Was monotheism really that much better than polytheism?

Sun: 07'Gemini
Moon: 00'Aquarius
(Mars: 28'Taurus, conj. fixed star Algol)

I found a fascinating link this afternoon over at Free Thought Blogs: was the advent of monotheism truly that much of an advancement over polytheism?

Find it here, and jump below the break for my thoughts (and perhaps, hopefully, a discussion)...
I don't mean to get combative here, though I include the position of Mars today as a note on what "might" happen... at best, hot heads and at worst, heads coming off, figuratively!  For full disclosure, I am a polytheistic Pagan and witch, though I no longer claim the label of Wiccan.

My own take on it is not too dissimilar from what is said at FTB, but again, I think it can be boiled down more simply without losing the essence of it.  When you create a "my-way-or-the-highway" dichotomy like that, you put people on the defensive, mentally and emotionally.  When it comes to something as sharp and invasive as invalidating their personal beliefs, now they're going to be outright hostile: you're attacking their minds and their ways of life through your words at this point, if not your actions.  I would argue, therefore, that there is no such charge as "idolatry," only the worship of a deity currently rejected by society.

And I choose this example because of all the examples, it has proven the most enduring out of history: when it's your own tribe's priests claiming that your God of War says "They all worship other gods, and I'm jealous that the other gods are getting worship that should be mine, so I declare that they're all wrong: kill them all!"...  well, you don't exactly have the recipe here for world peace, now, do you?  Because I know damn well that if someone is coming after me to take my life, regardless of their reasoning, I'm going to defend myself and my family by any means necessary - and if I know they're doing it because their religion tells them so, I also know that I may not be able to stop them short of killing them. 

Fanaticism does that.  If you're willing to take a life because a book says an imaginary man in the sky tells you to, there's not much you won't do: all I can do is live and let live, unless someone tries to deny me the right to the first.

I'm not going to claim that polytheistic nations were all sweetness and joy.  They weren't: witness the Aztecs.  I won't even say that they didn't do their share of fighting over which gods in their pantheons - or which pantheons - were top dog.  They sure as hell did, and they killed yelling "Odin!" and "Ares!"  When it's the only way of life you've ever known, I suppose some excuse for fanaticism can be made - though I make no such allowance for someone who has the opportunity to learn about other peoples' ways and chooses to remain ignorant and hateful about them instead.  But... I think the gods understand each other to some extent, which is why the Greek Goddesses are fractured, why Hecate has such power in a pantheon that does not properly account for Her, why Athena carries the thunderbolts for Zeus from time to time, why gods across pantheons whose cultures were geographically close and who had similar functions also shared similar attributes, and why New Kingdom illustrations of Isis show Her wearing the sun-disc crown that by rights belonged to Hathor in the Old Kingdom.

As for the war god Jehovah, and later on his little brother the war god Allah?  I would say They got Their way.  Two thousand years later, we're all still fighting in the names of our own gods.

Civilized discussion asked for below (on this topic especially, no fighting, please!)