Why did so many polytheistic people were converted into monotheism but the opposite way is so rare?
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  Why did so many polytheistic people were converted into monotheism but the opposite way is so rare?
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Author Topic: Why did so many polytheistic people were converted into monotheism but the opposite way is so rare?  (Read 1460 times)
buritobr
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« on: March 08, 2022, 07:40:10 PM »

Many former polytheistic people were christinized or islamicized. But the opposite way is very rare. It's hard to find examples of people who were monotheistic and became polytheistic.
Roman emperor Julian (born 331-died 363) was an exception.

Why do you think it is so much easier to convert polytheistic people into monotheism than the opposite way?
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TheReckoning
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« Reply #1 on: March 08, 2022, 10:38:00 PM »

     Monotheism in general leads to more powerful theologies which, when dominant amongst the general population, are better are propelling a country to be more powerful, relative to one’s a polytheistic religion being dominant. One reason behind this is that monotheistic religions tend to be a bit more “personal” than polytheistic ones, which makes sense- polytheistic religions tend to be more about the gods interact with one another, while monotheistic ones of course focus on how God interacts with human beings. Monotheist Religion therefore gives human beings more purpose, and more reason to be developed.

      Of course, more powerful countries spread their religion more than less powerful ones.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2022, 08:05:16 PM »
« Edited: March 09, 2022, 08:52:51 PM by Statilius the Epicurean »

Sidestepping issues about what "monotheist" and "polytheist" actually mean, I would suggest that it's a historically contingent phenomenon based on the adoption of Abrahamic religion by a couple of prestige civilisations. Where monotheistic faiths have cultural and social hegemony, it will often gain converts, and where polytheistic beliefs have cultural and social hegemony, monotheists will often deconvert.

The monotheistic Jews were under such threat of creeping Hellenisation that the zealots started a civil war over it.
The Nestorian Church in China declined and was absorbed back into traditional Chinese society, same for most of the Kaifeng Jews and to a lesser extent Chinese Muslims.
There was mass conversion of Christians back to Buddhism/Shinto under persecution in Tokugawa Japan, and even the Hidden Christians adopted traditional Japanese polytheistic aspects over time.
And it's not clear to me whether Hinduism is losing or gaining converts in post-independence India (maybe the former, I genuinely DK but just putting it out there).
There could be more examples but those I came up with off the top of my head.

One reason behind this is that monotheistic religions tend to be a bit more “personal” than polytheistic ones, which makes sense- polytheistic religions tend to be more about the gods interact with one another, while monotheistic ones of course focus on how God interacts with human beings. Monotheist Religion therefore gives human beings more purpose, and more reason to be developed.

Have you heard of Bhakti?
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Tartarus Sauce
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« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2022, 05:35:57 PM »
« Edited: April 07, 2022, 07:29:48 PM by Tartarus Sauce »

The Abrahamic monotheistic model is one that actively seeks to convert the uninitiated since they are "world religions" that adopt a universalist worldview. Most polytheistic traditions have localized, parochial origins and were thus generally (but not always) far more accommodating in regards to the religious practices of neighboring peoples.

There's simply more of a missionary mindset hardcoded into the baseline outlook of the likes of Christianity and Islam than most polytheistic faiths.
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Aurelius
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« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2022, 03:26:58 PM »

Many, many people convert from Protestantism to Catholicism.
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Calthrina950
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« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2022, 03:25:36 AM »

Many, many people convert from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Why is this so?
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Mopsus
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« Reply #6 on: April 08, 2022, 08:24:38 AM »

Many, many people convert from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Why is this so?

I didn't think that it was. While plenty of nominal Protestants convert to Catholicism for marriage, evangelical churches have seen huge gains in Latin America in the past few decades.
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gerritcole
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« Reply #7 on: April 08, 2022, 02:40:27 PM »

An interesting question is why has polytheism held strong in the Indian subcontinent?
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #8 on: April 11, 2022, 08:43:11 PM »

An interesting question is why has polytheism held strong in the Indian subcontinent?

Well to an extent this is an artificial discussion, because Hinduism especially on the philosophical end is pretty monotheistic.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2022, 08:48:33 PM »

An interesting question is why has polytheism held strong in the Indian subcontinent?

Well to an extent this is an artificial discussion, because Hinduism especially on the philosophical end is pretty monotheistic.
Hinduism is to some extent hardly a unified religion anyway. Adherents can be monotheistic or polytheistic.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #10 on: April 13, 2022, 09:23:03 PM »

I think it’s worth mentioning that - regardless of your opinion of them today - the Abrahamic faiths seemed a lot more enlightened and modern.  Germanic paganism taught that the world was held up by a tree … that’s a lot easier to disprove than the description in Genesis.  Whereas Hellenic paganism was effectively preaching gaining Earthly glory to affect one’s afterlife prospects, Christianity was promising slaves and women that no almighty God would care about such trivial, mortal things.  Traditional paganism taught that if you did [ritual to God X], you’d get [better outcome related to X].  The more interconnected the world became, it’s easy to see why monotheism caught on.
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buritobr
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« Reply #11 on: April 13, 2022, 10:17:53 PM »

Many, many people convert from Protestantism to Catholicism.

In Brazil, many people former catholics became evangelic. And the evangelics are a more extreme form of monotheism. In Catholicism, there are saints.
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Samof94
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« Reply #12 on: April 21, 2022, 05:55:20 PM »

An interesting question is why has polytheism held strong in the Indian subcontinent?

