A Pagan Response to Monotheism 

I also like that they're not very human. They merge, bifurcate, change forms, and so on, and they're not just immature people with superpowers. This makes them seem more plausible to me as cosmic entities than recognizably human gods and goddesses with human wants and needs, etc.. Whatever a god or goddess might be, it's not something that evolved from Australopithecines. 😄

Wasn't it space which is also the father of Ra but Horus was also Ra's father?

@@kevincrady2831 not human? NOT HUMAN?!

That's not answer, though.

Like I always say, if you treat YHVH as a dictator who purges his rivals and compatriots in a bid for power, and his followers actually believe in his "liberation" bullshit, it makes perfect sense.

As a Christian, this is true. The Bible is also clear that these other gods are lesser than God and usually demonic in their rebellion against God

Because it has revealed to be so One God Three persons Ditch that idea for now and examine Creation, design, destination, purpose, meaning, ethics, Then you'll see Christianity is the best explanation Follow the evidence Polytheism general lacks the following Specific doctrine, codified ethics, clear explanation of how creation and the nature of world. Bible explains it all. The heart of the message is love. A personal experience inherently means polytheism?? Ok...

@@bond3161 says someone who read that horror story wearing blinders and rose colored glasses.

@@bforman1300 empty words Provide an actual line of reasoning please

yeah Christians should drop the omnis. the bible itself argues against them, theyre just a drag

Also atheist. Polytheism is pluralistic by definition, allowing for many traditions to coexist. This also seems to include the tradition that at least one god cannot, therefore does not, exist, as well as the traditionally agnostic.

Polytheism is more fun.

Yep it's true, blondes and Polytheists have more fun

Polytheism is also logically more plausible; it grants more room for deities to be naturally emerging, makes it more reasonable that individual deities decide to bother with humans and the human world, and polytheistic deities are less complex and powerful meaning that their presence is more plausible because it requires fewer jumps from what is known.

@@reaganeidemiller7132 I wouldn't agree they are less powerful or complex, but more relatable, flawed and fallible. I would say that this makes them even more complex if anything.

See that’s where I fall. I concede that the Christian god may exist, but so may the Egyptian ones or the Norse or Aztec or Greek or Native American or Central African, etc.

As an atheist this type of argument is one of my favourite to use when talking to christians. Their arguments never even slightly work towards proving their god existence, only that A god exists. I personally love the version of this that points out how many of the classic Christian arguments for their gods existence come from Islamic theologians, who were obviously trying to justify a different theological framework. Always gets the islamiphobic ones panicking.

@Dough Nut could you explain more on how such a line of argumentation strawman's the Christian theology?

@Dough Nut atheist here... Yea ok you describe Christianity... Ok everyone know what christians believe!!! Now are you willing to make any argument??? Also a lot of polytheistic religion say exactly the same you say... I am not care to argue in this regard.. (I don't like to argue over definitions) But I don't understand why christians are obsessed with the monotheistic label... If don't effect anything in the Christianity if they drop it... Spatial the christian tha are believe in trinity... Is look more of a marketing thing than a theological....

@Dough Nut but I didn't use the word "god" in my argumentation at all. I used the word diety specifically for this reason as to avoid conflating terms. Convincing me of the magnitude, scope, and essence of "God" as "being itself" as you put it would be part of the question, "now convince me that its yours" bit. So I still fail to see how this would be a poor line of questioning for an atheist to ask a Christian.

This is exactly my take as well. The gods are more consistent with the world we observe around us.

I actually agree with design by committee, though I don't concede the Gods as imperfect. I take the "multiple kinds of greatness" approach. What is "perfect" for the Gods of wolves may be imperfect for the Gods of deer. Design by committee may mean concession and compromise, even among ideal committee members.

The funny thing is that when you examine closely the word Elohim which appears in the book of Genesis and gets replaced with the word God during the verse "in the beginning God created both the heaven and the earth" when translated into English language it more so winds up translating to mean, the gods,the pantheon, or a collective of gods which seems to actually imply that the world was created by a collective unit,multiple entities or by a committee.

