A Theological Question: How Many Gods are there really?

I have a lot of opinions on this sort of thing, but they are all opinions, so before I say anything, I just want to say that I don't mean any offense to anyone. I went to a Methodist college and we had to take religion courses to graduate, so I feel I have been pretty well versed in a lot of this, but these are my thought following my life in and out of church and my formal education: If you look at all of the different religions, many of them have very similar beginnings, or at least very similar stories from the beginning of whenever they claim existence. It is common knowledge that the bible has been translated several times through and that one of the most popular version, The King James version, was ordered to be written during his reign, and he was a biggot and womanizer and also enjoyed the company of men, as that was a sign of wealth and prestige in his time. For these reasons, things like women not being able to preach and homosexuality being against God, may have just been a way for him to gain the type of socail control he wanted. I don't believe in Hell, I also believe that is a man made fear, made to scare the masses into complying with what leaders wanted. I don't believe that our sovereign omnipotent heavenly father could ever banish us to a life of eternal damnation because we sinned in our lives. As per the bible, God created us a sinners, so why would be ever put one of this children into an eternity of hell fire for it? I don't think our beliefs today will affect what will happen to us when we die. I think that we all will live our lives however we will and our fate will lie with that. Personally, I think THIS IS HELL, and we must live a good life to successfully graduate from it, and then we will be able to rest peacefully, whereever that may be.

Sorry. To add to that I think that if you believe in reincarnation then you will be reincarnated, if you believe in Purgatory then you will go there when you die. Religion likes to fill your head with all kinds of 'consequenses' I think it is to brainwash you into jumping on their wagon. Now I'm saying this brainwashing occured thousands of years ago when these religions were started. My personal belief comes from a movie called, :What Dreams May Come", the after life is whatever you think it will be. If you picture it as being on the beach with the love of your life forever eating strawberries then that's what it will be.

I took a world religions class in mortuary school and we were talking about how every religion follows the same basic premise- the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. I think that there is only one God and that different religions just view him/her differently. They have different visions of God, different names for God but I think it all boils down to one God.