today.
Siddhartha: I agree. The scriptures are considered sacrosanct, literally the word of God, and used by people who wield religious authority to justify war, killing and committing suicide to kill others who oppose or criticize one’s religion or scriptures.. However, monotheists would argue that if there is no fear to control human beings, like the fear of punishment, hell fire, nobody would live morally well and society would become chaotic.
Nagardharma: Well, certainly there is a need to live in an ethically good society and a society that is orderly although I think morality differs from one group of people to another. It is morally right for the tribals of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to live naked and to be sexually promiscuous. To term this as bad and morally wrong is only from our perspective who consider nakedness and promiscuity bad but who live with obscenity, rape and sexual crime. However, these people have no such crime and seem to live closer to nature accepting the cycles and rhythms of nature.
Siddhartha: I also remember reading an anthropological account of a group of people living in one of the pacific islands who were naked and sexually promiscuous. But there was no sexual crime. The Christian missionaries converted them and clothed them literally and with their values. The result was sexual crime. The west is by and large a free society – not male dominated, free of religious authority, sexually a more open society. Are they probably freer?
Nagardharma: Probably. Although I think thousands of years of sexual, male-dominated religious conditioning cannot be shaken off within a short period. I’m reminded of Jung’s race consciousness or the collective unconscious. So, what could happen and is happening is a complete unwinding i.e. swinging to the extreme opposite to come to a balance. The extreme would be pornography.
Siddhartha: if we trace the evolution of monotheism, we would find it similar in some ways to other forms of religious thought. I can imagine what that could be and we discussed this earlier. The experience of fear and awe of early man in relation to phenomena or nature that could threaten his existence. The final threat was death. To face this fear of annihilation early man invented a God that would save him provided he worshipped and obeyed him. That’s what is happening today in the majority of religions – worship of a God, his appeasement, obeying rules and regulations, following rituals etc. And on the negative side, fear remained. If one doesn’t obey God, pray to him, carry out his order, live a good life, then one would be damned to punishment and hell, and suffer eternal pain.
Nagardharma: The whole thing sounds primitive and monotheism seems to be the crowning of these primitive thoughts. It has insisted that there is only one God whom we have to worship in awe. I remember this sort of belief being made fun of by the standup comedian George Carlin. But there is one more interesting twist of history to this concept. I feel strongly that monotheism is also a product of patriarchal societies across cultures. Language gives us ample clues. God is addressed as ‘He’ in monotheistic traditions not a ‘she’. This also has serious consequences.
Siddhartha: Yes, we can see the traits of male-domination in monotheism. God is the sole authority like the man/king in family/society. All have to obey and respect his authority like how family members/citizens have to respect the male-head of the family/kingdom. Those who disobey will be punished, banished and driven away (hell) and those who obey will be rewarded (heaven). There is a lot of similarity. When you look at this concept closely, it does smell of force/compulsion/authority etc. Man is like a puppet in the hands of God. He has no choice but to love Him. Otherwise, he is damned. He is to love Him, because He loves. Not really, because you are his slave or he has created you without your consent.
Nagardharma: Almost all monotheistic traditions have their own superstitions and idol worship though they claim not to have any. The scripture of each of these are considered holy. Islam which comes down heavily upon idol worship, superstitions and religious rituals has all of them: rituals and rules of praying 5 times a day, fasting during Ramdan, the superstitious belief that a trip to Mecca would gain someone heaven, believing in a black rock that represents something etc. Also in most monotheistic religions, women don’t have an equal place with man. In Christianity, women had to cover their head in the church in the past and even now Catholicism doesn’t allow women to be ordained priests.
Siddhartha: I think in the Jewish Morning Prayer, a man says thanks to God for making him a man and not a woman. Women aren’t allowed to pray alongside men in the synagogue. And in Islam, in most parts of the world, women aren’t allowed in the mosques during prayer time. The women are obliged to cover their faces too in the presence of men as they could lead to temptation. By and large, in most parts of the Islamic world, women don’t enjoy equal rights with men. In traditions with a monotheistic leaning in Hinduism, women are not allowed into the innermost parts of a temple and there are lots of rules if she is undergoing menstruation. She is considered dirty or unholy when menstruation is probably the most natural of cycles i.e. of reproduction. Man wants woman for sexual gratification and reproduction. During menstruation she is useless in these two things and hence ‘unclean’ and ‘unholy’.
Nagardharma: Also male-dominated societies, as I mentioned earlier, have strict rules, laws and codes of conduct. There is the male logic-centered rigidity. There is hardly tolerance for divergent thought. I’m reminded of the Ten Commandments common to the Jews, Muslims and Christians: “Thou shall not … .” This sums up monotheism – primitive societal male dominated authority. In short, monotheism is the refined residue of primitive thinking. The consequences of such a lop-sided thinking have been disastrous throughout history. The reason is that the female principal has been suppressed in monotheistic cults. The Chinese philosophy of yin-yang insists that the whole of creation is a balance between the male and female forces of the universe. There could be domination of one but never at the expense of or without the other or for an unduly long time.
Siddhartha: It’s interesting to use the yin-yang concept in this context. You were talking about the consequences. I can sense that one such consequence is fear. There is fear of God, of disobeying his authority, of hell fire, of damnation. The whole thing has a negative effect on the psyche of man.
