#transition from polytheism to monotheism

[blackcrowing]

God Against the Gods: the History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism - Johnathan Kirsch

Religious History- 364 pages- Published 2004

Johnathan Kirsch is an American attorney and writer with a BA in Russian and Jewish history from University of California, Santa Cruz. This and other works by the author are centered around religion, the Bible and Judaism.

4/5 on Fluff vs. Serious Study

This book is factual and informative, but falls just short of the highest score for a serious studier as this author chooses to prioritize the accessibility of their work to readers of all levels over source dropping. Notes for all chapters can be found at the end of the book as opposed to the bottom of each page.

4/5 on Easy reading vs. Dry

This author took great pains to make this material could be read and enjoyed, even by those not used to reading historically focused texts. With that said it IS still heavy reading and not recommended for those who do not enjoy the subject.

5/5 UPG vs hard evidence

The author keeps all of their information to historical facts with no personal theories, hypothesis or interpretations put forward.

Summary

This text is an informative and well written depiction of the transition inside of the Roman empire from polytheism to monotheism. Covering such subjects as theological disagreements within early Christianity, why Christians were "persecuted" by the state while Jews were not, and how Christianity grew in popularity among the population of the Roman empire and why polytheism fell out of favor.

[fdelopera]

I’m Christian but want to challenge what I’ve been taught after seeing your posts about the Old Testament having cut up the Torah to fit a different narrative. Today I was taught that the Hebrew word Elohim is the noun for God as plural and therefore evidence of the holy Trinity and Jesus & Holy Spirit been there at creation. Is that what the word Elohim actually means? Because I don’t want to be party to the Jewish faith, language and culture being butchered by blindly trusting what I was told

Hi Anon.

NOPE! The reason G-d is sometimes called Elohim in the Tanakh is because during the First Temple period (circa 1000 – 587 BCE), many of the ancestors of the Jewish people in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms practiced polytheism.

(A reminder that the Tanakh is the Hebrew bible, and is NOT the same as the “Old Testament” in Christian bibles. Tanakh is an acronym, and stands for Torah [Instruction], Nevi’im [Prophets], Ketuvim [Writings].)

Elohim is the plural form of Eloah (G-d), and these are some of the names of G-d in Judaism. Elohim literally means “Gods” (plural).

El was the head G-d of the Northern Kingdom’s pantheon, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah incorporated El into their worship as one of the many names of G-d.

The name Elohim is a vestige of that polytheistic past.

Judaism transitioned from monolatry (worshiping one G-d without denying the existence of others) to true monotheism in the years during and directly after the Babylonian exile (597 – 538 BCE). That is largely when the Torah was edited into the form that we have today. In order to fight back against assimilation into polytheistic Babylonian society, the Jews who were held captive in Babylon consolidated all gods into one G-d. Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

So Elohim being a plural word for “Gods” has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of the Holy Trinity in Christianity.

Especially because Christians are monotheists. My understanding of the Holy Trinity (please forgive me if this is incorrect) is that Christians believe that the Holy Trinity is three persons in one Godhead. Certainly, the Holy Trinity is not “three Gods” — that would be blasphemy.

(My sincere apologies to the Catholics who just read this last sentence and involuntarily cringed about the Protestants who’ve said this. I’m so sorry! I’m just trying to show that it’s a fallacy to say that the Holy Trinity somehow comes from “Elohim.”)

But there's something else here, too. Something that as a Jew, makes me uneasy about the people who are telling you these things about Elohim and the Holy Trinity.

Suggesting that Christian beliefs like the Holy Trinity can somehow be "found" in the Tanakh is antisemitic.

This is part of “supersession theory.” This antisemitic theory suggests that Christianity is somehow the "true successor" to Second Temple Judaism, which is false.

Modern Rabbinic Judaism is the true successor to Second Temple Judaism. Period.

