Inner peace, I imagine. Like the inner peace achieved by being burned at the stake. Try it! Report back in your next life!… Oh. No. Scratch that.

Stageleft:

We’ve had this discussion before, SL. I have yet to see any convincing argument that links monotheism to violence. In India appalling violence against Muslim and Christians has been practiced by the Hindu majority for centuries, usually tacictly sanctioned by the state, with some truly spectabular eruptions following partition.

When polytheists or atheists achieve political power, they wield it every bit as brutally as states where monotheists form the majority.

“I am discussing religiously motivated violence in the name of whatever/whoever a people, or a state, holds holy.”

Me too.

Is the violence against Christians/Muslims in India because they are Muslims/Christians, or for some other bigoted or ethnic reason?

Some of both, I suspect…as was the case in the examples you cite above, like the Crusades. They were as much about territorial hegemony and trade as they were about “belief”, although in both cases it’s the religious underpinning that creates the real fervour.

That was a very imaginative attempt to redefine Hinduism as something other than polytheism. Unfortunately, you’re quite wrong. Brahma or Atman is not a “god”: it is an impersonal state, and is not workshipped. Hinduism admits of the existence of a virtually infinite number of gods: that is, by definition, polytheism. Nice try, though.

And you haven’t really addressed my point at all. Secular states like the Soviet Union have practiced or condoned selective religious persecutions. The issue isn’t monotheism: it’s power.

I disagree with your analysis of polytheism, and I think the weight of world theological opinion is on my side. Which is irrelevant, of course, since my real point is, once again, that the issue isn’t monotheism, polytheism, or atheism: it’s power.

If I can interject:

I agree with both of you, in some ways. Violence and heirarchical brutality/authoritarianism seems inherent in the species, and I don’t think monotheism creates such a thing. The military doesn’t need God; it just needs some driving principle in which people can suspend their disbelief. Outgrouping, which allows for all sorts of atrocities, need not be based on religion - in fact, religious outgrouping isn’t quite as easy as gender or skin colour or phenotype outgrouping.

On the other hand, I think religions provide a better *tool* for the authoritarian on a mission.
Having an infallible source backing up your wacky ideas is a huge temptation, and makes wacky ideas a little easier to swallow to people who really, really want there to be an authority who is in the know. It’s the perfect background story to play to a natural tribal/outgrouping tendency, because it provides a nice dialogue to rinse away doubts, and you get a big bang for a little suspension of disbelief. There’s an intersection of human traits answered in a church: community, spiritual feeling, tribal ingrouping, answers & leadership, love, an equivalent of therapy - tools to mitigate self-hatred or shame (on a given script), ritual, story, myth. Hijacking a church on the answers & leadership prong, and exploiting the fear of the members that the rest of it might disappear, gives you an awful lot of ‘leverage’ - to jargon it out.

So I’m not sure I know of any other structure that can be co-opted quite so WELL, which is why it keeps happening.

Now, I think monotheism probably is the easiest to hijack, but any organized religion can do. I get SL’s “all is one” point about Hinduism, but I like Joesph Campbell’s examination of the whole schmear: and all the dharmic (and polytheistic) religions have the sense of a oneness at the root, but the point is that the oneness is UNKNOWABLE, and can’t really be seen, then, as a “god”: the knowable aspects show up in multiple dieties. Whereas monotheism tends to have a transcendant consciousness as the root of the philosophy: perhaps not knowable to man particularly, but of one direction/will/bent. There is the possibility of absolutist moral law…. etc.

Monism isn’t always the same as monotheism, in other words. Hinduism is monist, but not monotheist: we may all be of one, and all gods may be of one - but one is unknowable and metaphoric, whereas and gods, man, and nature are scrutible and dictate our morality and law. It’s perhaps a subtle point, but I think it makes a vast world of difference in the actual philosophy.

“Organized religion is all about power and control B”.

It’s partly about power and control, yes. It’s also partly about community, establishing structure for mutual support, information exchange, and so on.

“The violence perpetrated on innocents who did not buy into the accepted dogma has been great.”

Very true, by monotheists and polytheists alike (those Aztecs were pretty mean mothers).

“My reading indicates that the monotheistic religions, such as the one probably subscribed to by the professor of politics at the Catholic university, has been responsible for a great deal of violence in the name of, and/or justified by their, [monotheistic] religion.”

Very true. Where polytheistic religions have become state religions, as is the case in India, or in the ancient kingdoms of the Aztecs, Toltecs and others, they have also been responsible for a great deal of violence in the name of, and/or justified by their, [polytheistic] religions.

They have also been responsible for a great deal of good, and for the suppression of violence.

“I attribute this to the “one true god” issue, all monotheists suffer from it, for as soon as that philosophy is embraced all others are automatically wrong.”

That’s an interesting assertion. I find it very unlikely myself, given that polytheistic, secular and atheistic governments tend to use the same level of force to assert their authority. But let’s hear some arguments and see some evidence to support your theory.

Your example of Soviet style persecution of some/all religions was not done in the name of a religion, nor was it justified by a religion - it’s a good example of violence against one or more religions for sure, but it doesn’t really address professor Loves point that religion can be an incredible tool for peace, nor mine that religion can be an incredible tool for peace but we haven’t seen it happen a whole heck of a lot yet.

Two points:
- my suggestion is that the use of force to compel compliance or homegeneity is a function of power, not of “monotheism”, as you suggest. The example of Soviet, Maoist or Nazi religious persecutions would seem to confirm that.
- my arguments don’t address professor Love’s point, it’s true. But of course, neither do yours: pointing out that a large abstract (”organized religion”) has been responsible for violence in the course of human history doesn’t deny that the same abstract can also have been responsible for tremendous good. The same point can be made about “science”, or “feminism”, or “education”.

Here, Stageleft. You’ll enjoy it