I’d like to share a couple of hot takes with you, ya know, to spice your Monday up.

The first is that polytheism is the fulfillment of a naturalist intuition. The second is that monotheism has built a fortress around a very fragile belief. Let’s take each in turn.

I. The Best of Both Worlds:

Naturalists and theists alike customarily think of theism as going beyond Nature, and so of positing things that cannot be seen or heard. The world of ordinary experience is one of bodies in motion and not of the things behind the scenes–at least, as such. And so, the supernatural is part of the extraordinary that occupies our moments of imagination and hope. We look out from our mechanical world and wonder whether there really is enchantment out there. Something more than just this world of ordinary experience.

This depiction of Gods picks up on the importance of transcendence often highlighted by theists. But when transcendence is advanced in this manner, as if that is all there is to Gods, it becomes something of a weakness in that it leaves the supernatural looking like it’s the sort of thing we posit because it’s so undetectable.

Yet, in spite of being told that Nature is distinct from Gods, some naturalists still looks to Nature and feel disenchantment. Why? Isn’t Nature supposed to be bereft of divinity, at least intrinsically? Is it that Gods should be more… visible, or present?

Of course, monotheists can respond that nothing is more visible or present than the principle which is actively sustaining each thing in existence at every moment in which it exists, and even that this is what it is for a God to be present as a God.

But some naturalists will still feel like something is missing. For all these distinctions between, say, primary and secondary causality, and so forth, this isn’t what you’d think a world full of Gods should look like.

If that naturalist is you, then you may be pleasantly surprised to find that polytheists hear you! The expectation for visible divinity is not misplaced or mistaken.

Polytheism strikes that chord between extremes and can say both that everything is suspended from wholly transcendent Gods, and that Gods and all things enchanting are to be located in the very things you ordinarily see and hear.

There could be any number of ways to articulate this harmonization, but my preferred method is a sort of Platonism.

According to this scheme of things, the First Principle operates like a “form” in that it imparts formal identity to each thing by being that form of uniqueness! It is thus both distinct from each thing, but also intrinsically constitutive of their very being.

Every ounce of this empirical world, then, is divine, in that the formal identity within it whereby it is what it is, and so whereby it is capable of even being experienced, is ultimately a specimen of the form of a God.

Just as, say, redness itself is that formal principle within a thing which makes it to be red, so too are Gods the formal principles in things which make them to be individuated things.

The course texture of a tree’s bark is thus that unique way of embodying a God’s form. So too the light of the sun, or depths of the sea. Space itself and everything we know is a particular way of embodying divinity.

It’s Gods all the way down because what their unities are the ‘stuff’ out of which everything is made.

They’re as physical as they are immaterial, as immanent as they are transcendent.

Something to think about as you navigate the proposals of theists anyway!

II. The Bunker of Revelation:

Monotheism captures an important expectation of religions: they shouldn’t be arbitrary, made up, or based on us. Again, we’re trying to get away from the world of ordinary experience. Especially us. We are fickle creatures, and we’re wrong about stuff all the time. We need divine intervention. We need a rule of law outside ourselves.

We need revelation.

In the face of this expectation, the monotheist might look at the polytheist and say “Okay, suppose you’re right. Suppose there are many Gods and the world’s major candidates of revelation are all wrong. What then? Where do we go? What do we do?”

Think about that.

It might seem as if the ground was just pulled out from under you. Without revelation, all that’s left is us, and whatever claims we come up with about this that or the other. But all the rituals, prayers, and beliefs we try to pull out of our subjective experiences will never be anything more than just that. An argument’s conclusion is no stronger than its weakest premise, and guesswork is indeed a very weak thing to premise all of religion on.

Where’s the rule of law outside ourselves that we can all submit ourselves to? What keeps us from just going in any direction we want?

Never mind the fact that many non-monotheist religions do have textual revelations, and traditions enriched by thousands upon thousands of years of commentaries and lived experience. Suppose, in other words, that polytheism is a sort of rejection or at least absence of any and all organized religion.

Do not all of our beliefs ultimately trace back to our subjective experience? One might research all the relevant history in the world and conclude that, say, the Bible really is trustworthy, and that some form or other of Christianity is true. But however ornate and reasoned the resulting system becomes, it will always trace back to the individual’s personal judgement and limitations.

I am reminded of the ol’ Catholic objection to Protestantism as being based on subjective interpretation, as if Catholics do not similarly subjectively interpret testimony, history and Biblical texts to conclude that Catholicism is true.

We’re all in the same boat folks, and the idea that a “book” gets us around having to rely on any subjective element is severely naive. It gives the illusion of intersubjective facticity, like it’s as much a part of the world as the things in the world of ordinary experience.

All we ever have to work with are the appearances we happen to have; the ways that things seem to us to be.

Acknowledging and embracing the role of subjectivity in epistemology is something Protestants have made headway toward when engaging Catholics, but it is still a deeply fragile point that we spend enormous amounts of energy trying to insulate and brace.

If it’s of any interest or consolation, Platonism has some interesting ideas about what true ‘knowledge’ is and whether it’s even the sort of thing capable of being doubted.

But be that as it may, rip that Band-Aid off folks! Live your life in the light of a clear conscience and you’ll never have to hide from the boogeymen of fallibility.

More to the point, though, this whole way of thinking is about the fear that we may never have escaped the world of ordinary experience after all. We need some surefire way of knowing that there is something more. There is a vulnerability to trusting that, and a corresponding degree of anger when one feels betrayed in doing so which is infamous among fresh deconversion stories.

Such a world is already naturalist, and theism is held on to as a risk that one goes all in on.

But what if there was no sharp break between the world of ordinary experience and the world of extraordinary enchantment?

What if the very formal realities in things that are part and parcel of our everyday experience are divine?

Well, then, reaching Gods is something we’d have to try and get away from rather than something we could only hope to get to.

Revelation would be present and available under every stick and stone, to whatever extent or depth we engage with it.

III. Conclusion:

In any case, those are my spicy takes for today!

I hope they get y’all thinking and maybe come to greater clarity on these matters, whatever your ultimate convictions turn out to be!