Drugs and shamanism and other ecstatic practices lead to lay priests. (some ecstatic practices go through lineages, like some parts of ecstatic hinduism, say, but in general the tools are available to minimum apprenticeship and absolutely outside the bureaucratic processes loved by the Abrahamis religions).
it’s not in the best interests of bureaucracies to let just regular old members be experts and groundbreakers. It’s like selling a shirt that lasts and stays in fashion for a brand fastion designer. You’re out of work.
Also there are creative people, and there are the people who cluster around them, wanting them to repeat what the did before, to write sequels, new albums or novels in the same style.
From what I understand monotheism was a later development. Cuneiform developed in Sumer and the alphabet came from Greece. Both of these were polytheistic cultures. Am I missing something?
I would say, that religion took advantage of human physiological developments, i.e. language… religion, to me, has always seemed to be about community/safety-in-numbers, and not something that is instigated by our physiological developments at all, but rather takes advantage of them, by creating the cult that is religion… and by creating monotheism, even more so.
One God, one pot of gold to one, rather than shared between the many, then enforce that one religion and you have a monopoly on religion and therefore on those religious offerings, ergo The Vatican and all its riches.
Many species ingest many psychedelics… as well as alcohol in the form of fermented fruits lying on forest floors, but yet they remain far less advanced than we in terms of overall global dominance, and I am sure that we are not the only creatures that eat Psilocybe cubensis, so what about they?
The catalyst for our change could be a multi-pronged affair… a condition that change usually occurs under… when conditions are just right to fuel a need.
that is also the way I understand it, and if you take into account that the first writing was essentially used for lists and developed from there. It is a long way from there to philosophy as we know it.
Of course, the moment you do have “leisure” enough to sit down and write, our complete perspective is a different one than when we had no time to do that. Judging by what philologists have taught me about the Hebrew language, there were people who had a lot of time, which is reflected in the depth of that language. Martin Luther said that Hebrew was like an ocean, Greek like a river and Latin like a puddle. This tells me that there was a process going on when Hebrew and other older languages were developing that we don’t understand enough (or at least I don’t), and which would help us understand the ancients a lot better if we did.
In what way the development of language helped monotheism I’m not sure, but mysticism found a great source in its poetry and songs, which as I understand it, is a further development of language. The rhythm of language probably gave us a lot more than we are aware of, add the development of musical instruments and we have a development that explains much of what can be called “soul” in the modern sense of the term - which is where people like you come in
The biblical narrative of God etching his laws on tablets of stone to be given to the people by Moses is an apt metaphor for the importance of the written word of monotheism. Yahweh is the lawgiver and for the law to be accurately remembered from generation to generation it must be etched into stone and later written on papyrus. God could morph into god in oral tradition. Not so the Lawgiver of the written word. His character was bound to the history of Israel by the written word. The Covenant was a written contract. So I see monotheism being dependent on written language rather than vice versa. The biblical conception of God couldn’t have happened without written language.
I’m still leaning towards mathematics as being a better candidate for monotheism (actually, more specifically, monistic ideas); but is mathematics even a “language”?
Not questioning as much as just exploring, especially the background context and events that may have led to such developments. I do believe that there were cultural exchanges happening, even before pre-Socratics, given the contacts and trade between ancient civilizations. (Miletus, home of the first Greek philosopher, for example, was actually a major trading port and was known for its trade with Crete, which in turn, traded with Egypt, so cultural exchange of ideas was very likely). Another interesting fact is that ancient Greeks have also known of eastern ascetics, whom they called gymnosphists, and I suspect that Western ascetism may have been influenced by eastern practices. But this circumstantial approach involves a lot of historical research and getting into the minds of ancient peoples is not that easy.
It is not only possible but that is precisely what actually happens. Having said that, neither o those will ever accept that. Not only that, you can also add Judaism to that list which predates both.
Christian God is second version of Jewish God while Muslim God is the final version, of course, according to them.
I think you may be right that the discovery of prime numbers and other mathematical “Laws” of nature could well be the reason for assuming the existence of an intelligence behind the creation of the world. At this level, the tendency towards monotheism rather than polytheism is logical and may well have occurred much earlier than we have presumed. It has always been a fight for people who investigated the facts of our existence to find acceptance amongst those who ruled by brute force or populism. We see it even today …
