Me and my Christian friends have a lot in common but I didn't realize how much until I found this site: Gods You Don't Believe In. It lists about 2,800 gods of various sorts. I don't believe in any of them and most Christians reject all but a handful1. That makes about 2,795 gods whose nonexistence we agree on.
1. I'm not sure how to count up the gods of Christianity. If you assume that the big guy, Jesus, and the ghost are all the same person then what about Satan and some of the senior angels like Gabriel and Michael? Do they count as gods? And what about the other gods mentioned in the ten commandments? The god of the Bible says not to worship them because he is jealous but he doesn't deny that they exist. Who are they?
Silly.
ReplyDelete1+1+1=1
I have what I call the "Greek pantheon test": If it would be a god in the Greek pantheon, it's a god. So the archangels, angels, demons, saints and miracle workers are all gods. There's no such thing as a monotheism.
ReplyDeleteJohn S. Wilkins said...
ReplyDeleteThere's no such thing as a monotheism
I've had that conversation with some people before (especially evangelical interpretations of satan's power). Even some self-proclaimed atheist and agnostic people involved were uncomfortable with that statement.
Amazing how prevalent the monotheism myth is.
Only 2,800? Good thing they didn't enumerate the millions of local hindu gods. Or the thousands of catholic demigods/saints.
ReplyDelete> The god of the Bible says not to worship them because he is jealous but he doesn't deny that they exist.
ReplyDeleteHe does, actually: "Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken me and sworn by gods that are not gods." (Jer 5:7 NIV)
But 'tis true, in fact, the early Christians were called atheists (the word is from Greek) because they didn't believe in all these other gods.
The first atheists were Christians! It seems that's where the term comes from--now that's ironic...
Atheists say gods don't exist and Christians say those other gods don't exist except the one they believe in, but in fact there are billions of gods, Christians also have as many gods as they have believers, since each believer creates his or her own god based on inputs from the Bible an other believers. They just refer to their gods by the same name and claim their is the same as the one others believe in, the one they identify with the Bible.
ReplyDelete