Funny, the things that you can find online.

I found quite an interesting Yale lecture by Christine Hayes, and she’s discussing the views of a (theoretically relevant) Jewish man named Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963). The lecture is a comparison and contrast of polytheism and monotheism. As Hayes described the pagan polytheistic world view, it occurred to me that not only do I agree with the model, the model is describing the facts about what “is” all around us. Hayes then explains Kaufmann’s ideas about “monotheism” but, in my view what we get from Kaufmann is incredibly massive rationalization and apologetics.

“Apologetics.” This is a term you should familiarize yourself with. “Apologetics” are arguments in justification of religious theory or religious doctrine. It’s a bullshit word because people already write up things that justify their religious theories or doctrines without having to call themselves an “apologist.” An apologist a special category of person that comes up with incredibly long-winded rationalizations that attempt to mash Biblical gibberish against classroom philosophy. An “apologist” is literally apologizing for at least three things: 1) how cruel their Biblical God was/is, 2) being long winded themselves, and 3) their inadvertent sanctimoniousness and pretentiousness.

The apologist will always see their engagement with any outsider as a zero sum game. Therefore, the only reasonable way to engage an Abrahamic apologist is with personal intent to de-convert them from whichever Abrahamic religion they are coming from.

You are never in a normal conversation with an apologist. First of all, their world view is insolvent. Insolvency is worse than incongruence. An incongruence maybe be a single, fixable instance. Insolvency is the result of many incongruencies. An Abrahamic apologist is generally married to all of these incongruencies, and the result is the outsider is suddenly in a bizarre game of whack-a-mole against the apologist. You could call it whack-a-mole, or, you may find you are untying a massive knot that leads to another knot that leads to another knot. In a case where you are helping an apologist untie their psychological knots you may find that after 3 or more knots are untied, one of the knots will secretly re-tie itself. In ways it’s like a mind-virus. As you de-corrupt their brain-software, you will find their software has some mechanism in place that will re-corrupt itself. Frustrating? Yes. But it gets worse than this.

It’s not just frustrating, it’s straight up demonic. Abrahamic apologists aren’t just self-re-corrupting. They have every intention to spread their mind-virus to any outsider they engage with. It’s never a “friendly exchange” of ideas with these people. Hopefully the outsider can figure this out before he becomes infected with their Abrahamic virus. This is a situation for the outsider where he must recognize a solid offense is his best defense. Generally speaking, normal people don’t have to do this when engaging with other normal people. The Abrahamic apologist is not a normal person.

Congruence is a pretty huge virtue on this website. Congruence allows people to have world views that are solvent. Congruency leads to solvency. In this day and age, it is my observation that people seem to want some kind of sophisticated world view. I don’t know why, perhaps they feel the need to compete with the long-windedness of Abrahamistis? Sophistication might be “neat” but let’s re-review the difference between Ptolemy and Copernicus. Ptolemy’s geocentric view of the solar system wasn’t incorrect, it was just really complicated. Copernicus’s heliocentric view of the solar system was a lot simpler and subtracted a lot of headaches. (99% of astrology still uses a geocentric view of the solar system. Interestingly. There is such a thing as heliocentric astrology, it’s just not very popular.)

What I would posit to anybody, is that indigenous religions (or “polytheistic Paganism” if you prefer), have always been correct with their spiritual model of the Universe. Not just solvent, but correct. All Abrahamic concepts of monotheism are all incorrect. All of them. What these people really have is narcissistic favoritism of a particular deity. Whether it’s Yahweh, or Jesus, or Allah or whatever they throw at you. The more rationalizations and excuses and “apologies” they volunteer to outsiders, the more they are broadcasting their incorrectness. As the saying goes, “who you are speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you have to say.” You can never get an apologist to settle on a particular point about anything. When the outsider parrots back the Abrahamic concepts back to the Abrahamist, the Abrahamist will either say, “You still have it wrong,” or “Yes, but…” Any agreement with the outsider’s parroting will always have an asterisk next to it with more “sophisticated” apologies and rationalizations. Literally digging their boots deeper into their own incongruencies. (Abrahamic religions should really be understood as cults, not religions.)

Kaufmann’s rhetoric on monotheism is a massive denial of reality. Kaufmann was Jewish, and one would think he’d read the Old Testament with his eyes open. Clearly, he missed a lot of things. I’ve said it before, but calling Yahweh even so much as a desert pagan god is being far too nice. Yahweh, if he existed, was obviously a demon, and technically the demon of jealousy. I digress.

Earlier in this article I was about to offer a recap of how Christine Hayes described the spiritual world view of indigenous religions. So let’s continue from there. It’s a simple hierarchy. I’ll put it in list form to to make it easy to look at.

1. The Primordial Meta-divine realm. Gods, devils, angels, demons, science, magic, knowledge, good, bad, love, hate, and more are birthed out of the Meta-divine realm.
2. Gods and devils. Gods are mostly good. Devils are evil.
3. Angels, spirits, and demons. Angels are mostly good. Demons are evil. Spirits can be both good or bad.
4. Humans. A mix of good and bad.
5. The rest of the souls; animism.

I suppose, it is possible to put a “Creator” above the primordial meta-divine realm. And theoretically, one could say: “this creator that created the primordial meta-divine realm is God! And that would be monotheism!” Alas, attempting to monotheize this polytheistic Pagan model comes with some very rich problems.

