I apologize, but you did say it and I did disagree.
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
― Stephen Roberts
Yep, angora goats can be cute, either before or after cosmetic surgery.
That’s really the crux for me.
If an avowed Christian doesn’t believe in Zeus and all the rest then they don’t understand the basics of what faith & religion are. Their attitude amounts to “Invisible green unicorns are a ridiculous idea worthy of nothing but scorn. Meanwhile invisible pink unicorns are absolute truth worthy of praise, great sacrifice, and worship.”
Sorry, that’s crazy talk. Invisible unicorns are simply figments of humanity’s collective imagination. We like to invent these things for the same inscrutable reasons we like violence. It’s in our nature. Would that it were not.
I disagree. The capital-G God believed in by monotheists (including Christians, Jews, and Muslims) is a different sort of entity than “Zeus and all the rest”; and the question of that God’s existence is a different sort of question.
In some fictional worlds (e.g. settings for fantasy novels), gods (or ghosts, or vampires, or fairies, or unicorns, invisible or otherwise) really exist. In others, they don’t. But those fictional worlds all have creators (the authors of the novels).
The question of which entities really exist within the world we inhabit is a different question from the question of whether the world we inhabit has a Creator.
…and whether the creator has a creator…
Physicists were sure that Newton’s Laws were totally correct until Einstein proved otherwise. With lots of better evidence than for the existence of any god. Should atheists treat the issue any differently? And do you have a problem with being reasonably sure about something based on evidence and lack of evidence and changing your mind when new evidence arrives?
I know that isn’t faith, which seems to tell one to hold to a belief in the face of evidence.
Let’s say universe we inhabit - we have a pretty good idea of how the world we inhabit got started.
I’ve asked this for a couple of decades now, and have never gotten a good answer. Say I give you that the universe has a creator. Can you link that creator to any current human religion? Surely not the Abrahamic ones, since those got the creation story all wrong. And if we can’t link the creator to any god or gods, does the existence of this creator matter except to make some people feel better about there being a reason?
The “capital-G God” believed in by monotheists (including Christians, Jews, and Muslims), is nothing but the end result of a game of “My god is bigger than your god!”, and the only difference is ego, imagination and hubris.
Especially as the chap didn’t originate as an “omni” God, but only another god among his peers. The tale grew in the telling, and the one-upsmanship led, as you note, to “my god is bigger than your god” taken to a remarkable extreme when added to Aristotelian philosophy.
The god the priests and scribes wrote about in Genesis was just another figure alongside Osiris, Marduk, and Zeus. Then someone decided to be jealous.
That is only a theory. Certainly the ancient Israelis were Henotheistic, and He had a Female helper or wife, or something, but it’s only a theory that it was a Polytheist faith. Maybe, but- maybe not.
The Israelites were henotheistic but not polytheistic? “Henotheism” means “worshipping one god while acknowledging others”; it’s a subset of polytheism.
Not that same, which is why there are two different words for it.
They only worshipped One God.
Polytheism is the belief in or worship of more than one god. Note the word “or”-You can worship one god while believing others exist.
And so?
I think that you maybe don’t understand these religious concepts quite as well as you think you do. As @Czarcasm pointed out, “polytheism” means “the belief in, or worship of, many gods”. Polytheism | Definition, Examples, Religions, & Facts | Britannica
“Henotheism” is the belief in many gods, but the worship of one. Henotheism - New World Encyclopedia
“Monolatry” is a similar concept – the belief that only one god is supreme and is worthy of worship, but that other, lesser gods exist. Monolatrism - New World Encyclopedia
So saying that the Israelites were henotheistic but not polytheistic is like saying that someone is bisexual, but is only attracted to one sex. It’s a tautology.
This is technically true, but simply saying they were polytheistic gives the wrong impression and is not precise.
Henotheism may be a type of polytheism, but Henotheism is the more correct and precise term.
Yes, and saying that they were henotheistic but not polytheistic is simply wrong.
And if anyone said that, sure…
My apologies, I was unclear. The originators of the Jahweh stories may not have worshipped other gods, but they knew about them. There were other gods “out there.” They didn’t take the step, which only came later, of declaring all other gods “myths and fables.” Instead, Marduk was the god in this region, and Osiris was the god in that region.
I didn’t mean that Jahweh was “one god among many” inside his own pantheon.