Just pondering out loud about polytheism and monotheism feel free to correct...

there are religions without "theistic" in them.

 

I think that at teh top of the mountain is god. . .however you percieve god to be. . we all stive ti reach that top of the mountain to be with god. . there are many paths, all equally valid. . all lead to the top. . chose one. . jump form path to path, , it doesnt matter. . the journey is the same. . .

 

They're really just labels to categorize and describe similarities and differences amongst the various world religions.

Consider the longtime criticisim of Christianity's monotheistic claim while also holding to the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

..."more than most people" do not know what 'religious' means, never mind what 'God' or 'gods' are.

 

Indeed. Most people gloss over or ignore the concept of spirituality as well.

 

It has to do with whether you see a forest or whether you see trees. The spiritual mind perceives with awe, but classifies what it perceives differently depending on culture and environment. We can make a very few generalizations. In general, people that live in biodiverse environments like a rain forest tend to be polytheistic, whereas people who live with little biodiversity such as a desert tend to be monotheitic. It is also true that when a culture becomes literate, so that wisdom begins to develop over time, that polytheistic systems gravitate towards monotheism; the Stoic Seneca for example was raised with classic Roman polytheism but philosophized that the gods were superficial understanding that we give to an underlying unified Divine that was implicit in Nature.

So what is the difference between a forest and trees? A forest is more than the sum of its parts. I am a stomach, a heart, a nervous system, lungs... but when you put it all together you get a Person.

 

i found it so interesting in the past reading about understandings of ancient greek and roman pantheons. particularly approaches that were put down in writing BC and weren't focused on reconciling these things with later religions people had adopted. although jealous angry or vengeful at times especially in relation to other divinities these gods were mainly natural in their power and not overly concerned about whether humans validated it or not because they could crush humans like bugs. it was as though those stories were concerned with coming to terms with all of the complex chaotic conflicting forces that govern the world and human nature. but i agree that by contrast at least to this example of polytheism that monotheistic religions seem very absorbed in the notion of worshipping a centralised authority who is owed allegiance and obedience.

polygamy as it is practised in parts of the world today concerns me as a structure within which there is a great deal of scope for severe emotional and physical abuse of women and children. men at the head of families seem to be implicitly recognised as single and independent unquestionable authorities. a leader to annul all other possible leaders or ways of existing. proponents of this sort of lifestyle talk about how good and healthy their own specific relationships are without addressing this broader problem.

(i'm just throwing thoughts around about this too.)

 

I don't think we can classify religions in only that way. We also have non-theistic religions, deistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, etc.

 

Your question implies different types of gods, with different preferences/levels of jealousy.

Whatever makes such beings, if they even exist, different is a lack of some thing or another, which a different being has - a kind of incompleteness, which is contradictory of the notion of God.

God by definition can only be one, because anything that would differentiate two gods would be an incompleteness - and what is most likely is that one would simply lack what the other has, so that the truly complete being only is truly God.

 

Like [MENTION=834]Dragon[/MENTION] stated, there's much more out there than just monotheistic and polytheistic. There's:
Panentheism: "God" is both within creation and transcendant from it
Pantheism: "God" *is* creation - within creation, but not separate from it
Animism:everything has a soul/spirit, even trees, rocks, etc. common in indigenous cultures
Henotheism: there is the belief in multiple deities (polytheism), however the practictioner chooses to only worship one.

There are others, but I don't recall them off the top of my head.

In addition, there is often overlap. For example, someone could be a panentheist, but still worship, say, the Greek gods. They are praying to the Greek gods, with the understanding that each god is a different aspect of the Unity that resides within and connects everything. This is also known as Henotheism.