What is Polytheism?
Belief in Multiple Gods
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The term polytheism is based on the Greek roots poly, which means many, and theos, which means god. Thus, the label polytheism is used where a plurality of gods are acknowledged and/or worshipped. Through the course of human history, polytheistic religions of one sort or another have been a dominant majority by far.
Typically, any individual god in a polytheistic system is a member of a larger, coherent group (called a pantheon) rather than being totally separate and unrelated. Polytheism usually involves belief in the several gods of a particular national culture; other gods in other cultures may be acknowledged as existing but ignored, or they might be treated as different cultural manifestations of the same divinities.
It is also common that each individual god represents a unique value, personifies some aspect of humanity, and/or maintains stewardship over some facet of nature. Thus there are gods of fertility, of rivers, of health, and even of anger. Within polytheism, an adherent wishing to obtain something (fertility, health) or survive something (river crossing) is expected to pray to that particular god rather than to others who do not have dominion in that area.
Other structural considerations of a pantheon include the separation of authority. In some polytheistic systems one god is dominant in power and authority over the other gods, but not supreme in a way that warrants special worship from humans. In some polytheistic systems the gods themselves may be subbordinate to other forces of nature or fate - just because they are gods doesn't mean that they are supernatural or transcendent. Thus, polytheism commonly posits a division of labor and responsibility within the divine realm similar to that which we find in the human world.
Although polytheistic systems postulate a coherent group, this does not mean that they do not acknowledge the existence of gods outside the religion's pantheon. When faced with gods from other cultures and religions, there are usually three different responses. One is to claim that some or all of the outside gods are really the same as the gods currently worshipped, just with different names. Any new aspects or powers are simply incorporated into the older gods.
A second response is take some of the new gods and adopt them as new members of the pantheon. In this manner the pantheon can gradually grow. A final response is to accept that the other gods exist, but not worship them in any active manner. Because polytheistic systems are accepting of the existence of gods from other religions and cultures, polytheism has tended to offer more religious freedom than monotheism has.
This greater tolerance, along with the idea that if there is anything supernatural behind our universe then a multiplicity of divinities makes at least as much sense as a single god, may make polytheism a bit more attractive and appealing than traditional forms of monotheism. Nevertheless, a modern scientific perspective will tend to reject polytheism because of its incompatibility with our understanding of nature.
If there really were different, independent gods in charge of all the different aspects of reality, then we shouldn't necessarily have a set of natural laws which are common to all parts of reality. The laws of physics would not need to apply to chemistry and the laws of chemistry would not need to apply to biology, and so on. Scientific order would find no basis if multiple gods were working at potentially cross purposes.
A modified polytheism might be theoretically possible, however, if we imagine a committee of unknown gods created the universe and somehow managed to agree upon a set of common standards, and then all separated to take over their respective departments. This analogy to the human experience of committees and management, however, causes polytheism to lose much of its original attractiveness - the idea of the universe being created and run in such a manner is enough to incite nightmares.
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