Re: Taxonomy of supernatural beings

--- Pavel Adamek <pavel.adamek@...> wrote:
> > > > an atheist may perfectly well believe
> > > > in the existence of, say, jinns.
> > >
> > >Do you consider the old Greek mythology to be
> > >atheistic,
> > >because there is no almighty God with capital "G"
> > >there?
No. They did believe in Gods. Or at least, their
sacro-mythical system (religion) had gods. That makes
them "theistic".

> > >Let us not to confuse Gods with gods:
Seven of one half stone of the other.

> > While what you say is perfectly valid, the word
> > _theism_ happens to include both the belief in God
> > and in gods.
>
> I think so too
> and it was the reason why I wonded
> how a man believing in jinns could be described as
> an atheist.
Cos jinns aren't gods. At least, not as generally
defined. Like angels and leprechauns, they're somewhat
minor nonhuman beings. [Recall that Iblis was ordered
to bow to Adam, not the other way round!]

Now, we come to a possible stumbling block when some
religionists take a jinn or an angel and worship it as
a God [e.g., Satanists].

> > If we need to make the distinction,
> > we can usually speak of monotheism vs polytheism.
>
> There are 2 sorts of monotheism:
>
> 1) belief in God only and unbelief in gods =
> monotheism
> 2) belief in God and gods = monotheism
Strictly speaking, this is not monotheism, on account
of there being more than one God in the system.

Might Henotheism be what you're looking for here?

> 3) belief in gods only and unbelief in God =
> polytheism
I'm not sure why you differentiate between upper and
lower case gods. It makes very little sense to me.
They're the same thing, really.

> P.A.
Padraic.


=====
beuyont alch geont la ciay la cina
mangeiont alch geont y faues la lima;
     pe' ne m' molestyont
     que faciont
doazque y facyont in rima.

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