In the cultural development of humanity the emergence of Monotheism is often mentioned to be a milestone comparable to the ability to control fire or write.
Of course it is true, that Monotheism appears to be a relatively young cultural development compared to the time humans actually exist, and it's pretty prevalent, too. But in contrast to the ability to make fire, I find it hard to proof that Monotheism generally brings any objective cultural advantage over polytheism, henotheism, or atheism.
So how can Monotheism be seen as something superior as Polytheism or other kinds of nature religions like Shamanism and so on?
Reasons I heard so far, which do not convince me, are the following (in braces my counterargument):
- Most humans today were converted to Christianity or Islam (many people doing something doesn't mean anything)
- Theistic evolution, i.e. monotheism arose through a gradual process of polytheism -> henotheism -> monotheism (true, but still: cultural development was stuck in the middle age Europe due to Christianity and became enlightened by the philosophy of the polytheistic Greeks, which were arguably more enlightened)
- Proximity to atheism, i.e. one god is closer to none instead of many, while none is the absolute truth (nobody actually knows what the absolute truth is)
- Acceptance of science, since all of the gods except one were done away with, natural phenomena can no longer be explained by, "it was the will of the god X." (Then you can blame the one and only god without the need to question anything)