Greetings from a fellow polytheist turned atheist but also with some questions bumping around. We are flitting across the theistic spectrum and I only hope we settle down somewhere

@@garynaccarato4606 There's lots of hints of polytheism in the bible, historians who study the religions of the area would tell you Yahweh started out as a consort of a goddess. Maybe Asherah, but it's been a while since I listened to that talk, so don't take my word.

No that's your choosing bias If there is a creator who is timeless, boundless, all powerful, eternal That's infinity There can only be one Infinity

​@@bond3161 no he wasn't biased, you on the other hand are, you said that if there was a god that was infinite or timeless there could only be one, but most polytheistic religions see the death or weaknesses of their gods, therefore you have bias to the monotheistic standard of gods, almighty eternal beings.

@@A.G._TRY dude, how many infinite can there be? Death or weakness of God, that sounds like a god to you? Crying out loud

@@bond3161 yes it does sound like a god to me, gods themselves don't have to be all powerful, the only reason people associate all mighty power with gods is because of monotheistic religions.

On top of that monotheistic religions have holes in their arguments, for example god should be able to stop Lucifer but he doesn't, even though he is all powerful, it would make more sense if Lucifer himself was also a god, but he isn't.

I think Ocean was trying to point out how difficult it is logically to claim your personal experience is valid while everyone else's is wrong.

The argument from experience was always the only one that really resonated with me. I tried searching for Yahweh for around 10 years, and I always found callings that didn't make sense, but now I realize they were from other deities. All the other arguments are just abstract "what if" questions, which are fun to think about, but your personal or shared experience is much much more compelling. But, perhaps that's me, I seem to be drawn much more to the experiences of other humans than to philosophy or logic. I'm sort of a "collector of stories". I listen to tales from Reddit every day, my hobbies all involve stories and I love hearing what people have to say.

In buddhism we have scriptures about how gods come to develop that narcisism of thinking about themselves as all powerful, all knowing creators

The problem is that our Christian God is omnipresent and thus doesn't make much room for other Gods to exist. He is omnibenevolent and thus it is a moral necessity for us to establish a relationship with, which I suppose you can call worship if you want to. Therefore if you believe that the Christian God exists you have to by definition believe that only he exists or you have to like everyone else not understand him.

@@adenjones1802 But omnibelevolent (which is it's own discussion) and omnipresent do not mean exclusive. Nothing about those two qualities logically prevent the existence of other deities. It's the "First unmoved mover" argument again. That argument only proves that there is AT LEAST ONE unmoved mover. It is entirely possible that there are more

@@scarredFalconerOk lets say that there are multiple heavenly beings. Perfectly possible from a monotheistic perspective (angels and stuff like that) but when we are talking monotheism, we are talking about the being with the highest amount of knowledge, virtue, power, etc. Otherwise what is differentiating you and me from being heavenly beings? The only no arbitrary way to distinguish a God from a non-God is by the attributes a God can have but a non-God can't. Such as being omnipotent. If God has all the power in the universe then there can only be one of him. If there was more than one omnipotent being then these beings would have to share the power between them meaning they don't have all the power, meaning it is a contradiction. Therefore all they arguments that rely on omnipotence require monotheism. Omnipotence is a more falsifiable qualification for God. In other words, Polytheistic arguments are non-falsifiable or at least more difficult to hold any strict, workable definitions for as compared to Monotheism which lives and dies on its tri-omni definitions. This is why atheists prefer to debate us because we give them something to work with.

@@adenjones1802 Except the Christian god is born out of earlier, polytheistic near eastern societies, often having influence from Greek and IE philosophy/religions. I don't think Yahweh has anymore sway in being the unmoved mover than say Wodin or the Dagda.

