Not trying to accomplish anything other than finding out what religious people believe about the deities of other religions.
I believe that those from the non-Christian tradition who have worshipped the one God who made the universe and the human race and seeks to redeem us, worship the same God as Christians do. That would include individuals such as Socrates and other Greek philosophers, and the unknown author of the Bhagavad Gita. As for other deities such as the members of the Greek or Norse Pantheons, they may or may not have had some real basis but I’m not terribly concerned about them.
I believe that some of them are either supernatural beings (such as angels or demons), mighty historical human beings with exaggerated legendary reputations, or anthropomorphisms that have been humanly assigned to natural entities (such as the sun or moon) that exist and have power, but have no power other than what the one, true diety allows them, and that to worship them rather than the one true diety is a mistake. I believe that others are entirely fictional.
The Bhagavad Gita was written by Hindu polytheists.
I’m not sure if Socrates and Plato believed that the universe was created by God- did they?
Czar:
mrs andros is a practicing (Mahayana) Buddhist. Her answer is that humans perceive liberation (nirvana) in different ways, and filter it through flawed perceptions. The inherent human striving for betterment has long been (falsely) perceived as tied to some extrahuman divinity; gods are therefore a wholly human construct. More than once a teacher or bodhisattva has been worshiped as a deity, but not by their choosing.
I’m fairly sure that’s not really the sort of thing that fits your bill, though. She’s religious, but atheist, and I think you’re looking for religious theists.
The idea of God has, for many, evolved quite a bit since biblical times. I identify as a Christian, but the idea of a being up in the sky pulling the levers of the universe doesn’t work for me. For me I believe in a ground of all being that I call God. Christians of a more conservative stripe might say,“that’s not God”. The God written about in the Bible is too close to a amalgam of the deities of other religions for me. I can’t prove my God exists, nor do I feel any need to. You treat people, creatures, and the planet right and you’re a-ok with me. It’s not the gods of other religions I have a problem with per se; it’s a concept of God that I see as outdated.
Christianity, at least in it’s current form, teaches that there is only one God. Anything else is a lie, or a deception of Satan.
The only question hinges on interpretation of “You shall have no other gods before me”. Whether this is God acknowledging that there are other gods, but the Jews (and by extension, Christians) have to put him first, or if this is something different. Certainly, nothing else seems to acknowledge this point or deal with the idea of other divine beings equal to, subordinate to or independent of “God”.
So, from your perspective they just don’t exist. Thank you.
Why did you ask this question if you didn’t want it discussed?
Regards,
Shodan
That pretty much sums it up better than I could.
I believe that some bitch called Gödel apparently stole my concept of “why are there so many different views of God” a few hundred years before I was born.
OK, first, let’s say I’m having a Pascal’s bet day. So, God exists. But God is much bigger than me; much bigger than any human being. Our heads simply cannot comprehend God: we can’t even understand ourselves half the time! I believe that any person’s idea of God is by definition a partial image, and that when we group ourselves into organized religions it’s a matter of traditions / rituals / finding a group you more or less fit in with, but that any two people in the group will have somewhat different ideas of God. “Oh, but the grace of God can let you understand Him!”, say the mystics… yeah, ok, but how long does it last, Doña Teresa, hey? You and your pal John of the Cross spent as much time as you did writing poetry while you tried to grasp the ungraspable, so don’t give me that look.
My own concept of the Divinity is monotheistic, but I don’t believe it is any more correct than that of a polytheist. I’ve got my reasons, they’ve got theirs. Same as my concept of God is a God of Freedom while from previous threads I know yours is… not. My concept isn’t any more valid than yours, both are attempts at grasping something which, if it exists, is ungraspable by either my mind or yours.
To me all the faiths come together, but they are only partial pictures, aspects. This is because of children of God we are all suppose to come together in love and the human (and divine) family.
The entire picture is family. Father God, Mother God, Son child of God and Daughter child of God. We on earth fit in the category of Son child of God or Daughter child of God. Every aspect of divinity is divine, so all gods are real.
The paternal faiths is generally dealing with aspects about Father God, Maternal about aspects of Mother God, and we have the child based faiths, such as Buddhism which has to do with our divinity within. All are aspects about who is a God, even faiths such as Buddhism that does not have a ‘God’ but it is only a question of definition of who God is, as Buddhist is about self actualization, which leads to one finding out that they are a eternal being (god).