Well to an extent this is an artificial discussion, because Hinduism especially on the philosophical end is pretty monotheistic.
Hinduism is to some extent hardly a unified religion anyway. Adherents can be monotheistic or polytheistic.
The Balinese form is monotheistic.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #13 on: April 21, 2022, 06:27:09 PM »

An interesting question is why has polytheism held strong in the Indian subcontinent?

Well to an extent this is an artificial discussion, because Hinduism especially on the philosophical end is pretty monotheistic.
Hinduism is to some extent hardly a unified religion anyway. Adherents can be monotheistic or polytheistic.
The Balinese form is monotheistic.

I've heard some Hindus in India are also monotheistic.
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« Reply #14 on: April 22, 2022, 11:22:25 AM »

Here's a semi-educated hypothesis: a lot of polytheism is essentially Just So stories and codified superstitions. Why does sea go up? Sea god says so. What brings the seasons? Persophone is going into Hades? Who brings our household luck? The statue in our room of our patron god. There is a lot of intrinsic charm in these beliefs but they don't really stand up to too much philosophical enquiry. You don't even have to blame the abrahamic faiths here: the Greco-Roman religious beliefs had long ossified into a set of rituals by the time it was displaced by Christianity, and Christianity itself was one of many competing Eastern religions that seemed to place a new god into a semi-monotheistic Head Deity position (two roman emperors,  Elagabalus and Aurelian, were full on believers in monotheistic Sun Gods, with only the latter being actually successful in forming a fairly powerful religion that outlasted him, the cult of Sol Invictus)
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #15 on: April 23, 2022, 01:03:32 PM »

^ I kind of came back here to add that "Hellenic paganism" was already in steep decline (at least from its original, belief-oriented version during the "Trojan War Era") by the time Christianity even became a thing, and it was largely ceremonial for many Romans by the time of Constantine.  Monotheism (and all post-Axial Age faiths) provided a sense of philosophical fulfillment that I think had been sorely lacking from a decadent Roman Empire likely since the days of the early Republic.
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SInNYC
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« Reply #16 on: June 14, 2022, 01:44:46 PM »

If you start out polytheistic, the gateway to monotheism is pretty simple - you just start worshipping one of the gods. Some dont even give up on the other gods really, though you can if you want.

But if you start out monotheistic, you are committing apostasy and maybe blasphemy among other sins that condemn you to some dismal afterlife. Most monotheistic religions do not look kindly on this, and depending on how secular the rest of society is your life may also be dismal.
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buritobr
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« Reply #17 on: June 21, 2022, 04:26:16 PM »

Here's a semi-educated hypothesis: a lot of polytheism is essentially Just So stories and codified superstitions. Why does sea go up? Sea god says so. What brings the seasons? Persophone is going into Hades? Who brings our household luck? The statue in our room of our patron god. There is a lot of intrinsic charm in these beliefs but they don't really stand up to too much philosophical enquiry. You don't even have to blame the abrahamic faiths here: the Greco-Roman religious beliefs had long ossified into a set of rituals by the time it was displaced by Christianity, and Christianity itself was one of many competing Eastern religions that seemed to place a new god into a semi-monotheistic Head Deity position (two roman emperors,  Elagabalus and Aurelian, were full on believers in monotheistic Sun Gods, with only the latter being actually successful in forming a fairly powerful religion that outlasted him, the cult of Sol Invictus)

Yeah.
Although many conversions to monotheism were done by force, there were other motives.
If you don't follow the Bible litteraly, it's much more feasible to concile science to a monotheist faith, in which there is an invisible God, than to a polytheist faith, in which gods are like human beings or like a mix between human beings and non-human animals.
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #18 on: June 23, 2022, 01:12:28 PM »

Here's a semi-educated hypothesis: a lot of polytheism is essentially Just So stories and codified superstitions. Why does sea go up? Sea god says so. What brings the seasons? Persophone is going into Hades? Who brings our household luck? The statue in our room of our patron god. There is a lot of intrinsic charm in these beliefs but they don't really stand up to too much philosophical enquiry. You don't even have to blame the abrahamic faiths here: the Greco-Roman religious beliefs had long ossified into a set of rituals by the time it was displaced by Christianity, and Christianity itself was one of many competing Eastern religions that seemed to place a new god into a semi-monotheistic Head Deity position (two roman emperors,  Elagabalus and Aurelian, were full on believers in monotheistic Sun Gods, with only the latter being actually successful in forming a fairly powerful religion that outlasted him, the cult of Sol Invictus)

Yeah.
Although many conversions to monotheism were done by force, there were other motives.
If you don't follow the Bible litteraly, it's much more feasible to concile science to a monotheist faith, in which there is an invisible God, than to a polytheist faith, in which gods are like human beings or like a mix between human beings and non-human animals.

This.  Monotheism is just inherently more rational. This means it will have an appeal to a significant portion of the population that quietly rejects the pagan gods as ridiculous.  The monotheistic stories are a lot less convoluted and lean heavily on a conception of natural moral law.   While the parts of modern Protestant Christianity and Islam that focus on taking every detail literally get outsized media attention, this isn't the norm globally and those denominations generally didn't even exist in ancient times when the educated classes of Rome, Greece, Syria, etc. were converting.
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