Why polytheism was never able to compete with monotheism?

Even the most informal Christians still had a system of bishops, monks, deacons etc. usually based on Roman dioceses and provinces. There were Arian bishops, Nestorian bishops, Donatists bishops and all that. "Paganism" just couldn't compete with such things. Julian the Apostate's attempts to revive Roman traditional practices was quite literally "do what the Christians are doing" in terms of reform. I think that says something.

And these are by far the most successful. I don't know much about the spread of Shia but Protestants haven't had much success converting pagans. Most of their members come from Europeans who were already christian

What do you mean?

The Catholic church is doing great.

>Protestants haven't had much success converting pagans

North America, Africa, East Asia.

Gods that movie sucked balls!

Certain people having superior military might; those certain people also being monotheists and you can see the solution to your question.

>shit I need to make some friends
>oh i know! Veeky Forums probably would hate Hercules since its depiction of Greek myth is woefully inaccurate!
>"Gods that movie sucked balls!"
>oh god please find it funny
>this is all i have left in my life

Nah it had John Feelsgoodman and everything

>North America
There aren't many Christian Natives in North America.

...

Because monotheists are willing to subvert or murder people who believe in more then one god, meanwhile only believing in one god is not enough on it's own to make polytheists want to murder monotheists.

>being this retarded

This, polytheists dont have a divine mandate to exterminate other faiths.

Polytheism is/was the man attempting to identity nature with himself. Humans are prideful creatures, and they think the stars look down upon them around them. This was no different in ancient times. The gods of the forest were human shaped, created by humans.

Monotheism is a shift towards man's dominion over nature. God gave dominion to Adam.

If man ever has complete dominion over all the elements, all religion will vanish, because then man would have become the gods of their Earth.

Paganism was weak in the first place,and the pagans were retarded their response against other religions (Druidism, Christianity, Mystery cults) was always violence and forced conversion.
So, Paganism naturally died when it encountered a religion who can live without the support of the state like christianity.

India's the definition of paganism. An endless multitude of divinities where you can believe whatever the hell you want about them, as long as you're neither Muslim and/or trying to steal land.

You'll find Hindus that are polytheist, monotheist (where there's only one God and everything else is like an avatar or reflection), henotheist, pantheist, deist, agnostic, or even atheist. If you ever wanted to know what spirituality was like pre-Christianity/Islam, Hindu India's the closest living thing left.

I dare you to tell a Hindu there's a set doctrine of what Hinduism believes.

There are at least 5 things wrong with this statement.

>making shit up

This is why Veeky Forums is a failed board.

Daily reminder that pagatholics still exist.

Didn't the British isles experience a pagan reversion after the Romans fell apart and the northern raiders moved in?

Doesn't count because it refutes OP's argument

Literally ever Hindu I know believes in the manifestation of one crap.
And yes I have been to India. The polytheist shit only exist nowadays in fringe or out of touch places, so 70% of India aka no one gives a fuck about them.

>I have been to india
oh wow.

>pagatholics

what

I'm guessing he means like how the mexican cartels worship San la Muerte and Haitian Voodoo worships something like the Blessed Virgin.

Get fucked Proddie

You realize the Church proper despises that shit right?

No shit sherlock. Unless the guy meant that all Catholics are pagans, that's my best guess at what pagatholics means.

I'm guessing cause it was more complicated. It's easier to pray to one God than many.

Not him but yeah, papists are pagans

I'm reading the Republic, and it is beyond clear that if you have a Platonist-Aristotelian cultural élite, born out of the Academy, they're gonna be ferociously critical of the most beloved poets, even Homer and Hesiod, who were the foundations of the Polytheist beliefs.

Plato paved the way for Christianity's takeover, then Philo's commentary merged Platonic thought with (the Greek translation of) the Hebrew Bible, thus the God of the philosophers became one with the God of the "Old Testament." At that point, if you can read Greek, the Septuagint and Plato don't seem that incompatible anymore.

Last came Plotinus who is the Pagan that absorbed some 6 Centuries or more of Greek philosophy like a sponge, produced a synthesis of them, and ultimately made it possible for Judaism, Christianity and Islam to reinterpret themselves with further neoplatonism, effectively teaching them "how to God."

Ebin maymay

Dumb and wrong.

Polytheism is alive and well in India in cities like Gwalior. Plenty of traditional Shaivism in that place which believes in autonomous deities, e.g. the family of Shiva him self. Like a Ganesha temple, as an example, in this environment may worship Ganesha specifically however they don't neglect Ganesha's status as Shiva's actual son

The reason the pantheistic idea of "all of the deities are really just representations of the One God" is prevelent in the past century is due almost entirely to the methods of Swami Vivekananda, who in the 1800's drew heavily upon the material in the Vedanta and Bhagavad Gita (which both emphasized that pseudo-monotheistic idea) in order to present a cohesive image of "Hinduism" to western audiences. Prior to his influence, these concepts were mostly not seen in the same light by the average Hindu. As a result of his very successful movement many Hindus have adopted this idea, however to say that it's what the majority of Hindu's believe is incorrect, mostly because of your point about how there isn't a core doctrine

I'm Catholic you perfidious heretic.

