Sandee
01-29-2006, 09:42 PM
Source (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/humenathist.html)
The Natural History of Religion
David Hume
Hume’s The Natural History of Religion was first published in 1757. It was among the first attempts to account for the origins of theism in naturalistic terms. It can therefore be seen as a response to the argument that the sophistication of monotheism is such that it must have been handed down to men by God; Hume disputes this, giving a psychological explanation of the rise of refined monotheism, in just the same way as modern Darwinists give naturalistic explanations of the apparent teleology in nature that theists say can only be explained with reference to God.
The argument assumes that theism is superior to polytheism; Hume sees the ignorant barbarians inventing a rudimentary, polytheistic religion, and mankind gradually refining that into modern theism as our rational faculties improved. Had reason once given birth to monotheism, he suggests, it would never deface it by turning it to polytheism; the opposite process of gradual improvement, on the other hand, can plausibly be thought to have taken place.
Nature, he acknowledges, does suggest monotheism; its uniformity implies a uniformity of purpose in its creation, which in turn implies a single Creator. The course of life, however, implies polytheism; different forces oppose one another, suggesting a plurality of deities in conflict. Polytheism arises, then, because men lacking the intelligence to perceive the hand of God in nature, perceive the hands of many gods in the ebb and flow of the various aspects of life.
When we seek to explain events that we do not understand, Hume argues, this tendency causes us to postulate deities intentionally causing them. The greater our ignorance of the true causes of events, and the more subject to fortune we are, the more deities this will lead us to create.
Looking at early religion, Hume now argues that the dominance of the idea of God as Creator is relatively recent.
He begins by suggesting that those that believe in finite supernatural beings but not in an infinite supernatural being are just as much atheists whether they call those finite beings in which they believe elves, fairies, or gods. In any case, they deny God’s existence, and that is the measure of atheism.
He then surveys various historical, polytheistic civilisations, emphasing the finitude of their deities. The idea of an infinite Creator barely occurred to such peoples, he suggests. As these cultures’ deities are finite, they are not only polytheists, but also atheists.
Having argued that polytheism preceeded theism, and having accounted for the emergence of the former, Hume now turns his attention to the question of how the former gave rise to the latter. It is not by reason, he suggests, that this could have occurred, for the masses are incapable of perceiving the solid intellectual foundations of theism.
Hume instead attributes the transition towards true religion to a process of exaggeration: even polytheists tend to see one god as pre-eminent, and successive polytheists will exaggerate this god’s capacities until, finally, he is said to have infinite capacities and no further exaggeration is possible. Superstition, Hume suggests, thus leads eventually to the truth.
Or
From Monotheism to Polytheism?
Link to article (http://custance.org/old/evol/2ch1/2ch1.html)
SOME YEARS ago Prebendary Rowe observed that it is more sensible to start with the known and reason upon it towards the unknown than to start with the unknown in the hopes of being able to explain the known. We now have a body of "knowns" which is substantial, and in some ways the most assured data are to be found in that quite vast literature which has been preserved from the Cradle of Civilization, Mesopotamia.
When the cuneiform literature first began to reveal its message, scholars of cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics soon found themselves dealing with a tremendous number of gods and goddesses, and demons and other spiritual powers of a lesser sort, which seemed to be always at war with one another and much of the time highly destructive. As earlier and earlier tablets, however, began to be excavated and brought to light, and skill in deciphering them increased, the first picture of gross polytheism began to be replaced by something more nearly approaching a hierarchy of spiritual beings organized into a kind of court with one Supreme Being over all. One of the first cuneiform scholars to acknowledge the significance of this trend was Stephen Langdon of Oxford, and when he reported his conclusions he did so with a consciousness of the fact that he would scarcely be believed. Thus he wrote in 1931: (2)
I may fail to carry conviction in concluding that both in Sumerian and Semitic religions, monotheism preceded polytheism.... The evidence and reasons for this conclusion, so contrary to accepted and current views, have been set down with care and with the perception of adverse criticism. It is, I trust, the conclusion of knowledge and not of audacious preconception.
Since Langdon took the view that the Sumerians represent the oldest historic civilization, he added:
In my opinion the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man.
Five years later in an article which appeared in The Scotsman, he wrote: (3)
The history of Sumerian religion, which was the most powerful cultural influence in the ancient world, could be traced by means of pictographic inscriptions almost to the earliest religious concepts of man. The evidence points unmistakeably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate a primitive monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited.
This raises an important point; namely, the possibility that polytheism never did arise by the evolution of polydemonism, but because the attributes of a single God were differently emphasized by different people until those people in later years came to forget that they were speaking of the same Person. Thus attributes of a single deity became a plurality of deities. It is not merely that single individuals laid emphasis upon different aspects of God's nature but whole families and tribes seemed to have developed certain shared views about what was important in life and what was not, and therefore, not unnaturally, came to attribute to their god and to put special emphasis upon those characteristics which seemed to them of greatest significance. For example, a warlike people are not too likely to emphasize the gentleness of God nor a legalistic people the forgiveness of God. They will rather emphasize His power in the one case and His justice in the other.
