Ben,

It seems to me, the essential premise of monotheism is treating the ideal as absolute, but is it?

Wouldn't a unified state, all as one, be elemental, rather than ideal?

In that an ideal is a point of striving, of perfection, yet that implies imperfection. Which if it is distinct/different from perfection, than neither could be absolute.

Not to mention your idea of ideal might be different than my idea of ideal.

The only thing we call absolute these days, is the temperature of absolute zero. The flatline beyond all fluctuations. It's not ideal, it's elemental. The equilibrium and the infinite.

Then how is the ideal to be defined? The monotheistic trick is simply to say it is beyond definition, but then how could it be ideal, if it can have no form? Zero? Infinity? In-between?

What if it's all a bunch of blather Moses thought up to goad the Israelites out of Egypt and to someplace safe? One people, one rule, one god. It's not like they had doctorates in philosophy.

So if the Romans thought the monotheistic paradigm would be useful for embellishing the Empire, justifying the Ceasar and casting off the pantheism of the Republic, wouldn't that just be one more use for the device?

It might be plagiarism and tacky at that, but who's the judge? Where is the copyright office for religion?

Considering religion isn't so much about spirituality, as it's a cultural construct, to adapt a constantly regenerating population to some basic rules and habits, isn't a lot of it stories for children anyway?

People like rules. They like being chess pieces, if they can't be chess players.

As I've observed previously, I tend more toward the yin and the yang, than God Almighty.