God

When you think of God, what do you think of? Are you sure that's God? What makes you so sure? And why does it matter?
Monotheism is technically the belief in one God. Polytheism is the belief in many gods. Historically the first known montheistic faith is Judaism. If one thinks that monotheism's main distinction from polytheism is a case of numbers they would be mistaken. What makes the two "theisms" distinct is their basic understanding of "theism". It is these basic understandings that make them either one or the other. It is these basic understandings that I want to explore in this post. I want to hypothesize that polytheism is not dead, but alive with a different twist. And that monotheism is just as queer, but universally meaningful as it always has been. Many people say that they believe in "one" God, but monotheistic thinking would point out to those people that their God is unworthy of the title. Monotheism seeks a relationship with a Deity that is both personal and worthy of the title. The truth is that if this one God doesn't exist, that there is no basis for anything, and no explanation can be given for human life.
This may be taken as a reconstruction of the classic understandings of monotheism and polytheism. I am not sure that this is not a reconstruction. It may be. However, I would rather think of it as digging deeper in our defintions of monotheism and polytheism in anticipation that the improved definitions will help us with everyday life. Let me offer this definition of monotheism: The basic belief that the nature of a deity is also the truth that holds everything together. Let me offer this basic defintion of polytheism: the basic belief that the nature of a deity is that which is more powerful than the human being. These defintions are not without their assumptions. For instance, monotheism assumes a unifying truth that holds everything together. Polytheism does not assume this. Polytheism sees the chaos in the world and rejects the notion that there is an order behind it. In order to explain natural uncontrollable phenomena, they assume higher powers. The ancient polytheists gave these higher powers a personality. The modern polytheists give these higher powers an impersonal title called law. The basic belief in both cases is that truth is unrevealed. The basic reaction in both cases is to attempt to control natural phenomena; modern man through science, ancient man through religion. Monotheism assumes an order beyond the chaos. It doesn't deny the chaos, but does not exclude the possibility of a unifying order behind everything. In Judaism, the fall is what brought chaos into existence. It was not created by chaos, but with order, but when God's representative creature, the human, fell, it plunged the creation, including the mind of the man into chaos so that it appears that chaos is ultimate reality, if one accepts only the truth of one's experience. And so it appears that universality is beyond us, and therefore tempting to discard as plausible. But the existence of order itself, seen in our ability to organize civilizations, granted imperfect, is at least a part of the fabric of the universe, and cannot be denied outright unless its dismissed as an illusion at which point the believer of order could just as easily dismiss chaos as a possible illusion.
How can the Jew be sure that there is such an order? Or that this order is personal? To the second question it would be said that this order revealed Himself as "I AM". The fact that the order revealed himself affirms his existence. If this is assumed, then why can't it be the case that the search of modern man for the universal truth, is really a search for God. Is this not what Bacon and Descartes said that science should be? But this view of science ceases to be compelling when the revelation of God's revelation is made clear in our minds. Why would God reveal himself if we discover him on our own? I know the question is hypothetical. There is no way of knowing if God hasn't left some portion of truth to the searching, or some completely mysterious, and past finding out. He may have, and I believe that he has done that. That is to say more clearly, that God hasn't revealed all that there is, and all that there is to know isn't always revealed. God has given the faculty of discovery to the human mind, and in some way this can be categorized as "revelation", but if we now start asking how to distinguish from what we couldn't know without revelation and what we can know without revelation, we would be embarking on a path of misery, and also a rabbit trail. So in short, you can be a montheist and not be a Jew, but what makes you a Jew is that you insist that there are things that can't be known without revelation, and that all knowledge is subject to prior revelation. To the assertion that all things are revelation, I deem this indemonstrable, maybe not untrue, but irrelevant for now. But how does belief in order lead logically to monotheism?
If the world we see is basically chaos, how did it get here? Can something appear out of chaos? Sure. But then what we be our purpose? Our purpose cannot be dismissed as an illegitimate concern, because whether we like it or not, we all have a sense that there is a purpose, otherwise none of this would mean anything, and I also assert that without purpose you don't have emotion. For why is chaos annoying and order relieving? If the world is the product of chaos, then everything is phenomenal, including our minds which would seriously leave doubt in it's abilities to apprehend any kind of truth or order if we saw it. How could we understand our minds with our own minds unless our own minds were made with an order? We cannot know without order. We know by order. Our minds order in order to know. And the question shall be proposed that if there were a plethora of dieties, and that there was order, how would we know how it all worked out, and therefore how could it be orderly? To order is to simplify, therefore if God is order then God is one, because one is the simplest value there is. It is even more simple than zero. One can conceive of something easier than nothing.
But a dab of chaos in a world of order, makes the world chaotic, although it doesn't take over or delete the order. And so we're left to rely on faith. All knowledge has a starting point, that cannot be proven. It's not an easy world to live in because it's trying to mix order with chaos, which is really just chaos, and any sort of order that is not derivative of the order is faulty. If there is an order that is within our ability to grasp completely, then why is not already apparent, and thus why is there a problem? The only way around this is to declare all dissatisfaction with life the result of a mistaken desire. But give me faith. I need to believe that there is something or someone better than me who is in control, who is not waiting for me to do something to make something happen. Who is going to destroy chaos and make everything clear... someday. Call this blind naivety, false hope, or sad relgion, but I'd rather believe in the truth, and not be able to prove it, then believe in nothing because I can make the simple and obvious observation that complexity exists, or continue to trust modern science to figure it out (how long have we been waiting?)
I don't think that I fulfilled my original goal for this post. But I am satisfied with how it turned out. Please let me have it. Point out all the logical fallacies, misrepresentations, and nonsense. Please respond, and comment. I'm not kidding.