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Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in the same God, its the historical details they differ in. Buddhism is more a moral and spiritual framework than a religio

by beojan 9y ago

Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in the same God, its the historical details they differ in. Buddhism is more a moral and spiritual framework than a religion (a lot of Buddhists are also Hindus). Ultimately, all that science can tell us on this matter is that it is possible that God does not exist, and it is also possible that God does exist. The matter is outside the scope of science, but atheism (as opposed to agnosticism) is just as (if not more) arbitrary a belief as any mainstream religion.

humanrebar 9y ago
> Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in the same God On the contrary, while all claim to believe in the God of Abraham, the characteristics of each God are different enough to describe different gods. For example, Jews and Muslims do not believe Jesus is God and existed before the world was created. Both consider the Christian Trinity to be heretical.
- beojan 9y ago
  They all believe in the same God, they just don't believe the same things about Him. The details are important ones, but still, they're details.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    > The details are important ones, but still, they're details. Except for each describes salvation differently and each describes its method to salvation to be mutually exclusive from the others. Those aren't details. Not about the religion itself and not about the character of God. I could believe in "medicine" which is filling a pool with water, adding a milligram of penicillin, then drinking a gulp from the pool. You could believe in medicine that is taking penicillin in doses as prescribed by a qualified physician. We both self-identify as believing in "medicine". What counts as an "important" detail?
    - beojan 9y ago
      > Except for each describes salvation differently and each describes its method to salvation to be mutually exclusive from the others. Christianity entirely builds upon Judaism, and Judaism doesn't provide a path to salvation that Christianity doesn't (not the opposite though). Islam is more distantly related, but they still believe in the same God. It's more like I believe the US is free, democratic, and on the whole a good place to live, while someone in North Korea believes the US is a hellhole. (I live in Europe and haven't spent any significant time in the US, so my perspective isn't inherently superior to the North Korean's.) We have very different conceptions of the US, but we're still talking about the same US.
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        > What counts as an "important" detail? I'm having a hard time parsing your answer to this question. You seem to agree that salvation matters but think they all have compatible salvation messages? You reiterate that it's all the same God but ignore my point about Christ and the Christian Trinity. Is that an unimportant detail? Why? Why are these three religions special? Rastafarians and Mormons claim Abraham as well. Zoroastrians and Sikhs also believe in one god. One could believe in a form of Hinduism or Bahá'í, thinking that various gods could count in some way, but that's clearly different than Judaism, say.
        beojan 9y ago
        My point was that they are different religions, absolutely, but they believe in the same God. They believe different things about what God did, and how He asks us to behave. They differ to their core, but still, they believe in the same God. > Why are these three religions special? I didn't claim they were a complete set (they're not, you have to include Mormonism and other non-trinitarian religions that believe in Christ, then to a lesser extent you have Baha'i (which it turns out is literally answering this question) and the Yazidi faith, and probably more). Once you get to monotheistic religions that aren't descended from Abraham, it's a more philosophical question. If there were a tribe in South America that believed in a god that revealed himself to Atik and chose the Inca as his chosen people, on the other hand, would obviously be believing in a different god. Polytheistic or pantheistic (nature is God) faiths are quite clearly not believing in the same god.
Yizahi 9y ago
Statistics is a science and it tells us that while god-entity may exist it most probably don't and definitely don't in the way described in "the books".
- beojan 9y ago
  Statistics isn't a science, it's a mathematical tool. It certainly doesn't tell us that no God exists. I suppose you could argue that the probability that the nature of God is precisely as described in your chosen sacred text is zero, but that presupposes that the text is simply uniformly sampled from the set of all possible natures of God, which isn't really a valid assumption.
simonh 9y ago
It depends how you look at it. One way is to say no religion is any more or less convincing than any other, therefore any of them could be true. Also man of them share common features, so maybe they do encapsulate some underlying truth. That leads to Agnosticism. Alternatively we could demand a higher standard and require proof. None of the religions is able to prove any of their theological beliefs or tenets. Therefore we reject every single one of them. That leaves you with Atheism, because all religions and theological positions are discarded as having no reliable explanatory power, leaving you with no theology at all. Arguably the atheist position is just more rigorous and demanding, but I don't see how you can claim it is more arbitrary.
- beojan 9y ago
  > One way is to say no religion is any more or less convincing than any other Of course some religions are more convincing than others. The Graeco-Roman pantheon for instance, is trivially disprovable. The Abrahamic religions as a whole are more credible than the others. > Alternatively we could demand a higher standard and require proof. None of the religions is able to prove any of their theological beliefs or tenets. Therefore we reject every single one of them. That leaves you with Atheism You're still stuck at agnosticism, I'm afraid. Atheism is the positive belief that no god exists. If you require proof (or strong evidence, I suppose, since things can only be proven in mathematics) of your religious beliefs then this belief too needs proof.

