Making One God From Three

The Bible is quite clear that more than on god is depicted in the text. Years of explaining and funneling pinpoints has convinced the Christian world that three is really one. Fourth century philosophers and emperors agreed the final say in a confusing creed to say once and for all, that three gods is one god is “The God”. Why?

Most of you know the power of observation. Untrue knowledge is a chisel in the stone of common sense, and weak individuals without true knowledge, are easily controlled and manipulated. On the ruling side, three gods are less influential than one all powerful and frightening god with no one to reason or ration his ultimate power.

Nature can prove the point better than I, as you see the three maelstroms are seemingly insignificant. But combined they are a force to be feared, and grow to dangerous self serving entity that suck down everything in its wake.

Above is three finding their footing, and then they combine into this one below.

Left unchecked, or avoided all together, it sucks away everything in its path. That’s the importance of having one versus three. Monotheism is a danger to mankind. Here below two ships fight the whirlpool while fighting each other. Sound familiar?

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

55 thoughts on “Making One God From Three”

  1. I still can not understand the depth of the shift from polytheism to monotheism. That is a rather large shift in thinking. So what caused people to go that way? Why give up what was working well for them, multiple gods / goddesses. I have been told that until the Roman state pushed it as the single state religion ( and made out well in taxes ) christianity was a little no nothing cult hardly heard of. Seems a huge social shift with a little unknow reason to me. Be well Jim. Hugs

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    1. Becoming the official religion of the most powerful multinational Roman army carried a lot of weight. Why have people historically fled state religion? Pious force to believe or die. The rebellion was crushed in America too as the only natives left were the genetically compliant creatures.

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    2. Why give up what was working well for them, multiple gods / goddesses.

      Because that Big Bully in the Sky thundered from his “holy” throne … “NO! You shall have no other gods before me. I AM THAT I AM!” And so it was.

      Got it? (Me neither.)

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      2. But there’s a massive historical *got it* there. Monotheism = the consolidation of absolute rule and its religio-political justification. The idea of divine rights existed long before, but they become sort of an obligatory way of life when Roman Emperors adopt Christianity.

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    3. What Pink said, Scottie.

      Consolidation.

      Imagine ancient Rome, pre-Caesar. Lots of deities. Each with their own temple, each with their own priesthood. Each with their own agenda. Sometimes they’d align, often they didn’t. Jupiter being the head honcho gave them a kind of tie-breaker at the top, but power was spread out.

      Enter the end of the Republic, civil wars galore (Pompey! Antony! Cicero! Caesar and Cleopatra! Epic stories, drama, death wholesale), ending with Augustus knocking off one rival after the other and consolidating power. There’s your blueprint.

      One Rome. One Emperor.
      Let’s go conquer some more.

      No more bickering senate, but still bickering gods.
      Until from the east there comes a one-god, whom people seem to like a great deal. Some like him, because he seems to talk to the underprivileged, like slaves (lots of those. LOTS!) and commoners (also lots. And dirt-poor. Damn slaves taking our jobs!).
      Others like him, because the old gods always want sacrifice, and devotion, and never really do squat for the poor. Run yourself ragged from one temple to the next, get five to ten different bits of advice, but you’re still dirt-poor. One temple, >b>one set of rules sounds pretty good by now.

      One-god is clever. One-god adheres to the KISS principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid). At least he does in those early days. He’s going for the grassroots, this one. The disadvantaged, who now got hope for heaven, and the added glee of seeing their slave-masters in hell.

      By now, Rome is past its apex and splintering. Fraying at the seams.

      Enter a clever Emperor. One who sees one-god’s popularity with the masses, and recognizes the potential. Sure, he must tweak the holy scripture a bit to make it all work. Must unite the factions who bicker almost as bad as the old gods’ priesthood.

      But it’s easier to consolidate under one deity, with one book. Especially if you got the still mighty sword of the Roman Empire to prod the reluctant priesthood in the hind end (the problem when asking an Emperor “You and what army?” is that he only has to point out the window).

      Thus, Constantine. Thus, the bible as we know it today. Thus, the Vatican, center of consolidated Christian power.

      One Rome. One Faith.
      Let’s go conquer some more.

      (Until Luther, at least. And round and round we go…)

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        1. Email? Oh, dear 👀 – my email account recently suffered a nervous breakdown after being inundated with spam. Now it shunts everything, and I mean everything unfamiliar right into that folder.

          But I shall find you, never fear!

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          1. I left a sparse trail of bread-crumps in hopes you would! Well, actually croissant-pieces to be exact and probably nowhere NEAR enough… cuz my hand wouldn’t stop rising to my face. 🙄

            If you are unable to find me, my next alternative are flaming arrows.