Christianity began as an apocalyptic Jewish mystery cult in the 1st century CE, in reaction to Roman rule. One of the tactics that the Romans used to subdue the people they ruled over was a “divide and conquer” strategy, which sowed division and factionalization in the population. The Romans knew that it was easier to control a country from the outside if the people inside were at each other’s throats.

Jesus led one of many breakaway Jewish sects at the time. The Jewish people of Qumran (possibly Essenes), whose Tanakh was the “Dead Sea Scrolls,” were another sect.

Please remember that the Tanakh was compiled in the form that we have today over 500 years before Jesus lived. Some of the texts in the Tanakh were passed down orally for maybe a thousand years before that, and texts like the Song of Deborah in the Book of Judges (in the Tanakh, that’s in the Nevi’im) were first written down in Archaic Biblical Hebrew during the First Temple Period.

There is absolutely nothing of Jesus or Christianity in the Tanakh, and there is nothing in the Tanakh that in any way predicts Christianity.

Also, Christians shouldn’t use Judaism in any way to try to “legitimize” Christianity. Christianity was an offshoot of 1st century Judaism, which then incorporated a lot of Roman Pagan influence. It is its own valid religion, in all its forms and denominations.

But trying to use the Hebrew bible to give extra credence to ideas like the Holy Trinity is antisemitic.

It is a tactic used by Christian sects that want to delegitimize Judaism as a religion by claiming that Christianity was somehow “planted” in the Tanakh over 2500 years ago.

This line of thinking has led Christians to mass murder Jews in wave after wave of antisemitic violence over the last nearly 2000 years, because our continued existence as Jews challenges the notion that Christians are the “true” successors of Temple Judaism.

Again, the only successor of Temple Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism, aka Modern Judaism.

This line of thinking has also gotten Christians to force Jews to convert en masse throughout the ages. If Christians can get Jews to all convert to Christianity, then they don’t have to deal with the existential challenge to this core misapprehension about the “true” successor to Temple Judaism.

And even today, many Christians still believe that they should try to force Jews to “bend the knee” to Jesus. When I was a young teenager, a preacher who was a parent at the school I went to got me and two other Jewish students to get in his car after a field trip. After he had trapped us in his car, he spent the next two hours trying to get us to convert to Christianity. It was later explained to me that some Christians believe they get extra “points” for converting Jews. And I’m sure he viewed this act of religious and spiritual violence as something he could brag about to his congregation on Sunday.

Trying to get Jews to convert is antisemitic and misguided, and it ignores all the rich and beautiful history of Jewish practice.

We Jews in diaspora in America and Europe have a forced immersion in Christian culture. It is everywhere around us, so we learn a lot about Christianity through osmosis. Many Jews also study early Christianity because Christianity exists as a separate religion within our Jewish history.

But I don’t see a lot of Christians studying Jewish history. Even though studying Jewish history would give you a wealth of understanding and context for your own religious traditions.

So, all of this is to say, I encourage you to study Jewish history and Jewish religious practice. Without an understanding of the thousands of years of Jewish history, it is easy to completely misinterpret the Christian bible, not to mention the Hebrew bible as well.

[thysia]

Monotheistic fantasy settings seem fairly rare, but I guess it isn’t hard to understand why. Even beyond the first hurdle of initial association with abrahamic religion and associated baggage there’s an issue of conflict. If an unopposed god has an agenda how can the world look any way other than perfectly in line with the god’s will? Why does the god not simply create a paradise? Obviously this argument exists in real life theology and thus has a great multitude of answers to pick from or be inspired by. That the divine requires man to endure or overcome worldly strife to some or another end is easy to work with and seems to ring true for many people.

Even still, while I was thinking about retooling the cosmology of my setting to explore monotheism and the transition from polytheism to monotheism, it remained tempting to undermine that idea. The desire to have a god that survived the divine conflict as an adversary, or cthonic gods who weren’t in heaven when it occurred and were thusly spared, or even to have an alliance of gods win the divine conflict and become a new pantheon instead of a singular god. The singular god — dictator of ultimate truth by process of elimination — is I think necessary to make exploration of the idea at hand worthwhile. Anything less undermines the entire exercise.

