God’s Powers—Omnipresence

♫ He’s making a list and checking it twice
Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice
He sees you when you’re sleepin’
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!

You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I’m telling you true
God is always watching . . . you! ♪

It seems that all of the powers attributed to the Abrahamic god are based upon what the god-believers want that god to do. Take for example, omnipresence. If this god is to be the judge of all humanity, he can’t be going about staging trials. He needs to be witness, judge, jury, and executioner. So, in order for people to not be able to hide from this god, it needs to know what you are doing all of the time. In order to “see” your misdeeds he has to be where he can see them, so he has to be omnipresent (and awake 24-7, and not distractible, and . . . , and. . . .).

To “explain” this ability, some theists have claimed that their god is “outside of space and time,” aka nowhere, while others have claimed this god is everywhere. In Gordian knot solution mode, Anselm claimed that both of those were true (and also claimed he resolved the conflict between them)!

To be omnipresent, this god is claimed to be a purely spiritual being. Of course, every time such a claim is made, problems accrue. For example, to make us “special,” it is claimed that we are made “in God’s image.” If this god is a being of pure spirit, existing outside of space and time, it has no image, so WTF? Every additional claim for a godly power creates conflicts with its other powers and makes the whole mess less and less likely. And starting from below 1% likelihood, going lower is not easy.

All of these “power problems” stem from one source: an insistence on monotheism. Who is going to be attracted to worship a god which is kinda great and sorta powerful and knows a lot of stuff? Establishing a monotheistic worship in a mostly polytheistic world is asking for a lot of competition.

This results in the social inflation of the monotheistic god’s powers. (Polytheist: My god is so powerful that he can throw lightning bolts at his enemies. Monotheist: Oh yeah, my god. . . .) The only end result for a monotheistic god’s powers is the most, the strongest, the greatest, the hugest, . . . , hmm, maybe Donald Trump is religious.

This all comes back to my basic question: why monotheism? By claiming to worship the One True God™, who is the only real god, means that everybody else is worshiping false gods and are very stupid to be doing so. This attitude doesn’t exactly ingratiate one to one’s neighbors.

Imagine living in a suburban neighborhood and when you moved in, your immediate neighbor to the left, built a tall fence so that he and his family did not have to look at you, forbade his children from playing with yours, gossiped to his neighbors on the other side that you were immoral idolaters and would come to no good. Can you imagine becoming friends with those people any time soon? Can you imagine them being good neighbors?

Imagine these standoffish neighbors, are surrounded by people like you, so there are now tall fences on all four property lines. They no longer gossip with their neighbors, but they continue to write letters to the editor of the local newspaper condemning the immoral, demon worshipers in their community.

A community of people not desiring to blend in, assimilate, or compromise anything aren’t going to be liked. If you think this is an uncharitable portrait, look up the ultraorthodox Jewish communities in New York right now and see what kinds of issues they are dealing with.

So, the Hebrews, situated in a high traffic land between largish superpowers of the day, adopt monotheism, thereby picking a fight with everyone around them. How did that work out for them as a people?

And please, comments that I am “blaming the victim” for what happened to them is not what I am doing. I am trying to get at why there was a push to convert the Hebrews from polytheism to monotheism (and then hand off that hot mess to Christians and Muslims).

For those of you that think “Hebrews? Polytheism? Weren’t they always monotheists? The answer is: not according to their Bible. Over and over again, those pushing monotheism (remember the winners write the histories) warned about worshiping false idols, false gods, building altars in “high places,” etc. If they were all monotheists, then why all the warnings? Israelite monotheism seems to date back to the seventh century BCE, but not earlier.

From the Biblical story lines and other histories it seems that the only beneficiaries of monotheism were the religious elites, the priests. The secular elites, kings and whatnot, inherited grief, grief, and more grief, so they were not all that rewarded by monotheism. The common people? They always were keeping their heads down, trying to avoid the attention of the elites. And, while a few busybodies were always looking to count coup on their neighbors, those people always had ammunition for their pettiness, monotheism didn’t provide any more of that.

So, why monotheism? The downsides were huge and the upsides were few. Any ideas?