Valentine Michael Smith.
There’s not a lot on him at wikepedia. Maybe Liberal could contribute an article on his philosophy? 
whoa…
Does anyone know if L. Ron Hubbard, the guy who started the Church of Scientology, thought he was a deity? The most I can gather is “He claimed that a clear, like himself, would not suffer disease;”
Dug up another one! Anton LaVey, the guy who founded the Church of Satan, believed that “each individual Satanist is viewed as his or her own god.”
I’m not sure about L. Ron Hubbard, and I’m not willing to speculate or comment on him.
Vespasian’s last words, usually given as ‘Vae, puto me deus fio’ (‘Woe, I think I’m becoming a god’) are often thought to have been in jest. Roman emperors certainly officially became gods after their death (by an act of legislation, not automatically IIRC), but I’m not so sure emperors would have actually believed they would become gods. These words are also grammatically incorrect, though I don’t recall exactly why. For one, deus in the nominative case, and should be in the accusative (deum) since it is the object of the sentence.
From what I understand of Jovan’s explanation of kami theology, the Hindu belief in avataras is pretty similar. For the Hindus, all beings are divine, but the avatara shows the divinity through more clearly and strongly, therefore they pay devotion to access plenty of this divine mojo. The avatara is someone who has fully realized his or her divinity in their own being and not just theoretically. So lots of gurus like Meher Baba (who was promoted by Pete Townshend of the Who) get devotion as avataras, but it isn’t like they claim exclusive divinity; rather, their point is to say “You too can acheive this level.” (FWIW, Meher Baba wasn’t even a Hindu, he was a Zoroastrian, whose theology doesn’t even include anything like this, but no matter, this was India after all…).
It’s like Ram Dass said in Be Here Now, his cousin is in the psycho ward claiming he’s Jesus. Ram Dass visits him and says, “Of course you’re Jesus. So am I and everybody else too.” The guy goes, “Oh, no, you’re not Jesus, only I am.” Ram Dass points out: “That’s why you’re locked up in here and I’m not.”
Maharaj Ji of the Divine Light Mission claims to be an avatara too, but I don’t know anything about his teaching, whether he makes an exclusive or an inclusive claim to divinity.
There are stories about Sufis who said things like “Ana al-Haqq” (I am the Truth, i.e. Allah) or “There is nobody inside this robe except Allah”, which would seem to contradict the monotheism of Islam, but the meaning is much more subtle than that. The Sufis weren’t claiming that they were God, but that their individual existence had been annihilated, so nobody remained, and since Allah is everywhere, that’s what remained. It was said in explanation, “Nobody has a problem with a burning bush speaking to Moses with the voice of Allah; what’s so strange if a human does too?” Implying that neither the burning bush nor the human are identifiable with Allah, but serve as a conduit for the universal presence of Allah.
There is a legend that the ancient Greek-Sicilian philosopher Empedocles threw himself into the volcanic caldera of Mount Etna because he’d come to believe that he was divine and immortal. It’s doubtful whether this is a true story or was made up by his detractors.
Some philologists speculate that the Hungarian word for God, Isten, comes from Istemi, the name of a Turkish king who reigned in what is now Mongolia in the 6th century AD, in the first Gök-Türk empire.
Are we sure Jesus considered himself a deity? I thought people disagreed about whether he was aware, during his life, of his status as God, as opposed to “just” son of God, even leaving aside people who think “son of God” was a description of <i>everyone</i> (still assuming he was divine).
I was sort of basing it off of my reading of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” where he says:
Also, Alexander the Great believed he was the son of Zeus, and therefore a god. (I watched it on the History channel last night 
)
The odd thing with the Roman emperors is that, while they were not considered gods during their lifetime, their spirit (“genius”) was often given special treatment. For instance, a Roman citizen would typically swear oaths on the emperor’s genius, and everyone would give special honor to the emperor’s genius on the emperor’s birthday (this isn’t that odd, though, since it was traditional for Romans to honor their genius on their birthdays).
