A Pagan Response to Monotheism

Further Videos

Further Reading
- On the Nature of the Gods - Cicero (Ancient Roman source)
- A World Full of Gods - John Michael Greer
- The Case for Polytheism - Steven Dillon
- Metaphysics - Aristotle (Ancient Greek source)

00:00 - Intro
00:16 - The Nature of the Gods
01:43 - Aristotle, Plato & Socrates
02:30 - The Ontological Argument
05:48 - The Cosmological Argument
09:20 - The Teleological Argument
13:47 - The Experiential Argument
17:00 - Are there Monotheistic Arguments?

music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

[lizabethhampton]

My favorite part of Egyptian mythology is like, "which god is the creator of the world?" "yes."

[bforman]

The most entertaining argument for the existence of many gods is, "The Bible says so."

[zugabdu]

Not only do these arguments conceivably work better for polytheism than monotheism, but if your polytheism isn't tri-omni, then you don't need to engage in certain types of apologetics that most monotheists do. You don't need a general theodicy to explain the existence of evil if your gods are not tri-omni gods. You don't need to explain non-belief if the gods don't need everyone to believe in them and don't need to have the ability to convince everyone.

[markblack]

Even as I am atheist, polytheism has always made more sense than monotheism. If God exists, then multiple gods are even more likely. Good vid.

[taproot]

This points out a SERIOUS oversight in monotheistic argumentation. And one that I'd noticed, but not focused on in the past.

I one told a Christian friend of mine, "first you have to convince me that deity ever existed.

Then convince me that deity still exists. (For example, you could argue via the watchmaker that the universe was created by an intelligent mind. But that doesn't mean they're still alive. There are a TON of watches that outlasted their maker. Hence why I think this step is worth separating out from the last one)

Then convince me that they give a crap about me/us/humanity.

Then convince me that only one exists.

Then convince me that its yours."

And I could have an interesting back-and-forth with a christian until we got to the last two questions. And they always get stumped. I could concede deism, and even theism to the Christian. But they couldn't ever put forth a decent argument for monotheism.

That conversation usually ended in something along the lines of, "but you concede that the Christian god may exist?"

"Sure, if you concede that Zues, Ra, Thor, and every other pantheon may exist."

It truly shows just how much Christianity v. atheism has cornered the market of theology for so long because there aren't very many arguments from either side that really work too well against polytheists.

[grmpEqweer]

A world made by committee, the gods of said committee being less than perfect, not always interested, and not always paying attention?
THAT actually fits the experienced world a little better.
...I'm an atheist now for complicated reasons, but, if I were going to return to theism, I'd go back to eclectic paganism.

[fiittr]

I find that the Experiential argument works best for a hard polytheist. As a soft polytheist, one would have to invalidate other experiences on the bases that they just have misidentified the experience or didn't have it at all, similar to how it would happen with a monotheist.

[rookmaster]

From my perspective as an atheist, polytheism looks way more fun. The more gods, the merrier. And each one with its distinct character and purpose within the supernatural realm. I suppose Christianity, with its Trinity, angels and various saints, is not really that far removed from polytheism.

[BriannadaSilva]

I'm an atheist but I really enjoyed this video. I'm not convinced by polytheism per se, but I do think you convinced me that many of these classic arguments work better for polytheism than monotheism. So, bravo on that! :P I've never heard these arguments framed in this way. Very refreshing. Thanks for making this!

[lucideandre]

Not a theist myself, but I just realized that if we scale up the analogy to a building, you can even go further than “people who built the building”.
Because I could imagine a monotheist saying that, well, one single architect created the building, and the others only helped. Now, setting aside that that’s not how buildings work, and that a bunch of others need to come up with things in the building, one could use as an analogy something like a library.

It’s a building. It also has ornaments of various types along its walls. It also contains shelves and tables and chairs. And those contain a myriad books.

Then it’s even more polytheistic. You need people to create the building project, and the people who build it. But you also need artists to create the ornaments. You need artisans to create the furniture. And you need all the creative authors, painters, philosophers, etc to write the books. And all the book makers to print them out and bind them.

You need a vast myriad of both creative and practical minds to come up and put this thing together. And if you don’t, you don’t have a library. At best, you have an empty building. Likely not even that, but just a blueprint. Certainly not a library.

[sootsire]

I do love this kind of video because whenever I have these kinds of conversations with my friends, I tend to play the devils advocate for some of those conversations. So when you put forth videos about different ways of thinking, I do deeply enjoy watching them and learning from them. Also, your pun was clever and took me a minute to catch.

[alexcypher]

Reading about the Socrates v Euthyphro dialogue from the standpoint of appreciating the discord of the gods communicated within it leads to something special.

[Fcozer]

I love the ontological argument. It can apply to anything you want and it gives me hope that somewhere there is this great perfect chocolate cake that I can imagine, which, if can be imagined, must be real to actually be great and perfect.

[Duck]

At 12 seconds, I stopped the video, tossed the phone, and left the room. There was no point in me trying to watch anything at that point until my eyerollers settled down.

Once I got a cup of coffee and was better prepared, I was able to watch on through, and was howling with laughter. Fucking brilliant, man. Well done!

[trevorhanson]

We need more polytheistic centric philosophy. Thank you for the video! Looking forward to more of these. :D

[pinkartwitch]

I’m a hard-ish polytheist but I wanted to point something out that was said I have an issue with - Ocean was discussing with the experiential argument that in order to argue for a multi-faceted god (ie all gods are just the same one with different masks) you would have to favour a view that dismisses certain experiences to relabel them and we have to accept the experiences as described to be consistent. I think there’s a bit of a pitfall with your argument because our experiences as human beings are fallible, so I do agree with the spirit of the experiential argument and that’s actually the argument that landed me in the polytheist camp from a strictly monotheist worldview, but I think holding space for doubting experiences is an important counter-weight in our faith. Just because you experience a thing, it doesn’t make the interpretation of that thing correct. That does NOT give us a right to discount everyone else’s experiences, not at all, and that is exactly what monotheists do, but it’s just something to keep in mind.
A point about the cosmological argument I’d love people’s viewpoints on, which I actually think adds strength to the idea of many gods, is that the universe could very well be uncreated by the gods, the gods don’t need to have been its originator AND it could be very well that when the universe was created, that’s when the gods came into being as well. So even if they didn’t create the universe, they could still very well be an essential part of its ecosystem. Just a thought, very much unprovable but something I’ve thought about.

[mavrospanayiotis]

As usual your videos goes much deeper and give a lot of arguments pro polytheism in general. A reference point.

[demetriusprice]

I grew up Mormon, with the belief of God the Eternal Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost as three separate dieties as well as Heavenly Mother(s) and the ability for people to become Gods. So, when I correctly identified that we're practicing polytheism, I was disfellowshipped.

[avanijoy]

Whoa whoa whoa... You just breezed past a Norse concept of chaos... Please do a video focused on that!

[flakjacket]

Glad to see this video. I'm officially coming out at work and eventually with my family as a pagan/polytheist;

This helps me feel more sane. Thank you lol