Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on January 20, 2012 at 9:11pm

Nope they are worshiping the same god.  Or are you going to tell me that the OT god and NT god are different gods?

By your logic the Romans and the Greeks were worshiping different gods.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on January 21, 2012 at 7:50am

Why have the OT in a Christian Bible if they don't follow it?  As for Islam, Muhammad is the descended of Abraham's bastard son. BTW, You do know that Jesus was a Jew right?  That is how they all tie together.  What you are arguing is that if someone lived two distinct lives and never let people in his other life know the other him, that makes him two different people.

Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on January 21, 2012 at 9:32am

Susan, yes Jesus was a Jew and in fact had no intention of starting a new religion.  If the writings have any validity, it would be the ones in which he proclaims the need to strictly follow the law as understood within Jewish society.  It was later deluded people who misappropriated his (alleged) words and works for their own purposes and their own power (as is usual). Of course, xians cherry pick the OT - of the 613 commandments cited in Jewish holy writings, we generally hear about just a few of them from Leviticus.  I told my parents, when citing one of them, that unless they got a passing grade (a C) in following the law, then they couldn't morally and shouldn't cite any of them.  That is, unless they followed at least 491 (80% of 613) commandments, they should just be quiet about it.  From what I know, only the world's ~ 10 million orthodox Jews have any intention, let alone knowledge, to follow at least 491 commandments, so only they have any right to cite it - doesn't mean I give the book, a hate filled fiction, any credence, but that's a different point.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on January 21, 2012 at 9:23am

> Do Jewish people accept Jesus as their god?

By implication, you seem to be saying that Christians do worship Jesus as "their god."  I'm pretty sure that, in Catholic school, I was taught that Christians don't worship Jesus.  Worship is for God the Father (== [Yahweh, Jehova, Allah, Dios, and about 9 billion more]).  Christians' relationship with Jesus is a little more complex than that.

Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on January 21, 2012 at 9:26am

I'd add to Orion's helpful response that each group would find these attempts to unify the gods, and the artifacts which allegedly set forth their basic dogmas, extraordinarily offensive.  Jews do not refer to their religious artifacts as the Old Testament - that is one's xian bias and education intruding.  Instead, they refer to their holy artifacts as the Tanakh.  Here's a helpful site among others I've used:  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/jpstoc.html

In addition, there are some well-known differences between the original (and therefore correct) text as well as the wrong translations into Greek, Latin, English, etc.  Among them are the commandment against murder (unauthorized killing - for example, not in self defense) (Exodus 20, I think), Mary being a young woman and not a virgin, and more.  Each pokes a large hole in those who insist that the xian bible is inerrant (ha ha), is the word of god (apparently sanctions slavery - we've outlawed it so we've outdone god), and is in any way even partly relevant to our modern life (not at all!)

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on January 21, 2012 at 9:38am

The only reason I used OT is BECAUSE it is in the bible. 

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on January 21, 2012 at 10:17am

> I'd add to Orion's helpful response that each group would find these attempts to unify the gods, and the artifacts which allegedly set forth their basic dogmas, extraordinarily offensive. 

You got that right.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on January 21, 2012 at 7:52am

So because the Roman's took the Greek gods and changed some things that means they are not the same god? 

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on January 21, 2012 at 9:59am

> So because the Roman's took the Greek gods and changed some things that means they are not the same god?

Unimpeachable authority Rick Riordan agrees with Orion.  You'll have to read The Books to achieve true understanding.  I love them :)

How are we arguing this?  Theologically, on a literary basis, historically, behaviorally, or what?

If there is just One, then everybody's One has to be the same One.  It's just that people have imperfect understanding of the One, so they argue.  As atheists, we are not allowed to believe in One (except maybe Science (or Rationality (or [wo]Man))), so we are stuck with Many.

The Romans adopted Many gods from the Greeks.  That was another complex relationship.  The Romans conquered the Greeks, but also looked up to them.  The Romans adopted Greek religion, but their culture was very different, so the Roman versions of the Greek gods evolved different characteristics.  Most were fairly slight changes of emphasis.  If both places have a human-shaped sky god with a thunderbolt, and you can trace cultural influences from one place to the other, you can pretty safely say that both places worship "the same god."  Wait...

You can also argue that the God the Father of Christianity is "really" Zeus/Jupiter, based on the Hellinization of religious imagery in the middle east during the rule of Alexander and, later, the Romans.  I think I've read that Judaism and Islam both rejected that imagery, but it came in handy for Roman politicians as Christianity evolved into the Roman state religion.

That sort of covers literary and historical.  Behavioral takes you to the other extreme.  If you just look at what people do, and throw away everything you think you know about the background, you have to conclude that every group has its own little god.  Why else would Catholics fight Protestants, or Sunnis fight Shiites?

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on January 21, 2012 at 9:15am

Orion, What about our friends in La Iglesia Pentecostal, who pray to something called "Dios," who wants them to crawl on their knees for a mile to get to church?  Mismo o diferente?

It is widely accepted that the Abrahamic religions all worship the same God.  Obvious that people have their own ideas of what that means.

One problem is that the nature of that God has changed drastically over time, even within Christian tradition.  The God of Genesis was a divine person, who talked to human people and fought monsters.  The God of Moses was a Sinai volcano god with a bit of the trickster in him.  And the Jews who came back from Babylonian Captivity brought an invisible, impersonal and universal God who conveniently supported their foreign ways.

Then the Christians added gods to God, and you have the current mess.

Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on January 21, 2012 at 9:33am

Andrew, you might enjoy reading 'God, a biography' by Jack Miles - a former jesuit who wrote a book to expand upon your point.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Wiggin on January 21, 2012 at 10:11am

I'll look it up, thanks.  My paragraph was a mashup of stuff I remembered from a college Mythology class and a library book the title of which I can't recall.  It was about literary dissection of the OT and showed clear and separate narrative voices in the text.

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