Counting Gods

THERE HAVE BEEN more than three hundred gods so far, but yours actually exists. All the others are silly, superstitious nonsense, but yours actually exists, said the prescient Facebook post. The prescient person had the decency to spare us the cliche "let that sink in". Anything sufficiently substantive to sink will sink of its own accord, and needn't be prodded and cajoled to the bottom of the brain. It sank in, with qualifications. Haven't there been more, may more, than a mere three hundred fabricated deities? Didn't both the ancient Greeks nd ancient Romans achieve something near or exceeding that number? When you consider the sheer number contributed by Hindusim, the total surely well exceeds a mere few hundred. In these contemporary United States there are an estimated fifteen hundred organized religions, organized and registered with the federal government for purposes ot tax evasion. And, arguably, they all worship their own god, or distinct versions of another, ubiquitous one. The Baptist god can, with some vagueness, be distinguished from the Methodist deity; the Baptist God does not dance. Beneath the prescient post somebody percipiently typed in the comment: "All 1", presumably meaning that all the gods are one, all the same god. Even that's questionable. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story titled "The Nine Billions Names of god", in which an ascetic philospoher, sitting alons in a cave,recited all nine billion names, after which the universe came to an end. Granted, Zeus and Jupiter, Mars and Ares, Venus, Aphrodite, and Athena can be paired up as represening the same god or goddess. The Romans stole from the Greeks,imitated them and their culture. But even that only goes so far. If the goddess of love and beauty and the god of war are one and the same, they certainly weren't intended to be by their creators. We fashion our gods to suit our purposes. The requirements of our gods invariably match our own desires. I knew a man, an evangelical Christian and, predictably a hard right conservative, who once lamented his inability to completely satisfy the demands of his self styled Christian God."I try hard to do what the Lord wants, to live my life according to scripture and the Lord'scommandments. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't swear. But women, that's another matter. I can't stay away from them. I have o have them, I a only hope I don't spend eternity in hell." I was tempted but refrained to suggeest that he get married, fast and soon. He did,then got divorced. At last count he was on his second or third wife, but obedient to the Lord, assuming of course that his evangelical fundamentalist Christ conservative God was willing to sanction divorce, which seems questionable, according to the votaries themselves. Why he didnt simply invent a god who ordains sexual promiscuity I never discerned. Maybe he feared that his church would laugh or pray or drum him out of the congregation, in tongues. Like Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent my own."