The human idea of the single god

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jun 21, 2011 at 06:37

Prashant wrote

>You have listed many contributions of Israel in your articles titled "Remarkable Israel". The contributions of Jews to human civilization are undoubtably many. Besides their scientific contributions, I think, Jews can be credited with the invention of Monotheism as a thiestic doctrine. While Hindu and Greek philosophers of the ancient world had touched upon the idea of a single ultimate reality, Jews (to my knowledge) were the first people to establish the idea of mono-theistic worship. This idea was subsequently adapted/marketed/branded by the Christian preachers. Finally, the same idea was packaged as a monopolistic and inflexible theme by Islam. But jews can be considered to be the original inventors of the idea. What do your other readers think?

Well many historians of religion believe that the idea of the single god comes from Egypt and King Akhnaton (his capital was located in today's Tal el-3amarina in Upper Egypt) He believed that Aton or the sun was the ultimate one single god but the geart priets of the city of Ape (Thebes or today's Luxor) believed that he was out of his mind as the idea of a single god just did not make any sense and he was defeated and the old Egyptian Trinity was back (Isis, Osiris and Amon/Ra' or Horus) and I supsect that this idea of the Trinity was borrowed from the religion of Egypt by the Christians

Now we shift gears: there is a famous "encounter" between Muhammad and the Jews (and it comes in two recentions one from Meacca and one from Media and you will find one of the recentions in his biography called sirat rasul allah page 572) where the Jews that do not believe Muhammad or his claims ask him the very profound Aristotelian problem: "if Allah created this creation then who really created Allah" and Muhammad as usual got the help from Gabriel and Allah and we are told that Allah "revelaed' suart al-ikhlas or Q112. But the Jews were very familiar with Greek logic and they were not happy with the answer because surat al-ikhlas is no more than circular reasoning as Allah is really saying "I am one because I said so" so the Jews went back to Muhammad and asked him: then how did Allah created this creation and which hand did he use. As usual Muhammad had to get more help from Gabriel and Q39:67 was "revealed" which was no more than more circular reasoning and they left realizing that Muhammad had no command of logic and Muhammad left believing that he had the answer only if those pesky Jews would listen

So you see basic Greek logic can demolish monotheism as it does not make any sense at all and the Jews that lived among the Greeks as in Alexnadria had to deal with the very profound Greek logic and many of the Hellenized ones even wrote in Greek and made it very clear that the Jewish claim is that they the jews have only one God and he is their ethnic God and in regard to the question of are there any other gods and who really created this god, the Hellenized jews never cared because they realized that the idea of the one single god for all is an illogical idea.

Now enter Chistianity and Greek logic; If you read the writings of Christian neoplatonists (as in the case of plotinus) their idea was that this life is far from being perfect and it cannot be the creation of a perfect God and this is why they tell us that the perfect God must be Yahwah or the God of the OT and he is detached from this not perfect creation and that there are other sub-gods and they are the ones that are responsible for this creation which is far from being perefct and that Jesus must be such God and now we know that in the history of religion orthodoxy always wins and this is why Arias of Alexnadira lost such debate and Athanathius won and now we have Trinitarian Christianity which is more Greek logic that is after the fact that the single god is an idea that cannot be supported by simple Greek logic because God must have attributes or aqaneem (hypostatis) that can be opposite to one another and indeed Muhammad fell in this trap because Allah tells us that he is rahman and rahim but he also tells us that he is a makkar so how can a kind god be also a deceiver when Yahwah is supposed to be perfect but again Islam and Greek logic do not mix

Now what is most surprising is that the Qur'an has a clear layer of neoplatonism as it tells us that Jesus created life which would make him a god and he did not die which also would make him a god as god is the only one that does not really die but Muhammad did not realize that what he was incorporating in the Qur'an was Greek pagan logic

But the most important case to be made against any form of theism is the Buddhist view of it that the presence of god or gods has nothing to do with the way we human beings have to be

So back to this flawed human idea called monotheism: It is an illogical idea that can be defeated by simple Greek logic and indeed monotheism has been the most destructive force that human beings have seen as it assumes that "my god is the one and yours ain't the one" and this is indeed the catastrophe called Islam and it is just amazing when one compares the pagan world of let us say the late antique period and its learning and the ossified and nasty thinking of monotheists the likes of al-Shaf3ee and Ibn Taymiyya and this thinking was responsible for many crimes against humanity as in the case of killing of 90M Hindus because Allah says to kill the polythesits! Just imagine a god that tells us that he is rahman wa rahim is telling his followers to kill. How disgusting

But again the human spirit cannot be conjured by monotheists or the flawed idea of montheism

I hope I helped

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