/thread

Shits too confusing to convert people into, christfags can just yell about their heretic on a stick and people can convert

So what you're saying is that the only reason Hinduism survived is because of the brahmin caste?

An ancestral, Pagan religion with a centralized authority, thus unlike the others?

Go back to worshiping the man in the dagon hat pagan

>Miters are pagan
Even Protestants use Miters dumbfuck.

And besides, if Jesus made us fishers of men, why not appropriate a pagan fish hat, completley change its meaning, and use it as a sign of the Christian Mission like the Icthys?

The miter in your pic looks completely different than the one the pedo in Rome wears

My guess would be unironically this

Polytheism is hella confusing, you got thousands of dieties, with no strict teachings, everyone one of those gods is unique, everybody acts differently, they are strangely tied together etc, and every new nation/tribe you meet had hundreds more with new traditions and customs. Its easier to just shout about one true God with one strict set of rules and everything else being false.

It also didn't help that you could only pray to those gods in certain places like the specific temple in a specific town. The Assyrians were the first in my opinion to worship one god.

Well if Miters are supposed to resemble fish they do a piss poor job at it.

Also, it's just one style. The Bishopric has many miter-like hats

I'm talking about the specific hat that the pope wears.

>India
>China
>Japan
>Aspects of Buddhism could be considered polytheism in some angles with that Bodhisattva shit,
They got Asia cornered pretty well.

Holy fuck your post is wrong in so many ways that it physically wounds me.

Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire. Pagans are not a unified body capable of having a response. Pagans very rarely responded with violence. Nobody has ever been forcefully "converted" to paganism because paganism is not a religion. You can't force someone to honour a certain cult practice, the whole point of a cult practice is that it is a community process. And paganism survived until the end of the 1st millenium in southern Europe and middle of the 2nd in northern Europe.

Only in the sense that some previously Christian areas that fell under the control of Anglo-Saxons lost it a bit, but it was not en-masse. It was more that a centralised Church collapsed in what is now modern day England. The system of bishops and stuff had relied on Roman cities existing, and they failed in Britain unlike in Gaul.

I'm not saying that it's the only reason, i'm saying that there is a strong correlation between a religion being incredibly and heavily hierarchal and organised and its survival. Judaism is the perfect case in point of a religion surviving Seleukid persecution, Roman persecution etc. The entire reason that Jewish circumcision exists for instance, is that so that Jews can delineate themselves and mark themselves as separate from everybody else. Faiths that fail to do stuff like that are incredibly prone to conversion. Brahmins aren't exactly a centralised leadership or anything, but there is a hierarchy there, and it is rigidly defined. People know what they're supposed to be doing.

This

You've never been to India, and you're a liar.

You've read literally none of my post you fucking illiterate moron.

Take your pick.

Zuchettos are also a papal hat.

>"The pope's hat looks like a pagan hat"
>"well you know it's related to a lot of hats in Christianity and before Christianity al-"
>"NO I'M ONLY TALKING ABOUT THE POPE'S HAT!! I DON'T CARE ABOUT OTHER HATS! HIS HAT IS BAD!"

I suppose in the end it just made more sense and it was easier to understand

Fucking bullshit. I spent 3 months helping poorfags in rural West Bengal and polytheism is alive and well. I even stayed in an ashram for part of it.
I was there during the festival of Saraswati where they weave idols of that goddess and float them down the Ganges on little lily pads/rafts/whatever. And one of the villagers carved an idol of Ganesha for me to take home and bring prosperity to my family.

monotheism is literally a forced meme

LDS is the largest single organization on the planet, and they're polytheist.

>Convert or we will kill you
>You want to pray? Too bad, we burned/destroyed everything
>I see you like *enter festival name here*. We have the same here!

More like LSD, amirite?

Centralized doctrine, a requirement to proselytize, and religiously exclusive beliefs (a polytheist can belief in your one true god among theirs, but the reverse cannot be said of a monotheist).

For the time being, Christianity has been taking off in Korea and China really well.

The influence of Greek philosophy on modern Abrahamic religions can never be overstated.

In the 2nd century AD there was basically no visible difference between the average philosopher and the average Christian clergyman.

You are a moron. I was born into Hinduism in India. Paganism is well alive, families more often than not have theirown gods and goddesses ice the more popular gods found in larger temples.

China, I doubt it very much. You know what else is rising? Chink nationalism, revival of native religion, and Buddhism. Coupled with Christianity's anality with the Chinese government and people, I doubt it'll be dominant.

>The polytheist shit only exist nowadays in fringe or out of touch places

>China
>had ever been Religious in the same way as the west

Pick one.

The Chinese had always put authority of the king/emperor abode that of Faith. That's why China had always had a secular moral system.

You can't really compare. No religion had ever gained political power in Chinese history, ever. I doubt Monotheism will ever take major hold there.

Yeah I reread that as soon as I posted but fuck it. There were loads of temples and shit to different gods in Calcutta and people seemed to take it all fairly seriously so if it's like that in a big city I'm sure that's what it's like across the board

Good post.

Too much room for schisms.
With multiple gods each deity can have several different cults with varying values.
Monotheism is more unified.