Problem 1. One could ask, “Where did that creator come from? Did he have parents?” To which somebody might say, “He always was! He is eternal and infinite!” And there, at the words “eternal” and “infinite” we have a chicken or egg problem. Whether one wishes to believe there is a “Creator” at the top of the hierarchy, or a “Realm” at the top of the hierarchy – the person observing either spiritual model still has to attempt to grasp the troubling concepts of “eternal” and “infinite.”

Problem 2. Humans engaging in prayer. There’s various things people are trying to do with prayer. Here’s a short list off the top of my head:
1. Asking for help, solutions, and assistance for themselves or loved ones.
2. Requesting the world to be different than it currently is.
3. Asking for things tangible or intangible. From cars to “love.”
4. Saying “thank you” or “I love you” to the divine.
5. Apologizing and asking for forgiveness of perceived personal sins.
6. I would say “worship,” but worship is a troubling word. Once you get beyond saying “I love you” in prayer, what more do you need to do? In fact, I would posit “worship” or prostration should call into question whether or not one’s target deity is actually a demon. This is a subject to ponder for another article. I digress.

Generally (and also probably Kaufmann would agree), indigenous religions believe that humans can interact with all three levels above themselves in the hierarchy. From angels, to Gods, to the meta-divine realm itself. And in the animistic world view, they could probably also communicate with the spirts below them. For example, like a “pet psychic” who understands dogs and cats. Further theory is that angels and Gods have their own lives to lead and their own businesses to conduct. Occasional alliances can be made, but their interest in humans is likely a passing interest at best. (Eg, perhaps think of the Smurfs working together with Johan and Peewit.) Under the indigenous-style paradigm, humans don’t exactly worship the Gods, but they may celebrate various deities with calendar festivals that are related to the life the deity led. (In fact, the 7 days of the week are all tied to 7 celestial objects: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and all of those objects have historically had deities pinned to them, and still do today.) The large takeaway here is there is not a lot of “worshipping of the Gods” going on with the polytheistic model. But there is curiosity about learning about the meta-divine realm. Various amounts of magic, science, good luck (and more) can be harvested out of the meta-divine realm with or without the help of Gods and angels.

Also, the “Prayer Question” as it relates to monotheizing polytheism, what kind of arrogance must a person have attempting to use prayer to contact a possible, but also theoretical “Creator of the meta-divine realm” for any other purposes than saying “thank you” or “I love you”? If this Creator exists, can it be “moved”? Think about that as we take a look at the next problem.

Problem 3. Abrahamic monotheistis, specifically Christians, in addition to saying Jesus is “God” and therefore also “the Creator,” Christians like to say things like:
1. Jesus loves you.
2. Jesus loves me.
3. Jesus has a plan for your life.
4. Jesus is here.
5. Jesus is intimate with those who trust him.
6. You can have a personal relationship with Jesus.
7. Jesus is my best friend.

These statements are in the same realm as statements made by children who have invisible best friends. Considering there are as many versions of Christianity as there are people, it’s a possible spiritual reality that people with “intimate relationships with Jesus” have really created individual self-styled Jesus-tulpas. (A tulpa is a being that is created through spiritual or mental powers.)

The reality of these people’s lives is pretty similar to children that have invisible friends. There is a continuum with “weird” on one side and “toxic” on the other. Once the invisible best friend is also “The Creator of the entire meta-divine realm,” this will open up Pandora’s box of incongruencies. Eg, “Your best friend is who? Gee, with a best friend like that I would’ve thought you’d be doing a lot better for yourself.” If the person is already into “Christian apologetics” the rationalizations and excuses for their life’s circumstances will no doubt flow with little effort. Of course, it’s possible a person with a Jesus-tulpa is a “Prosperity Gospel” type of Christian. The incongruencies of Prosperity Gospel Christians are typically related to moral codes that don’t live up to the standards they project. A similar example of having the appearance of doing well (because Jesus is in your life) but having a big moral issue is the disproportionately high number of homosexuals in the clergy that happen to be morally against homosexuality. Just a bit of theory here, but if your religious tulpa is claiming to be “The Creator of the Entire Meta-Divine Realm” – your tulpa is actually probably a demon.

Review

So, let’s review the the original hierarchy of indigenous religion polytheists. 1. Primordial Meta-Divine Realm. 2. Gods and devils. 3. Angels, spirits, and demons. 4. Humans. 5. The rest of the souls; animism. I’m not saying I have this hierarchy nailed down perfectly. You can expect this model as I’ve described it to be a simplification. If you were to research non-Abrahamic religions, you might see something a bit different than what I’ve described. Regardless, this model is congruent, and solvent. There are no rationalizations or excuses for things. If anyone were to parrot it back to me just to see if they have it right, there aren’t followup semantic games about Quixotic notions like “omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.” This model is also easily transmittable. Yes, I like to write long articles, but anybody who can count to 5 can remember this model and transmit it to anybody else. There is nothing complicated about this model, which is probably why it has been around for so long. This model will persist and survive long after Abrahamism has disappeared from the planet.

Monotheism as Abrahamists would like outsiders to believe, just isn’t so. Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, or any other name they pick for their deity — they all land on levels 2 and 3 of the natural polytheistic hierarchy. Right along with Ra, Luna, Mars, Odin, Thor, Venus, Saturn and over 2500 other deities.