Diavolo Posted July 21, 2021 Posted July 21, 2021 "The old gods died laughing when they heard one of them say that he was the only one" -F. Nietzsche To speak of God is to speak of the truth. But of what truth and of what god? From that of the Aztec god of war, Huitzilopochtli? Or that of the Norse sun god, Baldr? Nobody thinks of them when the word "god" or the word "truth" arises. So, is it not an act of naivety not to assume that, in the West, the word god has almost been monopolized by the Christian god? Could it be that the truth, which is nothing more than the installation of the most efficient lie, has been monopolized in the same way? In one of Plato's texts, you can read the discussion that Socrates has with the soothsayer Euthyphro. Both try to define what are holiness and justice. Euthyphro does not take long to point out that the holy is that which pleases the gods. "It is not true that it is impossible to please all the gods, because what delights one arouses animosity to the other one?" Socrates asks his interlocutor. Greek polytheism appears as a repertoire of different divine visions, which coexist at the same time. It was a range of different morals; of simultaneous contingent truths, which did not need to please one another. The literary Trojan War was started by a ridiculous competition between the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Pallas Athena, which Ares's mistress eventually won. Similarly, Apollo and Dionysus shared believers: by day, the Greek polis worshiped the solar god related to the bureaucracy of life, and, at nightfall, the orgiastic god of wine was worshiped. The guilt, which the difference usually engenders, seems to be one of the non-existent or rare problems under the Greek polytheistic system: if someone did not worship a popular god, consequently he worshiped another, not necessarily evil, for being less crowded, as in the case of Penia, the goddess of poverty. Socrates was sentenced to death for failing to worship any of these, which complicates the matter. Before continuing, I would like to make it clear that the noun god can also be a synonym for morality; of tradition. It is not intended to speak in favor of the existence of the Olympians or to resume a cult towards them. The gods are archetypes of diverse customs. On the other hand, Christian monotheism established and normalized only 1 interpretation of reality: it institutes 1 couple to love, 1 nation to serve, 1 moral, 1 single cause, 1 single effect, 1 Whole, which is not composed of individualized entities that are interconnected, but by a social body that must lean towards moral homogeneity, which will be called reality and which comes from the law; from the only creative source. Monotheistic reductionism ignores the complexity of micro and macrocosmic processes to give rise to a univocal reading, which discards reason to enthrone faith as the only translator device of the universe, as if the force of a current of air could be calculated or the weight of an apple with some variation of the metric system. Maybe monotheism is the Big Brother of 1984 and its thought police are scattered within its bureaucratic behavior. Violence, such as that exerted by Emperor Constantine or by the Holy Inquisition, emerges when 1 worldview does not allow others to flourish and establish alternative versions of reality for political reasons: of power. Could it be that those who decide to adopt a monotheistic system to interpret its socio-historical context endorse a single belief more because they fear reprisals, suffered by those who contradict the idea of the ruling dogma than because of a conviction nested in the depths of their people? It is well known that until Christianity copied the idea of hell from other religions, its cells of believers multiplied more efficiently. Well... This is just another idea on the table.
Recommended Posts