How many gods and goddesses are there?

So, how many gods and goddesses do you think are there? If not for real, but at least in people’s belief. Gods and goddess are the result of people’s religion and belief. Not everyone will believe in all the gods, goddess or deities but only the ones related to their own religion. So, it might not make any sense trying to count the total number of gods and goddess here, still then let’s try to find out.  

Since long, people have attempted to explain the mysteries and fears, through worship and belief in gods.

Today, most of us don’t believe in Zeus, the most powerful god according to the Ancient Greeks, or you don't believe in in Odin the most powerful god for the Nordic religion, or you don't even believe in Thor and his mighty hammer. Or South American gods/goddesses who required human sacrifice.

Watch the video on same topic here:

Link to video you you want to watch in YouTube

Now, these are just a sample of few gods and goddesses out there. So counting all the gods and goddess can be a very difficult endeavor given that: 

 a) Throughout the human history, there would probably have been religions that were never documented.

b) Also Opinions on god and goddess can vary widely, even within the people of the same religion.

c) Gods sometimes moved between religions. For example, Hinduism and Buddhism have many similar gods and deities with different names.

 

Nevertheless, if we count the number of gods and goddesses, it is expected to be considerably greater than the number of religions, because a lot of religions are polytheistic, meaning they believe in more than one god or goddess.

 

Some estimates shows, there are 4,300 - 10000 religious groups in the world, depending on how you define religion.

Now, taking just 4300 religions and assigning 3 gods per religion on average, although some religion has hundreds or even thousands of deities, then there can be around 12,900 gods and goddesses.

But the estimates can vary largely, A book on Encyclopedia of Gods, lists over 2,500 Deities of the World, likewise another estimates shows that, there can be millions of gods and goddesses if we include all the ancient and long forgotten god and goddesses. This figure comes from the fact that the ancient Hittites claimed to have more than 1000 deities, and Hindu and Buddhist religion of today equally have many deities of worship.

Whatever it is, your god or goddess is just one among so many, so does it even make sense to disbelief so many (N-1) for the claim of one to be the true god? 

How many persons contributed to our being?

 

So how many grandparents do we have? or How many persons contributed to our being here? 

To find out, you are a single person and you most probably will have 2 parents (a father and a mother)

Your 2 parents will have 2 more parents each. That’s 4 grandparents for you

Going further 4 grandparents will have 8 parents (thats 8 great grandparents)

Further down, 8 great grandparents will have 16 parents (i.e 16 great great grandparents)

Likewise if we go until 10 generation back (around 300 years ago) that’s by taking 30 years in average for each generation) we would have 1024 tenth generation ancestors, assuming none of the them are related. This number would reduce if cousins marry, as they will have common ancestors.

                                YOU

                              2 PARENTS

                           4 GRANDPARENTS

                        8 GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

                     16 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

                  32 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

               64 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

            128 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

         256 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENT

      512 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

   1024 GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

But if we go on further to 20 generations (around 600 years ago, in the year 1420) we will have 1,048,576 ancestors. If we combine all ancestors from your parents to 20 generation ancestors together we would have 2,097,150 ancestors in total.

Now if we go even further to 30 generation (900 years ago, 1120) the number is really huge that’s 1,073,741,824 ancestors, that’s even larger than the number of people who lived on the planet at that time, which was about 400 million at that time.

Watch the video on same topic here:

                         https://youtu.be/eWjRc6u8x-4

So, in reality, families often have same ancestors and they appear in multiple places in our family tree. We know there were marriages among cousin after few generations, and that fair enough. Due to this common ancestors, one theory claims that everyone must related, which looks quite true.

Keeping all these aside, if we really want to know the number of ancestors we have, then the answer depends on how many generation do we wana go?

Even if we go up to 10 generation deep, that’s 300 years ago to 1720, then any one of us would have 1024, 9^th grand parents. But if we combine all grandparents then it would be 2047 ancestors in total.

Thats the number of persons who has contributed to our being, here today, if they were not related at all.

Now think, even with 2046 ancestors in total,

How many unique, life stories, amount of hardships, war, famine, disease, crime, did our ancestors had to face and possibly overcome for us to exist today.

If anything, had happened even to one ancestors, someone else would be here, instead of us.

So, if you are reading this article now, then by now you know you are a result of massive history.

So feel lucky…

 

Table of calculation used by me:

 

 

How long can humans live?

The only person to live 122 years was Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 in France. Come little down, and one more person had lived up to 119, and even down, seven had lived up to the age of 117. Ten people have lived until 116 years, and 27 had ever reached 115 years.

Now, if we keep decreasing the age until the average, the number of people who has lived that long keeps increasing. Human life expectancy as we know is on the rise. An average person born in developed countries during1960s was expected to live for 69 years, whereas someone born today can expect to live more than 80 years.

Now, the question is: how far can we go pushing the boundaries of our lifespan?

It turns out that, there is a limit on how many times our cells can divide to keep us look young and afresh. This limit, is known as the Hayflick limit. But, even though there is a limit to how many times our cells can divide, many of us don’t actually reach that limit.

Have a look on my video

https://youtu.be/39HliWSX2FA

Because, there are myriad other ways we can die, and only some of us really die as a result of our cells reaching the ends of their lifespan. While some of these premature deaths are just due to disease, and accidents, many other are from the outside forces such as the quality of air, water and food, quality of medical facilities, our personal lifestyle and the even personal choices that you make in our everyday life. Also the genes we inherit hold an enormous influence on our life span. If we inherit perfect genes, we can live far longer than average, but almost nobody has perfect genes.

Now, we know, we cannot change our genes, but if we can take care of our lifestyle choices and live in a clean and safer environment, supported by evolving medical technologies,   humans can really push the boundaries of the age limit. 

But, that’s not all, with more research into the field, who knows someday we’ll be able to increase the ability of our cells to multiply further, so we never grow old or at least increase our lifespan to double or even triple.  

In fact, scientists have already found other ways to increase life in animals, if the process works for humans, then it will be a new beginning.

Does income increase your life span?

The visualization of richest countries in the world shows, life expectancy is in fact dependent on income. 

The visualization show, the income (GDP in Billion $) in x-axis and life expectancy in year (y-axis) over time.  

Bubble size shows the size of Economy (GDP)

My motion chart to show relationship between income and life expectancy:

Click play button to see chart in motion...