Polytheism God

 In a 2023 poll by Gallop, 12% of the respondents answered “No” to the question “Do you believe in God?” Another 14% replied, “Not sure about the existence of God.” Compared to previous polls by Gallop and other companies, the trend in atheism and agnosticism is increasing.

If one asked those same respondents what they meant by ‘God,’ they would probably give an answer like the Abrahamic God, 

The One universal yet personal Creator God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and directly involved in human affairs while being the source of ethics and meaning.

A more sophisticated respondent might understand ‘God’ like the Deist God, which was popular among many highly influential American Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, which was:

The One universal Creator God who is revealed through Reason and Nature and is the source of ethics and providence.

This begs the question of how I and other polytheists should answer the question, “Do you believe in God?” Obviously, if we’re limited to either the Abrahamic God or the Deist God, then we’re lumped in with atheists. However, this wouldn’t be accurate since we believe in divinity. 

Following are a few choices that would allow polytheists to answer ‘Yes’ to whether we believe in God.

Neoplatonist Model

Neoplatonism was a highly influential Hellenistic philosophy from the 1st through 5th centuries CE. While resembling the later Deist model of the 18th century, the Neoplatonist model differed in that it allowed for a hierarchy of spirits, such as gods and angels, stretching from God to the human world. The Neoplatonic model of God is,  

An impersonal Source, discerned by Reason, from which, due to God’s self-contemplation, springs a Creative principle resulting in the emergence of the Cosmos arising out of a Chaotic base.

Collective Divinity

The word ‘God’ can represent a collective meaning. There are two ways we can define this ‘God.’

In Genesis 1, a holdover from the Hebrew pre-Abrahamic pagan past, the name Elohim is used. While English translations usually translate Elohim as “God,” the word literally means ‘gods’ for it contains both masculine and feminine elements. Defined as such: 

God is the collective will and efforts of all the gods operating towards a common goal.

Or we could say ‘God’ is a class of spirits, in the same way as we use ‘Human’ for our animal species. I admit that this is my preferred definition:

God is a collective term applied to a class of apex entities of the spirit world.

Godhead

Some classic Hellenistic philosophers used ‘God’ to reference Zeus (Jupiter to the Latins), as He was the head of their pantheon. 

God is the chief god in a pantheon of gods.

Pantheism

Pantheism is often associated with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. 

God is the impersonal sum of all reality and is an immanent deity, still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time.

Panentheism

Panentheism is sometimes wrongly confused with pantheism.

God is both the impersonal sum of all the physical universe and transcendent to it.