Inspired by this answer
in this thread
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5648026#post5648026
How can someone who believes in God, can be considered to believe in the "wrong God.
God = God.
religion =/= religion
Still: God = God.
Where is the “wrong” God in all of this?
Salaam. A
What if the person believes in Jesus Christ all his life, confident he’ll get into Heaven, and when he dies comes face to face with Odin? Or Zeus?
That would be really embarrassing, I’d bet…
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!
“What if we’ve picked the wrong church? Then every week, we’re just making God madder and madder.”
– Homer Simpson, American theologian
It’s the principal flaw with Pascal’s Wager (this is a variation of it), which posits that there’s no significant downside to blindly believing in God. Well, what if God exists, but instead of being a God who rewards blind faith, he’s a God who demands that you use the faculties he gave you to continually pursue truth as it is contained in the physical world he provided? A God who disdains blind acceptance of anything unproven, that is–a God who considers it intellectual laziness, reflective of poor character and unworthy of his respect or attention. Then what?
You will have believed in a God who does not exist, to your own peril.
What you describe is how Muslims are instructed to use their intellect. “Studying is better then praying”.
Maybe my OP is not clear enough.
I ask opinions on how people who believe in God can say that others who also believe in God believe in the “wrong” God.
How can this position be defended.
Salaam. A
I’m still not entirely certain of your meaning, Aldebaran. The piece you quoted in your OP was posted in response to a specific logical fallacy, Pascal’s Wager. It was done to point out (in a fairly amusing way) the problem with the construct in question. That problem being: What if you went through life believing in God so you could get to Heaven, and found out when you die that the Man In Charge is actually someone OTHER than Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah?
It’s not a claim that people who believe in A/Y/J are worshipping the wrong god, it’s an explanation for why Pascal’s Wager isn’t a valid argument.
A SUFI FABLE.
A man who had studied much in the schools of wisdom finally died in the fullness of time and found himself at the Gates of Eternity.
An angel of light approached him and said, “Go no further, O mortal, until you have proven to me your worthiness to enter into Paradise!”
But the man answered, “Just a minute, now. First of all, can you prove to me this is a real Heaven and not just the wishful fantasy of my disordered mind undergoing death?”
Before the angel could reply, a voice from inside the gates shouted:
“Let him in—he’s one of us!”
Rewriting again the OP:
First Believer in God to Second Believer in God (who follows and other religion to believe in God then First Believer in God): “You believe in the wrong God”.
Second Believer in God: “No, YOU believe in the wrong God.”
Third Believer in God, who follows an other religion to believe in God then the other two: “No you BOTH” believe in the wrong God".
etc… etc… etc… in the infinite.
Me, to all of them: “God = God. How can any of you say from the other one he believes in the wrong God?”
How can Believers in God answer this question? What is the argument to say to someone who believes in God, that he believes in the “wrong” God, when God = God.
Salaam. A
So you are saying that if you worship one god, you are worshiping your god, no matter how you worship or what you believe? So the christian god is the same as the muslim god is the same as the jewish god? Really? Possible I suppose, but are you saying Odin is really Yaweh? Shiva is really Michael? Prometheus is really Jesus? Are you honestly saying that there is no false relgion, and that everybody that worships somebody is really worshiping your god?
Because the people who actually use Pascal’s Wager usually don’t believe that the other man’s god is the same as their God. Or, to put it more accurately, they don’t believe that the other man’s god is actually a god.
You’re being way too inclusive to understand the American Fundamentalist mindset, sir.
The above is already accepted as being a fact.
I have not much of an idea about the rituals and dogmas of other religions, but I start from the supposition that everyone who believes in God and is convinced that he is worshipping God, can claim he is believing in God and is worshipping God.
How can you, as a human, make a claim that it is otherwise?
Salaam. A
The gods of different religions are markedly different. Yes, the Muslim, Christian and Jewish gods are generally accepted to be the same, but that’s because those religions are, if you accept their dogmas, the products of successive revelations from the God of the Old Testament. Those religions share as a basis the idea that it’s the same God.
Other religions aren’t. If you’re worshipping the God of the Old Testament when in fact Hinduism, Asatru, or any number of other non-Abrahamic religions is the “one true faith,” then you’re worshipping the wrong god.
Think of it this way. If I started my own religion and declared that the earthly body of Gary Coleman was the highest deity, wouldn’t it be consistent with Islam, Christianity or Judaism to call me an idolator and say that I’m worshipping someone I incorrectly believe to be divine? Same difference.
