One of the most common complaints I hear among intelligent believers is that atheists attack “straw men”. They accuse atheists of attacking the low hanging fruit of fundamentalist religion and biblical literalism while ignoring nuanced and sophisticated beliefs held by more intelligent theists. God, they suggest, is nothing like the God of the Bible, but it is something akin to energy, or a sense of awe, or attack, or poetry. Karen Armstrong, in her book “The Case for God” claims God is not a being, but God “is Being itself” and insists religion is not about belief at all, but practice. Christopher Hedges, author of “I don’t believe in Atheists” insists “that God is not a noun, but a verb”. He then says “God is the life force that sustains, transforms and defines all existence” (which actually does sound like a noun). Reza Aslan, the author of “No God but God” says “ironically, the new atheists take the bible but literally than most believers”
These critics have a point: Atheists may be free to attack fundamentalists, but if they want to attack theism more broadly, they ought to address it in all forms – including the more nuanced of belief. To do that, we need to look at how theism has evolved over time. We must understand how believers arrived at such vague and nuanced definitions of God. So let’s start at the beginning.
A History of Theism
In the 7000 years of recorded history, humans have documented, in writing, well over 10,000 gods. Most of these were minor deities, such as Nunbarsegunu, the Mesopotamian goddess of barley, but hundreds, like Anu, Enki, Marduk and Ra, were considered all powerful creators of the Universe. Today, these gods warrant only a footnote in history books, but in their time, evidence suggests people worshiped them with equal or greater devotion than most modern theists display today. They built temples in their names. We have records of prayers written to them and songs written for them. People celebrated holidays for their virtue, and sacrifices, animal and sometimes human, were presented upon altars to better gain their favor or avoid their wrath.
The obvious question: Where did they all go? How did they fall out of favor? We should suspect the success and longevity of any particular God to be highly correlated with the success and longevity of a tribe or nation of worshipers. For instance, Ra, the sun god, affiliated with the mighty Egyptian empire, survived for over 2000 years, the population of his worshipers expanding and contracting along with the borders of the Egyptian empire.
It is often the case throughout history that newly conquered cultures were converted to a new religion under threat of death or dismemberment, but other times the process was more organic, allowing a gradual shift of allegiances between gods. In this way, gods were forced to compete in a sort of marketplace of ideas where a sort of “survival of the fittest” was always taking place. Gods were constantly mutating and adapting, absorbing characteristics that drew believers into the fold and shedding ones that repelled them.
In ancient history, most gods possessed characteristics remarkably similar to humans. They fought, had sex, had terrible tempers, and even killed one another from time to time. The stories of their lives were, in many respects, analogues to today’s television soap operas — salacious stories have always had the ability to draw eyes and ears.
But for any god to be successful, one trait was desirable above all others: Power. A God needed to control something humans could not. This was ultimately their allure, for it was thought that by gaining the god’s favor, one could reap reward (crops, children, vanquishing of foes on the battlefield) and avoid their wrath. (floods, disease, etc..)
Robert Wright, author of “The Evolution of God” points out that the primary purpose of early Gods was to dispense favors and dole out punishment.
Just how to go about gaining this favor of the gods was surprisingly arbitrary. The reasoning often stemmed from a superstitious mistake linking cause and effect when it wasn’t warranted. For instance, a villager may melt honeycomb an hour before a rainstorm and assume the two are related. This may lead to the general idea that there is a deity in the sky that loves honey.
Of course, this opinion is equally likely to be forwarded by a holy man who loves honey, as the holy men were the typical recipients of gifts left on the altar. This ability for priests, chiefs and kings to alter the edicts of religions meant that early gods often reflected the will and desire of the leaders of any given society – from their noblest intentions to their most depraved indulgences. Throughout human history, gods were not only used to enforce laws against stealing, lying and murder, but also to justify genocides, rape, multiple wives, absolute rule, and slavery.
Given this wide variety of behavior, it’s easy to see how some gods could become more popular than others and as the population of the Middle East began to expand, three Gods in particular rose to prominence. El, Baal and Yahweh (Spelled YHWH in Hebrew bible). In the next few thousand years, the first two would be relegated to the dustbin of history with the thousands of other gods of antiquity, but Yahweh would become known as the God of Abraham, the God of the Hebrew Bible and ultimately, the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh would eventually come to be worshiped by over 3 billion people — half the population of the Earth. His worshipers would become so ubiquitous his name would no longer be necessary. Today, Yahweh is simply known to those in the West as “God”, and “Allah” in the Middle East.
From Yahweh to God
Many Christians go their entire lives without ever knowing the god they pray to ever had a name, but by Charles Ryrie’s count, the name appears 6,823 times in the original Hebrew Bible (what Christians refer to as the Old Testament.) It was not until later that the name was replaced with “My Lord” or “God” to reflect a more universal nature. It was Yahweh that spoke to Noah, commanded Moses on the mountain top, gave us the 10 commandments and was the subject of Jesus and, later, Mohammed’s preaching.
