The names of God

God is the term for the Supreme Being believed by the majority to be the creator, ruler and/or the sum total of, existence. Conceptions of God can vary widely, despite the common use of the same term for them all.

The God of monotheism, or the supreme deity in the pantheist, panentheist and henotheistic religions, is not always thought of by believers in the same terms as are deities in many other religions -- as a powerful, human-like, supernatural being -- but rather, becomes esoteric, the deification of a philosophical category -- the Ultimate, the Absolute Infinite, the Transcendent, the One, the All, Existence or Being itself, the ground of being, the monistic substrate, etc.

Theologians and philosophers have studied countless conceptions of God since the dawn of civilization. The question of the existence of God classically falls under the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, but is also one of the key discussions taking place within the field of the philosophy of religion.

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