Adebaran, you’re approaching the question from a distinctly Islamic perception monotheism. To you “One God” = One God. If you worship one God you are worshipping GOD. It doesn’t make sense to you that someone could worship one God that isn’t THE God.
In populist western thought, though, two monotheists don’t have to worship the same God. Two people can believe that only one God exists but they can have very different ideas and definitions as to who or what that God is. One possibility (which has already been mentioned) is that one or both could worship a human (Jesus) as God and (if Jesus is NOT God) be guilty of Idolotry. Other possibilities would include the worship any of a multiplicity of Gods from other traditions (Zeus, Thor, Mars, Kokopelli) as one God separate and distinct from the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. They might worship God as a Goddess and be in error that way while still being technically monotheists.
It is even rhetorically possible that there exists one God who is not the God of the Bible and the Koran but who has never revealed himself. What if God is an all powerful rabbit who lives on Pluto and eternally punishes anyone who worships Jesus or Allah?
There are many ways to conceive of one God.
None of the above is intended to ridicule monotheism, only to show that pascal’s Wager is not a logically convincing argument to believe in the Christian concept of God (which is what it was intended to be).
What if there are many gods, some more powerful than others? If that is the case, you need to choose to worship the right god(s), or you’re screwed. Consider ancient Greece and Rome. Neither tried to convert those they conquered to worshipping their gods. The reason they didn’t is that they attributed their success to worshipping the right gods. By worshipping their gods, these gods blessed them with the ability to conquer other peoples. If these other societies built temples to their gods, and made the right sacrifices to them and worshipped them, then maybe their gods would look favorably on those they had conquered.
It can’t really be defended because it is an inherently selfish point of view. For Christians, God is or can be an intensely personal and intimate experience, and must be present in the world at all times and all places. There are some Christians who have taken this theology further and believe that God belongs to them alone. This runs counter to Islamic theology that states that Allah is not part of the world at all, and can never be known by humans. Christian fundamentalist theology very often includes the perception and belief that God is exactly as they perceive God, and anyone who perceives or believes differently is worshiping the wrong God, or worse, Satan.
Something I learned in a course on Islam may help if you aren’t already aware of it:
Christianity : : Islam
God Allah
Jesus Qu’ran
Bible The Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)
In other words, Christians believe that Jesus is God/God’s Word in a human form, not to debase or degrade God, but to bring God to the world in a way that can’t be ignored. But as with humans and their posessions, they can be selfish, and that is what you see in the statements you hear.
Vlad/Igor
Think of the Latin Mass that you could devise:
Quo de loquitas, Willis?
How can you, as a human, make the claim that it is?
Saying that “everybody that worships somebody” covers a lot of territory. There would need to be some culling out of people like Rev. Moon, Kool Aid Jones, Gary Coleman and that rabbit on Pluto, but in regards to the accepted major religions of the world, I believe that we all are worshipping the same God. That does not mean that I believe everything connected with how they worship God and many other fine points…
Joseph Campbell wrote about the similarities of religions in all parts of the world. He said they were based on the same principles; including atonement, redemption, resurrection, rebirth, etc. The problem is that they are basically all ancient religions based on an outdated world-view. All religions come from a time when the best view was obtained by climbing the nearest hill. The thing that bothered the Jews in 500 BC was that God was back in Jerusalem and they were in Baghdad. They believed that because of the way they viewed the world. Today, we see the world from satellites and from the moon and even farther out.
In order to conform to the present worldview, religion must be inclusive and not exclusive. The idea that God is on the side of one religion and not that of another is not only outdated, but also terribly misleading. Most of us recognize there is a problem when one team made up of Christians prays for victory over another team made up of Christians. The way we see God must recognize that all of humanity is equal under God. If aliens from other worlds should show up, then our worldview would again require a major tune-up.
My view of God may not be as good as yours, but that could be because I’m seeing Him from a step ladder. 
The only first-hand experience I have of people talking about others ‘believing in the wrong G[/g]od’ is fundamentalist Christianity.
In this case, what they usually mean is either:
-The entity the accused believes to be ‘God’ is real, but is in fact something other than God (and that the accused is being actively deceived)
-The entity the accused believes to be ‘God’ is imaginary (and that the accused is merely deluded)
In both of these cases, the implication is that the subject of the accused’s reverence is [not actually God], as opposed to [the wrong God], but that’s possibly to subtle a distinction to cause concern to those making the statements.