the islamic god, and the christian God are not the same, what do you think?

[clearamericanboy]

I know this issue is probly pressed alot but as a Christian I belive fully that the islamic god and my God is not one in the same, many people disagree but fully belive that the Christians one true God is the one true God because of the very differnent differences, what do you think?????

[bananabrain]

i don't think you know what you're talking about. anyone who knows anything about islamic theology realises that G!D Is One and that the One referred to, Al-Lah, is just another name for G!D. Lord, Eternal, Divine, whatever you like -all of these are ways we grasp at the Ungraspable.

i'm jewish. we believe that G!D Is One and that christians and muslims also pray to the same G!D. do you say the same of us?

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Postmaster]

I agree with bananabrain. I'd say that everyone as individuals interprets God differently let alone which religion you are from. The original idea of one single deity that rules over all has never changed since its conception. Saying that I'm sure that different religions put more emphasis on different parts of God, Christians a more forgiving God, Jews a more justifying God, Islam a more demanding God? Am I wrong on that?

[Postmaster]

And for the record the conception of one God didn't come from Judaism, Islam or Christianity, before any of you start claiming superiority.

[bananabrain]

are you going to say it was the greeks, postmaster?

hehehe

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Dondi]

I have a question.

Is saying you have belief in One God the only qualification in saying that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God?

What if I said I worshiped Fred and the there is not other God but Fred, does that let me in the group?

Would you think though, that one would have to make a comparision of the attributes of the claimed One God to make a proper evaluation of whether or not we do worship the same God?

If I told you that Fred was omnipresent, omnipotent, all-knowing, all-wisdom, but only loved right-handers and preserved a placed in heaven for them, and all others would either have to convert to being right-handed or perish, wouldn't that be a distinction, even though I claimed to worship the same God as you?

[bananabrain]

is that for me?

well, for me, i qualify what i mean by One G!D - the Infinite Eternal Creator of everything, Who Forms light and darkness, Who Conceives and Enforces the laws of space, time, the dimensions, Who Judges between good and evil, Who always Was, always Is and always Will Be, Who Spoke to the children of israel at Sinai and Gave us the Torah.

if you chose to refer to the Infinite Divine as "fred", that is your affair. from time to time i myself have been known to refer to the "Big Guy", the "Big G", "Management" and the "Omnipowerful Pandimensional Wossname". metaphorically speaking, G!D Likes a joke as much as anyone - look at the duckbilled platypus, human reproduction and line-dancing, for a start.

if G!D Is One, as we believe, then if you talk about One as G!D then we are surely close enough for rock & roll, particularly given that the area of comparative theology is even more semantically problematic, philosophically complicated and linguistically subjective. where people tend to differ is in terms of what they think G!D actually Wants.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Postmaster]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

are you going to say it was the greeks, postmaster?

hehehe

b'shalom

bananabrain

Of course

[wil]

Do we worship the same G-d but differently?

Let's say we don't worship the same G-d for a moment.

Does that mean there are multiple G-ds or that only the one 'I' (the perverbial whoever is reading this 'I') is the real G-d and the rest of 'you' (the perverbial everyone of another religion other than the one reading this 'you') are just wasting time making stuff up?

Ok if I believe that we worship different G-ds...I obviously don't believe in monotheism...and we now get to start having the old my G-d is better than your G-d contest?

Or if I believe that you've just made up your G-d...then hmmm my religion can't follow in the footsteps of yours...or else my religion is based on your made up G-d...

I think we worship the same G-d...we simply hear, understand, and worship differently...ummm....that not only pertains to all the various Abrahamic religions but our differences are also fairly defined in our various denominations/sects...so much so amongst some I'll bet they often wonder if we all worship the same G-d in and amongst one religion....

[Postmaster]

In the Baha'i forum some weeks back I posted something which came to me with the death of my grandfather.

That there is an analogy between the law of minium and the nature of God. It's kind of based on the same principles in homeopathy. In homeopathy, a substance is more potent or effective when it has been purified to the point where no trace of that substance is left, what is left is a finger print of that substance that was once there and that claim homeopathists can cure the body of illness, triggering the body’s natural immune by causing similar symptoms in the body. So what I was thinking is, maybe God is so invisible to us because he is so potent, his love, his will and his presence is so great, that all we can see is his finger prints. That invisibility and distance some claim there is actually because of how close he is to us and not distant.

