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	ANIMISM, POLYTHEISM, MONOTHEISM AND DEISM
		Next, we shall discuss several ideas that are closely related to theism and atheism. In the study of anthropology we find that the vast majority of cultures throughout history believed in either "animism" or "polytheism."  And it's perfectly logical that they should.  The human mind demands explanations, and when we have no other explanation for a natural phenomenon we say that it is caused by some force we don't understand.  In the most primitive societies these forces are called "spirits," and every element in nature is said to have its own spirit.  So there is a Spirit of Wind, a Spirit of Fire, the Spirit of Buffalo, a Mountain Spirit, and so on.  This is what is meant by "animism."  In this concept, the only way of controlling natural forces is through persuasion and bribery, which is called "prayer" and "sacrifice." Now, in the study of formal logic, there is a fallacy, called "reification," which means that a person draws a generalization from a body of concrete data, and then assumes that his abstract idea assumes some kind of physical force which, in turn, can then influence other objects.  This is what happens in animism.  By observing thousands of specific buffalo, for example, ancient man arrived at the abstract concept of Buffalo, and called it a spirit.  He thought that by offering prayers and sacrifices to the Spirit of Buffalo, a few specific buffalo would then allow themselves to be shot during the next hunting party. It's only a short step from reification to personification.  By giving these abstract concepts human personalities, it became possible to create more detailed explanations.  So the Spirit of Love evolved into a goddess named Aphrodite.  The Spirit of the Sea became a god named Neptune, and so on.  Then elaborate stories were concocted to explain why things are the way they are. So: Why does the sun come up in the east each morning?  Because Apollo drives his golden chariot across the sky each day, then each night, he's ferried around the island "Earth," by a boat.  This was a task which had been assigned him by his father, Zeus.   Why are there so many evils in the world?  Because the first woman, named Pandora, was given many presents by Zeus, but there was one box she was told never to touch.   Eventually, however, her curiosity got the best of her and she peeked inside.  As soon as she opened the lid, all the diseases and disasters of nature escaped into the world.  What is an echo?  Well, Echo was the name of an argumentative young goddess who always had to have the last word.  One day she made Juno, the Queen of Heaven, very angry.  So Juno put a curse on her.  She said, "Since you insist on talking back to everyone, henceforth you'll always have the last word - but never the first word." Well, these fanciful little stories, of course, are called myths.  And each natural phenomenon had its own myth to explain it.  If someone discovered something new and peculiar in the world, eventually someone else would make up a story about it, involving the gods.  This is what is meant by "polytheism." In the thirteenth century, B.C.E., there was an Egyptian Pharaoh named Amenhotep the Fourth, also known as "Akhenaton."  He was the first person in history to whom it had occurred that offering prayers and sacrifices to hundreds of different gods was both stupid and wasteful.  Instead, he said, there is only one god - Aton, the sun god - also known as Ra.  He spent his entire life trying to promote the concept of "monotheism."  And eventually this led a group of Hebrew slaves to evolve their monotheistic version of "Ya," or "Yahweh."  Americans today usually think of monotheism as a great leap forward in the development of spiritual consciousness.   But that's highly debatable.  On the contrary, it could be argued that monotheism was a step backwards - because all it does is propose another logical fallacy called a "panacea."  A panacea is a "cure-all" - a reputed remedy for all diseases.  In the American frontier days it was called "snake oil."  In philosophy, it's a type of hokum which serves as a single answer to all questions.  But it isn't a real answer, because you can't do anything with it.  It only sounds like an answer - in order to prevent further questions. Whereas the Greeks and Romans were filled with questions about how and why the gods behaved the way they did, the monotheists put an end to questioning by declaring that everything is the way it is because "It's God's Will, and the ways of God are not to be questioned."  So that's that!  There's no point in further inquiry.  And to this day, anytime you ask a theist something he doesn't understand he will solemnly proclaim that "It is God's Will," and think he has said something very profound.  It's this kind of anti-intellectual attitude, engendered by monotheism, that created the dark ages. But monotheists try to have their cake and eat it too.  On one hand they use the concept as a panacea to silence their critics, and fool themselves into thinking they are less ignorant than they actually are, but on the other hand they realize that it's not really a satisfactory explanation.  So they go back to polytheism, while continuing to call themselves monotheists! For example: If there were really only a single god, who is all-powerful and all-good, then where does evil come from?  So eventually a second, separate but equal, god had to be invented.  This god was called The Devil.  Now surely a king who rules the entire universe ought to have a retinue of sycophantic courtiers to sing his praises and fight his battles, so he was supplied with an army of angels.  And to maintain a balance of terror in the cosmic arms race, Satan was provided with a legion of demons.  In the Christian tradition, two more gods were added to this Pantheon - "Christ" and something or other called the "Paraclete," or "Holy Ghost."  As though all these gods were not enough, the Catholic tradition replaces all the pagan gods with saints.  So we have St. Mary as a replacement for Isis, the Earth Mother.  Jehovah replaces Jove.  Christ replaces Apollo as the resurrected sun god - and/or son OF god.  St. Valentine replaces Cupid.  St. Christopher replaces Mercury, etc., etc.  Yet if you ask any Christian, he'll tell you that he is a monotheist! Another type of polytheism which parades under the banner of monotheism is called "multiple-monotheism"  This is the idea that, even though there are hundreds of different religions in the world, everybody is really worshipping the same god.  It's just that different people call him by different names and worship him in different ways.   The difficulty with this idea is that, if they are truly in communication with the same all- wise and all-loving god, then why have there been so many holy wars?  And why is every war assumed by their partisans to be a holy one?  Why would this single god be giving contradictory orders?  Or perhaps he's not giving conflicting orders, but man just keeps misinterpreting them.  