After an emperor’s death, his successor typically deified him, thereby giving him posthumous divinity (unless the late emperor had been a real jerk). However, few emperors claimed to be actual gods during their lifetime, even though their genius could almost be considered divine in anticipation of his pending posthumous divinity.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~csmackay/CLASS_378/Emperor.Worship.html
**Who throughout history has believed they were a deity? **
My ex.
And after he renounced his divine status (that included descent from the Sun Goddess) he tricked General MacArthur in reaffirming it! He asked the Supreme Commander for permission to worship an ancestress then proceeded to worship the Sun Goddess. When Akihito ascended the throne wasn’t there debate over the role of Shinto rites in his coronation?
Probably not really what you’re looking for but, sometime between his football phase and his “I see lizards, they’re everywhere” phase, David Icke declared that he was God or the son of God or son the Godhead. As far as I know he doesn’t claim that anymore.
SD
I can’t believe I’m the first to post this! 
Didn’t Louis the XIV of France consider himself a God or Sun God?
What about Sung Yun Moon (sp?) was/is he a God or just a cult leader?
I think that that’s correct. For the sentence “I am a god”, “a god” would go in the nominative, since the verb is “to be”. The same might be the case for “I am becomming”, though I’m not sure we ever covered that in any of my Latin classes.
And speaking of Latin, the Roman worldview, before the Greek influence of anthropomorphic gods, was very similar to the Shinto view described by jovan and others. Everything has a spirit, and the spirits of great or powerful things are considered gods. A Roman, as he walked through a doorway, might say a silent prayer to the god of that particular threshhold, the god of the house he was entering, the god of that door, the gods of the trees felled to make the doorway and door, the god of the doorknob, and Janus, god of doorways in general. A genius was a sort of personalized god, the essence of a particular man’s reproductive power (the female equivalent was called a juno, and Juno, wife of Jupiter, was the goddess of female reproduction in general). Usually, a man’s genius was relevant to only himself and his family, but for someone as important as an emperor, others would have taken notice, too. One difference between this and Shinto is that a person was not himself considered to be a god; a man and the man’s genius were two separate (though closely allied) entities. I don’t think that, before the Greek influence, the Romans had a concept of deification: If a person continued in any way after death, it was not as a god, since gods and humans were entirely different sorts of entities.
Many Mesoamerican natives, including the Aztecs and Mayans, had cultural phases in which the leaders did not just speak for the gods but claimed to be (and were worshipped as) gods themselves.
I’m not sure what he thought of himself, if anyone can find out, that’d be great. Mr. Selassie will apparently be celebrating his 113th birthday next year.
Yeah, but Haile Selassie himself, as a Christian member in good standing of the Coptic Church, did not accept his deification by the Rastas. When he paid a state visit to Jamaica in 1966, a big crowd of Rastas gathered on the tarmac to welcome him. As the airplane door opened and His Majesty became visible in the doorway, the Rastas exclaimed as one, “Jah! Rastafari!”, sank to their knees, and toked up on their ganja. His Majesty was so offended by the sight he went back in the airplane, sat down, and refused to come out for another half hour or so.
What about the Mormons? They teach that Mormon believers get to become gods in their very own universes in the afterlife. Maybe Mormons would qualify for the question in the OP, in the sense that they believe in their future deification.
Thanks for the tip. I don’t think he did, though. According to the article on rastafarianimsm,
I don’t think this one will work. They teach that there are three basic levels of heaven and that pretty much everyone is going to one of em’. But not everyone becomes like God. The three levels are Celestial, Terrestrial, Telestial, with Celestial being the highest. I haven’t read about this for a really, really long time, but I think there are even levels within levels of the Celestial, and only those who get to the highest of high levels will get to play pool with their very own planets etc…
Any of those practicing the LDS faith feel free to correct me