Why is 'Polytheism' considered as bad by monotheists?

[Mary The Quene]

Hello.

I can be wrong though but when i see religious monotheistics, i mostly seem them hating on the polytheistics,

I've seen religious monotheistic texts who aren't friendly towards them and portray them as devils (no i can't provide source about this because it's rather vague i remember this)

Recently i saw a few religious monotheistics commenting on various site like

this video makes me want to vommit. You wicked people! Turn your backs on your pagan gods.I tell you to pray to Our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ, Our Lord. You will all go into Hell if you don't repent of your sins.
Glory, Glory, Glory be to The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. One God for ever and ever.
Amen.

Why do they portray them as evil? Why is monotheism better then polytheism? It's what we prefer that's the most important.

This is subjective by me ofcourse, but i think this happens quite a lot.

Please discuss this civil.

[Hoplite of Ilis]

It ruins their so-called simplicity - which becomes more and more complicated as time goes by. Not to mention taking the bite out of their mouths and ruining their bussiness! If the statue of Zeus is pagan so is the statue of Virgin(?) Mary.

[Mary The Quene]

http://www.openbible.info/topics/paganism

Comon why are so many monotheistic religions so intolerant towards polytheism?

i find that disturbing what is described in my link, it says more about them then about polytheism in my opinion.

[Slydessertfox]

Because they replaced the polytheist religions and see them as archaic, a thing of the past, and primitive. Christianity made a point to make the roman god of light (Lucifer) the devil. I guess it was originally a way of keeping people from going back to those polytheist religions and showing them how bad the previous religion was, to make their religion seem barter in comparison.

It also I imagine has to do with the intolerance monotheist religions have to other gods existing other than their ow.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

[Mangalore]

Thinking about it I don't think there is a sane reason, in my opinion it's more of a knee jerk reflex. Anything in conflict to the one true Faith (coming dime a dozen) is seen as evil.

I don't think the main break between the ancient cults and the new monotheistic religions afterwards was less in the gods but in the postulation of a singular moral codebook of what is good, what is evil and how you gain eternal bliss or eternal punishment. The morale guidelines for polytheistic religions were far more complex and were generally relative as they said: You can't do anything to please the gods for certain.

[basics]

Hello.
I can be wrong though but when i see religious monotheistics, i mostly seem them hating on the polytheistics,
I've seen religious monotheistic texts who aren't friendly towards them and portray them as devils (no i can't provide source about this because it's rather vague i remember this)
Recently i saw a few religious monotheistics commenting on various site like Why do they portray them as evil? Why is monotheism better then polytheism? It's what we prefer that's the most important. This is subjective by me ofcourse, but i think this happens quite a lot.
Please discuss this civil.

Aphrodite,

Apart from the question being not only silly but obvious, I guess because you have asked it, it deserves a good answer. It is written, " In the beginning God created the heaven and earth." Not gods or anything else. Since it was the beginning and God is mentioned as One then it follows that there are no others or were no others since there were no men on board at that time to imagine there were. Therefore when men come up with the ridiculous as if they were true it also follows that believers in the one God will be offended as God Himself is offended.

" It ruins their so-called simplicity - which becomes more and more complicated as time goes by. Not to mention taking the bite out of their mouths and ruining their bussiness! If the statue of Zeus is pagan so is the statue of Virgin(?) Mary."

Hoplite of Ilis,

The only thing in your post I partially agree with is that any portrait of Mary is not in itself Pagan, rather idolatry. But then if you are talking of the religious who do commercialise what they think is the Gospel then that too has my sympathy. However what you cannot do is associate them with Christianity but in name only. But then these things are written of and why they ignore that only they can answer as it is definitely not of God.

" Because they replaced the polytheist religions and see them as archaic, a thing of the past, and primitive. Christianity made a point to make the roman god of light (Lucifer) the devil. I guess it was originally a way of keeping people from going back to those polytheist religions and showing them how bad the previous religion was, to make their religion seem barter in comparison. It also I imagine has to do with the intolerance monotheist religions have to other gods existing other than their ow."

Slydessertfox,

You know its remarks like the above that make me so enthusiastic about taking you guys on. I mean there is just no comprehension as to how ignorant of the Bible most of you are. I would relish someone coming up with a debate on Scripture that has some semblance of sense but alas since 2004 when I joined in on the site and this particular part of it, I have been amazed at how little most of you know.

