I think that monotheist religions are the lowest thing man has ever created. Their supporters tend to think black/white where as animists see things in a broader meaning. All life is sacred for animist, but for modern humanist/christian/muslim only humans matter. With this kind of attitudes we have destroyed out mother earth and eventually we will also destroy our selves. In fact, most of us are already dead - from the inside.
I agree. Some people seem to think that there is some kind of "religious evolution" in the following line: animism-shamanism-polytheism-monotheism-atheism. But there is no such "evolution". Animism does not automatically lead to shamanism, shamanism does not automatically lead to polytheism, polytheism does not automatically lead to monotheism, and monotheism does not automatically lead to atheism. It's a simplification which holds no truth.
If there is one thing that complicates this way of reasoning it's the rise of philosophy. The Greek philosophers created advanced systems by building on more "primitive" conceptions of reality. One could say that by making these systems more "rational" they also made them more artificial. And it's from the time of roughly 600-300 BC (the so-called Axial Age, according to Karl Jaspers) that most religious concepts we know and use today were invented: like angels, heaven, "true" monotheism, the devil, and so on.
The seventh to the fourth centuries BC was a period of remarkable intellectual progress, both in India and Greece, as well as in China. While the Greeks created "philosophy" (love of wisdom) Buddha preached a radical new faith in India, which excluded the gods, and at the same in China Taoism and Confucianism were being formed. Where exactly would Buddhism fit in the theory of "religious evolution" if it went from polytheism to atheism without first passing monotheism?
The problem arose with the advanced speculation (philosophy) during this era. The more rational a system is the more artificial it becomes. It tries to explain the unexplainable, and by doing so it creates a system, and a system often leads to an ideology, and an ideology often leads to a certain way of life. And as usual, when humans develop a complex system, adherence to that system becomes more than life itself, and after a while it's no longer worth just living for the system, but also to kill for it. And thus intolerance is born. And we have also seen what the monotheistic systems leads to: crusades, inquisition, witch-burnings, religious wars, jihad, suicide-bombings, et cetera. It was much easier with the "primitive" systems: no one would get killed because he thought that the god of thunder and lightning was more powerful than the god of the sea, for instance.
Back in the old, "primitive" days they said that the soul was in everything (hence: animism), today the monotheist say that their god is in everything, while a Buddhist would say that nothing is in the objects, and he would be correct too. The difference is that originally all the objects were seen as equals: man was no different from a bird or a tree, or even a stone. But through further speculation humans came to think of themselves as better than everything else; and their gods, who were personifications of the elements (storm, flood, drought, and so on), had to be anthropomorphic (i.e. human, like themselves). These supernatural creatures were further elevated at the height of polytheism, where many things, and not just natural phenomena, were seen as gods; for instance: gods of wars, and trade, and wine. By this time the immortal gods had become so abstract and so distant from the humans that it seemed they no longer mattered in ordinary life.
There is definitely a tendency away from the closeness between "gods" and humans of old, and the increased distance in more "enlightened" times, as if a close god had fallen into the realm of superstition, a closeness which was seen as unbelievable. If anything it's a rationalisation of everyday life, and not of some kind of religious development.
As humans became more aware of their surroundings and tried to explain natural phenomena with "science" they ceased to believe that the gods were behind everything. The boundaries of the unknown were constantly pushed back until the point where there no longer was a place for the gods neither on the surface of the planet, nor in the Netherworld. And thus the astral religion was created, and from that: Heaven (as separated from the sky, the Greeks spoke of the Ether).
Pythagoras was the mastermind behind much of that development. In the Odyssey and in the Gilgamesh Epic the world was still flat, with the realm of the dead placed at the very edge of the world, far away from the living. But Pythagoras changed all that. He created a peculiar religion based both on superstition and science, and was the first to contend that the Earth was round. Pythagoras spoke of the 'Harmony of the Spheres', divine music generated by the heavenly bodies (the gods seen as planets), which only he could hear (since he was divine). When people died their souls went up to the Ether (Heaven) where it stayed until it was sent back to a new body (reincarnation). And this reincarnation was not just limited to humans, but it was a process that all living beings were submitted to. Platon developed these ideas further in Phaedrus.
So clearly, there is not a question of RELIGIOUS development, but rather of philosophical speculation, which Christianity, among others, picked up and used bits of, like the Greek concept of heaven/ether, but not reincarnation, because reincarnation has no place in the Christian credo; so to the religions philosophy/science is nothing but a smorgasbord where you can take whatever you want, and ignore the rest. And these religions, which use these speculations for their own advantage, rapidly become locked in time (conserved), and unable to adjust their "philosophy" to new ideas, new speculations, which is the main reason so many intellectuals, like Giordano Bruno, were killed by the Unholy Dogmatic Church, because his (Pythagorean) views did not fit in with their "philosophy".
I sometimes wonder if it's inevitable that all religions must become conservative and anti-progressive, and if only new religious movements can incorporate the latest philosophical ideas into their faith. Either way, religions and philosophies should be kept separate. They can cross-breed for a time, but in the long run religion is bound to turn against philosophical speculation.
Finally, I would just like to point out that not all religions are as intolerant as Christianity: Buddhism, for instance, does not burn people at the cross... eh, I mean: at the stake, for having a mind of their own. Religious intolerance was created by, and limited to monotheism. Buddhism is a living proof that not all of the more advanced systems have to be intolerant, nor artificial.
