Bacchus drinks alone

Some are in China and Japan. In China, there are temples devoted to Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. In Japan they have Shintoism and Buddhism, and most Japanese combine both in their religious beliefs and practice.

Well, there's about 850,000,000 of them in India. And they believe in a LOT of gods...

Vancouver

However, not on A2K it would appear!

Nor are said monotheists open to polytheism, despite the fact that neither monotheism or polytheism have any more chance of being likely, thus "so where are all the polytheists hanging?"

By my rhetoric as per "hanging", it was in part a pun as to the Christian response to polytheism, and in part a specific reference to the posters on A2K, and not to the global population.

I gotta admit George's response made me chuckle......

(actually re Chumly)
"Neither monotheism or polytheism have any more chance of being likely..."

Is this valid ? Meditational "spirituality" seems to intellectually indicate the ascendence "unity" over "segmentation". This is reflected in the form of the celebrated phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts". Given the "omnicience" angle for deists, surely they would conclude that monotheism is "superior".

The Catholic seems like a good place for closet polytheists to hang out. There are patron saints for practically everything and everyone. Intercessory prayers may be offered to Mary and a whole slew of saints who have feast days devoted to them, statues/icons and relics with magical powers. Although you are not supposed to actually worship them, they come pretty close to being gods/goddesses.

Which is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church counted on when making inroads into new colonies. "Hey, now, instead of praying to this statute of this goddess, she looks like this statue over here, so you'll pray to that. And her name is Catherine. The soldiers will be around for taxes in a few weeks. In the mean time, keep on keeping on."

polytheism doesn't make sense to me because it sort of waters down the omnipotent part of God which is essential.

Perhaps monotheistic religions have demons and angels to replace various Gods and it's all a matter of semantics.

Why is an omnipotent god so essential to you?