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            1. Croissants!!! Chocolate!! Champagne!!

              Sorry, got distracted there for a moment.

              The flaming arrows are creative, but might to lead to unfortunate misunderstandings 😳 – in any case, methinks I found you!

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            3. Whew! These damn things were getting hotter and hotter and shorter and shorter! I didn’t have enough saliva to put ’em out so I shot the rest of them over to Jim’s place… by those 50-gal drums that read something like ‘Insane’ maybe or ‘Pro-sane’ something and others labelled ‘July 4th Entertainment’? I’m SURE he won’t mind.

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            5. (Like what Emperor Hirohito said on Aug. 6th, 1945 when everything was shaking… “What tha F*CK was that!!!?”)

              Oh. That wasn’t “Insane” but Propane, huh? Sorry, Jim. Did you need those trees, buildings, and animals there?

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    5. Hi Scottie. I was just shuffling on through and your question caught my eye. The attraction to this Abrahamic monotheistic belief is resurrection, afterlife, heaven and the perennial promise that it will come very soon. As you say, the declaring Christianity the sate religion of the Roman Empire was crucial. If it hadn’t been for that decision Christianity would not have survived. That was and continues to be the worst decision in the history of humankind, I think! The bit on taxes is something that should be reversed. Cheers

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    2. And if I may be so bold and honest on my last poly-ism, in my 4-5 decades of experience — much of it in the Deep South, the Conservative Puritan South — some of the most publicly “rigid” or outspoken women there/here are the most… umm, how can I say diplomatically(?)… Libertine? HAH! As Winston Churchill puts it…

      “A lady in the parlor, but a harlot in the bedroom.” 😁 Imagine that, huh?

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    1. Thanks Matt. It was always one of those things in my mind, who supposedly was Jesus praying to? In the garden and elsewhere. The one god explanations never cut it with me, even though I went along with it.

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  4. I think the more interesting question is why did we have goddess cults. I think agriculture and domestication were likely female discoveries. The gatherers were woman and they would have learned about seeds and farming. And what women would leave an abandoned wolf pup behind. I believe women were celebrated until the novelty of their discoveries wore off. Eventually tradition evolved and men took over. Yep, the God consolidation began too. With a single male God he now had to be defended.

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    1. I follow a Muslim atheist. He compared Abraham and Muhammad to the apes. Everything they did was to control territory, sex, and food. Boy that sure rings true doesn’t it? And that tradition is still strong among the abrahamics.

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      1. Yes, and if you see my post from today, you can see that it is very polytheistic in the ranks of the believers today. No one worships the same god and they pick and choose. Take a peek.

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    2. The comments have some pretty good insights. Think if it as a monopoly of any type for starters. There are even laws against it because if the power and manipulation in that structure. It’s super late here and I’m off to bed, but If you give it some thought of how important it was for THEM to bring it to one god, it all makes sense.

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          1. And genesis 1 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
            ‭‭Genesis‬ ‭1:26‬ ‭KJV‬‬

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            2. I see. I guess the point is, even with a very early in the book reference to “us, and our” and multiple gods, why the push to turn him into one when the text is quite obvious?

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            3. The JEDP Theoryproposes multiple authors and redactors had a go at it to shape God into their own monotheistic image. Remember how Hilkiah the high priest “found” that lost book of law in the temple (2 Kings 22)?

              He started out as a bit player among the Canaanite gods, became Abraham’s god of choice via covenant, assumed tribal prominence during the Exodus, and finally became the one and only true god for the nation via priestly fiat.

              I’m unfamiliar with Mormon theology. What was the LDS take?

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            4. The LDS take is multiple gods in the heavens. But Elohim is the god of this world. But the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three separate individuals but acting as a single committee. It’s a fairly sensible approach considering the text.

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            5. Guess that’s why Mel considers Mormons and JWs as “lost” as the atheists.

              But I’d agree that churches teaching a non-trinitarian doctrine are more coherent and — dare I say — in line with the biblical cannon.

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            6. True. Mormonism is a very materialistic system. When I bailed out the transfer to evolutionary atheism was a shoe-in. I have an old post I’ll send you other that retyping the entire thing.

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            8. Thanks. I’ve bookmarked it so I can ask any further questions I might have over there.

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  6. I love (hate) the way Christians have tried to claim the word Elohim refers to the unmanifested Jesus. Always exstant. Apologists have had 2000 years to make excuses and they still come up with new ones. An author in the twentieth century noticed that it said when Jesus had his side pierced blood and water flowed out. Modern medicine has shown that to bleed we need a heart beat. So was this person alive? Check the crazy apologies popping up for this problem. Ideas never proposed before for anyone.

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  7. Pingback: Making One God From Three — TheCommonAtheist – elunarcom

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