[dead jim]

so, i'll be honest and say that i don't really get why there's a religion forum on this board. that is, i don't see what religion has to do with the zune. but, communities determine what it is that they find valuable, so, if the regular participants of zuneboards want this, i'll simply accept it.

with that out of the way, i'll get on to something i'm curious about, and it's something that has come up on the debate board repeatedly. i've noticed that when people talk about god, they're often (though not always) careful to point out that they're open to god taking on a number of forms, e.g. God, Allah, Jehovah, and a few others. but it seems that the forms a god is allowed to take is determined by the number of people who believe in such a god. for example, if someone was to show up talking about his believe in Zeus, it is unlikely anyone would take him seriously. even if they did think he seriously believed in olympian gods, it is unlikely they would take the belief itself seriously, if you get what i mean. it seems that they would be far less likely to treat that belief with respect than they would belief in Jehovah. even less respect would be afforded thor, less than that to some barely-known african hippopotamus river god, and even less to some god that was only worshiped by the person posting. that is, it looks like the respect afforded to a god or religion in general is dependent upon the number of people who currently believe in that god, and that is just weird. it's weird for this reason: if i believe in some god, say God, then it is the case that i must believe that all other gods are false gods. as such, i don't know why i would treat any of those gods with more respect than any other. i mean, they all false gods, so what do i care how many people have been led astray by some wrong religion? if i'm going to treat other gods with respect, it seems that i should treat them all equally, and, to be honest, i'm completely unclear why i would treat any god that i believed to be false with respect.
now, someone might attempt to say that it's the person that they're treating with respect, and not the god or religion, but that doesn't seem right. i think that anyone showing up here claiming to worship thor would not be afforded the same respect as someone claiming to worship Allah. even worse, if someone showed up claiming to worship Nocar, a god who had revealed himself only to that single person, it seems unlikely his belief would be respected much at all, and this is assuming that it was known that he was being truthful about his belief. as such, it doesn't seem it's the person that is respected, but the religion itself, and that respect is seems dependent upon the sheer number of believers.
this does not only apply to theists. atheists get in arguments with theists all the time, but only those they believe to worthy of debating, and this will be determined in large part on whether or not that person is a believer in a major religion's god. it is unlikely that most serious-minded people would bother to get into any significant debate over whether or not Nocar, the god of my backyard, really existed.
so, why this prejudice in favor of sheer numbers. any god you don't believe to exist is a false god, so why would anyone care about how many people were fooled as a determining factor for the respect given to the belief in that god?