So with atheism, they say there is no God? But Buddhism also says their is no God, so atheism is not excluded on that basis. One has to look into the actual faith to see if their is indeed a god, perhaps hiding in some other terms, some aspect of the family to be revealed by this faith.
Atheism tells us a lot about our human nature, but does it tell us anything about our divine nature. One could say that without our divine nature their is no hope for humanity, so that divine nature is needed, as without it we come to a very dead end.
But that’s only part of the atheistic beliefs, some would say that their is future for humanity via atheism, through science we may be able to become immortal and travel the stars and one day no longer be dependent on the universe at all, but in this case there is a god, that god is us. So yes this form of atheist does have a god, it is identical to Son child of God and Daughter child of God. It is part of the divine family and it shows the role of the child, to learn and to grow past our limitations.
So that only leaves that first set of atheists, those who don’t see hope for humanity. That we will either destroy ourselves, or something will destroy us, and it’s over. But I do think it is a aspect of God, answering the question what are we separated from the divine family - answer is nothing. And goes to show our need for something more.
I also feel that set of atheists shows a path that we should not wish to follow. Many faiths have some form of reincarnation, living many lives in different bodies, learning and hopefully evolving towards enlightenment. While I do believe in reincarnation, I believe that is not what we want, reincarnation is eternally dieing, over and over again. Part of the message of the family is that you don’t need to chose eternal death, but with the family you can be given eternal life. So the atheists that believe in the hopelessness of life can be said to be worshiping a dead child of God, worship here is following the path of life with that as a reality. A eternal being that has the ability to lose it’s identity and create a reality that allows a god to die.
I don’t recall giving my personal opinion on the existence or non-existence of divine beings.
But that was what the OP specifically asked for. What were you responding to?
So all gods are aspects of the god you believe in. O.k.
As for all that “atheist” stuff? Not what we’re talking about here.
Thank you. Great opening sentence, btw. 
Just to make sure I’m getting you; You both believe in the actual existence of other (lesser) gods than Yahweh.
God has shown Himself to many different people on various occasions and been understood and described with varying degrees of clarity and accuracy–as Nava pointed out, never very clear and accurate. Stories of the older occasions have changed through being passed down. This leads to a lot of different views of what’s really the same thing.
I identify as a theistic person.
The phrase “other gods” doesn’t really parse very well. It’s like saying “other physics”, “other realities”, or “other universes”.
The first inclination is to answer such formulations by saying “There’s only one, although my own CONCEPT of such, or UNDERSTANDING of it, may be limited and someone else could have a valid and important alternative concept or understanding that I would benefit from incorporating and learing from”.
The alternative formulation that comes to mind is “OK, if the ‘one’ I’m familiar with is only one among many, then let’s assume an infinite number of them exist… well, now we need a new word for the superset that is all-inclusive, what shall we call it? MetaGod?” And then of course we cease to talk much about God and instead talk about MetaGod and all we’ve really done is rearrange the vocabulary landscape and we’re having the same conversation as before.
Having said all that, I’m not culturally oblivious and I’m not unfamiliar with Zeus and Athena and Jehovah and Allah and Elohim and Baal and Thor and Odin and Ananci and Gitchymanitou and so on. Most of them are like characters in a theatrical pageant. They have genders, they have faces, they go through moods, they hold opinions and have foibles and quirks, they seem to occupy specific space at specific time and can be said to be elsewhere or not yet observant or otherwise not-present at other specific space-time locations, they have hands and feet and eyes and tongues even if they also may have horns or eight arms or a third eye. They are essentially people even if they can also shoot lighting bolts or vaporize mountains by uttering a phrase or live forever. None of that has anything to do with what I mean when I use the word ‘god’, so for someone to day “what about THEM?”
It’s a non sequitur if we were previously talking about God. It would be as if we were discussing liberty and you said “Well what about OTHER liberties? What about the one in New York harbor, or the one on the 1920 quarter? Do you think your liberty is as important as those, and what if they disagree with each other about this human rights issue we were just discussing?” And I’d look at you and go 
huh???
So you fall into the “They’re all pretty much aspects of the same god” camp?