Re: Taxonomy of supernatural beings

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?
>
>Let us not to confuse Gods with gods:
>
>1) almighty God(s), usually only one. He is refered to as
>Eru, Iluvatar, Krishna, JHWH, al-Lah.
>2) Ainur, gods, jinns
While what you say is perfectly valid, the word _theism_ happens to include
both the belief in God and in gods.

If we need to make the distinction, we can usually speak of monotheism vs
polytheism.

>The jinns can be sorted "politically" and/or "socially".
>
>The "political parties" of jins are:
>
>2.i) devils
>2.ii) angels
>
>They are also known as deiwas and asuras,
>but in India deva = angel, asura = devil;
>while in Iran daeva = devil, ahura = angel.
>Essentially, devils = "oposition", angels = "ruling party".
>
>The "social classes" of jinns are:
>
>2.a) Valar, archangels
>2.b) Maiar, plain angels
The only trouble here is the boundary one - where exactly is one to draw the
line between gods of relatively limited power (belief in which would make
you a theist) and powerful jinns/angels/demons (belief in which wouldn't on
it's own).

                                               Andreas

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