I hate to be tangenting a thread that bashes that idiot Judge Roy Moore. So, I promise to return us to that.

But I have to take issue with the idea that the Hebrew god, the Christian god, and the Islamic god are the same God. The religions are all monotheistic, and the historical evolution is evident. But the God described by each religion is of a different entity. The God of Moses does not resemble the God of Jesus, and the God of Mohammad is a radical departure from the others. People say they are the same, but they are clearly not. In fact, the Gods described just in the different Protestant religions also seem to differ from those gods and from each other.

He’s (She’s) nicer in some, meaner in others, kills in some yet advocates not killing in others, advocates forgiveness in some but never forgives in others, is thunder and lightning in some and peace and love in others. He’s all over the place from religion to religion. At the very least he has extreme dissociative problems.

So either God not perfect (yet he’s supposed to be just that in all three) and has to change over time (who instructs God, I wonder? Who tells him he is in error? Who slaps his hand?), or God is not real, just a projection of the hopes and wishes of humans which understandably is very changeable.

Or maybe these three guys (girls) are related. Maybe they are God brothers (sisters?) who work different shifts?

OK. Back to Moore bashing.

Hmmm

Pedantism first - us protestants tend to use the word denomination rather than religion.

Regarding "creator Gods" The Torah and The Bible effectively share the book of Genesis regarding creation, The Quran has a lot of similarities.

Same God, different interpretations.

I think that what we are looking at are aspects of the same God, Christians would tend to argue that their God was a more accurate reflection of the Jewish God as explained by Jesus, and Muslims would say that their God is the same as the Christian God but as revealed to Mohammed.

Trying to step outside of my own beliefs I think that the three religions would agree that they share a God, but that (s)he is not correctly reflected by the other two religions, or different denominations within the religion.

Correction accepted. Although Southern Baptists think they invented religion, you are correct, Protestants are Christian denominations.

I appreciate you stepping out of your own convictions, I do not wish to question your or anybody’s faith. I’ve always admired your even tempered handling of delicate intellectual discussions. I aspire to your equanimity.

And I do agree that the three religions would argue that they share the one God. But I think that they do so in the face of overwhelming contradictions. Heads in the sand, they refuse to see the black and white (as written in the biblical texts) contradictions to that argument.

Different aspects of the same God? So God has three faces, a Janus plus one? I’m afraid that that is just another way of saying there are three Gods. And why not four? Or Five? Why not return to the days of a Pantheon, given a few more millennia to reinterpret God? Given infinity…

Same God, different interpretations? How can that be if God is real? A real God is just one thing if he is to be perfect and omnipotent; ultimately, it can’t up to mere mortals to define his being. It’s another way of saying mortals shape God. Which is saying God doesn’t exist except in the imagination. Or interpretation.

Whatever, the depictions of the central God of all three western religions is of three different Gods, even after recognizing that the idea of the deity has evolved over the millennia. To my thinking, there isn’t any way to honestly avoid that observation, and the dilemmas and contradictions involved.

Ultimately, maybe there is and always has been a one real God, but odds are that all current (and probably future) ideas of his being are not correct. He just doesn’t seem to be able to make himself very clearly identifiable, or his ideas very clearly understood. This would tend to lead one down a very non-religious path.

One thing I can say with perfect assurance. Judge Roy Moore is wrong wrong wrong. And an idiot.

How can one God have three aspects, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

Many would argue any Christian denomination that believes in the holy trinity is a polytheistic religion.

So if one God can have three aspects, how is it impossible one God may show up a bit different in each of three books.

I purposely didn't delve into the question of the Christian Trinity. Unnecessary complications. But it actually does pose further questions in regard to whether there is one god for three religions. One who is defined separately and very differently in each.

For instance, find any hint of three aspects of a Trinity, or three aspects of their God, in the Hebrew texts. I’m not a scholar, but to my knowledge they don’t exist. He was just one Hail and Brimstone guy back in those days. So why aren't there, if the Trinity is just three aspects of the same God that is/was the Hebrew god? And if they aren't there, then that alone radically differentiates the Christian God from the earlier version. The new Christians, many/most of whom were born Hebrew, redefined their God, and so created a new one. One unique to their new religion in which they could incorporate someone they considered to be their Messiah.