Nagardharma: Yes, you are right. The whole concept of sin comes in. Fear has a lot of psychological consequences. It brings about an unhealthy guilt feeling not because one really feels at the gut level that one has done something wrong but because one has gone against God’s authority or the universal writ or against religious laws and one would suffer in hell. Guilt and fear can lead to all sorts of mental disorders from neurosis to psychosis.
Siddhartha: As you said earlier, the whole concept of fear of God and hell fire seems to have a negative effect on man. But couldn’t an absence of fear lead to social, moral or religious disorder?
Nagardharma: Yes, it can, but the consequences in both cases are the same. What is important is a balance – the feminine principal. It looks as though this is also present in monotheism when God’s other qualities like love, care, tenderness etc are stressed. But as we said earlier, all these are human qualities that we have projected on God and so limited.
Siddhartha: Doesn’t Catholicism, a monotheistic religion, have the female principle, in the form of the Virgin Mary?
Nagardharma: That’s true. Other than Jesus Christ, Mary occupies an important role and seems to give some balance. Also, I’d like to point out that Christ as a monotheistic teacher was very different. He was born into a people who were purely monotheistic and into a religion that practiced an outcome of a male-dominated society i.e. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even today this monotheistic principle is followed in some middle-eastern states – cutting off of hand for theft, execution for murder, stoning to death of adulterers etc. There isn’t much softness or forgiveness of the female there. Christ reversed this whole concept when he preached love, God as love, love of neighbor, love of enemies. Even on the verge of death on the cross he forgave those who crucified him. A non-violent monotheist which is a contradiction of sorts.
Siddhartha: So, are you suggesting that Christianity is in some sense a different monotheistic cult?
Nagardharma: In some sense. That way, there have always been people in each of these cults who have tried to elevate monotheism from its male bias. The teacher himself in Christianity rose beyond it. Unfortunately, the religion that got formed after him had the trappings of the negatives of monotheism. That leads us to the second consequence of wielding authority. The church, priests/imam, the governing body, the head had absolute authority as they represented the authority of God and the flock had to obey them. Otherwise they were damned.
Siddhartha: I guess that once a person or a group gains authority that too sanctioned from the heavens and the scriptures, it could be disastrous. Heavenly and earthy authority could easily mingle and interchange and we have had a number of ‘holy’ wars of history unleashing death and destruction.
Nagardharma: Yes, take for instance, the love dominated monotheistic cult of Christianity. It began with love as its centre as opposed to ‘an eye for an eye’ and claimed followers on the basis of this revolutionary idea. But once an authoritative body with a head was formed and it became a political entity with the sanction from the Roman Empire, the authoritarian monotheism reared its ugly head. Christians who were persecuted became the persecutors.
Siddhartha: You remind me of the holy or the rather unholy inquisition where anyone basically Christian who preached contrary to the dogma of the church was ruthlessly hunted down and burnt at the stake. The novel “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco and the movie very graphically describes this.
Nagardharma: Very true. St. Francis of Assisi, with his advocacy of poverty and simplicity, was a revolutionary and a challenge for the political heads of the church as they were glutting in wealth. Fortunately, he and his followers were finally accepted because in all ages, I think, there existed balanced personalities.
Siddhartha: Yes. It looks as though in every era and every culture there have been people who transcended the existing norms and beliefs.
Nagardharma: I would like to relate this with psychology. I think monotheism basically operates on the thanatos or death principle. The Eros or life principle is often dominated and controlled by thanatos, the death principle. Herbert Marcuse, a Neo-Freudian, outlines this well in his book ‘Eros and Civilisation’. Life is killed in deference to an unreal, unknown ‘authority’, ‘morality’ ‘heaven’ or ‘God’s will’. A glimpse at what is happening today in the world is ample proof of carrying out the dictates of an authority sanctioned from above. Killings are ordered in the name of God. There is so much of anti-life sentiment in the world today.
Siddhartha: I agree. The scriptures are considered sacrosanct, literally the word of God, and used by people who wield religious authority to justify war, killing and committing suicide to kill others who oppose or criticize one’s religion or scriptures.. However, monotheists would argue that if there is no fear to control human beings, like the fear of punishment, hell fire, nobody would live morally well and society would become chaotic.
Nagardharma: Well, certainly there is a need to live in an ethically good society and a society that is orderly although I think morality differs from one group of people to another. It is morally right for the tribals of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to live naked and to be sexually promiscuous. To term this as bad and morally wrong is only from our perspective who consider nakedness and promiscuity bad but who live with obscenity, rape and sexual crime. However, these people have no such crime and seem to live closer to nature accepting the cycles and rhythms of nature.
Siddhartha: I also remember reading an anthropological account of a group of people living in one of the pacific islands who were naked and sexually promiscuous. But there was no sexual crime. The Christian missionaries converted them and clothed them literally and with their values. The result was sexual crime. The west is by and large a free society – not male dominated, free of religious authority, sexually a more open society. Are they probably freer?
Nagardharma: Probably. Although I think thousands of years of sexual, male-dominated religious conditioning cannot be shaken off within a short period. I’m reminded of Jung’s race consciousness or the collective unconscious. So, what could happen and is happening is a complete unwinding i.e. swinging to the extreme opposite to come to a balance. The extreme would be pornography.
