The causes of Western monotheism's exclusivism?

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Out of historic and philosophical interest, as well as having a few acquaintences and friends who are moderate to progressive Muslim, I've picked up the Quran to see what it is, what it isn't, and to really try to get a sense of both how it shapes their lives and beliefs and also to try and get a better sense of what's happening in the Middle-East.

Two of the biggest questions that hit me after reading maybe the first four suras were 'Why did they have a huge scientific golden age between 700 to 1300 CE that collapsed into anti-scientific sentiment?', the other question that got raised was significantly more interesting as it relates to the general nature of the three Abrahamic religions in the west: "Why did polytheism get replaces by monotheism in such a brusque manner?"

To the first question I was able to find a pretty good article that explained partly what I already knew - that in their conquest the early caliphs were telling their acquired territories that they could be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Sabian - just not polytheist (perhaps with the exception of Sabians if they were). The additional: In acquiring those territories the Muslims had to be respectful enough of the populace to keep them on board and as it happened the Persians had a great adoration for Greek thought. This actually rubbed off on the Muslims as well at that time and there was a huge Greek literature translation movement that occurred in Baghdad for about 500 years under the Abbasid caliphs. However the mode of Islam that we're accustomed to today which takes to ontological occasionalism (as the article's author put it - the belief that laws of physics are just 'habit' of nature but that they were irrelevant because God willfully generated each interaction) was already considering Greek logic an enemy of the Quran and not only was that slowly ramping up from 800 CE onward but you had the Abbisid caliphs enforcing Greek thought the way the Shah of Iran enforced westernization. What put a tombstone and epitaph on the Arabic scientific revolution was the invasion by the Mongols in the 13th century and sacking/takeover of Baghdad.

The second question is this - why did monotheism replace polytheism? The really neat thing about reading the Quran right now is it's shedding a lot of light on the bible and particularly on the kinds of behavior that one sees in the Torah, in Joshua, in 1 & 2 Samuel and Kings, kill-or-convert, etc.. From what I've seen of the Quran so far it's actually starting out much more tame and positive than the Old Testament of the bible, if anything it seems to be somewhere between that and Christian compassion, just that it codifies charity.

What's starting to become my theory about the 'Convert or burn in hell for eternity' ideology that surrounded the Abrahamic religions is that it's of anthropoligical sources. Meaning: if I understand this right there were huge cultural problems with polytheism and pagandom from the perspective that religion was strictly transactional, social, you had occasional Pythagoras's or Plato's but the pagan saints were the rare/odd 'seeker' of that time and were few in number compared to the problems, and that having multiple gods meant you could take the path of least resistance in morals and ethics simply by deferring to whatever god in what ever circumstance offered that path. I hear often that there was a big problem with charity, or should I say lack thereof, in the pagan world and when people can defer to expedience that well as a culture that makes some sense.

The other problem with trying to take a pagan/polytheist world is that if someone claimed themselves to be monotheist and wanted to share their God with that person they'd simply add that God to their pool of deities and if that deity asked uncomfortable things of them in terms of what it represented they'd just keep it on the back shelf. I think the very resistance-by-absorption that polytheism had was the reason why the Abrahamic monotheistic beliefs were so heavy handed with 'Believe or burn in hell!'. It was a cultural revolution with significant obstacles (ie. what they might have deemed excessive choice/options) and to do so they had to ideologically electrify the region, cut off all paths of relapse, and as many zealots both within Christianity and Islam did at various times they turned to burning pagan texts, destroying statues, and doing whatever they could to remove paganism from the areas in which they resided. Looking at the history of Rome, Byzantium, etc. and how the pagans generally handled themselves or even how early sort of pseudo-Christian pagan emperors and the like did things, it shows that it took them a very long time to get this out of their cultural system.

That's kind of just my working theory right now but it seems to be what makes the most sense - ie. a cultural patch. When I think of the early Muslim caliphs telling cities that they could pick one of three monotheistic religions as well as another questionable but highly moral per their view vs. polytheism - it suggests a lot about the social dynamic and politic that may have spawned the monotheistic revolution in the Middle-East. It's also why I feel pretty safe reading the Quran and resonating with the good suggestions or ideas I see in it while not being particularly worried about the exclusivity gnawing at me.

The Mongol Invasion may not have been the only reason for the end of the Golden Age of Islam.

Sunni Islam underwent a significant level of codification following the death of Muhammad in 632. A key turning point was probably the work of al-Shafi‘i (767 - 820), a Sunni jurist and founder of the Shafi'i school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shafi%E2%80%98i

Before al-Shafi'i, Sunni Islam was much less dogmatic because of the many contradictions within the Qu'ran and between the Qu'ran and the Hadith (the major Hadith collections had not been compiled at the time of Al-Shafi'i).

However, al-Shafi'i then introduced the concept of Naskh (abrogation), where certain Qur'anic verses are suppressed by other verses or the Hadith (contrary to a widespread opinion about the authoritative nature of the Qur'an, the Hadith sometimes overrules the Qur'an).

