Greetings,
This is a very interesting discussion, people.
In a strange way, I almost think Skye and the bit of the Qur'an she quotes have put their finger on it: if polytheism were true, then it's possible one of the gods could have become all-powerful and then monotheism would prevail.
How do believers know that this has not in fact happened?
I obviously come from the same perspective as barney, that all gods are man-made. I think one big reason that monotheism seems to be more popular than polytheism is that it's just simpler for people to understand. After all, simpler explanations are usually more immediately convincing than complex ones.
Peace
I suppose that just as God existed before the beginning, that many gods could have existed before the beginning and just as you have suggested that our God simply is the one that won out. But the key is that all of this would have had to have happened before the beginning. And since God has not shared any of that which was before the beginning with us, I am agnostic to it.
In the universe in which we actually live it appears that there are those who accept only that which they have knowledge of through their own 5 senses (or technologies employed to enhances their senses). These people are called atheists for they perceive no god and therefore assume that none exists. There are those who asume that their senses do not perceive everything and that there might be something/someone out there beyond themselves. These people are some type of theist, be it animist, ploytheist, _____ist of all varities. Among them are some who believe they have some sort of special revelation or knowledge. These too come in various forms gnostic, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and others).
The question that Barney and CZ cause us to ask is do any of these folks really have some sort of special revelation or knowledge? Or is their special knowledge little different than the intoxicated hallucinations of the Peruvian shaman. If that is all they are, then the analogy to dolphins worshipping gods with flippers is probably right. The Greek gods being a good case in point. But not all gods fit that mold, or at least if they do the comparison to humanity is so sophisticatedly derived that I don't see.
But there is something even in the profligate profuseness of myths that makes me think that God is real. For I wonder what is it in mankind that leads us to create so many myths about a creator god that seeks to redeem its creation. Might there be at the core something real, something primeval within us that recognizes that we do in fact have a creator, an origin that is from other than random happenstance. Might those who believe that all that is real can be observed through the observation of created nature have shut themselves off from the not just the observation of, but even the perception of the very thing which brought the creation into being? Will it not take some other sort of sensing to perceive that which has made us. And if God (or whatever god/gods there might be) is not a part of the material world, then those sense we have which have been developed for the purpose of existing in the material world, will be no help to us in whatever other non-material world might exist alongside our universe. We than can live in a state of unknowing (the agnostic), denial (the atheist), or speculation (the many varities of theists), and one could not prove any of the other two wrong.
But what if there is a way to know the non-material world? What might that way be? It would not be the result of mere speculation and imagination, that would be man creating God. It would have to be the result of some type of observation, perception, experiencing of God. I see then only two sources for knowledge of God. One would be if God should make revelation of himself within the natural world. The other would be if God should leave within humanity some ability to sense things beyond those senses which are targeted to understanding the created world. Many religions make claim to some type of special revelation. Among them Christianity (there may be others such as Native American) affirms that the spiritual world may also be sensed by those who are blessed with the presence of God's Spirit within them.
These religions that rely on such special revelation of gifts of spiritual perception would be those that can encounter God quite apart from themselves. While those that rely on their own ability to sense things with their eyes, ears, touch are going to have to create God in their own image. Perhaps the epitomy of such behavior would be the scientists who, because he cannot perceive God denies that God or any god could even exist. His behavior fits the pattern described by Paul 2000 years ago: "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14, my own translation).
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