With that kind of set up there’s still a lot of room for the exploration of human theology, I think. Especially if the desire of the god is to create a crucible for man instead of a paradise. Besides differing interpretations of the god, there may be those who hold that the others gods still live and continue to worship some combination of them. Or those that know the other gods are dead but continue to worship them anyways in opposition to the reigning god. I already had the Obliterationists — a sect of antitheist necromancers using a mix of eternal unlife and spiritual annihilation to wage war against the divine regime — and they fit pretty nicely into this too.

[teawiththegods]

helloo!! I have a question about transiting from monotheism to polytheism - hoow do you find time for everyone?? Starting this year, the gods seem to be in charge of specific months for me, but I really want to do things for/with them even during the months they're not the main one in charge. Are there any practices you do to spend time with several different gods? thank you!!

Hello, love! 💕

For me the best way to honor and connect with multiple gods at once without burning yourself out is through devotional acts! Pick any activity you wish and dedicate it either to multiple gods or the entire Theoi. What the activity you choose is ultimately up to you but if you want to make it simple and easy for yourself (esp in the beginning) you can pick something already in your routine esp if it’s something you still struggle with. Like for me I recently dedicated drinking water to Apollo (well he kind of forced me but it still counts! 😂). I was drinking water but not enough and not consistently so adding the devotional element to it makes it more likely I’ll do it you know? So you could do something like that but dedicate it to more than one god.

Another easy but effective method is to light candles. I freakin love candles! You can light one candle for multiple gods. I’ve done it so many times before when I felt immense gratitude for all the Theoi.

Similar to that you can share your food with multiple gods!

Hope that helps!! 😁💖

[algolspeaks]

9th House Saturn transit update 15 February 2024

- crisis of faith and direction.

- The urge to elevate or “do something” with my life. Feeling like I was stuck with the direction as to my life.

- Long travel. I spent 6 months in India volunteering. Found the culture differences difficult and frictions led me to feel some sort of uncanny valley affect and develop an appreciation for my own culture.

- Started dating someone from a different race, culture and religion. We had friction as to goals in life, and cultural differences led to communication issues. We both spoke a different kind of English. Sometimes I felt we were too different and being seen together as two different people from completely different cultures would affect my reputation (natal Saturn in 10)

- My bf is Hindu and I am from a Muslim background. Due to the uprise of Hindu nationalism, he would occasionally criticise Islam, which would offend me, even though I didn’t find myself identifying with the religion, I still somehow felt it was an attack on my identity (natal Saturn conjunct Moon which is my ASC ruler). My bf is a writer, writing a trilogy about Lord Shiva at the time.

- Due to India travel and Hindu boyfriend, I challenged with the idea of polytheism vs monotheism which I grew up on. I was raised to believe idolatry was the biggest sin and now that idea was being challenged. Hinduism is very different. I found myself quite closed off and résistent to a lot of concepts from Hinduism. Found the practices of having dolls in temples ‘immature’ and the whole God culture in India a bit too money orientated and cult like.

- Despite so much instinctive rejection of Indian and Hindu culture and difficulties assimilating, I found their humility and humbleness admirable. I found followers of Abrahamic religions and those in my hometown, London, to be unbearably arrogant and self-righteous which was a complete turn off from my own country. Being humble felt more attractive and respectable.

- Felt like I had no direction. Remunerating over whether I wanted to do a TEFL and teach in Asia or go back to the UK and study a masters. Struggling to pick a topic to study for Masters. Whether I wanted to continue my chosen career path despite having the struggles i had and choosing to quit in the first place, although I needed the security. Felt like my options were limited. The world no longer felt like my oyster.