I think it’s just kind of stupid to make a 1-to-1 analogy between watches and the entire universe. Like, of course one human couldn’t build an entire skyscraper, but a being possessing omnipotence and knowledge of all things could build one effortlessly just by willing it into existence. Likewise, I find people who just say that the universe is obviously designed are people who just kind of feel that way, they simply point to the precise intricacy of the whole of reality. But, the precise nature of physics can’t be understood at all, you could say it’s intelligently designed, and some would say that the universe is fine-tuned, because certain constants of the universe function to certain incredibly small windows for life to exist. But, why isn’t this standard of “fine-tuning” applied elsewhere? Why specifically just the constants of the universe? You could say that the concept of spacetime being bendable (which allows gravity to exist) is evidence of fine tuning, or the fact that gravity is proportional to mass/energy, and not, say, the rate of cosmic inflation, and what if those constants had to be set to those specific numbers, because of hidden variables? Like how volume is length times width times height, but that’s specifically because of how geometry works, volume literally has to be proportional to that or else it wouldn’t be volume, likewise, perhaps the constants of the universe are proportional to certain variables and simply have to be that way. Darwinian evolution perfectly accounts for life, even if you may not find the explanation believable because it looks designed, that itself is not proof at all, it’s simply a logical fallacy known as an Argument from Personal Astonishment. Anyway, not sure why I went off there, but just some things I’d like to say about theistic arguments.

@@computergamescritical6917 like I said at the beginning of my comment, I’m not a theist. I myself don’t find those arguments for god convincing. I’m just engaging with it, doing a sort of thought experiment of how the cosmological argument could make the most sense. While, of course, an infinite and omnipotent being could do it, we’ve never seen such a thing. On the contrary, all the beings we know are limited, but can achieve great things through cooperation. So if one grants the cosmological argument, multiple limited cooperative agents make more sense than a single one with no limits, based purely on what we experience in our world. Also, if I’m to take this though experiment one step further, the chaotic nature of the universe could be excused easily with multiple deites, as multiple deities can mean conflict, and conflicting ideas about how to “build” the universe, thus forcing those conflicting notions to coexist. The results, while beautiful, are also chaotic. Again, I don’t believe this. It doesn’t convince me. But it is an attempt to engage with this stuff differently

@@lucideandre Thank you for your response. I wasn’t claiming you were a theist, though perhaps that might have been what I was unwittingly communicating, my reply was mostly just a broad critique of theistic arguments, and also a critique against an atheistic/polytheistic argument. I think that, as we explore deeper aspects of the universe, there is no guarantee that it will have any parallels with the things we are familiar with, space and time seem constant and unrelated, but Einstein proved they were connected, and oddly enough, bendable, like a material substance. When you’re talking about the creation or origin or potential design of the universe, we are now talking about an area that we can’t even make empirical judgements on, we have no idea what made our universe come into existence, and so although we have parallels to the construction of, say, a skyscraper on our planet, when it comes to the “construction” of the universe, we have no idea what happened, and no guarantee that it works in any way similar to anything we’re familiar with, we don’t even necessarily know if it pertains to the laws of logic or if it can be even comprehended by humans. Perhaps some people think it’s more likely that the universe keeps on working in the same, consistent fashion on its “lower” levels as it does its “higher” levels. The different spatial dimensions, for example, are all just layers of the preceding spatial dimension, the 2nd dimension is just rows of the 1st, and the 3rd dimension is just rows of the 2nd. So perhaps some think it’s more likely that something like the “design” or “creation” of the universe may work in similar ways to human design, but ultimately, this is purely speculative, we don’t know if that would be the case if such hypothetical “spirit beings” or “higher powers” existed and were manipulating the world, because they may work in ways entirely alien to our conception of reality.

@@benjiman_OBE oh, sure. But the people to operate and use the library could be said to be just…people. As in, other beings beyond those who originally created it

@@benjiman_OBE I mean, sure. That’s a way of seeing it. Like I pointed out in the beginning of my comment, I’m not a theist. I’m an atheist. I’m not defending my the existence of any deities here. I’m also not opposing it, I’m just making a thought experiment. But also, Ricky Gervais is interesting in that he’s certainly someone with some irrational, unjustified, made-up beliefs that likely will become obsolete.

I think we're mostly in agreement. But for the experiential argument you would want to avoid relabeling experiences in order to collect your initial data of the experiences. After that, you may build a model of understanding that is polytheistic, and that may lean in a direction of hard or soft polytheism, or that some deities express themselves in a soft polytheist sort of way, and others a hard polytheist sort of way. But that would be something that is done after you honestly look at the descriptions of the experiences themselves. Any honest exploration of that, however, would have to include that humans can make mistakes. Not everyone's description of their experience is honest, or even well understood. So there's plenty of room for error in what we're looking at, and that consideration must be part of the analysis.