Christianity was on the planet from the moment God prophesised about the " seed " of Eve contesting with Satan for the souls of men. That " seed " is Jesus Christ. Therefore since it was at the beginning of the world and just after the fall when there was only two people on the planet, how could God borrow from anyone never mind the Romans? Do you see your problem?

[basics]

Another double post.

[Aeneas Veneratio]

Basics strikes again with his circular reasoning...

The Monotheistic religions hate religions that are actually interesting and not lame (thunder gods, war gods, fertility gods, etc.), and ofcource they just hate competition in the race to feed the masses nonsense.

[pacifism]

I can be wrong though but when i see religious monotheistics, i mostly seem them hating on the polytheistics,

I've seen religious monotheistic texts who aren't friendly towards them and portray them as devils (no i can't provide source about this because it's rather vague i remember this)

Recently i saw a few religious monotheistics commenting on various site like

this video makes me want to vommit. You wicked people! Turn your backs on your pagan gods.I tell you to pray to Our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ, Our Lord. You will all go into Hell if you don't repent of your sins.
Glory, Glory, Glory be to The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. One God for ever and ever.
Amen.

Why do they portray them as evil? Why is monotheism better then polytheism? It's what we prefer that's the most important.

This is subjective by me ofcourse, but i think this happens quite a lot.

It quite seems like you are wondering why Christianity has such “hating on the polytheists” instead of generic monotheists (since there is only several dozen monotheist religions). You give absolutely no evidence for any other monotheist religion other than Christianity. I would not say it is blatant hate in your “quote” but sincere conviction. Given the option, I doubt people would willingly say that unless they saw it as true. You must understand Christians believe/are supposed to believe that everyone who doesn’t repent of their sins and trust Jesus as their savior will go to Hell. With it being entirely just if the latter happens.

I can’t really fathom what you mean when you say “it’s what we prefer that’s the most important”. Truth is not up for grabs by an individual’s feelings or preference. If so, many things like war and disease and famine would not exist.

Because they replaced the polytheist religions and see them as archaic, a thing of the past, and primitive. Christianity made a point to make the roman god of light (Lucifer) the devil. I guess it was originally a way of keeping people from going back to those polytheist religions and showing them how bad the previous religion was, to make their religion seem barter in comparison.

It also I imagine has to do with the intolerance monotheist religions have to other gods existing other than their ow.

“Lucifer” is only mentioned once in the King James Version and nowhere else. The passage is Isaiah 14:12 (with Isaiah being penned in the early seventh century before Christ, I doubt Lucifer “existed” at the time, with Rome being an upstart city-state.) for the Hebrew word הֵילֵל or Helel. So I don’t think Christianity was making a point to non-existent pagan Rome at the time or anything like that. Lucifer was like a single level above lares anyway.

The Monotheistic religions hate religions that are actually interesting and not lame (thunder gods, war gods, fertility gods, etc.),

Entertainment is not His purpose.
If you think God is “lame” for giving mankind an opportunity for being saved then you have another think coming.

[Slydessertfox]

Has you ever wondered why you worship a god who says if you don't worship him, you will suffer for eternity?


If you we're living under an iron cost dictatorship, and the dictator decreed that everyone must worship him or be suffer a slow and agonizing death, would you worship him, or would you try to get the hell out of there or fight back?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

[MaximiIian]

Why do they portray them as evil?

Think of it this way: you are a monotheist, you believe that only one god exists. You believe in absolute truth, and that truth is the most important thing in the world. If that is your perspective, people who assert something you believe to be false are not just 'wrong', they are in opposition to universal truth and goodness, they are in opposition to the most important thing that can possibly exist.

I don't agree with that perspective. But I can understand it. I'm polytheistic myself, and I try to view things from a pluralistic point of view. I can understand absolutist viewpoints even if they're not my bag.

Though what Aquila said is also accurate: not all monotheists are absolutist about their belief. They don't all believe that their god is the absolute truth and many are actually quite tolerant of other belief systems. Even within the Abrahamic faiths, a lot of them have adopted the subjectivism of modern thought.

[Divine Augustus]

The reason why monotheists hate polytheists is because it is doctrine of most Abraham religion to despise polytheism.

[Mangalore]

... You give absolutely no evidence for any other monotheist religion other than Christianity. ....

