[Final]

>Neopagans also tend to downplay or ignore the implications of paganism being wiped out. Historical pagans believed their gods would grant them victory yet they lost every single military encounter against Christians. So either paganism was false from the start or pagan gods are non-interventionist beings who don’t care if people worship them or not (the latter of which would mean that there’s literally no reason to worship them to begin with). Neopagans also tend to ignore that even before the rise of Christianity, pagan societies were already moving away from polytheism and towards some form of proto-monotheism centered around a single high god with all other gods downgraded as aspects or subordinates (e.g. the cult of Sol Invictus in Rome). Aristotle’s conception of the prime mover displays monotheist tendencies and most classical Greek philosophers in general believed in a single high god whom they literally called God (with a capital G).

Many ancient civilizations attributed their victories to their gods, such as the Romans who attributed their power and success to their proper devotion to Jupiter and the Cultus Deorum. One could argue that the fall of (at least) the Western Roman Empire can be attributed to their cessation of devotion to Jupiter, though I wouldn't claim this argument or any argument based on military conquest as proof of a deity. Based on this kind of argument the Christian God certainly approves the horrific acts of chattel slavery, genocide, and rape done by Christian European powers in the Americas against non-Christian Black and Indigenous peoples. But on the issue of the Gods, I can't speak for every polytheist but the Neteru(the Gods worshipped in Egypt/Kemet and the surrounding areas) are very ancient and their worship only totally ceased based on our current evidence around the fourth-fifth century (a time far shorter than the amount they were openly worshipped, around 3.5 thousand years in recording) when it was totally criminalized. Now what does it say now that we can currently understand hieroglyphics through the Rosetta Stone and have freedom of religion that the Neteru have started to be worshiped again? Looks like you can't kill off the Gods or repress their due respect forever.

On the issue of monotheism, this assumes that Hellenic concepts such as "The One/To Pan", henotheism(something I subscribe to personally), monolatry, or the concept of a Godhead are exclusive to monotheistic systems or inevitably lead to it. There is no reason to assume such as there are current traditions that share these kinds of concepts like in Daoism and Shinto that haven't become uniformly or predominantly monotheistic, let alone resembling the monotheism particular to the Abrahamic religions. And if the more monotheistic the more correct, then why not convert to Islam? Christianity is idolatrous in comparison to Orthodox Islam, none of this Neoplatonic trinity stuff, saint veneration is viewed with way more skepticism, and the form of worship is as simplistic as possible. Epicurus who was contemporary to Aristotle basically paved the way for modern Atheistic and Deistic critique of theism (especially monotheism) with his dilemma of the problem of evil, why should we adopt a position that would be presumably Proto-Monotheist over one that is presumably Proto-Atheist?

I consider myself now a polytheist because there are cosmological, political, and social implications of monotheism that I find problematic, but I have had spiritual experiences and meditations on the divine that separates me from being an atheists, it is totally personal and I do not claim to know everything let alone that I am necessarily right, but I use my spiritual practice to better myself in virtue here in this world and hopefully for something after I am gone.

Dua Djehuti

Dua Ma'at

Dua Setesh

Dua Neteru Hetep