Umm no God created a free will universe where ❤ is possible There is rebellion thus evil

Turn to Hinduism

This is largely why reading the bible turned me Mesopotamian Polytheist. The bible literally says Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Canaanite gods have power, just that... they're """evil""". In reality, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Canaanites were normal every day people like Israelites and weren't any more wicked than anyone else, especially as ancient history is a mess of imperialism and genocide no matter what people group you look at

@@BlackLotusVisualArchive the bible has countless examples of people worshipping other gods and gaining knowledge and power from them. Also mesopotamian paganism,what's that like

I used to do many debates back to back. You might say i was a mass debater.

@@OceanKeltoi even better!

There can only be one Infinite I can't see it any other way

@@bond3161 - Nobody cares how you see it. Why are you so desperate to convert people? I think if your God wanted more followers, he would convert people on his own. He wouldn't need you to speak for him.

@@neopagan1976 its not how i see it. Its a matter of objectivity. Two plus two is four yes? Scientific ideas come from logic and rationality yes? So does philosophy. It matters because its the only consistent answer to literally everything, from meaning, purpose, to valies and morality. It literally IS the idea of love, something every one knows for sure. On the surface Christianity seems to be another religion. But thats just the invisible war we are caught in between. God has already won for the war for us. And he says, believe in the gift he has given to us so that we may live past death. I love you and and all, why wouldn't i want you to have the best gift? Why wouldnt i want everyone to know love, and receive it? Let us follow the evidence.

@@bond3161 - It's like I previously stated. Nobody actually cares about how you see it. You Christians should have learned by now that the world doesn't revolve around your religion. It never had. Why do you think nobody in this comment section will ever be willing to listen to you. The human race had survived for millennia long before your religion came along, and the human race will continue to survive long after your religion has faded into oblivion. Oh, and yes. Your religion really will fade away, It's already in an accelerated steep decline. For the record, when it comes to science and objectivity, don't be trying to lecture anyone, because you lack even the most basic knowledge of both topics. Oh, just to be clear, there is no actual secret war against you Christians. People would have to view your religion as being something of real value before they'd even be interested enough to declare some kind of war on it. The truth is that ultimately your religion never had any real value attached to it. In other words, your religion just isn't interesting enough for people to even bother declaring war on. This is especially true since there are so many other more spiritually authentic religions to choose from. FYI, your God could hardly win a war that never actually took place.

Creation myths have always been a struggle for me because they all start with creating "something" from "nothing" by describing all of the THINGS/Beings present in the so-called nothing. They simply shift the starting point. As for the fine-tuning of the universe, this planet is finely tuned for a series of ecosystems, some of which are friendly to life, some of which are hostile to it (think incredible pressures and darkness of the deep ocean where very few organisms can manage to hang onto life). Also, every other planet in the universe has its own highly specific set of conditions, some of which may support life we haven't yet found. There is to me no reason to think this planet with its set of circumstances was the goal and epitome of creation, it was simply one of the many outcomes.

Generally I think this is true. But I also think that a lot of the arguments do matter for those that think in that sort of way. For me, they are good for articulating certain concepts and expressing why I agree with something.

CHRISTIANITY hinges on logic and history

@@bond3161 - Your christianity hinges on forced conversion, genocide, and holy war based bloodshed. There's nothing logical about Christianity.

What? That's your understanding of it? Ffs....

I would argue the various "paradoxes" are not a bug but a feature of Polytheism. Yes, if there are many Gods that are concerned with different things then there will indeed be times those things come into conflict. Lo and behold that is actually something we see happen with the Gods: various stories and instances They come into conflict. Why is this? One need only look at the natural world. It's built upon conflict! Night and day, predators and prey, health and illness, friction and inertia, etc. The world stops working properly if any one of these truly prevails. Conflict among the Gods therefore is not a problem but a necessity. This is compounded by the fact that these conflicts lead to creations and the Gods Themselves provide cultural ways to navigate these conflicts such as sacrifices to appease land spirits when we need to take resources or rites of passage that allow for young people to go from the protection of childhood deities to the realm of deities with more adult concerns. The world is dynamic and therefore a dynamic conception of the divine is far more plausible

