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I've heard the claim that in recorded history, humanity has believed in 5081 different deities.
Do you know about the origins of this claim? Who did the counting? Is there a list? And am I assuming correctly that only gods with a somewhat widespread cultural acceptance are listed and not those who are only followed by a few single weirdos?
Does that include The God Of The Gaps?
Never heard this one before, but it does makes you wonder why we'd stop at that figure.
I have to be somewhat skeptical about this number.
Even with the enormous pantheons associated with Hinduism and Animism I think that, in the end, many dieties are repeats found across cultures. For example: do you count Zeus and Jupiter as two or as one? Does Woden fit in there somewhere with those two? Is the coyote god known as The Trickster the same as other cultures Tricksters? Does YHWH count as one or does He get credit for all three?
I don't know how one comes up with such a precise number with an infinite number of variables involved.
And the variables have must be infinite as they refer to beings with conditions of existance are in and of themselves infinite.
Yes, I'm aware that the terms "recorded history", "belief", and "different deity" are vague enough to allow for great variations of this number without being factually wrong.
I'm simply asking if anyone else has heard this particular claim of the 5,081 gods and if there's any published material about it.
Totally. It can't be any more than 5075, 5080 at MOST...Quote:
Originally posted by Dangerously Unqualified
Joe
I've never personally heard this claim (and I think Hinduism would proably beat it all by itself), and furthermore, can't get any hits on Google about it. Might you have the wrong number?
I suspect this is part of the 39.6% of all statistics that are just made up.