Hippocrates was the first to be aware of these principles, which could be universal and I think apply nicely to monotheistic thinking.

The way I see it God loves us so much and because he is so close he seems so distant and invisible.

13 things that do not make sense - space - 19 March 2005 - New Scientist Space

4 Belfast homeopathy results

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.
So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.
You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.

[Prober]

(imho) There is no god but G-d no matter what you call "him".

[Dondi]

Originally Posted by BB

is that for me?

well, for me, i qualify what i mean by One G!D - the Infinite Eternal Creator of everything, Who Forms light and darkness, Who Conceives and Enforces the laws of space, time, the dimensions, Who Judges between good and evil, Who always Was, always Is and always Will Be, Who Spoke to the children of israel at Sinai and Gave us the Torah.

Here's what I'm getting at. You are basing the concept of this One God on the information you've gather from the Torah. It is the source of your authoritive determinate of God.

Christians would agree to the extent that the Hebrew scriptures are part of what encompasses the 66 books that make up the Christian Bible. But when it comes to concept of God, the dynamics have shifted, because there is an added revelation to consider, namely that God came to earth in the form of a Nazarene named Jesus, according to the conventional Christian orthodox view. "...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father..." - John 14:9. The authority of Jesus' words have altered the conventions of the Jewish faith.

The dilemma we have now is a contention between how the Jews view God and how the Christians view God, for the Jews will claim that God did not appear as a man:

"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" - Numbers 23:19

To further complicate matters, along comes Muhommed and the revelation of the Quran. And while it seemingly resets the notion of a God-man in favor of the Jewish perspective, thus nullifying the New Testemant dynamic, it also overrides the Torah and places a higher authority in it's stead, as giving in the Quran. Theimplication here is that the foundational revelation given in the beginning is somehow flawed. This doesn't sit too well with the Jews who have valued the Torah as been given from God in the first place. Further, credence has been given to Jesus as a Prophet, though not the Son of God, which the Jews likewise reject.

And so Round and round it goes.

You cannot tell me that we all worship the same God if our perceptions of that same God is in conflict with the other views. Granted, we see through the glass darkly, but someone has to have darker shades on than others.

For example, I could support my view that only those who are right-handed are favored by God according to these scriptures:

"Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy." - Exodus 15:6

"Then will I also confess unto thee that thine own right hand can save thee." - Job 40:14

"Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." - Psalms 16:11

"A wise man's heart is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left." - Eccl. 10:2

"And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the leftThen shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:...Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:" - Matthew 25:33-34, 41

"Those on the right hand - how lucky are those on the right hand !
And those on the left hand - how unlucky are those on the left hand !" - Sura 56:8-9

See, it's better to be right-handed. I've quoted from all three sources. (Sorry, my eldest daughter, you are doomed.)

So my conclusion is that our point of reference is the determinate of whether or not we can truly establish if we have the same God. Perhaps if we could list the similarities and/or differences between the three views, the comparisions would be more evident.

[Pathless]

I love this:

Originally Posted by bananabrain

i don't think you know what you're talking about.

For the record, my god can beat up your god.



Wait, wait... that's not quite right... oh I remember:

My god can outdance your god.

[bananabrain]

pathless:

without my G!D there would be no such thing as a concept of dancing. my G!D makes *atoms* dance.

dor:

You cannot tell me that we all worship the same G!D if our perceptions of that same G!D is in conflict with the other views. Granted, we see through the glass darkly, but someone has to have darker shades on than others.

well, that's where we don't really care, as long as you look like you worship One G!D and act like it. the theological minutiae feel kind of pointless because we're under no compunction (unlike christians and muslims) to enforce a universalist theology.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[wil]

I always look at the right hand info as righteousness...doing the right thing...

The best one I've ever heard....my son calls me dad, my mom calls me son, my sister- brother, my niece- uncle, my friend- friend. They all see me different, have differing relationships, have different perspectives, have different knowledge of what I can and do do....but it is all me.

Even better in my mind than the old elephant analogy...

Pretty easy to understand how we could see and understand all that is a little differently....