My issue with the monotheistic vision of God is that a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the new born, than the wise old man. Consciousness seeking knowledge, than any particular form of it. The light shining through the film, than the images on it.
It is that this essence bubbling up is expressed as desire and so it seeks objects of desire. Thus this father figure lawgiver as the ideal. Though the ideal is a slippery concept, as we tend to want our cake and eat it too. The form to give our desires focus and structure, but than to transcend any particulars.
So we get caught in this tension between the heart and the head. The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement.
Conflating the ideal with the absolute is especially dangerous, as it empowers those seeking to impose their ideals as universal.
We are taught good and bad are some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, though they are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of life. Even bacteria sense this attraction/repulsion. So all the higher order emotions and cultural mores, such as, love, respect, responsibility, trust, honor, empathy, sympathy, humility, as well as all the negative impulses, hate, jealousy, envy, are complex interactions emergent from this elemental polarity. Much as all the colors of the spectrum are between light and dark.
Yet as our top down religious beliefs hold this essence as ideal, conflicts often become a race to the bottom, of us versus them, white versus black. Rather than each side being able to hold and expect the other to recognize the complex civil and cultural structures on which humanity is based. Then being able to sort through the nuances of the particular situation.
Consequently we often end up as petulant children with guns.
One of my favorite books on religion is Gilbert Murray’s; The Five Stages of Greek Religion.
