Steve, do you have a million parallel Universes to “test” what would have happened had we NOT had monotheism? Unfortunately not. You cannot chance a single coma in our history without completely changing the outcome, for better or for worse. And the end result is completely uncertain.
Let me ask you this:
Your kid is 2 years old, you tell him repeatedly he should not play with knives, he doesn’t listen to you and cuts himself. Is it “bad”? Millions and millions of his body cells died because of it!
Now, your kid is 10 years old, you never let him near knives to prevent him from cutting himself. You did just what the king did in the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. You hid all knives and raised him in a controlled and safe environment. Then one day, he encounters a knife, and through sheer ignorance, he impales himself and dies.
Yes, monotheist religions caused millions of deaths, violence, and plenty of other things. And? What’s your point? That we would have all been better for it had they not existed? If so, you cannot prove that. You can only speculate, just like I’m speculating here. But I see the story and development of humanity the same way I see the development of a child: sometimes you need to get burned to understand that it’s dangerous to play with fire. And as we “mature”, we can move on from having to learn from experience to understanding that something is dangerous by simulating it in our thoughts.
When you look at a toddler, yes, his or her actions may appear chaotic. You talk about “chaos” like you know what it means. Explain to me how life emerges from chaos? How ecosystems become resilient to external shocks in chaos? How Nature achieves such marvelous Balance and Harmony between all living creatures to the point that it all looks so perfectly planned out. Chaos and randomness explain absolutely nothing. In your body right now, there are billions of cells dying, billions of cells being born, there are trillions of chemical reactions happening every second, yet you could be just sitting still in a sofa and from YOUR subjective perspective, nothing is happening. Chaos from one perspective is order from another perspective. It’s the two sides of the same coin.
As for “searching for meaning” and “seeing patterns that aren’t really there”… Well, you know, a toddler reaches self-awareness around the age of 1,5 years. That is, they understand that they are what they see in the mirror. That it is their reflection as opposed to some other person. Some toddlers understand this sooner, some later. Take your time. You have all Eternity! :-)
