Outline

1. Refutation

2. Polytheism to Monotheism

3. Environmental Conditioning

4. Divine Name Phenomenon

5. The Second Commandment Connection

6. Where' the Goddess?

7. Biblical Refutation

8. Conclusion

Evolving Monotheism

Critics against the Bible will try to do anything to disprove it.  It's no surprise then, that some will claim the Biblical concept of one God (known as Monotheism) are nothing more than an evolved concept of religious belief.  Putting this into perspective, what does it all mean?

Def. of Evolving Monotheism: The concept in which religions evolved from a lower stage of understanding of deity, such as fetishism and spiritism would move on to more advance stages of deity, such as polytheism and pantheism.  With proper amount of time, it can evolve to Monotheism.

 To these critics then, the Bible and the early Jewish people are nothing more than pagan in their cultural origin.

 Refutation:

The foundation of all this "Evolving Monotheism" nonsense comes down to one thing: A wrongful presupposition. 

• Since "Evolving Monotheism" is based on presupposition [Take for granted –Ed.] , by this fact alone, "Evolving Monotheism" could be rejected.

• The concept of "Evolving Monotheism" is just another offshoot of Darwin's Macroevoloutionary belief.  Ever since his "Origin of Species" was published, other fields have introduce their own "evolution".

Polytheism to Monotheism?

"It cannot be shown that there is a universal tendency on the part of polytheistic religions to gradually reduce the number of deities until finally arriving at one deity.  In some instances, in fact, such a religion may even add to more deities as it adherents become aware of more and more natural phenomena to deify!  At any rate, the Old Testament teaches that monotheism, far from having evolved through the centuries of Israel's history, is one of the inspired insights revealed to the covenant people by the one true God Himself." (Excerpts from "The Heart of the Old Testament", pg. 9. Written by Ronald Youngblood).

It would seem very unlikely that polytheism would evolve into Monotheism.

Environmental Conditioning?

               The Jewish belief of One God is unique especially in the geographical area they are located in.  Surrounded by pagans and polytheistic neighbors, the Jewish God stand alone as the ONLY true God, and the ONLY true creator.  Therefore, the argument using Environmental Conditioning is actually against "Evolving Monotheism".

               (Note: If you are searching for God, wouldn't you look into the Bible with it's unique claim?)

Divine Name Phenomenon

               Yahweh and Elohim are two names for God used in the Old Testament of the Bible, but to some of the out-of-date Bible-biters, it is allegedly, a "clue" of how there is really two gods.  Looking carefully, we see that Elohim is used when the Old Testament is describing God's philosophical concept of God, or his attributes.  Yahweh then, is use in describing God's moral and personal attributes.  Simply put, Elohim is God's common name and Yahweh is God's personal name.

The Second Commandment Connection

               This refutation shows the absurdness of how far one can go in trying to argue for "Evolving Monotheism".  Supposedly, since the 2nd Commandment forbid images of God, there must be images of God (as in images of the Israeli's God) before this commandment was given.  First, to begin with, even if this statement is true, (Which it isn't) it still doesn't prove that the Jews and the Bible were pagan.  It just show that the Jews had idols of their only God.  Now we have another thing to handle: Did the Israeli had idols of their God?  Definitely no, and this is soundly refuted by archaeology.  There have never been any images of God or any idols found during the time period of Abraham and Moses.  The Second Commandment in reality, points to the fact that there is ONE God.

Where's the Goddess?

               If the early Jews were indeed polytheist, then there would have been many gods, and reasonably, goddesses too.  This is true with the case of many polytheistic religions and that include Israel's neighbor, which is more revalent to our topic.

"For some reason, perhaps in part because of the historical nature of God's revelation, the Israelite did not combine the complementary forces of nature by means of a duality expressed in terms of sex.  While the category of personality is, of course, applied to Yahweh and while the pronouns used are in their masculine gender, there is no complementary feminine.  The duality of male and female is to be found only in the created world; it is not part of a Godhead, which is essentially sexless.  BIBLICAL HEBREW HAVE NO WORD FOR GODDESS." (Excerpt from "The Old Testament Against it's Environment", pg. 23, by G.E Wright)

Biblical Refutation

"You shall have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3)

"Do not make for yourself gods of silver or gods of gold." (Exodus 20:23)

'I am the Alpha and the Omega' says the Lord God, 'who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.' (Revelation1:8)

Since, the Bible is God's Word and the standard of truth, it nail shut the myth of "Evolving Monotheism" forever

 Conclusion

With such a case against "Evolving Monotheism" from many approaches, it would seem proper to reject the concept as a fraudulent lie.  For those who hold on to these lies against God, God would ask you to drop it fully and come to Him instead for repentance and salvation from all your sins.  The clutch of atheism will get you nowhere.  It is a life of despair and are lies told to oneself.

By Jimmy Li