- Despite having some spiritual encounters in the past and it building my faith in god through hard times, I started to question how useful this was and if it was mature to base big decisions on superstitions. At the same time, spiritualism drove me a bit crazy and led me to make impractical and crazy choices in my life because I was relying too much on superstitions to direct my life. Likewise, I needed spiritualism to add colour and meaning to my life. Life was more beautiful with empathy, compassion, beauty and dreamy spiritualism (Pisces), which I felt was precious but dying

- Felt like I needed guidance, a career counsellor or something to help direct my life, but feeling like there was nobody out there. Mother being my ultimate authority figure (my natal Saturn conjuncts my Moon in 10H), I felt like she was the only respectable guidance out there, despite having rebelled against her advices so much because of how she would limit my life.

[baldysthoughts]

Akhenaten: Unveiling the Transition from Polytheism to Monotheism

[colecatalanculturalstudies]

Blog Post #1: The Roman origins

The Roman Monumental influence was very large and the engineering capacity in Barcelona was very impressive. Below are 5 pictures that compared to today’s Catalan buildings are very different. In each of these pictures the material used for the buildings is vastly different from today's buildings. The material in these photos is a mix of many different types of bricks and clay. The photo containing the pavements of an interior courtyard and the fountain show some similarity as todays because both are still a common space for public areas, but the aqueduct is obviously very different from today's water source. I found the last picture very interesting because it shows the height comparison of people from the past to today.

The transition from Polytheism to Monotheism had a very large impact on the culture at the time for Romans. The switch represents the arrival of Christianity and the acceptance of it. It was a transition from many Gods representing many different aspects of life to one God alone.

The houses in Roman times and the houses today are similar in the way that they both have some form of decoration and order. Another similarity is the attention to detail provided in both times. The symmetry and shaping of architecture have very similar aspects in the past as today’s modern designs. The pictures that I have included are to demonstrate the influence that religion and wealth had at the time. In the third image it demonstrates the reversal of architectural influence at the time and the impact that religion and Christianity had on design. There are not many similarities to architecture in the United States as there are to the Roman houses and this may be due to the influence that religion had on Romans when they were in the early development stage. Religion was impacting their daily life and was very present whereas in the United States religion was a factor, but not as large. Each component of Roman homes have many similarities as today's homes in the form of rooms and separation. For example, the Culina was the kitchen of the Roman homes, the Peristylium was an open courtyard area within the house usually containing vegetation, the Atrium were a source of light during Roman times and were large open-air parts of the ceiling similar to a skylight and lastly, the Triclinium in a Roman house was the formal dining room area.

Domestic Objects: There were artifacts that were found including ceramics, vases, and more that were all very similar to today’s habits. There were also many games and hobbies that I found very interesting such as the boards for chess. Majority of the objects found made sense due to the trade provided by the city, but I found the use of hinges and nails very interesting at the time, it seemed very advanced.

Note *** The Tablinum is a room in an ancient Roman house that contained the archives of families and the rules that you would follow

Wine Culture: Roman wine culture was extremely influential during these times. Romans consumed more wine than water at the time due to the water being very contaminated. The Romans had a very serious process for wine making and had many ducts and channels to handle the fermentation of wine. The culture was very important at the time and whole facilities were created for the operations. Christian religion now teaches that wine is the blood of Christ creating some similarities to the Romans showing the importance of wine to their culture. Wine culture is still extremely prevalent in Catalonia today and they are still a major exporter of many types of wine. For example, cava which is the Catalan version of champagne and very strong red wines which are also known as black wines.

Visigothic Culture: The arrival of Christianity in Catalonia created the culture of the Visigoths. Pre-Christianity many aspects of the culture and architecture were not present and weren’t introduced until the Visigoths. They brought religious impacts and various design principles that were not being used before and were not found such as the Baptism pool.

