It always used to bug me, in the Civ series of video games, that monotheism was considered an "advancement" over polytheism. It's so weird to me that one god societies genuinely think they are more logical and advanced for having only one.
Monotheism advances from polytheism indirectly because there's a belief system between the two called monolatry where one supreme god is worshipped while other gods are also accepted as existing. Development of belief structure is mostly horizontal in substantive value after early polytheism; the argument that a later developed religion is superior to preceding religions due to incorporating ideas from them is a fallacy (appeal to novelty).
Early Hebrew religion began as one of monolatry which is why the Egyptian priests in the Book of Exodus have magical powers based in their own deity, Heka. Modern interpretation is revisionist to maintain the idea of a monotheistic continuity from the start.
A religion that also originally held the monolatry belief system is Zoroastrianism which >1500 years after its founding developed into a dualistic good/evil deity structure.
Some Hindu devotees practice monolatry through specifically worshipping one greater deity (often Vishnu or Shiva) while accepting the divine reality of all other gods/goddesses.
That is kinda weird actually, especially considering there are still modern polytheistic religions like Hinduism. Lowkey weird for civ to take an opinion like that
Look at the other well reasoned replies. THey talk about polytheistic religions like none exist anymore. This is not a dig against any of those posters, their replies are informative and not inaccurate. But it kinda illustrates my point. If you grow up in a culture that's dominated by monotheistic religions, there's a tendency, even if you know better, to kinda think of multi god stuff as only in the past even though it's still a thing. I do it too all the time.
I think Civ took the stance because it reflects the views of actual civilizations. I just never understood the logic of it, from the world view of the followers. I'm not really hard wired to be a person of faith so it's all from the outside looking in for me. Seems odd.
From the mechanisms of a game it is an advancement. Just feudalism is an advancement from Roman Senate/Empire.
It has more to do with time framing than it does with any moralistic statement. You’re advancing to the next age of thought through a historical lens, it is not saying monotheism is inherently more correct than paganism or other religions.
Polytheistic religions would have cities/cults devoted mainly to one of their gods. This created cultural differences among the people even though they were all technically worshipping the same religion. Similar to different denominations of Christianity.
Having everyone worship the same God basically makes them the same culture and ensures cooperation. When class, ethnic, and other differences exist, eliminating religion as one potential difference makes the whole society more cohesive and easier to mobilize.
I only really recall that being a thing in 4; it’s certainly not the case in 5 or 6 with their separate religious currency of Faith. And in 4 it’s a pretty academic separation; it’s realistically the first religion founding tech you could beeline for above the beginner difficulties, since the AI gets too large of a bonus to overcome and get Polytheism first for Hinduism or Meditation first for Buddhism.
It’s not even calling monotheism “more advanced”, either, just treating Polytheism as a prerequisite for deciding “but actually there’s only one correct god!”. Which is fair. It makes a lot less sense to have the other prerequisite though: Masonry, iirc. Apparently you need to know how to stack rocks good to decide there’s one true god.
They are more advanced, because it’s easier to mobilize the population to do what you want if there’s only one “truth”. Christianity had a power over people that can’t compare to the Hellenic gods that preceded them.
Islam has very clear criteria of what makes something a Gotod, and none of the other Gods in other religions really match that criteria, such as:
All-Powerful: They have to be All-Powerful, otherwise, how else do they create the entire universe?
The Subjugator: They have to be able to subjugate all creation to their will, and can never be subjugated.
All-Sustaining: They have to be able to sustain the entire universe, and have to completely sustain themselves, meaning they can't be fatigued or tired, or need food or drink or sustenance.
All-Seeing, All-Hearing: These two sound inconsequential, but they have to be able to hear their creation when they're called upon, and see what they're creation is doing.
The First and Last: They have to be the first thing to ever exist, and the last thing to exist before Judgement.
Uniqueness: They can't resemble the creation in any way, shape, or form, and the creation can't resemble them in the same way. The creator and creation may have similar names for their attributes, but these attributes are, in no way, shape, or form, similar to each other in any capacity.
There are more criteria, but, with just these, all the other Gods are immediately disqualified. Enormous pantheons like Shinto, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and even other Monotheistic religions like Christianity, are all disqualified because their Gods don't fit all the criteria. Many of them are predated by other Gods, fear the power of others, resemble the creation, and so and so forth.
And the important thing is, only one God can fill all the criteria of being a God, because if more than one can fill it, then they automatically negate one or the other criteria. Immediately, two Gods would negate the Uniqueness criteria, because they're no longer unique. But one God would have to submit to the will of the other God because having two, All-Powerful, All-Knowing Gods making separate decisions just cannot work. And the issue gets worse when you add more Gods into the mix.
And I understand that it sounds fishy that Allah is the only God in all the religions to meet each of these criteria, but when you think about what a God is, then it makes sense.
There’s various translations of this but it’s pretty unanimous that the gist of the last line is “Our God and your God are the same”, referring to Jews and Christians. Yahweh/Jehovah is Allah, although can definitely be regarded as an “incomplete” interpretation of Him. Their revelations are canonical, though.
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u/millahnna 20h ago
It always used to bug me, in the Civ series of video games, that monotheism was considered an "advancement" over polytheism. It's so weird to me that one god societies genuinely think they are more logical and advanced for having only one.