@@WildMen4444 "I would argue the various "paradoxes" are not a bug but a feature of Polytheism." Don't know if I would go that far. One of the more common paradoxes relies on the tri-Omni god, which is the god concept used by many monotheists and Neo-Platonists. How it goes is assume two gods wanted opposite things, what occurs? For example, God A says 'let there be unicorns' and God B says "let there not be unicorns'. Both gods are Omnipotent, and so we end up with a logical problem. Of course, this is shown to be a bad objection as it ignored two other properties of gods, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence. In this case each god would only be able to do good things and they know that what the other gods want are also good, so why would they ever come into conflict with one another? But even if we assume that the gods are not tri-Omni, how does the universe maintain uniformity of nature? If gods are able to influence the very nature of things, how can we ever trust induction? While some chaotic elements exist within the universe, it still does ultimately follow a level of uniformity. If there are multiple gods then this needs explanation. Personally, I tend to favor the view of the gods, for the most part, being rational beings (favoring some level of Platonism with my non-Platonist paganism), and so I find this easy enough to address. It is, however, something that does need to be addressed by some polytheists. I think one of the advantages we have in addressing this problem, however, comes from combining the rejection of mythic literalism with some of the works of pagan philosophers, specifically this quote, "For this is law amongst us Gods; none of us will thwart his neighbour's will, but ever we stand aloof" Artemis, Hyppolytus. Here we have textual backing that the gods do not thwart the wills of other gods, thus they do not come into conflict with each other. Breaking the uniformity of nature would necessitate that such a conflict occurs. Of course, this text only seems to suggest that there is some sort of contingent agreement for such a thing but not that the gods necessarily don't thwart each others will. By supposing the gods are rational, as I do, I think we can preserve the uniformity of nature without necessitating that the gods never disagree. Rational conflict and disagreement is then possible, but as all parties are rational it would not be hard to argue that the uniformity of nature is a result of the base agreement they all have as rational agents.

@@philosophicaljay3449 Well, there's a couple of things I have to say to that. The first one being that your first point is kinda moot. We already are at the conclusion that there aren't any tri-omni deities competing against each other. Just wouldn't work. Secondly, I will say that perhaps I should have clarified that the conflicts in question are not really conflicts. As you say, the Gods are not actively negating each other's wills. The myths aren't literal. However, They do engage with each other in ways that cause change and are manifested symbolically as a conflict. These symbolize the changes we see in the outer and inner worlds. So my point still stands. There are things that clash and those things are represented in divine drama as conflict but really ultimately are for the collective goal of maintaining cosmic order. Breaking the order to reaffirm order

It could be that my understanding of Max Black’s critique is incomplete, but as far as I understand it it is far from a disproof. If the symmetrical universes in which the spheres reside in are in fact distinct, then we can identify them as two independent (though symmetrical) universes. And if we can identify them independently, then they can be predicates. If applying these different predicates to their corresponding spheres results in the asymmetry that Black claims, then their definitions are inherently contradictory, and cannot be used to prove or disprove anything. If it does not result in asymmetry, then the spheres have different predicates, and are not the same. If the universes cannot be identified independently, then they are only separate if we already assume identity of discernible to be false. If we assume it to be true, they are then the same universe, and thus the sphere contained within is the same.

​@@ZMattStudio Max Black's symmetrical universe isn't comparing two different universes. Think of it this way, there exists a universe that only has two identical balls in it. Their position within the universe is such that the universe is entirely symmetrical. Anything you can say about Ball 1 can also be said about Ball 2. Even relational properties are identical as the universe is symmetrical. Is there one ball or two? In fact, let's replace the balls with two photons that are just sitting there, because we already know through scientific reasoning that photons share entirely identical properties. The mere fact that such a universe with two photons within it seems metaphysically possible suggests that the Identity of Indiscernibles is false. After all, if every property of one thing is equally shared with another thing then those must, in fact, be just one thing via the Identity of Indiscernibles, but this hypothetical universe does not seem to be metaphysically impossible and so the Identity of Indiscernibles must be false. A friend of mine is in the works into formalizing this with a photon as the example, but to quickly use it in an example, Let's say that there is an Omnipotent god looking at a universe. At the moment the universe has only one thing in it, a photon. Can said god, being Omnipotent, create a second photon within this universe in such a way that the universe becomes symmetrical (given that he could also, theoretically, move the already existing photon to a different location within said universe)? If so, then could said God now use that universe as a blueprint and create a new universe identical to it? Within the old universe you could argue that the two photons are distinct as they have different temporal properties (one having existed long), but this is not the case for the two photons in the new universe. These two photons would have every conceivable property identical, so are they actually two different photons or just one? Obviously there are two, but this cannot be allowed under the Identity of Indiscernibles, so either something (what could it be though) about this state of affairs is impossible or else the Identity of Indiscernibles is false.

this is an excellent point.