[unifiedesoterictarot]

Very few people are aware that the ancient Mesopotamian Moon-gods were masculine. Semitic tribes held the Sun to be female and considering the Moon and Venus to be male. Look at both birds and mammals, beauty is predominantly a masculine feature. In primitive, isolated tribes where the ancient traditions are still preserved, man paint themselves, dress up, dance and perform rituals to attract women, just like in nature, and not the other way around as it happens in the "civilised world". The invention of values, standards and attributes occurred with the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, respectively, from polytheism to monotheism. What we learned is not always correct. #moon #lunatic #moonatics #esoteric #astrology #mysticism #scholarship #wisdom #feminism #matriarchy #patriarchy #knowledge #attilakarpathy #learning https://www.instagram.com/p/CQIYGW1Ha__/?utm_medium=tumblr

[apocrypals]

hey! i’m super curious about the pre-monotheistic/monolatrism times of judaism (proto-judaism?). what parts of the old testament were monolatristic? why the change to monotheism? what’s the difference between monolatrism and henotheism? they seem p much the same, but i’m reading wikipedia sooo

To answer your last question first: monolatry and henotheism are both practices in which one worships a single god while acknowledging the existence of other gods, but the difference is that in henotheism, worship of other gods is considered potentially as valid as the worship of one’s own god. So, for example, a henotheistic Roman might worship Sol Invictus exclusively, but they wouldn’t look down on someone else for worshiping Jupiter. Whereas a monolatrist thinks only their god is worthy of worship.

The transition from monolatry to monotheism within Judaism is believed to have largely occurred during the Exilic period in the 6th century, thanks in large part to exposure to Zoroastrianism, which is monotheistic. The majority of the Hebrew Bible was composed or redacted during the Exilic or post-Exilic period.

Pretty much the only material that predates the Exile are oracles of the various prophets, and even then, as we’ve discussed on the show, only portions of what we now think of as the complete books of those prophets.

So the earliest composed bits of Bible would be portions of Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk. The earliest narrative parts would be the Deuteronomic code and portions of the Deuteronomistic history (Joshua/Judges/Samuel/Kings) composed during the reign of Josiah, which was also the transition from full-on polytheism to monolatry, btw.

Wikipedia has a chart that can give you an overview of the different layers of composition of Bible. Hope that helps!

--Benito

[eightyonekilograms]

Do any of my followers know what is/are the leading theoy(ies) about why the Near East (and subsequently, “the West”) transitioned from polytheism to monotheism, and what is some reading I can do about it? Is it just a historical accident because Christianity happened to win, were there structural factors in the region that caused it to happen, or is there considered to be something about monotheism in general that makes transition in that direction much more likely? 

Without even glancing at it, it’s the sort of question that I can tell attracts controversy, woo, and both real racism and unfounded accusations of same, so I want to skip uninformed Internet junk and get to the expert literature.

[fabien-euskadi]

🥉 and 🧚‍♂️!

- What’s one thing you enjoy doing even though you’re bad at it? I used to play tennis and I actually enjoyed it, although I was rubbish at it. Latter, I decided I wanted to surf and I really enjoyed it - but I was rubbish at it. Now, I wanted to play guitar and even sing... but I am prepared to be really rubbish at it.

- You can choose one ancient religion to become a major world religion today. Which one do you choose? - I was always fascinated by the Egyptian theology, but it's quite tricky to say that there is just an Egyptian religion - each pharaoh had his/her specific religious program (for example, pharaohs named "Seti" would, probably, be more focused on the god Seth - and that could mean that military/war affairs would have a higher priority) and even each main city had its specific understanding of the religion of the Kingdom of the Two Lands. But, to become the main religion of the World, it would have to be the Atenism system of the Akhenaten period in Amarna. Although the cult of Aten and the solar deities have been a norm since the Old Kingdom - specially in Iunu -, the Atenism was the turning point,  the moment where it started the transition from the polytheism to the monotheism (although the Atenism was not, technically speaking, a monotheist system).

