When is something a god?

What are our criteria for deturmining whether or not something is a god, if we even beleve in gods?Is it immmortality nessesary?
What about omnipotince?If you are religious would you continue to worship a god that was merely the most powerful being in exsistance, as opposed to being all powerfull?Do gods have to be incorporial to be counted as gods or can phyisical beings be gods. Can organisums or things become gods, if not how do gods come into exsistance?What about omnibenevelance? Is it possible for God or gods to be evil and still be called gods?

Yeah, it seems to me that polytheisum has Non-omnipotent gods where as monotheisum requires omnipotent gods.Does anyone know of a monotheistic religion with a less than omnipotnent god?Zoroastrianisum comes to mind, but is it realy polytheisum? Does Ahriman and Ormuzd's conflict make them competing gods? Or is this just the result of a less than ominpotent god in a monotheisitic religion?In modern monotheisum God seems to be all powerful and merely allows less powerful gods (satan) to exsist as part of a higher plan.This message has been edited by The Dread Dormammu, 12-02-2004 03:48 PM

NosyNed says: Yeah but HOW sufficeantly powerful? When do we make the leap from Boss, to say overlord, to god?I mean lets say we base it on ability to hear prayers. Well my Boss can hear and answer prayers (requests for a raise etc.) provided that I ask over the phone or in her office. If an alien overlord implants a chip in my brain so that he can monitor my thought is that god like?Perhaps there is no real clear line between gods and non-gods. Some super-powerful beings might wish that they be refered to as Gods while others are satisfied being called supreme overlord.

Such as...?

So there should be a ratio or something right?I think it should have something to do with understanding how the god operates. For example my govenrment is many millions of times more powerful than I am, yet I am not mystified by it, I know how it works.A god, on the other hand, might be only a few times more powerful than I am but be able to preform apparent miracles.One might see a problem with this when it comes to, say magicians. I have no idea how David Copperfeild preforms some of his illutions but, having been a magicain myself, I feel no need to whorship him because I believe he does not posess actual power beyond the power to create illutions. So though I do not understand a praticular illution I understand the principle and am not mystified.Some, however, do not understand illutions and choose to worship charlatins like James van Pragh, Jon Edward, and Uri Geller, what a shame.