what i find more interesting and appealing about polytheism is the content of the stories, and not the question of existence, which i don't think is worth seriously considering at this point. if religion has any value, it isn't in the theological question (which is resolved. there is neither a monotheistic god nor polytheistic gods and that question should be abandoned and moved on from.) but in the cultural value of the underlying moral teachings and, in today's world, most importantly in the differences between how monotheistic and polytheistic societies see the place of human beings. i prefer pagan polytheism because it is culturally superior, and we do in fact see that in the syncretic forms of christianity that developed in europe and also, more recently, have been developing in south america, where they didn't completely wipe out their indigenous religions. the christians of constantine's time would call the lot of us a bunch of roman pagans, celebrating germanic rituals and holding to icons and romanic laws and cultural traditions. the pope is just a continuation of the office of the high priest of the sun god. da fuck is this?
it's as though you stupid idiots don't even realize you're performing a cannibalistic ritual to dionysus every time you engage in the eucharist.
if you want to be objective about this, it's pretty clear that the greeks and romans, and germans and celts and slavs, eventually conquered the christians, from the inside out. there's almost no trace of the invading christian colonizers left anywhere. we have statues of the old gods everywhere, and people living the old ways everywhere. the pagans won. it's right in front of you. but you don't realize it.
the struggle is in preventing the victory of paganism over christianity from being engulfed in a new round of colonization by muslims, and the decrease in quality of life and enjoyment of existence that would follow from that. i don't want to have to spend my time fighting to save europeanism from encroaching orientalism, i want to spend my time enjoying being a european.
i watched a youtube video the other day about the origins of the flood myth. there's several earlier versions of this myth in sumerian and semitic mythology, as found on bits of clay tablets that are thousands of years older than the one in genesis. i'm not interested in the theological differences; there is no yahweh, there is no enki. it doesn't really matter how many gods are in the story. what is the lesson of the story? how does it change in the different cultures?
in my opinion, the jewish version is a dumbed-down version of a far more complex narrative in the older versions. in the jewish version, god wants to punish us all for not listening to him, so he kills us all. we're taught from a young age that this is a good story, with a good moral, but it isn't at all. it's a horrible story, and the version of god in genesis is a horrific asshole that should be condemned as what he is. we would chain this god up and bring him before the hague and sentence him to death. we would charge this god with hate crimes. this god has little to no redeemable qualities whatsoever; if such a god existed, it would need to be destroyed, and it would be the west that would destroy it, in an epic struggle to restore freedom and assert democracy over tyranny and backwardsness and barbarism. we could not coexist with such a horrible entity. but the jewish scriptures teach us that god's wisdom is infinite, that god made the right choice to kill us all, and we're not to question the wisdom.
well, ok, then.
but the older stories actually show disagreements amongst the gods and invite us to question their decisions. the reason that this one asshole god wanted to kill us all was that we were overpopulating the earth, and too loud, and too smelly and it's pissing him off, so he just seeks to crush us like we would stamp out gross roaches. hey, i can empathize with that a little; it's a far better reason to kill us than that we're gay, or worshipping a cow or something. but in the mesopotamian stories, there is criticism of that decision, and it is clear that the people were taught to question the gods rather than to obey them. was it a just decision? or was this god an asshole and should this god actually be punished for killing us? the mesopotamian stories, like the greek stories we are more familiar with, try to work out these more complex analyses, and subtle moral positions. the gods argue with each other. they can be right or wrong. the stories don't merely declare the monotheistic god infallible and decide it's judgement is unquestionable, they tell us to think for our ourselves and come to our own conclusions. the latter is culturally superior.
the direct analogues between roman, greek, germanic and celtic mythology and jewish mythology are less than the analogues between jewish and sumerian mythology due to the differences in cultural origin. eventual post-captivity judaism was heavily influenced by indo-european zoroastrianism, but that would be like if the greeks decided zeus slaughtered all of the other gods. it's still warped. the overlaps in stories don't really make sense until after alexander conquers the middle east, and they start speaking greek and reading greek literature and philosophy in the region, and jesus eventually emerges as this hebrew socrates. so, the comparison between the version of the flood story in genesis with the different and older flood stories is something that doesn't extend to a comparison between other jewish myths and corresponding stories in greek and roman mythology, more directly. the phoenecian mythology was more similar to the greek mythology, and probably influenced by it, but that doesn't make it's way into the hebrew scriptures, for whatever reason.
the analyses has to stand by analogy. i have to point out that the roman and greek stories are like the sumerian stories in assigning the gods personalities, in developing conflicts between the gods and in telling people to think for themselves, rather than obey their tyrannical lord and then argue that i would rather live in a society where the culture tells us to come to our own conclusions than a culture that tells us everything is burned into stone, and we do, because the pagans won, and that is worth protecting from another round of encroaching monotheism, which is always a massive cultural step backwards and yet is certainly currently pounding at the doors. rome went through a cultural collapse leading to the adoption of christianity, which took centuries to undo, and which we should fight hard to not let happen again.
however, the story of adam is even worse than the story of noah and an urgent and pressing reason to draw particular attention to the need to reconnect with indigenous cultural ideas, before we kill ourselves off. the monotheistic religions teach us that god created this all for us and we are to use it for our benefit. this is a distinct reversal of any indigenous belief system, and from any pagan system i'm aware of, which all teach us that we are a part of an interconnected system that we need to coexist within, rather than that we are in some way distinct from or outside of it. the idea that we are part of an ecological web and need to exist sustainably within it is a superior position to the backwards idea that we are at the top of the food chain, and this all exists for us to do what we want with it. many centuries from now, some smart race of aliens may tell the story of the destruction of human society and conclude that it was the stupid myth of adam that led the stupid humans to destroy their habitat, and destroy themselves. it is imperative that we find a way to undo the effects of the monotheistic religions on western culture in relation to this specific idea that we're outside of ecology and return to the indigenous european idea that we're a part of a ecology instead of being outside of it if we want to survive, and a return to cultural paganism is the best way to do that. the norse may have fought against the skraelings as much as they did against the christians, but they would have thought we were stupid for shitting in our own beds; the ideas of resource economy and sustainable growth were inherent to european culture, before the unsustainable middle eastern cultures, which had already ruined their own lands, brought their disastrous philosophies to us and enforced them on us with violence. whether we are able to reverse this one lingering and subtle but catastrophic and important position of monotheism and return to the indigenous position we once held will determine if we can survive or not.
i hope i've explained why i'm interested in returning to paganism. it's not about the theology. paganism is simply better aligned with freedom and democracy, and with sustainability and sustainable growth. these ought to be the three pillars of western society, moving forwards, if it is to survive the collapse of the global capitalist order.
the french had liberty, equality and fraternity.
we should have freedom, democracy and sustainability.
monotheism has been our biggest retarding force for centuries in getting to a secular society and culture based in reason, and will remain our largest barrier to overcome for the near future.