So would that narrative be from the Talmud? BTW, I think it’s deeply meaningful, although I don’t believe in any revealed deity.
Hindu thought holds that all religions are reflections of the same basic truths, and that different deities (including the various Hindu deities) are facets of the same being. So everyone who believes in a higher power is a Hindu, according to Hindu teaching. That’s either wonderfully inclusive or kind of passive-aggressive, depending on how you look at it.
Hinduism is both polytheistic and monotheistic. All the devas are merely avatars of Brahman, the supreme/ultimate/whatever. So there’s nothing really inconsistent with believing Hindus and Christians worship the same god.
No reason it can’t be both. 
As a religious nontheist humanist, I personally hold that all deities are aspects of a single human drive to self-actualization and striving for betterment. Which I freely admit is extremely passive-aggressive.
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Latro:
Depends on your definition of “god”. Let’s, for example, consider the sun. The Egyptians worshipped the sun in the form of “Ra,” and there’s no question that the sun has power - it gives light and heat. I certainly believe the sun exists. I do not believe, though, that it has any power that is independent of the one, true deity. Or consider the Pharaohs of Egypt, who were “deified” after their deaths. I believe that they existed, and that they wielded power in various ways when they were alive, but I do not believe that they are to be prayed to or worshipped.
Bottom line: I do not believe there is any entity in existence that the one, true deity does not have ultimate power over. Even human beings, to whom I believe the one, true deity allows free will, could have that overridden if the one, true deity desired to. I do not believe that there are beings of lesser power who exist and act independently of the one, true deity.
Does that answer your question?
One of my favorite just so myths is Bila, the Australian aborigine sun goddess. She cooked and ate human beings in her solar flames. She was chased away, but then it got dark and cold, so she was hunted down, captured, and chained to the earth so we could enjoy her light.
An unruly emanation of Yahweh?
I’ve seen people describe all solar gods as incarnations of Satan. You know, the morning star, the shining one. I knew one interesting fellow who believed the Greek pantheon were angels, since they were described as being so beautiful. I wondered about that, since the angels in the Bible are sometimes described as hideous Lovecraftian abominations, but whatevs.
So Jesus wasn’t God then.
You just keep those slaps to a minimum, please.
Czarcasm, I love you, baby. But your attempts to exert control over this thread have led you to be fully one-third of the posts in it.
You may start threads, sure, but too much constraint has led to confusion. Threads, like babies, tend to go their own way. You should maybe step back a bit and realize that.
No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.
Your examples only cover a very small subset of what people call “Gods”.
What about all the others; Toth, Artemis, Loki etc etc etc etc etc?
Are they real, but only hold power as far as Yahweh allows them?
In mythology, angels are not defined as gods/demigods at all. They are servants of the gods. And there’s considerable debate about whether or not angels have free will.
Since all gods are imaginary, and imagination creates reality, each god possesses power proportional to the number of people who imagine that their personal god is real. Therefore, calling upon Archangel Michael can be extremely helpful, since “Mike” (as I call him) is accepted as a genuine divine entity by Catholics and New Agers alike. Ophiuchus? Not so much.
But even Ra/Zeus/Loki retain some staying power due to the great number of historians who study them, as well as the neo-pagans who worship them.
I’ve heard this belief before from many people, and wasn’t this an aspect of Gaiman’s American Gods?
And many other fictional works.
Glen Cook, Pterry Pratchett, Steve Erikson, and Rick Riordan (hey, my kid’s 13) come immediately to mind. I’ve always found the idea compelling from a mythological perspective: it’s a way to establish deities as extant beings that are nevertheless wholly (or mostly, or partially) human constructs.
True dat, but sci-fi writers and others probably acquired the idea from certain branches of classical philosophy – solipsism, most likely.
I recall an old short story where it turned out that one of the most powerful beings in the spirit world was…Uncle Sam. Not many people believe in Zeus or Odin any more, but who doesn’t believe in Uncle Sam? For a loose enough definition of “believe”, at least; given that Uncle Sam is identified with the US government that’s a lot of believers…
Yes, aspects or confused perceptions.
Der Trihs–Fredric Brown, “The New One.” What do I win? 
My thanks, for telling me; I couldn’t recall that. Although if pressed that’s the author I would have guessed at, Brown was a great short story author.
[QUOTE=marshmallow;17150157 (responding to me, above)]
So Jesus wasn’t God then.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, correct.
Jesus of Nazareth was a person who lived ~ 2000 years ago, apparently. The sense in which he was God is the same sense in which YOU are God. Which is to say, “a manifestation of God”. My kitty cat is a mammal and hence a specific local manifestation of what we’re talking about when we speak of mammals. My kitty cat is not mammalia.
Latro:
I really can’t answer in the specific. For example, maybe Toth was a demon or something like that, in which case I’d say that Toth was real. Or maybe we was a personification of all ibises and whatever niche in ancient Egyptian life ibises filled. In which case, I’d say that ibises are real, though Toth as a singular entity isn’t, but what they worshipped was the genuine power of ibises to do whatever it is that they did for Egyptians. And in both cases, the power that these beings have are entirely what the one, true, deity allows them.
On the other hand, maybe Toth was a fictional character entirely, with no basis in reality, but created as an additional character to round out a good myth. I don’t really know.
Former mentor of mine claimed that the Gods were real, but they were sort of like programs roaming the ‘internet’ of Humanity, metaphorically speaking. Taking up head space in people’s minds to supply their processing power and move around.
A ‘thought virus’ would be a similar, medical based metaphor. An organism that lives only in its hosts and depends on them to infect others so that it can spread and continue to exist.
You could say then that the only difference between YHVH and Cthulhu is that we all know that Cthulhu is only made up, and we know who did it. However, one could also point at something like Xenu, where we know it was made up and who did it, but undoubtedly at this point there are people who think he is/was real, as a sort of middle ground. The point then becomes not ‘are they made up’ (because they all are), but at what point they become real because some people become convinced that they are real.
If I may ask, what particular religious group do you identify with?