Member-only story
God’s Dystopia and Nature’s Wild Origin
Contrasting religious and godless models of nature’s inhuman enormity
Surprisingly, while the Abrahamic religions are supposed to be monotheistic, they each posit two created orders, the initial paradise and the fallen condition that strives to regain the universe’s former stature that God intended.
The surprise is tempered by the influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism since Zoroastrianism incorporates dualism into monotheism with a teleological outlook of how the warring forces of good and evil ought to be reduced to a single victor. In the interim, before that ultimate victory of good over evil, there are effectively two worlds, the destructive one of lies, darkness, and evil, and the constructive one of truth, light, and goodness.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam inherit not just the polytheistic plenitude of gods that had to be demoted and conceived of as angels and demons, but Zoroastrian dualism, the picture of a heavenly paradise that contrasts with the imperfect natural realm. Christian thought leaders especially developed that dualism by absorbing Plato’s dualism and Aristotle’s teleology into Christian theology.