The basis for Naskh is mainly this:

Sura 2, verse 106: We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth [one] better than it or similar to it. Do you not know that Allah is over all things competent?
Source: http://quran.com/2/106

Because of this, the chronology of Qur'anic verses becomes very important. Most Qur'ans do not list verses chronologically, but thematically, so it often jumps back and forth between Meccan and Medinan verses. But Because of Naskh, contradictions between Qur'anic verses are solved by having later verses overrule earlier verses, as mentioned in Q 2:106 above. Unfortunately, the penultimate Qur'anic verse is Surah At-Tawbah, or Sura 9, in which the infamous "Sword Verse" (Sura 9:5) is present. And the final sura (110) doesn't contain any commandments that abrogate Sura 9.

See the chronology here:
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Chronological ... e_Qur%27an

Since Sura 9 basically rejects any and all messages of religious tolerance present elsewhere in the Qur'an (there is actually a Freedom of Religion clause in the Qur'an) al-Shafi'i then effectively removed just about any and all tolerance and diversity from Sharia Law. When Bukhari and Muslim later compiled their major Hadith collections (the two Sahihs), they then became the primary basis of Sharia law and remain so to this day. This occurred long before the actual collapse of The Islamic Golden Age, but the foundation for the extreme dogmatism and religious intolerance seen in many Islamic countries today was likely laid by al-Shafi'i, because he (1) made Sura 9 the most authoritative political statement in the Qur'an and (2) because he made the Hadith (which is much, much more extreme than the Qur'an) an authoritative source of Sharia Law.

It is difficult to tell If al-Shafi'i was instrumental in the end of the Islamic Golden Age (after all, he lived more than 400 years before the collapse), but he is certainly a deciding factor in explaining the current state of many Islamic countries.

Christianity has thankfully escaped similar dogmatism. This is probably because Jesus is not considered to be the author of the Bible, and as such, biblical inerrancy is not "necessary". (it is certainly widespread, though, as The Catholic Church and Evangelicalism is evidence of).

In Islam, the Qur'an is the spoken word of Allah through Muhammad, while the Hadith is literally the words and deeds of Muhammad. It thus becomes very difficult to defend theologically how a certain part of Islamic Scripture should *not* be followed.

As for Judaism: Two Jews, Three Opinions.

It's also cited often that Jesus's saying that his kingdom was not of this world and his lack of demand for setting up government but rather a personal faith set the precedent for separation of church and state; even if people might snicker a little about how much power the Vatican wielded and how it had the Emperors of Europe in its pocket.

I'm still hoping to find some good anthropology resources on the cultural reasoning for the polytheism to monotheism shift. There's usually myriad reasons for these things and geography and socio-political concerns usually are the root cause. I'm almost certain 'hell' was employed for group dynamics reasoning but I'd have to think that cultural concerns were bad enough that people were willing to make that trade. A power-hungry clergy doesn't seem like it'd quite enough to sell that line of logic.

Islam had the advantage of having been created 1,000+ years after Judaism was formalized. It's pure monotheism and comes after quite a few additional generations of religious thought. Judeans likely started with polytheism then moved into monolatrism and only later became strictly monotheistic. So it has roots in the earliest world religions when moral thinking was pretty crude and the gods were often elemental. So Islam could borrow, as they all did, at a good time. Ive read the Koran and it uses the lake of fire plenty. Also a newer concept.

I think Jewish monotheism was just the natural result of national or city-state deities. At first your god becomes the high god, then he becomes the only god to worship, then he becomes the only god, period. But by design it wasn't going to spread far. Christianity and Islam take off once you start offering easy to understand rewards. The old gods were a bit mercurial and almost more about explaining why life sucked rather than helping you achieve a permanent reward. I think in that sense the old gods were more honest. You can pray thirty times and day and still get hit by lightning. Because the gods were pissy that day or didn't like your face. Modern religion still struggles to explain suffering.

*sigh*.

It just occurred to me that I spent 30 minutes writing a post about something that has been specifically addressed - almost down to the letter - by David Hume.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume- ... f-religion

I defer to The Great Infidel.

TY. I'll have a go at that.

Lots of things about Hume's ontology as I remember had me curious about him, particularly wondering how his view on our inability to really grasp all of objective reality impacted his overall image of things.

Another point on monotheistic expansion is that there comes a point where it's not a question of faith but of political advantage and economics. If you want the most favorable trade with muslim traders, you convert. If the local appointed leader belongs to a certain faith the elites will tend to convert to get the appointments he can offer. Once your livelihood or future is at stake, conversion is just politics. And those elites then set the tone, build the temples, and offer patronage themselves.

That happened in both Africa with Islam and in Rome after Christianity crossed a certain threshold.

My Pastor, who had years before been a missionary in Nigeria, had recently commented that it was easier to convert pagans than it was Muslims or adherents to other monotheistic beliefs. Pagan religions rarely had notions about grace and salvation, or taught about morality at the same level that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. had. And so pagans were open to such belief systems.

How thorough is such conversion though. I.e. I doubt they completely remove pagan thoughts and concepts

Maybe not for that first generation. But later generations wouldn't be able to think of themselves as anything other than devotees of their particular monotheistic faith.

D: