Who Mourns for Adonais? Or, Where Have All the Gods Gone?

What is it about?

This is the seventh chapter of The Devil’s Advocate vs. God’s Honest Truth: A Dialectical Inquiry into the Rationality of Religion. It complements the methodological appraisal of the previous chapter with a historical analysis of faith as an existential impulse that perpetuates itself in various forms serving as its own validation. The main strategic vehicle is a survey of the historical development of religion as a social institution, especially in the context of its evolution from Greek polytheism to Abrahamic monotheism, where the focus is on identifying common strands in the conception of God and permanent tropes in the associated outlook on reality and morality. Much of the emphasis is on the sociocultural developments through which the creator gods and ruler gods of antiquity are gradually abandoned in favor of a single God absorbing and integrating the most relevant and most impressive of their functions, powers, and characteristics under the universal umbrella of monotheism. Drawing on various connections suggesting a continuity between Hesiodic theogony and its Judeo-Christian legacy, with the evidence being admittedly circumstantial rather than conclusive, the chapter presents speculative considerations for the classification of religious commitment as an ancient impulse, once indispensable for causal explanation and moral guidance, but now sustained through the force of tradition, despite the longstanding availability of viable alternatives for both causal explanation and moral guidance.

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Photo by Valdemaras D. on Unsplash

Photo by Valdemaras D. on Unsplash