The thinking starts with the beer, then progresses towards one entity, then backpedals because one needs a second to offset against, and from two comes three, and we have come full circle.

I see a similar pattern in the advent of abstract art. People have independently settled upon primary colors, primary shapes, and primary compositions, only to then get stuck in a rather limited playing field, from which people started again to create the total utter chaos that is called post-modernism.

My personal conviction is that neither religion not abstract art have found the key to understanding the universe. They merely reflect our limited way of thinking.

> Is it an in-built preference? I think a robust monism is still a fairly radical position, especially among religious views. For example even the branches of Christianity which tack more materially tend to draw a rigid boundary between creator/created, God/the universe, etc. (and if you interrogate lay views they tend to skew even more dualistically).

Can you expand on this a bit? I have an intuition about what you're saying, but I confess that the definitions can be a little slippery.