 Jorjor says: Have you ever noticed that almost all religious wars involve monotheistic religions? I have looked and cannot come up with an instance when one polytheistic culture waged religious war against another polytheistic culture. There's always a monotheist involvement - maybe that's because with only one god, the monos think they have more to lose. Read the clip source and the original article I don't know Jorjor... maybe a war wasn't fought in the name of Zeus, but I'm certain that there have been many that have sought the blessings of various polytheistic gods before going to war. It just doesn't stand out as obvious when people say "we need to wipe out all the heathens that don't accept all the various gods" vs, "in the name of god you must die!" It's one thing to seek the favor of Ares or Mars before going into battle. That's like taking your lucky rabbit's foot with you. It's quite another to claim that the gods commanded you to go to war. When we are talking about the Graeco-Roman world, they didn't consider foreigners to have different gods; they were the same gods with different names (see Tacitus: ...they worship Jupiter, whom they call Thunar...). The Romans in Europe and the Chinese in Asia conquered and absorbed their neighbors into their empires not for ecclesiastic reasons, but from a firm conviction that they were culturally superior. It's been years since I read my greek and roman mythology (jeez, like 25 now that I think about it!) so I cannot honestly recall alot of the details of it. I had a recollection of one Greek godess or another sending out troops to wipe out another city, but quite frankly, those memories could be entirely mixed up with some more recent B-plot or Disney animated movies. Monotheistic religions are much easier to use to organize its people for or against specific obstacles/targets where a polytheistic religion allows people many 'outs' or other gods to turn to if one group gets a little more upity than another. Perhaps that was the weakness of polytheism. Christianity absorbed many other ... |
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