SO
MANY FAMOUS
WRITERS! So Which Gòd?
Thousands of gods & plots have been
violently worshipped throughout history! Polytheists
believe in lots of gods all at the same time {THEOS is Greek
for ‘god’ & POLY is Greek for ‘many’}. Wotan/Wodan (or ODIN) once
was the chief god of the Vikings~~ Other Viking gods were also BALDR (God
of Beauty), THOR (the thunder god with his mighty hammer) & his daughter THROD.
There were goddesses like SNOTRA (goddess of wisdom), FRIGG (of mother-hood) & RAN
(òf the sea)?! The Ancient Greeks & Romans were also very polytheistic. Their gods, like all these Viking ones, were very humanlike, with powerful human lusts & emoti{c}ons. The twelve Greek GODS
& goddesses are often paired with Roman equivalents who were thought to do the same jobs, f.i. such as ZEUS (Roman JUPITER), king of The GODS, WITH HIS thunderbolts; Hera, HIS wife (JUNO); Poseidon (Neptipune), god of The SEA; Aphrodite (VENUS), goddess of love; Hermes (Mercury),
mes-senger (mess senders)of the gods' business, who flew on winged sandals; Dionysos
(Bacchus), god of wine & so on...
Of the major religions that more or less survive today,
Hinduism is also aggressively polytheistic, with thousands of gods & Islam,
with countless of martyrs? Countless Greeks & Romans thought there gods,
toddlers & temporary modes were "real" ~ prayed to them, sacrificed animals & so on
to them, +thanked them for 'good fortune' & blamed them when things 'went wrong'!
How do wé know those ancient people weren't right?
Why does nobody believe in Zeus a.s.o. any more?
We can't know for sure, but most of us are confident enough
to say we are socalled 'atheists' with respect to most
of these old gods (a 'theist' is somebody 'common'
who believes in god(s) & an 'atheist' - a-theist, the 'a'
meaning 'not' - is someone who doesn't).
Romans at one time said the early Christians were
atheists because they didn't believe in a Jupiter or
Neptune or any of that populist crowd.
Nowadays we use the word for people who
don't believe in any gods at all (but only in
populists, greedy gold, mammonmoney,
nitwitbits, bullshittits &
'famous sf-writers)
etc.'!?