by beojan 9y ago

humanrebar 9y ago

> Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in the same God On the contrary, while all claim to believe in the God of Abraham, the characteristics of each God are different enough to describe different gods. For example, Jews and Muslims do not believe Jesus is God and existed before the world was created. Both consider the Christian Trinity to be heretical.

beojan 9y ago
They all believe in the same God, they just don't believe the same things about Him. The details are important ones, but still, they're details.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > The details are important ones, but still, they're details. Except for each describes salvation differently and each describes its method to salvation to be mutually exclusive from the others. Those aren't details. Not about the religion itself and not about the character of God. I could believe in "medicine" which is filling a pool with water, adding a milligram of penicillin, then drinking a gulp from the pool. You could believe in medicine that is taking penicillin in doses as prescribed by a qualified physician. We both self-identify as believing in "medicine". What counts as an "important" detail?
  - beojan 9y ago
    > Except for each describes salvation differently and each describes its method to salvation to be mutually exclusive from the others. Christianity entirely builds upon Judaism, and Judaism doesn't provide a path to salvation that Christianity doesn't (not the opposite though). Islam is more distantly related, but they still believe in the same God. It's more like I believe the US is free, democratic, and on the whole a good place to live, while someone in North Korea believes the US is a hellhole. (I live in Europe and haven't spent any significant time in the US, so my perspective isn't inherently superior to the North Korean's.) We have very different conceptions of the US, but we're still talking about the same US.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      > What counts as an "important" detail? I'm having a hard time parsing your answer to this question. You seem to agree that salvation matters but think they all have compatible salvation messages? You reiterate that it's all the same God but ignore my point about Christ and the Christian Trinity. Is that an unimportant detail? Why? Why are these three religions special? Rastafarians and Mormons claim Abraham as well. Zoroastrians and Sikhs also believe in one god. One could believe in a form of Hinduism or Bahá'í, thinking that various gods could count in some way, but that's clearly different than Judaism, say.
      - beojan 9y ago
        My point was that they are different religions, absolutely, but they believe in the same God. They believe different things about what God did, and how He asks us to behave. They differ to their core, but still, they believe in the same God. > Why are these three religions special? I didn't claim they were a complete set (they're not, you have to include Mormonism and other non-trinitarian religions that believe in Christ, then to a lesser extent you have Baha'i (which it turns out is literally answering this question) and the Yazidi faith, and probably more). Once you get to monotheistic religions that aren't descended from Abraham, it's a more philosophical question. If there were a tribe in South America that believed in a god that revealed himself to Atik and chose the Inca as his chosen people, on the other hand, would obviously be believing in a different god. Polytheistic or pantheistic (nature is God) faiths are quite clearly not believing in the same god.

Yizahi 9y ago

Statistics is a science and it tells us that while god-entity may exist it most probably don't and definitely don't in the way described in "the books".

beojan 9y ago
Statistics isn't a science, it's a mathematical tool. It certainly doesn't tell us that no God exists. I suppose you could argue that the probability that the nature of God is precisely as described in your chosen sacred text is zero, but that presupposes that the text is simply uniformly sampled from the set of all possible natures of God, which isn't really a valid assumption.

simonh 9y ago

It depends how you look at it. One way is to say no religion is any more or less convincing than any other, therefore any of them could be true. Also man of them share common features, so maybe they do encapsulate some underlying truth. That leads to Agnosticism. Alternatively we could demand a higher standard and require proof. None of the religions is able to prove any of their theological beliefs or tenets. Therefore we reject every single one of them. That leaves you with Atheism, because all religions and theological positions are discarded as having no reliable explanatory power, leaving you with no theology at all. Arguably the atheist position is just more rigorous and demanding, but I don't see how you can claim it is more arbitrary.

beojan 9y ago
> One way is to say no religion is any more or less convincing than any other Of course some religions are more convincing than others. The Graeco-Roman pantheon for instance, is trivially disprovable. The Abrahamic religions as a whole are more credible than the others. > Alternatively we could demand a higher standard and require proof. None of the religions is able to prove any of their theological beliefs or tenets. Therefore we reject every single one of them. That leaves you with Atheism You're still stuck at agnosticism, I'm afraid. Atheism is the positive belief that no god exists. If you require proof (or strong evidence, I suppose, since things can only be proven in mathematics) of your religious beliefs then this belief too needs proof.