Sunday, November 18, 2007

Does Monotheism Breed Intolerance?

Here's a concept that never occurred to me, but having read it I find it intriguing.

Philip Pullman is an atheist and an author. He has written a fantasy trilogy, the first of which is due out as a movie in the next couple weeks. More on that in a moment.

The first I ever heard of Pullman and his books was in an article in the latest issue (December 2007) of Atlantic Monthly, entitled "How Hollywood Saved God." The teaser for the article says "It took five years, two screenwriters, and $180 million to turn a best-selling antireligious children's book into a star-studded epic--just in time for Christmas."

Everything else the article addresses aside, what struck me was this quote from Pullman:
Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don't accept him.

Think about it. If you belong to a polytheistic culture you accept that, hey, there are lots of gods. If you have your favorite god you want to worship, and I have a different one that I want to worship, it's cool. No problem!

But if you belong to a monotheistic religion, you figure there is one and only one true god, and by god it's your god. And maybe you, yourself, would not go out and kill someone else for refusing to believe in your god. Nevertheless, you don't have to dig too deep into history--or yesterday's news--to see that some people will do exactly that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not carrying this any further than makes sense. I'm sure that polytheistic cultures have killed plenty of people throughout history for other reasons: power, greed, whatever. And maybe Pullman is wrong. Maybe there are polytheistic cultures that have persecuted others for religious reasons. But I'm not aware of any. Are you? I hereby declare this concept officially Pretty Dang Interesting.

So anyway, just to wrap up, the movie is The Golden Compass and it is based on the book of the same name. The other two books are The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. I haven't read any of them, just as I haven't read the Ring Trilogy or any of the Narnia books, to which Pullman's books are compared. But I'm betting we'll all be hearing a whole lot more about these books soon.