God is essentially an unknown quantity, quality and condition. Individuals even of the same religious affiliations will generally vary in exactly how they define God, even within the same context of a particular religion. No one agrees exactly on what is the nature of God.
Religions do not agree, nor do theologians, philosophers, or thinkers. There are hundreds if not thousands of religions.
There can be no true agreement because there can be no objective criterion for definition. God, assuming the phenomenon, is an invisible force which is non apparent to the empirical senses, as accepted by science or simple experience. God as premised by many, is a force that can, if not be sensed, can be felt through the more subtle feelings like intuition and perhaps be observed through
Semiotics, or the interpretation of signs, as the storm indicated God's wrath. However this is or may be subjective interpretation.
Thus an unknown factor represented as God, can take the form of multiple qualities, generally called Polytheism, which represents the true state of the situation, since an invisible factor will necessarily have varying definitions by differing individuals, even if those individuals try to unify the concept into a single context.
Polytheism is descriptive of a more true and objective situation, as the human condition of a sensory knowledge of God. Generally in Polytheistic Spirituality, sensory conditions as the material world are manifestations of God, and thus are empirical, and can be known as individual facets, such as oceans, storm, fire, wind or forest.
However since these material manifestations are still unknown in the sense of the reason, the where, the why or what of existence as a whole, the nature of gods, or even one god is still a mystery; but the many manifestations of nature may engender many Gods.
The condition of
Monotheism is to take the unknown factor of the character and condition of God, which can be represented by the symbol X, and unify it into one element, context and specific definition. If one says there is one universal entity and we will call this X factor God, then this single entity can be described as possessing specific qualities and conditions in which everyone can theoretically agree.
Because these conditions are to be agreed upon by the greatest number of people, as God is perfection, they generally consist in qualities which are not real but ideal, and are abstract states of mind, that in theory can be adopted by anybody. Some of these attributes are perfect truth, justice, wisdom, purity and knowledge as universals. It is always helpful to a nation state with a unifying government, that its people not be disparate but unified into a coherent whole. These wholes are like northern Protestants and southern Catholics in Ireland, or Hindus and Indian Muslims who were forced into Pakistan. There is a degree of unity, but these united factions are ever at each others throats, because they cannot agree on what the X factor is suppose to be - precisely.
When the concept of an unknown X factor is adopted as a legitimate belief in and of itself, it may be called
Mysticism. The concept here is: since the character and condition of a higher power or powers are unknown as a given, then it is in this condition that the individual is free to create whatever they wish. This is the essence of free will.
This could suggest the opposite of free will as a principle of Authoritarianism. If the X factor is a known, and this property is considered a mandatory authority that must be conformed to, the authority for one's self as thought and action is not one's own, but is an authority outside the self. Much of one's thinking and acting are preprogrammed and thus automatic. One does not truly have a will of one's own.
An aspect of this problem may be exampled by a dichotomy that may be found in most umbrella religions. God is accessible only through intermediaries as officials of the church or state, or those who believe that God is accessible by anybody on their own, as may be exampled Catholics and Protestants or possibly Shiites and Sunnis.
And to this may be added Dostoevsky's observation in the chapter 'Grand Inquisitor', from 'The Brothers Karamazov', that the people should not have and are not capable of a will of their own.
The unifying properties of the X factor or God, as abstract ideals are almost always in opposition to nature and the natural world. This illustrates the distinction between
Progressive and
Conservative. Progress means the replacement of the old with the new. Conservative means the preservation of the old and the whatever already is.
When Monotheism sees no distinction between God and Earth, and where God is perfect, and thus by extension the natural earth is perfect, and is in no need of progress, then this type of Monotheism is Conservative, meaning what is good enough for God is good enough for me.
For Polytheism, the natural world being possessed of God and Gods is already perfect, given the conditions of the physical universe, and thus is to be preserved. God or Gods and nature are one and the same, and one accepts it as it is, in all its glory and random devastation.
Progressives whether religious or secular, generally view heaven and earth as distinct and separate. The X factor is progressed Ideal. The progressive ideal is the creation of something of greater value from something that is of lesser value. An antagonistic duality then exists between Nature and Ideal.
Thus for secularists the inferior material world is used to create the superior ideal, as anything from necessity to as much wealth as possible. And for the Monotheist, the human obligation is to conform in thought, word and deed to whatever the ideal or the attributes of God are deemed to be, and which are progressed, and thus generally antagonistic to human nature.
And today war rages in the Middle East and elsewhere, which is really an eternal battle of Progressives against Conservatives: 'progressive enlightened entitlement', to steal from inferior Conservatives, because conservative change only preserves what already exists, and does not create profit, where profit is defined as giving meaning to change.
LEXICON
