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.

Christians are always asking themselves, “What would Jesus do?” though there is no real evidence they ever answer the question; perhaps because they don’t want to know. It would likely oppose what they’re so eager to do.

How often do I ask myself, in a similar vein, “What would my ancestors do?” It’s a question that is bound to come up among those who adhere more strongly to historical standards in the reconstruction and revival of ancient religions. We tend to be very ancestor oriented and traditional minded, even as those traditions are being reconstructed and reinterpreted in light of the passing of a thousand years or more.

Of course, I’m not a reconstructionist but a revivalist, if I must take a label. Heathen reconstructionists are no more able to reconstruct the past than Christian reconstructionists. The main reason is that it’s gone and past. Many centuries have passed and the world has changed.

That’s just my opinion and you’re welcome to challenge it. I know there are some pretty strict reconstructionists out there. But look at the context of the past for starters. The climate has changed – twice in some cases, perhaps more if you go back far enough. We’ve had a Little Ice Age and a global warming periods and now an upward trend in temperatures that make a solid case for anthropogenic global warming.

In that respect alone the world is different. Some ways of living will be more or less difficult as a result. Whales are on the decline and protected and my Norse ancestors loved to hunt whale.

The world has also gotten smaller. Communications and technology have changed everything. The three-tiered universe has been discounted. There may still be people who believe the gods are up and the dead below and we humans are in the middle. I suppose a case can be made in a metaphysical sense that there are other ways to look at this point, or maybe multi-dimensional physics could take care of it.

We mostly live in larger communities. We’re not isolated by geography and climate. There is no place we can’t go, no influence we can entirely avoid. Things just aren’t the same.

We can’t even raid monasteries anymore. But then, on the flip side, those Christian reconstructionists, though they might want to, can’t burn us at the stake or pour molten metal down our throats to make us convert either, so there are some trade-offs I can live with.

But my point in all this is to say that I can say, “What would my ancestors do?” in a given situation except that the situation in question would probably never have arisen in my ancestor’s world and he would be ill-equipped to deal with it now, were he here.

We have no idea how our ancestors would have coped with some of the changes of the past ten to twenty centuries. We can try to imagine but there is simply no telling, not with any degree of certainty.

That’s not to say we should just throw up our hands and surrender to a world culture. We have our gods and we have our beliefs and we treasure the wisdom passed down to us by our ancestors. Across the centuries, they have something to tell us, some important things.

Like honor and ancestry, like family and clan, like courage and moderation.  Some of these things are timeless and will serve us as well as they served them. Our ancestors were a pragmatic lot, not given to violent swings of ideological or religious fervor. You might get outlawed like Hjalti Skeggjason, a proponent of Iceland’s conversion, for calling Freyja a bitch, but you wouldn’t get hounded into death and long-term persecution because you refused to abandon Christianity. The Norse ruled in Ireland and Norway and other places without forcing everyone to become Heathens like them.

Historical lessons like this tell us something about what our attitudes towards other religions should be. Respect and honor our gods and defend that honor, but do not impose your beliefs on others. There are other lessons we can learn, which give us some clue as to how our ancestors might respond today. For example, our Heathen ancestors practiced exposure of infants. It might be suggested from this that they would be pro-choice. It seems a reasonable assumption, since they themselves practiced what might be termed abortions after the fact.

But our ancestors also engaged in violent feuds and held entire families accountable for the actions of a single member. These are things most of us would likely not do today. In a small, isolated community such a practice might make sense. It kept social order by forcing clans to police its own. But in today’s world it makes no sense, and most governments discourage feuds. We have laws and courts for such things. So that would be an entirely wrong lesson to learn. My ancestor might draw his sword and kill the man who insulted him. I would not want to do that.

Sometimes you have to ignore the little ancestor on your shoulder. Sometimes you would do well to listen.

But that is largely why I am a revivalist. Our customs and traditions are important, but they must make sense in the context of the 21^st century, not the first or the seventh or the ninth. Even the Amish, isolated as they make themselves, have to abide by the law, and those who oppose being bound by the Ten Commandments or Sharia Law would do well to avoid proposing the enforcement of old Pagan law codes.

So ask yourself what your ancestor would do, but keep in mind when he answers that this is the 21st century America (or wherever) and not 9th century Norway, and if somebody tries to tell you what Jesus would do, remind them that this is 21st century America and not first century Judaea, the Romans are not our overlords and that neither of you are Second Temple Jews.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that made me laugh. It said, in bright readable letters: “God is Pro-Life.”

Really? I thought.

What are we supposed to go by? This assertion, so often made by the would-be moral police on the Religious Right? Or the assertions supposedly made by God himself and his followers and preserved in the pages of the Bible?

The Bible is supposed to be the inerrant word of God after all, and there is some pretty anti-life stuff in there. As religioustolerance.org summarizes, “These include religiously-motivated genocide, stoning non-virgin brides to death, burning some hookers alive, treating women as property, etc.”

I mean, nasty stuff. Not pro-life at all. Since we can’t ask God and the prophet business has dried up over the past few thousand years, let’s do the next best thing and flip through the Bible.

Things don’t begin well for the pro-life argument. Ezekiel 34:31 states:

“And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord GOD.”

Yes, only Jews are human to YHWH. The Nations (Gentiles) – in a word, everyone else – are beasts. You remember what Jesus said about them, don’t you? Swine and dogs.

Now of course, the situation is complicated by the fact of three competing monotheisms, all claiming to be descended from Abraham.  Everyone knows the Jewish “Chosen People” spiel but there seems to be a lot of that going around.

