"How God got started", how god belief + basic reason + writing -> modern humans?

[Whateverist]

This article is so bad, it isn’t even wrong. It’s hard to critique because it’s all over the place. His arguments hinge on very slim evidence. For example, he dramatically overstates the influence of Thales, especially since so little is known about him. Everything we know comes from fragments of fragments of later philosophers writing about him. He was by far less influential than Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus. And to characterize Hellenistic philosophy as entirely secular, in the sense of being wholly naturalistic, is a gross overstatement. If anything it started to converge on a kind of mysticism that culminated in the third century with Plotinus. Next, the list scholars he references is unbalanced – Dennett, Pagels, Ehrman, etc.

I don't think the article wonders any wider than necessary to address his thesis that monotheism only arose where the expression of reason based only on the observation of patterns intrinsic to things themselves, and not on their manipulation by powers unseen.  Faith as a stubborn insistence on a particular doctrine wasn't necessary when we were just polytheistic people trying to survive in the world, using our wits both to figure out what was going to happen next but also what gods might be involved in that.  But when the pursuit of reason without regard to the will of the gods threatened theologians there were repercussions.  One was to emphasize miracles to establish the existence of the supernatural.  The other was to consolidate and formalize the nature of the supernatural (if that makes any sense).  

I'm no expert in greek philosophy so I can't argue the relative merits of those you mention, but I am convince by the case the author made for thinking Thales is significant for the emergence of science.

The essay begins by comparing the “faith” based Abrahamic religions with the development of ancient Greek philosophy. The author seems intent of showing the gradual invention of God, whereas most theologians would recognize progressive revelation.

I didn't get that.  He specifically says that Thales and all or most other greek philosophers were polytheist, not atheists.  He also casts Plato and Aristotle as compatibilists (not his word for it) who sought to reconcile the action of gods with the regularity observed in nature.  God wasn't invented, but a defensible unified doctrine concerning God and his supporting cast was invented in response to the those philosophers who were gaining interest for studying the world without regard to the gods.  I think his point was that the formal interest in secular reason had the effect of galvanizing theologians to make a response.  Monotheism was part of that response.

The author presents us with a thought problem: what if all knowledge of religion, including all sacred tests, disappeared. His theory is that because of a natural “mental faculty of faith,” religion would reappear, but probably in some polytheistic or animist form. My guess is that he would be right. Not only that but in complete agreement with Aquinas who at the very beginning of the “Summa” asks whether it is possible to have knowledge of Divine Truth apart from revelation. He of course concludes that it would not. So at this point, I agree with the author on the form a naturally developing religion would take – still not at all in conflict with the idea of progressive revelation.

It sounds as if we both agree that only polytheism would arise in the thought experiment.  We simply account for in ways which reflect our worldview.  For you revelation is how we 'progress' to monotheism, for a naturalist the hypothesis here is it would come as a reaction to the power of secular reason.

I do however, take issue when he starts to compare and contrast the parallel traditions of Hellenistic philosophy and Oriental religion and asserts that they cannot be reconciled into a “tidy” theology. Except that it can. For example, Aquinas is called the “Angelic Doctor” precisely because of his elaborate angelology, retaining the notion of a heavenly host, without abandoning the Greek “God of Classical Theism” of Necessary Being, etc.

I don't think the author is saying it isn't possible to reconcile hellenistic philosophy and oriental religion.  His point, as I understood it, was that reason and god belief never came into opposition in the east because the state control of both learning and religion was more tightly controlled there.  Asian rulers found value in both advances in empirical understanding and in god belief, both were important to control.  If any asian philosopher had suggested that the gods were superfluous to understanding, that would not have been well received and would certainly not have been shared or preserved.

The author states that in the time of Abraham, God was understood not as the sole divine entity; but rather, one of many divine entities, albeit the most powerful. That much is true; however, the author’s belief that late monotheism collapsed all spiritual reality into a single divine entity is simply not true. To this day, all three major forms of monotheism retain belief in, not only a heavenly host, but also malevolent spiritual entities. Then he backpedals later to say that the independent “old gods” were rolled into the heavenly host under Christianity. Again this is not true. The Pantheon was built around the idea that the sum total of all the gods represented a single spiritual reality. This same idea can be found in the Lotus Sutra and I don’t think anyone is going to say that Buddhism was a reaction to Christianity.

So I already said why I think you misunderstood what he was saying about the east.  But the part about the 'multitude' or 'pantheon' is interesting too.  The part I've bolded is indeed what the point of the move toward 'monotheism' was all about.  It was about formalizing and making defensible the study of the will of the gods, something that had never before been necessary.

I could go on. From that point on the author is spinning wildly out of control building speculations on top of speculations based on his faulty premises. It was starting to make my head hurt.

On a personal note, I really do not understand this obsession with showing that faith and reason are not compatible. Nevertheless, Whateverist, if there is some particular point within the article you find interesting, I would be happy to drill down on it.

I'll give it more thought.  I'm still digesting the article too.  I realize the article is very challenging to someone who takes seriously the defense of that which cannot be seen, but if you're up for it I'd still value your take too.

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Mary Boyce, a British scholar who died in 2006, is considered to have written the definitive study of Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices

I have no idea if it can be found online.

Thanks.  It's not in my local library but I do find it available on Amazon.  Think I'd better read it in a library up on the UC Berkeley campus first to check for accessibility and see if the interest is there.