Reddit reviews Encyclopedia of Gods: Over 2,500 Deities of the World

No, of course not. There are a multitude (hundreds or thousands) of gods being actively worshiped somewhere in the world today. Do you believe in all of them? If not, you're effectively an "atheist" with regard to all the ones you don't believe in (or more accurately, you're an atheist with regard to all the ones in which you lack belief). For lack of a better term, you're a "relative" or "partial" atheist with regard to most of the deities that people worship. And that applies both to deities you've heard of or learned about and ones that you haven't.

People who identify simply as atheists (without the "relative" or "partial" qualifier) simply lack belief in all gods.

Be careful going down this road, as grouping deities by superficial similarities often ignores the more complex nuances that make each of them unique, and can lead to erroneous comparisons. If you're going to do so though, a book like Michael Jordan's Encyclopedia of Gods has an index where you can search for deities by "subject," such as agriculture, funerary, war, youth, etc.

ITT: /r/DebateReligion sucks.

I'm not trying to defend bad philosophy or poor debating in general, nor am I trying to excuse any specific instance, but this is an open subreddit, not a philosophy journal. If you come here expecting anything even approaching a similar level of debate, you're going to have a bad time. Additionally, there seems to be several comments here taking atheists, specifically, to task for poor form. There's certainly a lot more of them here (and on reddit in general), but I've not found the average level of discourse here to be poorer for atheists as opposed to theists.

That all being said, I do have vague memories that this place used to be a bit more rigorous.

Personally, I'd say one of the largest changes to my own beliefs as a result of this sub has been to start emphasising the secular, humanist & sceptic labels over the atheist one - atheism being more a conclusion of scepticism than the other way round, secularism/humanism being more practical applications of this kind of position etc. Another specific change would be that I'm leaning towards gnosticism on 3O Gods (don't find any satisfactory solutions to the PoE), which wasn't the case before.

Generally, as the OP says, I feel better-informed about religion and religious topics in general (that is, specific religious positions as well as non-religious arguments and so on) and - probably like the vast majority of people here - my time on /r/DebateReligion has served to better sculpt and refine my positions, rather than to radically change them.

EDIT: whoops. 3O like three-oh, not 30 like thirty. I guess I lack belief in closer to 3,000.

Encyclopedia of Gods

I own this book. Has a lot of obscure gods from all over the world. Hard cover looks good on a shelf. There is also Manual of Mythology. If you can find a hard cover it is a simple but classic design.

"edgy atheist" is a disparaging term used only by theists.

>Most atheist I know try to be optimistic despite their own awareness of the meaningless of life

Because no meaning of life is ascribed to us, doesn't mean we cannot ascribe our own.

so these gods are the different faces f your god?

https://owlcation.com/humanities/10-Weird-Gods-and-Goddesses

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-13-biggest-assholes-in-greek-mythology-1454132475

https://www.toptenz.net/10-gods-of-death-destruction-and-the-underworld.php

so now we don't have to just disprove one god, we have to disprove every god that ever existed.

2,500 in this book.

There's over 2500 just in this book.

We're going in circles now.

God has the means and the will to reach out to the world, yet he doesn't. I have on my own reached out to -him- and even then he -still- doesn't show himself.

This isn't the stuff of reality. The world does not look like how the Bible describes it. The only reasonable thing to conclude is that maybe the Christian god isn't real, just like the rest of the 2 500+ gods humanity has believed in.

> He does not want to force you to believe.

Apparently he does not want me to have a shred of evidence of his existence. That's the real problem. Adam and Eve had direct evidence, so did Lucifer. They weren't forced to believe because they all went against God, but they at least had direct evidence of his existence. We don't have any of that, even though God -can- give us that.

For every believer I recommend this so they can choose better god that drivers their agenda https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Gods-Over-Deities-World/dp/0816029091