One God versus many

[T.J.]

I always found it a little interesting that, to my knowledge anyway, the only religions that cite to there being only one god is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All the others to my knowledge cite there being multiple gods all with different purposes. I wonder what came to the authors of the above mention religions to decide it made more sense for one god to exist instead of many?

Discuss.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I always found it a little interesting that, to my knowledge anyway, the only religions that cite to there being only one god is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All the others to my knowledge cite there being multiple gods all with different purposes. I wonder what came to the authors of the above mention religions to decide it made more sense for one god to exist instead of many?

Discuss.

Your premise is flawed.

The great heretic of ancient Egyptian history Ahkenaten introduced monotheism to Egypt in the 14th century bce. This was in the form of the sun god, Aten.  All of his works were destroyed by his son, Tutankhamun, and all of the old gods were restored.  The Egyptian religion lasted for another 1000 years.  The Torah was not written for at least 500 years after Ahkenaten.

Hinduism is around 3500 years old. It has 30 million, 15 million, a few dozen, or one god, depending to whom one speaks. There are Hindus who claim there is only one god, that all of the other gods are simply aspects of the one god. I once ran across a man who asserted that he was both an atheist and a Hindu.

Zoroastrianism was first written about in the 6th century bce. It is still around. This religion asserts there is one creator god, Ahura Mazda.

All of the religions  mentioned above are far more complex than I've stated. However, the basic claim is correct. That there were monotheistic religions long before Judaism and the two other Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Islam

[zwanzig]

I tend to get confused about the technicalities, probably due to Mormon anti-everyone-but-us propaganda but some branches of Christianity decided god was actually 3 of them with the weirdest backtrack eat your cake and have it too "actually it's still that but also just one guy". There's branches that pray to magical saints, Mary the mother of gesus, and angels(how are they not gods? They are powerful enough to appeal to and intervene on your behalf. Why not skip the middleman and just pray to the singular god if he's supposedly the ultimate one? Or are these mutants actually mini gods and the religion actually has lots of them?).

So, I dunno. I think sometimes the terminology can get fuzzy for deliberate usage in manipulation. If I'm a theist Christian and praying to god for help and "talking aloud to my dead grandmother to guide me and watch over me in a time of need" are functionally the same how is it NOT placing dead relatives in the pantheon?

[Jehanne]

In my opinion, monotheism arose with the rise of the first city-states followed by the rise of empires. Having one god instead of many went hand-in-hand with having one ruler. For instance, the Roman tetrarchy, instituted by the emperor Diocletian, failed immediately after his reign, and Constantine, when he ascended the throne, saw the utility of Christian monotheism over Roman paganism, as being a unifying force for the Empire, which was also his motive in opposing Arianism.

[Brian37]

I always found it a little interesting that, to my knowledge anyway, the only religions that cite to there being only one god is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All the others to my knowledge cite there being multiple gods all with different purposes. I wonder what came to the authors of the above mention religions to decide it made more sense for one god to exist instead of many?

Discuss.

Imagination is enticing. 1 vs many, is like "You got my Star Trek in my Star Wars". "No, you got my Star Wars in my Star Trek."

It still boils down to all the flavors claimed in human history, if you want to believe something bad enough you will.

[Silver]

When it comes to monotheism, it appears the main drive was patriarchy. Can't have the woman above or on equal footing, after all.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The big gods eat all the smaller gods until there is only one really big god.

[no one]

Like a Battle Royale?

Are we talking Ra giving a suplex to Shiva?

Maybe Jebus comes roaring down the runway to "I am a Real American"?
Jumps off the top rope only to miss Poseidon and have the crosses turned and wind up in Poseidon's submission hold. The Crucifix.

I might pay to watch that.

[Belacqua]

I always found it a little interesting that, to my knowledge anyway, the only religions that cite to there being only one god is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All the others to my knowledge cite there being multiple gods all with different purposes. I wonder what came to the authors of the above mention religions to decide it made more sense for one god to exist instead of many?

Discuss.

Maybe a key word here would be "henotheism." Coined by Schelling in the 19th century, it refers to a belief that there is one God that is greatest, over all, but that lower-level gods may also exist. 

There is a theory that the Jews were originally henotheists, and thought that the other gods (of Canaan, for example) were real but weaker than their god. It's interesting to read the Jewish scriptures with this in mind -- some of what we take to be monotheistic language may actually fit with henotheism equally well.

There were two centers of thought which posited that there must be a single creator God. This God is said to be unlike Zeus or Odin, etc., because it is not just a powerful human-like character with special abilities. In both ancient Greece, and in the schools of Indian thought which were labeled "Hindu," people after much argument concluded that there must be a non-material source for the material world. This source is the Ground of Being -- is being itself -- but is not a physical being. It cannot be one of many. 

The Greeks had different names for this, including The One. In Hinduism it's Brahman. In Buddhism it's the Not-Two (but this part of Buddhism evolved from Indian thought.) 

The important thing is that in both traditions, God is not the angry patriarchal sky-daddy which we all love to hate. It is the Ground of Being, the Form of the Good, the Unmoving Mover. By definition, there can only be one of these. Because if God is existence itself, then no other thing can exist separately. All existence is in God (or Brahman, or the Not-Two). 

A lot of Christians were comfortable that there would be higher-level beings between humans and God, though they didn't call these "gods." They were angels, geniuses, or daemons (and the word daemons didn't start out with a bad nuance.) For some reason when we translate the Hindu pantheon into English, we call their intermediate-level beings "gods," but I don't know enough about the original languages to know if that's a good translation. But Krishna and all those guys also exist thanks to, and as a subdivision of, Brahman. 

This theology is at the heart of modern Christianity and Hinduism.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

When it comes to monotheism, it appears the main drive was patriarchy. Can't have the woman above or on equal footing, after all.

Excellent point. However, I try to avoid simple answers to complex questions