If one is working with the idea that the cosmic manifestation is completely controlled by a divine force (which is what the standard definitions of god point to, namely being omniscient, omnipotent and all powerful) then the only logical option is for there to be one god who is the cause of all causes.
If there are two or more entities operating out of the same capacity, clearly you have problems because
1) one "god" could have a difference of opinion with another "god"
(Cris attempts to circumvent this point, saying they would have a mutual consensus by dint of omniscience. To carry through with that he would have to give more specific information about how merely having access to knowledge equals a consensus or somehow pacifies the sense of seperateness that blossoms with ego - like for instance there are numerous conflicts in the world where the issue is simply conflicting egos - the resolution won't come from acquiring more knowledge, on the contray more conflict comes from acquiring more knowledge because it is used as a tool to get the upper hand) ... th e only way omniscience creates a consensus is if they are all omniscient to the degree that they are the exact same personality (I address this at the end of this post)
- in essence however, two or more entities that are supremely omniscient, omnipotent and all powerful raises issues about how they maintain the status quo
(Ironically this is the proposition of polytheism - that there are several gods equally potent, and they manage things in the medium of material nature, so it ends up being material nature that is the superior force of existence, since such "gods" meet with varying degrees of success and failure by dint of the co-operation or conflict of others in the assembly, through the medium of material nature)
2) difficulties arise when one tries to determine who (or what) caused the environment that the two or more gods interact in - The god who caused the phenomenal world would be more greatly omnipotent than the other god/s that didn't. Even if these marginalized gods engineer another aspect of the phenomenal world at a later date, they would technically owe their cause to the god that caused the original phenomenal world which obliged them their capacity to act. This point leads to the idea that being the cause of all causes is the quality that omnipotence, omniscient and being all powerful are contingent on. Cris attempts to negotiate this by saying that the gods were all uncaused but it doesn't answer the question of what is the relationship of the phenomenal world with a group of equally supremely omnipotent gods
3) Omnipotent means having all potency - just like there may be many candles that may be lit by one candle, but it is the original candle that is "omnipotent" - so if it is engineered that all these gods could somehow operate out of an identical potency, if one of them exhibits a potency seperate from the others (like for instance causing a blade of grass in a particular time place and circumstance to sprout) then they would have defied the capacity of other gods to fit the bill as "omnipotent" (a potency would have been exhibited by another entity that was beyond the jurisdiction of the other apparently omnipotent entities) - in other words the whole concept of having several supremely omipotent and independant all powerful personalities is an oxymoron
Thus if one wants to advocate that there are many omnipotent etc gods one is relying on a corruption of terminology for one's arguments (either not using the proper definition of god as the cause of all causes or not using the proper definitions of omniscient etc)
The other alternative is that there could be many such omnipotent gods but they would all be operating out of the same ego - so the problems of forming a consensus amongst such personalities is addressed - this is actually the viewpoint of the Vedas with the numerous incarnations and expansions of Visnu.