I think that the teleological argument works better by focusing on structured order. If we came across some unknown object in the woods we would still come to the conclusion that it is designed if it seems to have some level of structured order to it. Even if we observe some parts and those parts seem more random to us as first observation, the overall design would still be apparent. The universe is much the same, it has a structured order to it (it operates on mathematical principles). Even if parts of it might seem random at times, when you dive deep enough you find more and more of that randomness explained. There are still some flaws to this formulation, but I think that by moving into this general direction that the watchmaker analogy can be saved. I do, however, think the fine-tuning version of the teleological argument does not fall into the same pitfalls as the like of watchmaker arguments.

@@philosophicaljay3449 this actually makes it even worse, as it posits a "designed" quality that we recognize intuitively, meaning we also intuitively recognize it's absence in the woods around it. And much like the woods around it, we also recognize it in the universe. In fact, SETI wouldn't be possible if the teleological argument held any water. Science itself relies on us NOT believing this argument. If it was true, science would be impossible, as we'd have no way of recognizing design from non-design, since we recognize that EVERYTHING is designed.

@@Nerobyrne I disagree. I think that by following this line of reasoning that you can find an underlying design element throughout the universe, but that does not presume that such order will be anywhere but in the foundations. For example, you can create a code that outputs a random mess of things. While the surface layer of the observation would be a random mess of things, and thus clearly not something that seems designed, but looking further into things, closer to the foundations you will start to see design. This is why we can recognize, for example, the pocketwatch as designed while not having the same intuitions for trees. The pocketwatch's structured order is also clear to see on the surface as well as the foundation while the forest it was found in does not have that structured order on the surface. As such, SETI would still be possible as what is being looked for is that 'surface layer' being ordered. As I said in the previous comment, it is by diving deep enough that the elements of randomness become more explained.

@@philosophicaljay3449 yeah there are ways you can find order in the universe, it's just that the teleological argument doesn't get you there. Even logically. P1: there are natural laws which cause things to manifest in reliable ways. P2: intelligent beings are able to manifest objects in ways clearly not natural. C: the universe was intelligently designed That makes NO sense.

Oh? What did they have to say?

@@OceanKeltoi Only good things! Drew was saying conversations with you had influenced him to take second, third and fourth looks at arguments for theistic positions, and to stop dismissing them as irrational. The exchange starting at 43:13 of Alex's video is around where you come up.

Making it on screen for such a short time like that probably made it more likely for ADHD people to make sure they knew what it said.

Same. I have learned to set video speed to .25 when I try to pause the video for such things.

YUP. Same

I think your post got cut off somehow

Thats called the “appeal to mystery” and its not exactly helpful to the Monotheist because it doesnt actually offer a justification other than a willful override of evidence counter to their position.

"Definitely something to toy with." 🤣

The fine-tuning argument has this issue I think. If the universe was fine-tuned for our existence, it stands to reason that we wouldn't have so much universe that we can't exist in.

@@OceanKeltoi yeah. And if i would have a genuine discussion about Gods with a polytheist I would first ask them to define God. Because I can imagine really powerful beeings. Just omnipotency is contradictory similiar to omnipotency and free will. How can I have free will if someone already knows what I will do? Sounds predetermined to me. But a one eyed dude sitting on a space tree in a giant castle? Maybe. I don't know. Doesn't sound impossible just wild.

Problem of evil is solved by Christians The understanding you guys have if it is so so shallow. God wanted a loving universe. He gave free will. Free will implies rebellion. He is love and life and your guide. You die without him.