Islam puts polytheism as worse than any other false belief - with the exception of apostates - as well. Not sure about Judaism, their monotheism is essentially a polytheistic born one but they way the old testament goes they certainly considered their true God as splendid justification to snatch their piece of land and kill everyone with a different belief.

[MaximiIian]

Not sure about Judaism, their monotheism is essentially a polytheistic born one but they way the old testament goes they certainly considered their true God as splendid justification to snatch their piece of land and kill everyone with a different belief.

You have to keep in mind, that Hebrew mythology started off as oral mytho-history just as it did with every other culture. It developed originally in a time when the Hebrews were polytheistic but shifting towards henotheism. Like every other culture in the time period, they used religion to not only justify going to war, but to determine if they would go to war. Religion, statecraft, and warfare were all intermeshed. So, when they later shifted again towards monotheism during their period of exile, the Hebrews constructed a justification within this of "oh those guys believed in false gods, and thus were untrustworthy and in our way, it was totally sanctioned by Yahweh for us to blot them from the map". But other than that, it was no different than any other culture's justification for war.

The thing you have to understand about Judaic monotheism is that it is closely tied to ethnicity. Unlike most other monotheistic religions, the Jewish covenant is for the Jews and no one else. So, for all they cared, foreign tribes could go off and believe in their foreign gods, and the Jews could stay comfortably in God's divine grace.

[basics]

Basics strikes again with his circular reasoning...

The Monotheistic religions hate religions that are actually interesting and not lame (thunder gods, war gods, fertility gods, etc.), and ofcource they just hate competition in the race to feed the masses nonsense.

Aeneas Veneratio,

Whatever the above is supposed to mean, it is an example of what I talked of earlier. However that said I am compelled to reply according to what is written by Moses as coming from God. Of course one has to take in that you weren't there when that communication was made nor that you understand why it was made so one has to be a little understanding concerning you.

According to what is written just after the fall it was apparent that man had become violent in the eyes of God and therefore He decided to rid the world of them with the exception of righteous Noah and his family. So, when the flood abated, the world changed, it was only then that apostasy entered and by that I mean a twisting of the Gospel that Noah carried into the new world, that Gospel being that Jesus Christ would come eventually to bring certain back to God. What is circular about that?

Man took upon himself what was divinely ordained to be divine and so we got religions based on man's abilities rather than the grace of God. Nonetheless God called upon certain men and women to be His all built on the promise from the garden until Jesus Christ did come in the flesh to die as a substitute for every sinner that the Father gave Him to save through His faith and by His blood that both natural and Moses' law demanded, and so their accounts to God were cleared. Am I going slowly enough for you to get it? Still no circular reasoning.

Abraham being a guy of no particular distinction and living then in Ur of the Chaldeas, a Gentile, was himself compelled to uproot his family and take a journey by command of God and as is written he did so by faith. In other words what he heard, he believed and so that was to him accounted as being righteous before God. Not to fast I hope? When outwith any ability to reproduce after Ishmael was about to enter his teens, Abraham and Sarah were told they would have a son, Ishmael being from another woman, this boy was to be a forerunner, a type and shadow of Jesus Christ.

When he was ordered to take Isaac as a sacrifice up into a certain mountain, Abraham did so by faith, believing that even if he killed Isaac, God would raise him up. That faith was built on Jesus Christ Himself being raised up after paying for the sin of many. Abraham believed that God would do the same for Isaac. Of course it didn't work out that way because God stayed his hand at the moment of striking, providing another sacrifice for Isaac and thus confirming what Abraham believed by faith that substitutionary sacrifice in Christ is of God and this God only.

And so it was written and confirmed by Paul that the children of God would be them that were given faith to believe that Jesus Christ would and did sacrifice Himself on their behalf. They didn't have to be Jews because Abraham when given the promises was not a Jew and so the Gospel was seen then as a promise both to Jew and Gentile, the sign to the former taking effect slightly later. The problem however for the Jews was that they worshipped the sign more than what was behind it and the law when taken in clouded their judgement further.

Meanwhile, the nations around him worshipped what they thought were gods or God in manners not dissimilar to the original yet nonetheless that reasoning filled the planet with false gods, yes ones that drew the Israelites to them, why? Because they gave the adherents pleasures that defiled them according to God but were pleasing to these Jews. Of course what they thought were gods were no gods at all, but nonetheless they sounded good to both their eyes and ears. And to compile their apostasy these nations utilised sacrificial rituals into their worship patterns.

