How atheistic are you? How many gods do you NOT believe in?

FlexGunship

Often, members of our species rate themselves by how religious they are. I hope you all don't mind if I start a brief poll. I'm going to enter in the most common possible responses (though I know there are so many possible answers).

There are over 2870 known gods or goddesses that are classified as "deities" (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_g...sses_are_there). Rather than ask how many you DO believe in, I'm going to pose a different question:

How many gods do you NOT believe in?

EDIT: I should be clear:

"2870" means you are an atheist. (Perfect atheist)
"2869" means you are a monotheist. (Almost a perfect atheist)
"2867" means you are a traditional Christian polytheist. (Still very very atheistic)
"0" means you are the most amazing "true believer" ever! (You could also use this as an "other" option, I guess... sorry I didn't add one.)

Evo

A trick post eh? If people don't fully read your post and go by the title, they will be voting wrong.

FlexGunship

No, sorry. It was a mistake. I fixed the thread as quickly as I could and added an "EDIT" to clarify. Honest mistake.

Evo

Awwww.

Was the IPU included in the list? I *do* believe in the IPU.

FlexGunship

I'm not 100% sure that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is worshiped as a deity. There are many many more supernatural beings that aren't included in the 2870 number. I'm pretty sure the IPU is one of the "other ones."

Chi Meson

Since there is no god TO believe in, then there is no god NOT to believe in. Hence "0" would be the choice for the perfectly atheistic person.

Nyah

G01

I like the fact that all monotheists are classified as "almost perfect atheists." I'm sure that this will go over well!

Also, what's a Christian polytheist?

FlexGunship

Hmm, it's actually impossible to argue that. You're right. It should really be: "How many god-claims do you NOT believe in?"

Sigh...

Well, to be fair (2869/2870) is very close to (2870/2870). It's 0.99965 to 1.00000. I mean, that's a pretty tight tolerance, all things considered. So, mathematically speaking, monotheists are pretty close to perfect atheists.

Some sects of Christianity worship the holy trinity has a three-figure godhead.

Gad

I was going to go for 2869, that is I do not believe in any of these god-claims except for ONE!... Wow,that was a close one! I was about to become an atheist.

FlexGunship

This is really surprising, there are no monotheists on PF. Granted the sample size is small...

rootX

Problem is if you believe in one god; you would assume that all different gods are just different representations of one god so you would end up believing in all gods.


I would like one more option "NA"

FlexGunship

Not necessarily. Yahweh even had a commandment forbidding belief in competing gods like Baal. So, you could still believe in just one god but recognize a multitude of non-gods.

Gad

This is not necessarily true. You would need to know what qualifications one must have to become a GOD? I. e. I know that I would worship Cyrus! ... Giving it a second thought, nah, a bug can kill him.

I'm quite busy right now, if this thread doesn't end up locked, I'd be happy to reply later.

Borek

I would prefer to see a "All of them" as on option. Someone selecting 2870 always risks that one or two gods have been lost during counting. Besides, we don't know how many gods are worshiped on Mars or Aldebaran, so the count is pathetically local.

FlexGunship

Well, can you accept 2870 as a theoretically reference value and everything else is a fraction there of? Whatever number of deities might have been proposed, that number is normalized to 2870.

Gad

Ok, you've excluded the possibility that any of these counted gods might've claimed to be worshiped on any other place un/known to us?

Borek

Now you are twisting your own words. Have you thought about becoming a politician?