ABSTRACT

Supernaturalistic theism comes in several major varieties. There is the view of polytheism. This multiplicity can be as low as two gods, as in Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, or a much higher number, as in Confucianism and the classical paganism of the Greeks and Romans. The people can have the view of monotheism, as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Within monotheism people find the traditional position that God is ever-present to one and the non-traditional position of deism, stating that God is absent. They should also bear in mind that religious activism can be perverted into non-religious programmes and can sometimes make strange bedfellows. Both the capitalists and the anti-capitalists, for instance, preserved the activism aspect of supernaturalistic theism even while removing its religious core. This chapter concludes that with naturalistic theism, supernaturalistic theism has taken several different forms. Each of the different forms has some rationale to support it.