To the Ancients, gods were metaphors. Monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Ancient Israel was a monarchy. The Big Guy Rules. Like the religion.

Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The various elements interacting. The origins of the Christian Trinity go to fertility rites. The young god born in the spring to the old sky god and earth mother.

Though by the age of the Olympians, Zeus didn't give way to Dionysus. Tradition prevailed over renewal. Which provided fertile ground for the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus to take root, as metaphor.

Though by the time Constantine co-opted it as the state religion of Rome, it too had started to calcify, so the monotheism served to validate the coming together of the Empire and bury any remnants of the Republic. The origins and implications of the Trinity shrouded in the Holy Ghost.

So the Catholic church served as the eschatological basis for European monarchy. Divine right of kings, as opposed to consent of the governed.

When the West went back to popular forms of government, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics, morality and law.

The problem with the Western Catholic formulation of monotheism, God as the "all-knowing absolute,' is that ideals are not absolutes.

Truth beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The core codes, creeds, heroes, narratives at the center of every culture are ideals.

The universal, on the other hand, is the elemental. So a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell.

The light shining through the film, than the stories playing out on it.

Morality is not absolute, as it couldn't be transgressed, if it were. Like a temperature below absolute zero. Morals are the habits, beliefs, relationships, etc. that enable a healthy society.

Traditionally that one's status be a function of what one adds, not what one can extract.

Yet these last 3000 years, of going from mostly tribal societies to nation state of millions and billions of people might seem like a long time, from our individual point of view, in terms of evolution, it is an eye blink.