In this case, however, why can't an all-wise and all- powerful god make himself understood?  So it really boils down to the same thing as polytheism.  Whether you say, "My god exists and yours does not," or whether you say, "My interpretation of God's Will is true and yours is false," still amounts to the same thing. The next related concept we shall analyze is called "Deism."  During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a number of important philosophers began working out the basic rules of inductive and deductive reasoning that we call the scientific method.   Historians refer to this period as "The Great Enlightenment."  People began to realize that appealing to holy books, soothsayers, or the authority of the church were not the way to gain genuine knowledge.  So all claims of divine "revelation" were rejected in favor of experimental evidence.  Consequently, all the great thinkers of the Enlightenment discarded any belief in the Bible, Christ, Satan, ghosts, miracles, prophesies, prayers, and all other forms of supernaturalism. There are only about fourteen basic arguments which theists use to try to prove the existence of God, and the people of the Enlightenment rejected all but two of them.   These are called the "cosmological argument" and the "teleological" argument.  The cosmological argument is based on an ignorance of physics, and the teleological one is based on an ignorance of biology.  Of course, those two sciences didn't even exist in seventeen-hundred.  So, even the greatest intellectuals retained the concept of God to explain the creation of the universe, the existence of life, and the perfect adaptation of animals to their environment.  They called themselves "deists" rather than "theists," and referred to this concept as the "God of nature," in contrast to the "God of the Bible."  They said the only way to learn about "God's Will" was through the use of reason - the one gift that sets man apart from the other animals.  They felt that only through the disciplined and concentrated use of reason could man answer the deepest questions of existence and solve his problems.  And because of this confidence in the efficacy of pure reason, they were also called "rationalists."  So during the time of the Enlightenment, the words "deism" and "rationalism" were used more or less interchangeably.  According to the deistic concept, God is not so much a "He" as an "It."  Not a superman, but a kind of natural force - what animists might call the "Life Force" or "Spirit of Intelligence."  At any rate, whatever it was - He, She, or It - created the universe, like a machinist building a clock.  He wound it up, set it ticking, and then abandoned it.  Perhaps he got bored with it, or went off to create other universes.  In any case, it does no good to offer prayers and sacrifices to influence him to suspend the laws he created - because he isn't listening.  If we want nature to do our bidding, we must first use our power of reason to learn God's laws, and then use our reason again to create technological systems that will exploit them to our own benefit.  There is no evidence of a life after death.  So if there is one, we'll have to worry about it when the time comes.  Meanwhile, we should make the best of this one. This, then is the basic philosophy of "deism." Most of the founding fathers of our American government regarded themselves as deists and rationalists.  So in the Declaration of Independence, they stated that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."  This was a radical departure from previous centuries - when it was assumed that governments were instituted by God, and derived their just authority by inheritance.  Ordinary citizens were assumed to have no rights, but only the obligation to obey the will of God, as revealed to The Church, and administered by the divinely ordained king.  All European monarchies for more than seventeen- hundred years had been officially Christian, and subjects were heavily taxed to support the church.  But notice that in the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, there is no mention of the Bible, or Christianity.  In fact the only reference to religion is in prohibiting anyone from forcing their beliefs on anyone else. Modern atheists have very little quarrel with deism and rationalism.  And we certainly agree with the intentions of the founding fathers.  Our only disagreement is that when a deist says he believes in "God," it leaves the door open for misinterpretation and unnecessary confusion.  For example: If a physicist says that the existence of natural laws leads him to the conclusion that somebody must have created them, many people assume that he must therefore believe in the God of the Bible.  They are using the same word to mean two totally different things. Another objection to deism is that we now know enough about physics, astronomy, and biology, so that the god-concept is no longer necessary to explain the origin of the universe, or the nature of life and biological design.  Even as far back as seventeen- hundred some philosophers realized that the god-concept was really no explanation at all.  Because if God had to create the universe from nothing, then where did God come from?  If you say that God always existed, then why couldn't the universe have always existed?  If you say that the universe is so beautifully designed that someone must have designed it, then the designer must be even more wonderful.  So who designed him?  If you say that God designed himself, then why couldn't the universe have designed itself?  If you try to pin down a theist or a deist about precisely what he means by the word, "God" they will always end up by defining it as the "unknown."  So when they say that "God designed and created the universe," all they are really saying is that they don't know how it happened.  And this supposedly "profound" statement doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. We see, therefore, that deists are simply using the term, "God" as a synonym for "nature."  So why use the word at all?  It merely introduces an irrelevant confusion- factor that explains nothing. The real reason that deists continue to cling to the word, "God" is that it makes them feel better.  It's an emotional crutch - a kind of verbal security-blanket.  Statistics show that if you ask the question, "Do you believe in God?" the majority of Americans will say "yes."  But if you ask them exactly what they mean by that statement, they won't be able to tell you.  The phrase is simply a magical talisman, a verbal good luck charm, and symbol of conformity.  To publicly admit that you don't believe in God is a kind of social blunder.  It's like walking into a blue-collar bar and loudly announcing that, frankly, you don't give a damn who wins the World Series or the Superbowl!  Those who hear this kind of offensive statement will regard the person who makes it as some kind of freak.  So the deist, even though essentially an atheist, protects himself from social ostracism by going through the ritual of saying the magic words.
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