Intriguing concept

Post #175,586 by FuManChu 9/22/04 1:27:24 AM Reply	Intriguing concept But IMO there have been far too many polytheistic societies with "evil" behavior bound to one god or another. The most persistent in the Middle East for centuries was probably Moloch: [link\|http://www.fact-index.com/m/mo/moloch.html\|http://www.fact-inde.../m/mo/moloch.html] [link\|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch\|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch] ...the most famous atrocity done in his name being the regular sacrifice of human babies. Although the original MLK deity may have sprung from a monotheistic culture (and even that's doubtful), he continued to appear well into the Babylonian period and beyond, each wave of conquest incorporating him into Yet Another Pantheon. One might also easily mention the Aztecs' god of war, Huitzilopochtli, and the ritual human sacrifice and cannibalism performed in his name (among others in the same pantheon). Before the advent of Christianity, world made do with non-religious ideologies for atrocities. Ellinistic culture and Roman Empire are two that we all know about. I would put that more at the feet of a general atheistic trend which always accompanies large people-movements. Both the Greeks and Romans brought about and therefore experienced a large number of cultural upheavals. An increase in the pantheon followed each such shuffling, to the point of unsustainability which you mention. So I think you're right to say "there's a point at which polytheism loses its potency as a ideological basis for behavior." But I don't think you can then say _all_ polytheistic systems have been impotent. There's a critical mass which has only occurred (to my knowledge) a few times in history.
Post #175,606 by Arkadiy 9/22/04 8:53:59 AM Reply	I have to agree that polytheistic civilization commited attrocities. But I am not sure if they indeed used religion as the excuse for real industrial-grade evil - killing off entire cities or nations, like Crusaders did to Constantinople, Nazies to Jews and Stalin to Chechens. Aztec gods and Moloch required human sacrifices, which is a horrible deed, but, when their followers set out to subjugate neighbors, did they do it because Moloch told them he needs more victims? I do not know enough about Aztecs, but Carthage's commercial expansion brought it in conflict with Rome, not religion. Mars is another good example. Are Romans favored by Mars because the conquer, or are they conquering to please Mars? I thing former is closer to Romans' feelings. -- ... a reference to Presidente Arbusto. -- [link\|http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001417.html\|Geoffrey K. Pullum]
Post #175,757 by FuManChu 9/22/04 2:30:24 PM Reply	In the Aztec case, yes The impetus for conquest was directly tied to the bloodthirstiness of the war god. They only killed and cannibalized their own when they ran out of nearby enemies. All I'm saying is that Rome, and to a lesser extent Greece, had atheistic "industrial-grade evil" because they had acheived a critical mass of polytheism after numerous waves of conquest. Early Rome was much more bound to its pantheon as a sincere justification for behavior than later Rome was. So it's not polytheism per se which diffuses religious justification, IMO--instead, there's a watershed point when enough cultures have collided and mixed their pantheons. The Aztecs never had the opportunity to attain that watershed point, for example; their one chance came with European contact, and they didn't survive that long enough to see the polytheistic results. One might argue that Europe, itself, has reached that point, and that Hitler and Stalin are outcomes. I would guess that Chang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung (and other atheistic communist revolutionaries) functioned equivalently; they all were attempting cultural consolidation in the face of cultural uncertainty (with an economic factor, to be sure). The fact that they were able to do so atheistically was dependent upon the number and frequency of those same cultural collisions which forced the revolutions themselves. IMO. I'm not going to make a doctoral thesis out of all this. ;)

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