Thank you - enjoy your weekend (or what is left of it) and stay safe, please:)

[ahordeofmandrills]

Like i have this class, this class on religion and ecology. And i was thinking, “ tight, we’ll be going over the transition from animism to polytheism to monotheism with a focus on theological thought towards the environment”. And nah, it’s like... a book club. And like the other day in class my classmate was talking about how america was still a place where you could make your dreams work. It’s not. But you’re a bullshit college kid who doesn’t know any better? Like 20 or so. The fuck do you know? I don’t blame you.

And the prof just starts tearing into this guy, about how he only believed that because of his enormous privilege ( white, hetero) and that that wasn’t the case at all and etc etc... and the whole time i’m thinking like

Who’s more privileged than a liberal arts professor at one of the top ten state universities of the richest country in the world?

I mean CEO’s and shit, you’d say if that wasn’t rhetorical. And i’d say yeah. But the point is at a high enough level in the academic ladder you lose the ability to smell your own bullshit or really even offer real situations to things because your career and existence relies on the system stagnating! You live in a bubble! You got to go to college debt free lady! You literally discuss hippie books twice a week and get paid 70,000$ a year for it! And you’re talking down to somebody who’s going 40,000$+ in debt so they can parade around a dying planet and pretend like the entire ship isn’t fucking sinking! They’re dealing shit you will NEVER have to deal with. But uh peepeepoopoo white man bad, let’s discuss how native language could save us from capitalism while you work at a uni built on kuumeyaay graves. But uh... at least we acknowledge they used to own the land :)

[artist-tyrant]

V

Nietzsche was a Crypto-Platonist, and Socrates was a Crypto-Sophist. "Pre-Socratism" is still ever-present. The Heraclitan dialectic and logos synthesizes the fundamental essentials, relativizes the singularity, and universalizes over the multiplicity. All of speculative metaphysics has represented this henotheistic conquest towards a qualified monism, with various thinkers holding different abstractions in the form of the logos and drawing different ends in the form of their telos. The true aristocratic radical is the henotheistic oligarch. When the time is right, they deconstruct and relativize universals only to re-establish their universals over the particulars/reduce the particulars down to their universals, but this time, in their name... Polytheism develops into monolatry from which henotheistic tendencies can quickly transition into monotheism. Perhaps none exemplify this better than the Pharaoh Akhenaten...  

[young-anarchist]

Finally finished this piece I’ve been working on for a couple months!

“Progress of a kind”

Acrylic Paint / Gold Pen on canvas board

This piece started out a simple painting of my hand holding a pomegranate from a tree in my back yard, but it felt a little empty...

One of my favorite speakers, the late Christopher Hitchens, often used the phrase, “Progress of a kind” when talking about humanities’ transition from polytheism to monotheism. He described that transition as a progress of a kind because he argued that that meant the human race is getting closer to the right answer - #atheism. I strongly agree with him and so I drew inspiration from the absurdity of the biblical talking serpent and forbidden fruit to represent many far-fetched monotheistic beliefs. I chose this story because it’s universally known and easily recognized. I hope that one day this fairy tale, like the rest of them, will be seen as nothing more than a story from another transitional period that humanity made in its quest for the truth

[kaijuno]

