I saw Questa's comment on Taliesin's blog about believing in Gods and thought it might be helpful to post some references here for people who are interested in this topic.

Not that anybody "should" or "shouldn't" believe in many Gods vs. one God/dess of many aspects. Nevertheless, there are a number of books around that do provide an intellectual introduction to and defense of Polytheism. An oldie but goodie is simply The New Polytheism by David Miller, which you can get through an "InterLibrary Loan" at any US public library (you have to ask for it specifically). A couple other recent books are: A World Full of Gods by John Michael Greer, or The Deities are Many by Jordan Paper, both of which can be purchased online if you can't find them locally.

I've also seen a few websites around, one of the most interesting being a Hindu defense of Polytheism that I can no longer find. Oh well. There is this, however:
http://www.hermetic.com/webster/polytheism.html


Also, since many of us came from a Christian background, you might be interested to know that the Bible itself mentions other Gods. There are some examples here:
http://www.holysmoke.org/hs00/bible2.htm
but the example I like most is Exodus 12:12, where Yahweh says he will "bring judgment upon all the Gods of Egypt." So, let me ask you, if the Gods of Egypt didn't actually exist, how could YHWH bring judgment upon them?

See, the ancient Jews were actually "henotheists," not "monotheists." They believed there were many Gods, but that one God, YHWH, had called them apart from all the other peoples of the earth to be his people, and he alone was to be their God. Other peoples, on the other hand, had other Gods. There's a nice discussion of this here:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1835144&displaytype=printable

as well as a humorous Pagan example here:

http://www.caw.org/articles/otherpeople.html



Enjoy!