You say that these are interesting, more so than what God intended man to be like in the first instance and when He has declared it to be wrathsome you fling all that you can muster at God because He has dealt with these things in His own way as has been written. The silly thing is that most all know this and yet reject it. In this, time will most definitely tell who has been right and who has been more than foolish. Aye, even you Aeneas will discover that. That is why I take time to keep replying to you and all the others who have the same attitude. There is only one God and we are all personally responsible to Him.

[Aeneas Veneratio]

Entertainment is not His purpose.
If you think God is “lame” for giving mankind an opportunity n you have another think coming.

Your god "cursed" us with sin and then want respect for giving us the opportunity to remove it... What a pathetic being you worship.

[Gromovnik]

But he loves us so so much, he even sacrificed himself to himself so we could avoid being tortured by him for all eternity. We only need to submit and worship him 24/7, but who wouldn't want to show their love for the Great Leader anyway?

[O'Hea]

Keep in mind that fundamentalist monotheists (Christians, Jews and Muslims) sometimes believe that polytheistic dieties are real, but that they're demons. I remember seeing a sermon from an American pastor talking about how Amaterasu, the Shinto goddess-ancestor of the Japanese royal family, is a devil and that the Emperors have stayed in contact with her through unholy means. This guy is the founder of a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation that is affiliated with several of our crazier governors, representatives and senators and has a disturbing number of supporters. I've also read that lots of Muslim cultures are loaded with superstition about djinn, not to mention Subsaharan Muslims and Christians who fall just short of full-on animism, and the Old Testament describes the gods of other cultures as real, but as wicked or petty.

What I'm saying is, a significant number of monotheists believe in magic and think that 'false gods' are demons who can let nonbelievers use that magic. Other monotheists worship the God of Abraham same as them, so they don't suspect any funny business.

[Mary The Quene]

Keep in mind that fundamentalist monotheists (Christians, Jews and Muslims) sometimes believe that polytheistic dieties are real, but that they're demons. I remember seeing a sermon from an American pastor talking about how Amaterasu, the Shinto goddess-ancestor of the Japanese royal family, is a devil and that the Emperors have stayed in contact with her through unholy means. This guy is the founder of a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation that is affiliated with several of our crazier governors, representatives and senators and has a disturbing number of supporters. I've also read that lots of Muslim cultures are loaded with superstition about djinn, not to mention Subsaharan Muslims and Christians who fall just short of full-on animism, and the Old Testament describes the gods of other cultures as real, but as wicked or petty.

What I'm saying is, a significant number of monotheists believe in magic and think that 'false gods' are demons who can let nonbelievers use that magic. Other monotheists worship the God of Abraham same as them, so they don't suspect any funny business.

Yeah i especially saw these comments coming from christianity, i searched verses in the quran about pagans and i must say from a quick search that they weren't considered that violent when we compare the verses with the bible.

@Basics , i readed your post and i think i safely can conclude from your post that you're a very religious person.
But why if god is good man then why he doesn't respect people with other beliefs and polytheism?
It's like that i can conclude from the bible that they should become christanity and when they don't want to that they should burn in hell?

There is only one God and we are all personally responsible to Him.

Why is there but only god? is he proven to be true? So i can claim that the ancient (greek) gods in my case are the only rightfull to obey?

[Aeneas Veneratio]

Basics doing what he does...

Basics, the bible - the Gospel - is not a historical accurate book nor is it factual with its details. To use it to validate the existence of a god is not logical. As of now, you do, and you use the circular reasoning that the Gospel is true, because your god exists.

The Gospel validates your god -> Your god validates the Gospel -> The Gospel validates your god -> Your god validates the Gospel

See, circular, tiring and pointless. Would have been convincing in the socalled dark ages, but these days you words have no power to convince anyone.

Aye, even you Aeneas will discover that. That is why I take time to keep replying to you and all the others who have the same attitude. There is only one God and we are all personally responsible to Him.

The NT made me an agnostic and you made me an agnostic atheist, so keep it up! I might end up a militant atheist and an very anti-religious person at this pace. Great work(!), great advocacy(!), splendid indeed(!), you really got a thing for turning people away from you, instead of towards you.