Gods

I have decided to change my topic from ancient greek mythology to just be all gods.

I’m not religious or a person of faith as such but no one can deny the ideology of a god as good (By definition it means a kind of perfect being).

I want to research all kinds of gods from different countries and religions and societies and times through history.

Belief in god can best be described either in theism or deism. I don’t think there is much difference between the two but my understanding is that theism is a belief in god through religion and deism seems to be a belief in god that can be seen in the natural world and needs no religion or organised worship and without the need for faith.

Deism seems to say that it’s just obvious that there is a god and that’s that.

Within both deism and theism there are different sub categories which show different sides of belief.

Theism

Theism is a belief in a deity which created the universe and watches over it and interacts physically with his creations. It basically believes that there is an active god.

The term theism comes from the greek word Theos which means god. So it kind of means godism.

Monotheism

This is the theistic belief that there is only one deity which created everything and continues to interact with everything. This ideology links with Abrahamic religions which are basically those which follow the story of Noah (Abraham was a direct descendent of Noah and an important character in each of these religions). The religions include Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Sikhism is also included as the only monotheistic Indian religion.

Polytheism

This is the belief that there is more than just the one god. Although the definition seems to say that it is just the worship of more than one god, the gods are often a specific pantheon related to a country or area or time (e.g. Greek pantheon, Incan pantheon, Celtic pantheon, Japanese pantheon etc) so it isn’t like the picking and choosing of more than one god.

Within polytheism are other divisions which differ in the importance of each deity; some worshipping one above the others, some worshipping individual deities at different times of the year etc.

Polytheist religions include Shinto, Ancient Greek, Roman, Germanic polytheism Chinese folk religion and Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhism.

Pantheism

Pantheism is the belief that a god or gods are fully equivalent to the material existence that they have created. So in this sense the universe and everything in it literally is god. In a sense god = nature.  This is the way for a lot of form of Saivism which is a Hindu sect that basically worships the go Shiva as the supreme deity.

Panentheism

This is very similar to Pantheism in saying that god is directly physically linked with what he creates, but in Panentheism god is greater than the universe that he created.

Deism

Deism is basically the belief that there is a god who created everything but takes a passive role in running the universe because it has already been planned. It usually shuns any religious supernatural events like miracles and prophecies but that god obviously exists by just observing the world and things in it

Pandeism

This is effectively the overall belief of a Deistic viewpoint but mixed with the ideas of Pantheism in which God is equivalent to nature and the universe.

Panendeism

Again, this is a mix of Deism and Panentheism. The idea is that god is directly tied in with nature and is a part of the universe but also transcends it and is greater. This is often linked with ideas that self discipline and things like meditation can create some kind of relationship through nature connecting a person and the/ a deity.

There are loads of other split groups within these ones but they are generally quite similar and each fit within on of these definitions.