Monotheism is the belief that one god is the only deity. A distinction may be made between exclusive monotheism, in which the one God is a singular existence, and both inclusive and pluriform monotheism, in which multiple gods or godly forms are recognized, but each are postulated as extensions of the same God.
Fictionalized portrait of Xenophanes from a 17th-century engraving
Remains of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece
God in The Creation of Adam, fresco by Michelangelo (c. 1508–1512)
A deity or god is a supernatural being considered to be sacred and worthy of worship due to having authority over the universe, nature or human life. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life".
Pantheists believe that the universe itself and everything in it forms a single, all-encompassing deity.
Statuette of a nude, corpulent, seated woman flanked by two felines from Çatalhöyük, dating to c. 6000 BCE, thought by most archaeologists to represent a goddess of some kind
Yoruba deity from Nigeria
Egyptian tomb painting showing the gods Osiris, Anubis, and Horus, who are among the major deities in ancient Egyptian religion