Criticism of monotheism

Monotheism has attracted criticism throughout the history of the concept. Opponents of Akhenaten restored polytheism in ancient Egypt following his death. Although Abrahamic monotheism later achieved widespread prominence, critics have described monotheism as a cause of ignorance, narrow-mindedness, oppression, and violence. David Hume (1711–1776) wrote that monotheism is less pluralistic and thus less tolerant than polytheism,^[1] because monotheism stipulates that people pigeonhole their beliefs into one tenet.^[2] In the same vein, Auguste Comte said that "Monotheism is irreconcilable with the existence in our nature of the instincts of benevolence" because it compels followers to devote themselves to a single Creator.^[3] Mark S. Smith, an American biblical scholar and ancient historian, wrote that monotheism has been a "totalizing discourse", often co-opting all aspects of a social belief system, resulting in the exclusion of "others".^[4] Jacob Neusner suggests that "the logic of monotheism ... yields little basis for tolerating other religions".^[5]

Regina Schwartz portrays monotheism as an instigator of violence because (for example) it inspired the monotheistic Israelites to wage war upon the Canaanites who believed in multiple gods.^[6] Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan regarded monotheism as a cause of violence:

"The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien [beliefs and cultures]. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam, and it might not be unreasonable to suggest that it would have been better for Western civilization if Greece had moulded it on this question rather than Palestine."^[7]