@@bond3161 Christianity literally creates the problem of evil by assigning the attributes of God. Free will is a whole other minefield... Is your God all-knowing? If so he knows the future. If he knows the future then he knows what you're going to do. If he knows what you're going to do, then you will do the thing he knows. Conclusion, if you can only do what is already known you do not have free will. Or, God cannot be all-knowing. Hence Calvinist doctrine of predestination, that is, if God knows what you're going to do then he knows if you're going to heaven, and has always known, and there's nothing you can do about it. (Rough summaries of both, but that's the gist).

It's an interesting idea to explore. I hadn't come across a conception of polytheism that holds to that. But it would be really interesting to explore if one such tradition exists.

_"Hey, how come YOU have more followers?"_ "Well, you punished yours with a famine, dude. You killed a bunch." _"They were butchering their goats wrong!"_ "You killed 100,000 of them because they were butchering their goats wrong? Was that necessary?" _"I must be obeyed!"_ "Dude, you're gonna be obeyed by less people." _"gaaaah!"_ "Snicker"

Agreed

That doesn't really make sense. Humans live together in communities. So do deer and ants. Even territorial animals like tigers merely guard their territory from others, and still congregate for mating and child-rearing. Multiple gods would mean there are conflicts. But if we assume the deities are distinct entities with their own agency and thought we can assume they'd be able to tolerate each other's existence.

(not arguing against you since you said you didn't find it convincing. Just figured it was worth stating why that makes no sense.)

@@alicev5496 Yeah, I agree with you I think. There's no reason gods couldn't work together, or just tolerate each other.

i’ve actually considered writing a book around this concept. it’s a really interesting thought experiment.

Its an interesting conversation. But the short of it is that I dont think simpler is necessarily better.

The same as you find yourself in that "feeling good with yourself" I find myself in "truth". I don't mean this to say "I'm right" or something, just that one of, if not the most important things for me is that I'm representing reality as fairly as possible and not. as what I wish it to be. That being said, I personally don't subscribe to "objective truth". I think our conception of it comes from the way we are as subjects, so there's no way to get out of that and have "an outside perspective". Sorry for the rambling, but I just wanted to say that while you might value something like "meaning" (correct me if this is a misrepresentation in any way), I value "truth", so these questions over the existence of anything really, not just gods is important to me.

​@@cynicviper I come from kind of a utilitarian mindset. There are a lot of things that are true, but almost worthless. It's true I can't eat the sun, for example, but in my day to day life it's not a useful truth. For me, meaning is about how we can influence how we interact with other people. That which is true is compelling only because we face so much uncertainty. Usually in how other people react or deal with either us or the world we share. The truth is a swiss army knife that we can either use to shank someone or pop a champagne cork.

@@taitaisanchez That is perfectly reasonable, and I do think truth is almost wholly instrumental, but isn't that the same for your interactions with other people, or even your feeling of accomplishment/meaning/happiness? Aren't those instrumental towards some other goal (in one sense at least)? And, not to just go contrary to your statement or anything, but I'm extremely against utilitarianism. I care little about what use things may have or if they are practical. I just value thinking, the deeper, the better (usually). I can understand it might feel like useless mental gymnastics, but what is wrong with that? I just enjoy doing it, it doesn't have to have any use outside of that(kind of like actual gymnastics).

@@cynicviper I'm not a huge fan of utilitarianism, it just works for me more often than I feel like it really should. Also I feel like it's illegal to talk about instrumentality without dropping some kind of Evangelion refere... *turns instantly into Tang*

@@taitaisanchez Lol. I don't know if you got anything from this "conversation", but it was fun either way. I hope the best for you and good night. 👋

Unless that god is an ass lol

Free will, ❤ and rebellion Christianity

It surprised me too that people like the teleological argument. But I’ve found that people find it, or some variation of it, like an appeal to beauty, to be what they attest to finding convincing.

@@OceanKeltoi My take is: I simply can't make any sense of the ontological argument: I can't figure out why people think it makes sense. The teleological argument, on the surface, seems a lot more reasonable to me, but every time I get into the weeds about it, I find myself in heated debates about the idea of order, and I find it to kind of unravel. When it comes to a "prime mover", I often just kinda shrug my shoulders and go, "Hell if I know, maybe you got me there."