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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.
        • humanrebar 9y ago
          > ...but they believe in the same God. You've listed your thoughts in a lot of cases. Can you boil that down to some guidelines for how to decide? I'm not sure I'm picking up a clear way to distinguish. If they say it's the same God, it's enough? If I praise Bill Gates for: * founding Microsoft * his ability to bench press 500 pounds * his waist-length, beautiful hair * his ability to fly * his willingness to pay anybody 500 euros for a hug ...am I still talking about Bill Gates? Or am I talking about something else and just reusing Bill Gates' name?
          • beojan 9y ago
            Just because you're praising Bill Gates for things that aren't true doesn't mean you're not praising the same Bill Gates.