Muslims point to Genesis 15:18 as proof that they got the prized covenant from Abraham via Abraham’s firstborn child Ishmael, son of Abraham and his second wife, Hagar. The Jewish claim rests on the assertion that God passed the covenant on to Isaac (Genesis 17:19-21), the son Abraham and main wife, Sarah. And of course, Christians believe it passed on to them via Jesus.

Which would be fine, but apparently this covenant is exclusive property. They can’t all have it.

And they hate each other for it. We’re used now to Christian attacks on Mohammed but in the Talmud, both Jesus and Mohammed are “dead dogs.” America’s Talibangelicals seem to hate Islam with the same fervor they once reserved for Judaism.

The result is the followers of the “god of love” have as much hate as the god they worship. If we judge the tree by its fruit, it’s clear that the god of love is no such thing. It is also clear that his stance is anything but pro-life.

Let’s climb up and look at the tree some more.

We don’t have to look far:

Exodus (22:20): “Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed.”

Ouch. Yeah, not so much pro-life.

And it’s not like Jesus steered away from this platform. Yes, old YHWH said you should hate your enemies (after all, he did) and Jesus said to love them, but for both the end-time scenario was the same.

Everyone else has gotta go. Off the planet.

It’s no wonder Christian conservatives feel comfortable saying the US is by and for Christians. That’s actually a step down from their God’s platform. Maybe we should be grateful they’re being so moderate.

It is really difficult to find this god who is pro-life in the pages of the Bible. It’s filled with atrocity after atrocity and many of them at God’s own command. It’s no wonder it has sometimes been called one long hate speech.

Look at Numbers 31:17, concerning the Midianites:

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

The god of human sexual trafficking.

Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

This is not very pro-life. It obviously means everyone who doesn’t follow YHWH needs to be killed.

Deuteronomy 32:9-43 is white hot in its opposition to non-believers, as is Deuteronomy 13:6-10:

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods…you shall kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’

Is this pro-life?:

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. they must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads” (Leviticus 20:13).

And then there is always the pesky issue of human sacrifice. Can a pro-life god demand babies be sacrificed to him?

Exodus 22.29 literally, YHWH demanded human sacrifice as well: that of the first-born son:

Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give me the firstborn of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep. Let them stay with their mothers for seven days, but give them to me on the eighth day.

Ezekiel (20.26) certainly takes God’s command literally:

“I let them become defiled through their gifts – the sacrifice of every firstborn – that I might fill them with horrors so they would know that I am the LORD.”

The ever-reviled Baal and Moloch have nothing on this guy.

Of course, some apologists claim that this was not literally sacrifice but only consecration. Problems arise, however, when we see for example how in 2 Kings 21.6 King Manasseh “sacrificed his own son to the fire.”

And Levicitus (27.28-29) makes clear this is sacrifice, not consecration:

But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the LORD – whether man or animal or family land – may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the LORD. No person devoted to destruction may be ransomed; he must be put to death.

Then there is story of Jephthah, one of the Judges of Israel who lived in the time before the first king, who in fulfillment of a vow sacrificed his own daughter to God (Judges 11:29-39).

Did Jesus really change anything? No, not really.

(Luke 19:27):

“But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me.”

Luke 14:26:

If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

The Bible has been used to support and justify all kinds of hate and intolerance and violence. Yes, the Bible gets misused and abused and misquoted and taken out of context but the ideas of hate are there; they are not invented. The hate is there and those who follow the Bible get as riled up by God’s speeches as people once did by Hitler’s.

But making statements like the one found on that bumper sticker is not based on any biblical evidence that I can find.  Saying it doesn’t make it so, however convenient the wish might be for the so-called pro-life movement (otherwise known as the anti-mother movement) and taking it upon oneself to speak for “God” seems a risky undertaking.

The arguments used to advance this pro-life point of view are weak and general: Nehemiah 9:6 that God gives life to everything; Job 12:10 that God’s hand is in the life of every creature; Deuteronomy 30:19-20 where God tells the Jews to choose life over death. The argument that because God creates life he is pro-life is a weak one. He obviously also created death and later, we are to believe, sent his own son to be killed. And while Deuteronomy is used to promote the pro-life cause, as we have seen above just a couple passages later God is expounding a very pro-death point of view (Deuteronomy 32:9-43). The most mis-used passage relates to a very special person, and not to all people. That is Jeremiah 1:4-5: The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” A very special case, said nowhere to apply to humankind generally. In fact, it is a unique statement in the Bible.

You want abortion examples from the Bible? Hosea 9:11-16; Hosea 13:16; Numbers 5:11-21; Numbers 31:17; 2 Kings 15:16. You want the murder of infants? 1 Samuel 15:3; Psalms 135:8, 136:10; Psalms 137:9.

It would be more accurate for the bumper sticker to read: “God is anti-life” because if there is one thing God seems to love in the Old Testament, it’s murdering babies, inside and outside the womb.

My new article on Pagan+Politics, inspired by the American Family Association’s demand to stone a killer whale and SeaWorld Orlando’s curator, deals with the issue of projecting ancient law codes into the present. You can find it here.

I would like to introduce here my very first piece for Politicus USA (www.politicususa.com), Conservatives Argue Against the Constitution When They Oppose Gay Marriage

I am excited to be part of Politicus and look forward to being a weekly contributor there. This piece I see as a logical extension of my most recent piece here regarding gender and this is an issue, along with anything related to church-state issues, that I will discuss frequently wherever I can get my voice heard.