• Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    True! In a polytheist perspective multiple religions can be valid. Even the bible doesn’t actually claim there is only one God just that Yahweh demands to be placed atop the heirachy along with a lot of rules that would make worshipping any other God really hard.

    Like take things from a Shinto perspective. There is no reason to suspect Yahweh doesn’t exist, but the characterization might be of a God who is lying because they want adoration and loyalty. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha etc are all viable as living beings who were far enough into their individual spiritual journeys that they could be living gods (though the concept of god is a little different from a pantheon-esque idea of a god or the idea rendered from a monotheist perspective.)

    In Shinto you basically have more Gods than can be counted. Some of them like to interfere with humans and the world but for the most part whether you believe in them or not makes little to no difference to the Gods doing their thing. They are more likely to notice you if you try and get their attention but you have a chaotic blend of forces all work so every God that is claiming to be the best/only God would essentially be a flawed insecure power looking to lie to a bunch of humans (who are essentially children just starting out their spiritual progression) for basically similar reasons one lies to children. Either to control their behaviour or because it’s an easy source of validation… Or they just think it’s funny? In the belief system there is nothing to say these powers are not fallible. Just like adults they can have faults and thus all belief systems that have something alike to Gods (Kami) could all potentially be real and non-contradictory in the sense that there is a framework that supports them all existing simultaneously… Though absolutely contradictory in their motives.

    Monotheist systems essentially give their Gods a sort of authorial intent. It is impossible for them to be flawed because they are the judge and jury of what is correct because they made the game and set the rules. Thus there can only be one correct set of answers. So multiple valid points of worship are simply not viable unless those entities are subordinate to the God of authorship.