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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1887376" data-attributes="member: 7240">Several monotheistic systems arose in a polytheistic context. In particular, one can look at the various forms of monotheism that arose in Ancient Greece and Ancient India. A single creator god was superimposed on top of an existing chaos of hundreds of gods. In Europe, this paved the way for the ultimate demotion of the original gods first to the status of inferior deities, then to demons/angels and finally to complete nonexistence. In India, things stopped at the demotion to inferior deities and Hindu culture became quite comfortable with the coexitence of monotheistic and polytheistic thought. And in the West, this gradual demotion of the other gods can be traced from the creation of deities like Sarapis and the development of Neoplatonism by Plotinus. Even when one reads the City of God, the great orthodox Christian synthesis of Saint Augustine in the 5th century, note that Augustine does not deny that the gods polytheists worship are real -- in his view, they are just demons.So, I think what you are proposing makes a lot of sense. The one thing I might recommend is that even if the majority of society understands these lesser gods to be angels or demons, I think that the priesthood and dedicated followers of these gods should still perceive them to be gods.</blockquote>