Monotheism then Polytheism (another article) (http://www.submission.info/perspectives/monotheism/monotheism_since_ancient_times.html)
The Natural History of Religion
David Hume
Hume’s The Natural History of Religion was first published in 1757. It was among the first attempts to account for the origins of theism in naturalistic terms. It can therefore be seen as a response to the argument that the sophistication of monotheism is such that it must have been handed down to men by God; Hume disputes this, giving a psychological explanation of the rise of refined monotheism, in just the same way as modern Darwinists give naturalistic explanations of the apparent teleology in nature that theists say can only be explained with reference to God.
The argument assumes that theism is superior to polytheism; Hume sees the ignorant barbarians inventing a rudimentary, polytheistic religion, and mankind gradually refining that into modern theism as our rational faculties improved. Had reason once given birth to monotheism, he suggests, it would never deface it by turning it to polytheism; the opposite process of gradual improvement, on the other hand, can plausibly be thought to have taken place.
Nature, he acknowledges, does suggest monotheism; its uniformity implies a uniformity of purpose in its creation, which in turn implies a single Creator. The course of life, however, implies polytheism; different forces oppose one another, suggesting a plurality of deities in conflict. Polytheism arises, then, because men lacking the intelligence to perceive the hand of God in nature, perceive the hands of many gods in the ebb and flow of the various aspects of life.
When we seek to explain events that we do not understand, Hume argues, this tendency causes us to postulate deities intentionally causing them. The greater our ignorance of the true causes of events, and the more subject to fortune we are, the more deities this will lead us to create.
Looking at early religion, Hume now argues that the dominance of the idea of God as Creator is relatively recent.
He begins by suggesting that those that believe in finite supernatural beings but not in an infinite supernatural being are just as much atheists whether they call those finite beings in which they believe elves, fairies, or gods. In any case, they deny God’s existence, and that is the measure of atheism.
He then surveys various historical, polytheistic civilisations, emphasing the finitude of their deities. The idea of an infinite Creator barely occurred to such peoples, he suggests. As these cultures’ deities are finite, they are not only polytheists, but also atheists.
Having argued that polytheism preceeded theism, and having accounted for the emergence of the former, Hume now turns his attention to the question of how the former gave rise to the latter. It is not by reason, he suggests, that this could have occurred, for the masses are incapable of perceiving the solid intellectual foundations of theism.
Hume instead attributes the transition towards true religion to a process of exaggeration: even polytheists tend to see one god as pre-eminent, and successive polytheists will exaggerate this god’s capacities until, finally, he is said to have infinite capacities and no further exaggeration is possible. Superstition, Hume suggests, thus leads eventually to the truth.
Or
From Monotheism to Polytheism?
Link to article (http://custance.org/old/evol/2ch1/2ch1.html)
SOME YEARS ago Prebendary Rowe observed that it is more sensible to start with the known and reason upon it towards the unknown than to start with the unknown in the hopes of being able to explain the known. We now have a body of "knowns" which is substantial, and in some ways the most assured data are to be found in that quite vast literature which has been preserved from the Cradle of Civilization, Mesopotamia.
When the cuneiform literature first began to reveal its message, scholars of cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics soon found themselves dealing with a tremendous number of gods and goddesses, and demons and other spiritual powers of a lesser sort, which seemed to be always at war with one another and much of the time highly destructive. As earlier and earlier tablets, however, began to be excavated and brought to light, and skill in deciphering them increased, the first picture of gross polytheism began to be replaced by something more nearly approaching a hierarchy of spiritual beings organized into a kind of court with one Supreme Being over all. One of the first cuneiform scholars to acknowledge the significance of this trend was Stephen Langdon of Oxford, and when he reported his conclusions he did so with a consciousness of the fact that he would scarcely be believed. Thus he wrote in 1931: (2)
I may fail to carry conviction in concluding that both in Sumerian and Semitic religions, monotheism preceded polytheism.... The evidence and reasons for this conclusion, so contrary to accepted and current views, have been set down with care and with the perception of adverse criticism. It is, I trust, the conclusion of knowledge and not of audacious preconception.
Since Langdon took the view that the Sumerians represent the oldest historic civilization, he added:
In my opinion the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man.
Five years later in an article which appeared in The Scotsman, he wrote: (3)
The history of Sumerian religion, which was the most powerful cultural influence in the ancient world, could be traced by means of pictographic inscriptions almost to the earliest religious concepts of man. The evidence points unmistakeably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate a primitive monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited.
This raises an important point; namely, the possibility that polytheism never did arise by the evolution of polydemonism, but because the attributes of a single God were differently emphasized by different people until those people in later years came to forget that they were speaking of the same Person. Thus attributes of a single deity became a plurality of deities. It is not merely that single individuals laid emphasis upon different aspects of God's nature but whole families and tribes seemed to have developed certain shared views about what was important in life and what was not, and therefore, not unnaturally, came to attribute to their god and to put special emphasis upon those characteristics which seemed to them of greatest significance. For example, a warlike people are not too likely to emphasize the gentleness of God nor a legalistic people the forgiveness of God. They will rather emphasize His power in the one case and His justice in the other.
Monotheism then Polytheism (another article) (http://www.submission.info/perspectives/monotheism/monotheism_since_ancient_times.html)