That the gods didn't destroy each other is irrelevant. What is relevant is that throughout polytheistic mythologies, the most violent wars are described as 'two Gods had a disagreement, and settled it by pitting their respective worshipers against each other'.


Not as big as you think. Most Jews interpret their monotheism this way. Most Christians and Muslims I personally know also do, because I tend to associate with intelligent and spiritually strong people who understand their own beliefs.

Why would someone who is polytheistic think any of the gods are better? I would think that the reason is obvious: you acknowledge that many deities, that are in many way similar to humans, exist. Some of them are weaker, some of them are stronger. Some of them are wise, and some of them are stupid. Just as people sort other people, so do they sort the gods. But even if this doesn't convince you, just look at histories of polytheistic religions. That's exactly how polytheism was interpreted: our city believes that god X is better than god Y, and we are willing to fight for X's glory.

And why would someone who is monotheistic believe that other monotheists believe in the same god? Well, first of all, because that's how many verses in the bible have been traditionally interpreted and still are today. That's the fundamental concept on which Judaism is built. Even the radical Muslims believe in it (they say that Jesus was a prophet of Allah, and acknowledge that Allah is the same as the Jewish God, and the same as all other philosophical conceptions of the supreme being, ultimate reality. This indeed is something that the majority of monotheists agree upon.

If you want an explanation of this, you would have to further study religion and philosophy, since it is a rather complicated topic. But the basic idea is this: words like 'God' (as opposed to lower case god, deity), 'Allah', 'Brahman', etc. mean not specific deities, but what Aristotle would call 'unmoved mover' or 'ultimate reality'. When defined this way, it doesn't make any logical sense to say that there is more than one such Being. So, a Hindu can say that a Muslim is wrong in believing that Muhammad is a prophet of Allah, or that Jesus is the son of God, but it would make no sense for him to say that Allah is not Brahman, since they represent the exact same philosophical idea, that by definition can only be singular. It's the same as arguing that the Roman 'VII' and modern '7' and the Arabic '۷' represent different things. They don't; they are different words to represent a very specific mathematical idea.