Jaster Mereel said:
However, with your ideas about monotheism I must argue. First, most societies throughout history have been patriarchal. Polytheism does not promote inherent equality among the sexes (not that this was your assertion), nor does it promote some kind of "balance" to a civilization, as you seem to be suggesting. Of course, since you pointed out the masculinity of monotheism I must ask that you define exactly what this "balance" is, before I continue to dissect your post. It seems at surface glance to be about the various inherent behavioral qualities that differentiate the sexes, but you are a smart man and so I don't want to go on the assumption that such is what you are talking about. It seems over simplistic, so clarification is needed. If it is about the various differences in behavior which separate man and women, then what are these behaviors? If you could list them for me, I'd be glad. I think it's been pretty well known throughout history that, when you attempt to find inherent differences between man and woman (psychologically, not physically), then a sharp contrast cannot be identified, only inferred through experience with members of the two sexes. If I'm wrong and you have the answer, I'd greatly appreciate your opinion, since it's one of those "big questions" of life.
The evidence is indeed strong that human societies have always been patriarchal. Women were indeed the "weaker sex" until very recently when contraception, substitutes for natural milk, and sedentary professions freed them from an endless cycle of pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing that kept them out of the mainstream. Nonetheless, women were more respected in the pre-Abrahamic days. Because of the biologically enforced division of labor, it was women who learned to be the healers, counselors, herbalists, cooks, and other home- and nearby field-centric specialists. Not to mention the awe in which they were held for the unique ability to create new life in eras when survival of the pack was a constant battle between reproduction and attrition. As Jean Auel hypothesizes, it may have been quite recently in our history that we recognized any role at all for males in the reproductive process. Ancient peoples had fertility goddesses and medicine women. These roles were institutionalized during the Bronze Age, whose incessant warfare required a constant replenishment of the male population and ensured that the only "elders" who survived to perfect and pass on their expertise were women.
It can be inferred, even from the male-biased version of history we have, that wise women with the respect of the community were regarded as a threat to the patriarchy of the Christian church, something which transcended the disenfranchisement, arranged marriages, and wartime rape of previous eras in its debasement of the status of women. Old men were rare so the attributes of age were attributed exclusively to the old woman: wrinkles, wispy hair, missing teeth, stark features from loss of subcutaneous fat, eccentric behavior, an air of disgust for foolish conventions... She who was once revered as a "medicine woman" was now cast as a "witch." Christians were taught to cast old women out of the community. It was no coincidence that this era saw long-civilized Europe degenerate into a dysfunctional Third World in its sanitation, disease, practical science, grooming, education, rationality, and human relations.
Inherent differences between men and women? Perhaps there are none. Nonetheless every culture seems to create a Venus-Mars paradigm. And you can't deny that Venus vs. Mars is an enduring symbol of its spirituality. Men have been the instigators of war with only a handful of exceptions, while women have just as consistently been the force of love.
Is something that occurs in virtually every human society in virtually every era not a textbook example of an archetype? Is it not genetically preprogrammed in our synapses due to an accident of DNA, or is it not inherited from an era when it was a survival trait that we can no longer understand, or is it not breathed into our souls by the goddess on our way down the birth canal--depending on one's preferred model of the human spirit? I cannot justify my conviction that there is a division of male and female spirituality--a yang and yin to refer to yet another long-respected model--using the tools of any of the "hard sciences." Yet the "soft sciences" like anthropology and psychology, despite their politically correct efforts to avoid it, provide a stunning and durable stream of support for my position, going back into prehistory. I never thought I would be the kind of elder who says things like, "I can't convince you that I'm right through rational means, but ignore my counsel at your peril." And here I am.
The Abrahamists celebrate Mars and suppress Venus. I cannot find a way around this model of recent history. To the extent that we all have Venus and Mars inside us regardless of our biological gender, it is perhaps not a hopelessly sexist view of humanity.
Black and white morality? Well, not all monotheism holds to this rigid analysis. True, American bible-belt fundamentalists tend to hold this view, but none of the major Christian Churches propogate such a simplistic view of the world, and neither do the other two Abrahamic faiths. In fact, both Judaism and Islam consider morality to be the affairs of man, not God, and that God transcends said morality. The Hebrews (originally) saw the law as belonging to the Hebrews alone. Islam extended it to all mankind. Still, though, as samcdkey (as the Muslim on this message board whom I hold to the highest intellectual standard) has stated many times, morality is man made. So, as you see, monotheism on the whole does not hold this black and white view of morality. This is the fault of individuals, not of belief systems, and if you were able to go back in time and talk to a (patriarchal) Greek, or Roman, or Gaul, or any other ancient person for that matter, you may find a similar percentage of them engaging in the same type of black and white view of human behavior. My point, if I haven't gone off track, is that this type of view is the fault of individuals who don't want to do the hard work associated with moral dilemmas, not of the type of beliefs which guide their judgments.
I think it's too facile to say that it's the followers of a prophet who are responsible for the failure of his teachings rather than the teachings themselves. As a professional manager I would be incompetent to the point of malpractice if I did not hold the managers who work for me responsible for the positive and negative acheivements of those they manage. I thus hold Jesus and Mohammed responsible for the evil done by their followers. Since they could not stick around to yell "stop" when things got really out of control I won't be too hard on them. But their Flower-Child naivete (especially Jesus's) and disdain for the flesh-and-blood world of reality (especially Mohammed's) indicate a consummate lack of the wisdom and the understanding of human nature with which they are traditionally credited.
Yes, patriarchy, intolerance, war--and all the other entries on what should be the true list of Seven Deadly Sins--have always been with us. But it's hard not to reach the conclusion that they have become far worse in Christian and Muslim civilization. (I give Judaism a tentative bye but probably because as the only non-evangelical member of the Terrible Triad it never achieved the size and power to do as much damage. Israel is hardly a reassuring harbinger of how it might be to live in a world with a billion Jews.) I've gone into this at great length on other threads. But to hit the highlights, only the Christians and Muslims have, in the name of their prophet, set out to utterly wipe from the face of the earth all traces of entire civilizations they considered "blasphemous."
Civilization is mankind's greatest and most precious achievement and he has only managed to create six of them.
Three of those six were obliterated by Abrahamists. We still have enough artifacts, writings, and accounts of Egyptian civilization to not have completely lost it, thanks to its previous encounters with various offshoots of still-polytheistic Mesopotamian civilization. But the Aztecs and Incas were isolated from us until the Christians got there, burned their libraries, melted down their artworks, and destroyed their cities, so we have precious little of them left to enrich the surviving global civilization.
I assert that the destruction of a civilization is the worst sin that can be committed by human beings. It is eternally irreparable, it is eternally irrepentable, and so it is eternally unforgivable. It brands Christianity and Islam as inherently uncivilized, threats to the survival of the civilization we have left. The fact that Christianity and Islam are at this very moment squaring off and encouraging each other to "bring it on"--in the name of their prophets--only supports my point.
Abrahamism is the religion of Mars. We need a whole lot more Venus in this world if we expect civilization to survive.
