Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

Discussion: Monotheism, the Bible, Akhenaten, Dan McClellan, and Paula Fredriksen Initial Claim The first monotheism was created by King Akhenaten as a way to unify his society, as a means to consolidate his own power. Monotheism isn’t “modern” in the sense of post-Enlightenment. Rather, it’s modern in the context of the timeline of human history. Polytheism very far predates monotheism. But even polytheism took a very long time to develop out of our species’ heightened agency detection, imaginations, storytelling, superstitions, scientific illiteracy, social-power paradigms, major personality disorders, etc. None of the Bible writers or characters were monotheists. The stories about Jesus are stories about a henotheistic Jew who joined and later took over an apocalyptic Jewish mystery cult. Do I think any of the Bible characters thought that any “God” is always and purely “good”? That’s not how I read it. But I also have no interest in arguing comparative interpretations about that ei...