Bend Over and Kiss Your Golden Idol Goodbye

Since Akhenaten’s failed experiment with monotheism in the fourteenth century B.C.E. monotheism has waged war on mankind. It was not enough for Akhenaten to simply install a cult devoted to one god, or even as one god as the only god. He had to demolish the other gods and their worship.

It was the same with Moses. “Thou shall have no other gods before me,” YHWH is to have said to Moses. At once an acknowledgment that other gods lived and an injunction against them, this rabid and unreasoning intolerance of alternatives to itself has been monotheism’s hallmark for close to thirty centuries.

That’s a long time to hate.

And it’s a lot of insecurity.

Polytheism never had a problem with other gods. Just plug another god into the pantheon or add a pantheon and worship one, two or ten. It made no difference to the worshiper and it made no difference to the gods. Jealousy is a thing felt only by a god who wants to be the only one.

Or, at least, by his followers. After all, as the emperor Julian said in the fourth century, it’s a libel upon god to accuse him of such shortcomings.

When Jesus came around the same problem cropped up. But now the focus was not on YHWH but on his son, and it was his turn to be the big cheese. Everything was about Jesus; it still is in Christian culture. YHWH belongs to the OLD Testament.

Mohammed offered the same stark distinction: there is no god but Allah.

None. Zip. Cancel Jesus’ claim and push him out the door. And all the other gods with him.

And on and on polytheism persisted, accepting every god that came along and rejecting none. The Romans thought people who believed in just one god were a little odd but there was no legislation against it, let alone a persecution that lasted centuries.

But monotheism has never been content to live and let live. Its entire history is one of holy wars, persecutions, book (and people) burnings, and inquisitions. Monotheism is by its very nature intolerant. It is part of the package.

And after all the long years we’re stuck with three of them, all hating each other and the rest of us, demanding that their own system of belief be privileged above all others and claiming unique access to the divine. Everyone belly-up, kneel, or bend over and praise god.

Millions have died over a question of divine jealousy and insecurity. It is rather difficult for a non-monotheist to imagine anybody wanting to honor a god who is capable of such childish motivations, but monotheists thrive on it.

Banished are the benign gods and welcomed is the angry sky god with his wrath and threats of eternal damnation. It’s difficult to find something monotheism doesn’t hate.

Choice, the first fruits of a liberal democracy, is a bogeyman. There is a reason that choice is equated with heresy, because choice negates orthodoxy. There is only one thing to believe and there is only one way to go about believing it. Any veering from the path leads to catastrophe.

A polytheist can only throw up his hands in wonder. Everybody knows, after all, that there are many truths and many paths, and that each culture has the religion that is right – and true – for it.

People have a right to believe anything they want, including nothing at all. As Thomas Jefferson said, “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

That is the assurance we have from the United States Constitution, ratified by every state in the Union.

And now under attack by conservative Christians who have decided that since the history of the United States is not to their liking that it should be re-written and our nation established retroactively as one made by and for Christians and Christians alone.

And only a specific type of Christian.

We’re even being told that Islam isn’t really a religion and therefore First Amendment protections do not apply to it. Who is making this ruling after the fact? A conservative Christian. And of course if the world’s second largest religion isn’t really a religion, you don’t have to work your brain very hard to figure out where everyone else stands.

It is to prevent such madness that the First Amendment exists. It is for that reason that conservative Christians are re-writing our nation’s history, and interpreting the First Amendment and the Wall of Separation out of existence.

As Sarah Palin says, the Ten Commandments trump the Constitution. Sharron Angle wants to legislate Old Testament law.

You don’t have to be a genius to see the outcome for those who, as George Carlin said, give the wrong answer to the god question.

To polytheists, atheists, secular humanists, liberals, progressives, and everyone else who might worship one god but not in the approved way, bend over and kiss your golden idol goodbye.