It’s logical to assume that the Islamists did the same.

Actually, in regard to the argument about the Christian Trinity, sophistry, or more accurately, inanity mixed with human hubris, rules the day there. IMO, it is what it is, and maybe it’s just unknowable.

But all three claim the God that talked to Abraham is the one that talks to them today.

So there is some history of saying they are all at least in theory going after the same stories about what their Deity has done. I'm not sure any of the three have a simple, single way that God always is. I mean I thought I remember at least a few moments of grace and mercy in the old testament. And the you gotta die on the cross thing isn't all that gentle, either.

Talk to pretty much any other mono-theist and they have a hard time understanding how Christians get away with claiming they are also mono-theistic.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:26

http://www.hebrew-streams.org/works/monotheism/genesis-plurals.html

LAST EDITED ON 05-07-14 AT 09:56 AM (EST)

(Our? Who is this "Our"? Nevermind).

That brings up another point, the God's image thing. (“Which God’s image”? Nope! Not gonna go there.)

Does she look like Kate Upton? If so, would it be blasphemy to say I'd do God? That I’d pay to do God?

Is the image in question the cute little kid that I once was or the gluttonous slob that I am now?

Does he look like Fooner? I think we'd all agree that that would be tres cool.

And if God actually did said that, then he’s been giggling about it ever since.

I remember back in Catholic school asking the teacher about the trinity. Not in any snarky way - I was just curious. I got back the standard, "It is a mystery only God can answer, we just have faith and believe it".

I've always been bothered by that sort of answer. When faced with a valid question or observation (like why the Holy Ghost and the Son exist nowhere in the Old Testament), religion gets to dismiss it with "Just believe it and it's true". I'd like to try that in other aspects of life. I'm going to walk into the nearest lottery office and insist they pay me the jackpot because I have faith that I won, even if I can't prove it and all objective data says it can't be true.

I avoided talking about the Trinity before because it runs the gamut in Christian faiths, from virtual polytheism to absolute rejection in favor of pure monotheism.

What I was taught as a child in my anabaptist faith was that it is symbolic. The Father represents God in heaven, the Son represents God active on the Earth, the Holy Spirit represents that aspect of God within each of us.

LAST EDITED ON 05-13-14 AT 12:25 PM (EST)

That's what I was taught in my very waspy protestant (Presbyterian) upbringing. Which, as some may sense, didn't take root.

So far, I am lightning unstruck. So far.

So it's a confused mess which one can only take seriously (IMO) if one can handle life without skepticism (and what is life without skepticism, exactly?). Because skepticism is (again, IMO) a killer of religious doctrine.

... what I found most fascinating was the number of people who believed in God* but didn't identify with a religion.

I'm one of these people. It's good that you put a qualifying asterisk there with "God", because God means different things to different people. I believe in God as a spiritual Creator, the source of this Universe, everything within it, and us as spiritual beings living life as humans.

And although the Judeo-Christian-Islamic view of some of God's characteristics and revelations differ, they are essentially describing the same God within the same historical religious tradition that goes back for millenia. There is still the common concept of original sin, the devil as the temptor and Hell as the punishment, all of which I think is an elaborate myth.

My view of God (and the afterlife), a deeply personal one based on my life's own experiences and inner intuition, is much simpler and far more subtle. I view God simply as the source of our universe and our existence as spiritual beings, in keeping with the order that we see in this world and universe around us.

It makes no sense to me that God intervenes in any way in human affairs, keeping a scorecard of whether to punish us with Hell or reward us with Heaven (with no in between), inflicting natural disasters, or sending revelations and a code of conduct to a select group of prophets and/or saviors to pass along to the rest of humankind, among other things. People have anthromorphized God in the manner of a human being, as if God has feelings of love, satisfaction, anger, wrath, justice, mercy, and all the other associated attributes that are human, not divine, in nature.

God is the source of our spiritual sentience; people are the source of religion.

Capn's Wisdom