So slavery is called America's "original sin" and because of its genocidal qualities of suppressing culture and destroying families, it could be classed with what may be called America's true original sin, genocide. And whatever way you conceptualize it America has failed historically and currently to reckon with either. (Side note: Ivanka Trump had the AUDACITY to recently come out against modern slavery when her father praises folks for being "tough on crime" and pardoned Joe Arpaio, who was so pro-prison slavery that he attempted to reinstitute chain gangs.) But what I wanted to talk about was that, when polytheistic African religions were suppressed by enslaving European Christianity, the Christian canon of saints became a tool that provided continuity of worship for African polytheists. They'd assign saints to particular gods and the most powerful one in the pantheon would be equated to YHWH. This was especially true in Roman Catholic French and Spanish territories and it's the origin of Vodou, or "Voodoo," post-slavery. We know that pagan cultures are capable of becoming officially monotheistic while pagan practice persisted from, for instance, when Egypt tried out monotheism at least a couple times with with Amun-Ra and Aten. (Another side note: Amun-Ra could be an antecedent of the Christian Trinity, that is, of having multiple "persons" in one god, but like with cat memes, Egypt having an analog of something in another culture at a later time doesn't always--or even usually--have any kind of continuity from one to the other. Cultures have similar trends at different times, but it's just as likely to be "convergent evolution" as it is true heritage.) Anyway, African enslaved cultures' persistence of paganity under oppressive monotheistic Christianity by means of the canon of saints suggests that the reverence of saints as a practice might have originated in early Christian Rome for the same reason. Their centuries-old pagan apparatus of worship couldn't have just evaporated after the Edict of Milan. Martyrs of earlier Christian persecution might've been appropriated to "fill in" for their old gods. Saints being "patrons of" places or concepts also supports this interpretation, having replaced "gods of." Paganism is also uniquely historically flexible as can be seen, for instance, in how the Greeks assimilated their local deities and heroes into a pan-Hellenic tradition (Hercules especially). The worship of Bacchus and an Anatolian goddess were so coincidentally similar that they invented a tradition of Bacchus having learned revelry from "Magna Mater" (who they assigned to Rhea) while traveling in Turkey. Ancient historians would also generally refer to foreign gods by their Greek or Roman counterparts. We don't have very good or specific evidence of the transition of historically pagan cultures to Christianity by mass conversion, especially under Roman rule. But the well-recorded and recent example of African polytheisms persisting under Christianity via the saints gives us a pretty good idea of how it might've happened in other cases. If the idea excites you, I'd suggest looking into Vodou at least on Wikipedia. Slave religion, while the product of atrocities, is so fascinating. My "elective" African American Religions class turned out to be one of my favorites. (Concluding note: the term "syncretism" is absent from the body of this micro-essay because it can be construed as offensive by suggesting the superiority of the oppressing religion.)

[gellyopal]

Fascinating

I have been going through this playlist about a young man who fell away from Christianity; starting with 1.0 My Christian Life. 

Honestly it was painful to watch his set up throughout most of the 1.0-1.8 (they are 10 min or less each) The reason I felt that way, I believe, ties to my core conviction about what God and religion means to me and how I don’t have an understanding of typical christian culture. For example, I never knew what ‘being saved’ was as an act performed or that speaking in tongues is a sought after experience in the line of Christianity he grew up in. As he enters 2.0 Atheism I became hooked and my fascination with what he was presenting blew up. This is the first time seeing someone talk along the lines of belief that I have been developing over the last year.

My core belief is that the essence of goodness caused the creation of life. I feel because everything naturally falls into chaos it had to be an act of power and will. I feel this is God. I feel everyone who worships, worships the same being and we all have different names and ideas about what it wants. Last, I feel I have a personal relationship with this entity. I don’t know about life after death, or salvation but, I deeply believe that every person and soul that chooses to progress towards being better will all get to the same destination of either heaven or having our life recycled in the elements and future life.

In video 2.5 he talks about evidence of polytheism and the transition into monotheism in the Torah (first 5 books of the old testament?). The theory, which is claimed to be backed by experts of ancients texts suggests there are 5 writers of the Torah and their writing is all mixed together. (I need to use ‘claimed’ because I haven’t done the research myself, and i’m taking it off of his word)

We then are launched into the story that he believes actually was taking place. I love the mythology.

I want to invite people to view this series and to get your reactions about it. It also makes me want to organize my thoughts about a tendency in utahmormonculture to discourage seeking out ‘anti’ opinions while we also maintain that we want everyone to be educated about our beliefs and why we maintain them.