Conceptions of God

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The god of monotheism, pantheism or panentheism, or the supreme deity of henotheistic religions, may be conceived of in various degrees of abstraction:

  • as a powerful, human-like, supernatural being, or as the deification of an esoteric, mystical or philosophical category;
  • the Ultimate, the summum bonum, the Absolute Infinite, the Transcendent, or Existence or Being itself;
  • the ground of being, the monistic substrate, that which we cannot understand, etc.

Monotheist conceptions of God appear in the Hellenistic period, out of predecessor concepts of monism (mostly in Eastern religions) and henotheism. Since humans, plants and animals, rocks, mountains, and other things, have been labeled as divine by various religions and beliefs, it can be argued that anything can be considered a god, and that there is no criteria other than acknowledgement of divinity.

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