Considering Yahweh is now worshiped as the sole God by roughly half the population on Earth, his origins were surprisingly humble – in fact, they are almost indistinguishable from that of hundreds of other Gods before him. He is at times, described as a son of El, but many scholars believe he likely merged with El at some time. In fact, some believe Yahweh assumed not only El’s position atop the pantheon of gods, but for a brief time, also assumed his wife (or consort) Asherea. His early personality, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible, was quite similar to other gods: He rewarded and punished his subjects on Earth – routinely smiting entire cities, causing floods and demanding sacrifices. Here’s how Richard Dawkins describes the God of the old Testament:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully
How is it that Yahweh thrived to become the “one and only” god of the West while others faded away? Scholars cite many reasons, but we can begin with the obvious. The early Jews made a deliberate conscious effort to establish Yahweh as the one and only God. This was, in many respects, monotheism by design.
Consider; the very first of the 10 commandments forbids the worship of other gods. The 2nd suggests his name is too sacred to be uttered in vain. This gradual removal of Yahweh’s name from common speech was an essential step on the path to monotheism, for the very idea that God needs a name to discern himself from others implies other gods exist. The 3rd commandment eradicates the depiction of gods in physical statues or totems. This not only outlaws the Pagan gods, but suggests that Yaweh, himself, was too vast and all encompassing to be depicted in physical form. As Robert Wright points out in his book, the Evolution of God: Three of the 10 commandments – almost a full third of the ethical laws of society were deliberate steps to assimilate the masses into a sort of monotheism.
Another reason scholars give us for Yahweh’s eventual domination lies in Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312 A.D. As we previously stated, the reign of any particular God is highly correlated with the reign of the society that held it dear, and the Roman empire was the largest society the world had ever seen. Perhaps more importantly, it grew at a time when the world was becoming smaller. In the ancient world, relative cultural isolation allowed hundreds of religions to flourish without conflict, but as Rome spread, increasing cross-cultural communication and migration allowed for – even demanded — a more universal belief. That it would be something other than what Rome had sanctioned seems unthinkable.
And yet still, these answers do not entirely satisfy. They show us how Yahweh became the God of the Western world, but not why. Why did Constantine adopt Christianity? How did the idea spread so easily? What was Yahweh’s allure? History suggests that no religious idea can be forcibly thrust upon society for any length of time. In order for Yahweh to become the one and only God, the masses must have willingly accepted him, and to do that he’d need a universally palatable message – one that would “ring true” in the hearts and minds of the average citizen of the world. It appears he found that via Jesus of Nazareth and Paul the Apostle. The message was that of love and forgiveness:
“Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:31)
“Love one another. As I have loved you: (John 13:34-35)
“’Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mathew 22:39)
This message had legs. We see its appeal grow and strengthen throughout the Gospels. In Mark (thought by scholars to be the first, or earliest Gospel written some 65 years after the death of Jesus), we hear multiple sermons suggesting God wants humans to love one another, but things take a subtle shift by the time we Gospel of John (thought by scholars to be the last, or latest written, some 30 years after the gospel of Mark) Here God is not only urging us to love one another, but God becomes love.
The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love (John 4:8)
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (John (4.16)
This subtle change in definition over the course of a generation had profound implications. No longer was Yahweh an invisible being in the sky – no different from the 1000s of gods that preceded him – incapable of withstanding the slightest scientific scrutiny, but he became love — a feeling in our hearts: something universally experienced by all humans. In effect, he became something real. For there’s a key difference between a God that commands us to love one another and a God that actually IS love. Namely, the former doesn’t exist, the latter actually does – no one can suggest love itself does not exist.
Love is just difficult enough to understand to warrant supernatural explanation, but altogether real enough for its existence to be undeniable. It’s so beautiful as to inspire spirited songs and poetry and yet sometimes so difficult to embrace, that it requires strict discipline. Furthermore, following a life based on love is, in fact, rewarding. Rejecting love does, in fact, ultimately lead to sorrow. These are truths that “ring true” in the hearts of everyone, regardless of the culture in which they were raised.
So Yaweh became something real. Zeus, Bal, Ra, and thousands of other gods faded into history, while Christianity (and eventually Islam) spread through the Middle East and Europe. Other gods might preach love, but few could compete with actually being love. The race was over and the strongest idea survived. The god of Abraham had won the West. He was no longer Yahweh, he would be known as simply “God”.
Contemporary Monotheism
What does the thinking believer make of all this? Given that Yahweh’s origins were largely indistinguishable from 1000s of other gods, they now face a serious question. How can they defend the veracity of the claim that Yahweh is the one true god while dismissing all others?
There are many possible answers, but only one warrants exploration, and it leads us to the more modern, nuanced view of God held by contemporary theologians. Most modern theologians believe there is and always has been only God. His (or hers, or its) presence is universally felt (or inferred) by everyone, and all of the gods of antiquity (including Yahweh) are but clumsy, rudimentary attempts to define this presence in some anthropomorphic manner. The modern theologian believes God was, and always has been, love. It just took humans a while to realize it.