THE NEGATIVE ROLE OF POLYTHEISM
According to the Quran, Adam was the first human being to exist on earth. God told him that his religion and that of subsequent generations would be monotheism. In this lay goodness in this world as well as in the Hereafter. For some generations people followed the true path, but soon the perversion set in. It was now that God began to send prophets to the world (2:213).
Noah was born in Iraq about three thousand years before Christ. He was chosen as God’s messenger and entrusted with the task of reforming his people by showing them the right path. Then from Noah to the Messiah, the apostles were sent in succession. They made every effort to make people understand the error of their ways, but their listeners showed no willingness to be reformed (23:44).
The cause of this perversion lay in the inability of these people to see anything but externals, whereas monotheism demanded reverence for an unseen God. People unfortunately failed to find and worship this invisible God, and instead made visible objects their deities. The first form of religion had been monotheism, but the perversion that set in in later times resulted in the world going in the direction of polytheism.
Monotheism is the greatest truth. When man believes in one God alone, all his affairs are set right. When he forsakes this belief, all his affairs go awry. Monotheism provides the measure by which to judge the rise and fall of all human beings.
The Quran tells us:
‘God is the Creator of all things. He is the Guardian. His are the keys of the heavens and the earth. Those that deny His revelations shall assuredly be lost. Say: would you bid me serve a god other than God, O ignorant men? It has already been revealed to you and those who have gone before you, that if you worshipped other gods besides God, your works would come to nothing and you would be among the losers. Therefore serve God and render thanks to Him.
They have not justly estimated the might of God. But on the day of Resurrection, He will hold the entire earth in His grasp and fold up the heavens in His right hand. Glory be to Him! Exalted be He above the partners they set up with Him (39:62-67).
The real extent of the harm done by deviation from monotheism will become apparent in the next life. Since monotheism is the reality of the universe, deviation from monotheism means, in effect, deviation from reality. The lives of those who deviate from reality will suffer from serious distortions not only in the next life, but also in the present world. This is the fact, which is pointed out, in the above verse.
The basic reason for this is that God-consciousness is ingrained in human nature. Man, as a result of his own natural urges, is forced to believe in God and surrender to Him. Man can refuse to believe in one God, but he cannot refuse his own nature. In consequence, those who do not believe in the Creator have to pay the price by believing (as one believes in God) in God’s creatures. That is to say that, flying in the face of facts, they give to some creature or the other a status which they ought to give only to God.
The Creator and the Master of this universe is God. All true greatness belongs to Him alone. When man makes God his sole object of worship, he is acknowledging greatness in One who truly deserves such obeisance. By recognising that God is great, man stands face to face with the truth. As such, his life becomes a true life, free from all kinds of contradictions. His thinking and his actions both follow the right course. His being comes into harmony with the universe of facts. There is no contradiction between him and this universe.
Whereas when man takes something other than God to be great, when he accords to it a status which should be God’s alone, the result is that his attitude becomes unreal. He becomes a thing displaced and disjointed, which cannot be in accord with the universe of facts. His whole life, instead of taking the course of reality, takes the course of supposition.
Here is an example to illustrate this point. The Christians’ belief in the Trinity made them suppose Christ, the son of Mary, to be God. Christ was, in reality, the son of Mary. But the Christians, exaggerating his importance, gave him the status of the son of God. They accorded to him the greatness of which only one God is deserving—He who is the creator of all human beings, including Christ.
As a result of this belief, they found themselves beset by great contradictions, one of which stemmed from their determination to view the solar system as a theological matter.
The ancient astronomer Ptolemy (90-168), who was born in Greece, carried out research in the time of Alexander the Great, writing a lengthy book in Latin, in which he advanced the theory that the earth was static and that the sun, moon and planets revolved around it. Thanks to the patronage of the Christians, this theory dominated people’s minds until it was finally displaced in the 16th century by Copernicus.
As far as the Christians are concerned, the basic belief of Christianity is that of atonement, through which God ordained the salvation of the whole of humanity. The event of atonement, so central to this creed, relates not only to humanity but to the whole of the universe. Since the greatest single act of atonement, that of Christ’s crucifixion (as atonement for the sins of humanity), took place on earth, the earth according to Christian theology, was assumed to be of the greatest importance in the universe and, therefore, its central point. This being so, Christians wholeheartedly supported Ptolemy’s theory of geocentrism, giving it the status of a religious creed.
The Christians naturally opposed all attempts to prove the truth of the heliocentric theory. It was only the research carried out by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler which ultimately proved the falsity of this theory.5
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984), the scheme of salvation in Christian theology is a universal event. The act of atonement possesses a universal significance. It is related through human beings to animals. But the study of modern astronomy shows that the earth is no more than a small pebble in the vast sea of the universe. In view of this fact, the meaning of Christ himself has lost some of its impact, and the divine act of salvation appears merely as a tiny episode in the history of an insignificant little star.5
The Creator, Master, Planner—all are only one God. All greatness and power belong to Him alone. No one besides Him has any such greatness and power. As such, whenever any attempt is made to attach this greatness and sanctity to anyone else, such a concept comes into conflict with the whole universe, failing to fall into place in the universe as a whole.
This is why the concept of polytheism becomes an obstacle to human advancement, whereas the concept of monotheism opens the door to all kinds of progress for mankind.
