[QUOTE=DanBlather]
Putting aside the Abrahamic religions for a moment, God himself said there are other gods when he told Moses: “Thou shalt have no other gods before
Me”.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, it seems to me that what God was saying is that there are perhaps other gods, but that you aren’t allowed to consider another god as superior to Him.
Damn, missed the edit window - we agree.
In a theological sense, there are two categories of beings worhsipped by man: God and everything else. God, of course, has been covered quite extensively, if never to anyone’s satisafaction, in numerous works. The Everything Else Group somewhat less so.
The Everything Else category contains numerous false deities, mostly Money, Power, Sex, and MEEEEEEEEeeeeee!!!111. And in fact, you could certainly find numerous people worshipping Money, Power, etc. in the manner of Christians or Buddhists. Happens all the time. Even athiests worship these gods often enough in their own non-denominitional fashion.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
Actually, it seems to me that what God was saying is that there are perhaps other gods, but that you aren’t allowed to consider another god as superior to Him.
[/QUOTE]
Wouldn’t he know?
[QUOTE=DanBlather]
Wouldn’t he know?
[/QUOTE]
Doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants us to…
[QUOTE=jayjay]
Doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants us to…
[/QUOTE]
I always suspected God was passive aggressive.
[QUOTE=Clothahump]
Well, given that god is an invention of humanity, then yes - they are all the same.
[/QUOTE]
In elementary school, and Sunday School, we were taught that the Greeks, Romans, the Norse people, and so on, made up god stories to explain the natural world. Our God, though, is the real deal, not some backwoods Thor. :rolleyes: It seemed arrogant then that we could say those previous civilizations were a bunch of primitive glumps making up stuff, and we are so much smarter :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=IntelSoldier]
It’s wierd to me when someone says that Christians and Muslims have the same God. The thread on “Evil due to religion” brought up another example of this same thinking. Why is it that people say “Some Muslims fly planes into buildings. Most do not. Therefore, Islam is not evil.” instead of the much more logical “…Therefore, those Muslims practice different religions.”
To me, the Christian God and the Muslim God are two separate entities. I personally believe neither exists, but assuming one exists, doesn’t that mean the other does not? You might as well throw in Egyptian Gods and say that they’re the same as the Christian God and the Egyptians were just wrong about them/him/it.
[/QUOTE]
It is clearly stated in Genesis that the God of Abraham spoke to Hagar, the God of Abraham provided water, and the God of Abraham made Ishmael the father of a great nation. Muslims worships the God of Abraham, Jews worships the God of Abraham, and Christians worship the God of Abraham. It is all in the Bible. Maybe it makes Christians feel better to believe Muslims worship a different God and frame a believe system of us versus them.
[QUOTE=nd_n8]
Now that you mention that, there is a lot of dissonance about Jesus so I guess that only applys to the OP to the point that the personage of Jesus is the same across Islam, Christianity and all of it’s flavors, and Judeism. The concept and role of Jesus varyies tremendously.
So if the personage of Abraham is the same across all three religions, and all three claim to follow the God that Abraham followed, does that make all three the same God with differing underlying properties, roles, rituals etc.?
[/QUOTE]
All three religions believe in the God of Abraham. They all disagree on the messiah/prophet. Christians believe Jesus is the messiah and follow the New Testament. The Jews don’t believe in the New Testament or Jesus as messiah and are waiting for the true messiah. Muslims believe in the Koran and the prophet Muhammad.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
Actually, it seems to me that what God was saying is that there are perhaps other gods, but that you aren’t allowed to consider another god as superior to Him.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve always taken this to be about what we value most and what we seek with our hearts regardless of lip service.
If we value money most, status, power, etc, those become our gods.
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’ve always taken this to be about what we value most and what we seek with our hearts regardless of lip service.
If we value money most, status, power, etc, those become our gods.
[/QUOTE]
Scripture mentions people worshiping the ‘god’ baal and making asheran <sp> poles many times - these don’t seem like non-spiritual stuff like money, but yes I believe it possible to make something like money a ‘god’ also.
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’ve always taken this to be about what we value most and what we seek with our hearts regardless of lip service.
If we value money most, status, power, etc, those become our gods.
[/QUOTE]
That’s a very good interpretation, but I’m not at all certain if that was what was originally intended.
IMO, the Bible (and indeed the whole subject of religion itself) can be looked at a number of ways - one being, if you will, an anthropological and historical perspective.
When the commandments were first conceived of, probably even before they were redacted into the form we know them today, I suspect that more or less everyone believed in dieties - the concept of “athiesm” was probably pretty rare. The question for most people was probably not whether gods existed, but rather which gods had power over a person’s life and should be worshipped. The “pull” of various gods (and by this I mean gods in the supernatural sense) was evidently quite strong, as much is said in the OT about Israelites hankering after false gods (I do not believe that anywhere in the OT is there any proscription against failing to believe in the existence of gods at all, indicating that this probably wasn’t a major consideration).
Moreover, while certain gods were associated with certain “nations” or tribes, there was a lot of syncretism - some gods enjoyed a popularity that transcended their origins (think of the later example of Isis worship among Romans).
Thus, the commandment against holding other gods as more important - which essentially meant, I believe, that one was to respect the tribal diety of the Israelites above gods of other peoples and places.
However, there is no reason that this historical/anthropological interpretation should be the only valid one. Religions are re-imagining and re-inventing themselves all the time. Judaism, for example, while based on an extremely ancient (and quite primitive) tribal diety and ritual prohibitions based in large part on notions of ritual cleanliness has evolved into an extremely sophisticated ethical system based largely on exactly this sort of re-imagining and re-shaping of the meaning of ancient texts. The sort of criticism of Judaism (and indeed any religion) based on the crudity of the ancient texts (for example, pointing out the history of tribal massacres recorded therein) is I would say misconcieved, for that reason: the religion is based, not on what the texts say or originally were intended to mean, but on what modern-day people read into them - which is often (in the case of Judiasm, invariably) of a higher order of ethical awareness.
[I make no apologies for rating some things as “primitive” and others as “sophisticated”. I am not a cultural relativist in the sense of holding all systems of equal moral worth, and I do believe that such things can progress.]
[QUOTE=Malthus]
Religions are re-imagining and re-inventing themselves all the time.
[/QUOTE]
Also ‘gods’ are reinventing themselves (I do personally take them as supernatural evil beings), Baal is the ‘god’ in scriptures of child sacrifice, some would claim that that ‘god’ is still being worshiped by the practice of abortion.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Also ‘gods’ are reinventing themselves (I do personally take them as supernatural evil beings), Baal is the ‘god’ in scriptures of child sacrifice, some would claim that that ‘god’ is still being worshiped by the practice of abortion.
[/QUOTE]
I suspect we have somewhat different opinions concerning the literal existence of supernatural beings.
My own philosophical position, for what it is worth, is that there exists a universal urge towards finding meaning and a universal sense of awe and worship in humanity, and that religions and supernatural beings are one expression of this; thus, to answer the OP, all gods are in that sense “one” as they are all symbols or objects of a universal human urge, expressed in slightly different forms and with varying degrees of moral and intellectual sophistication by different people in different cultures.
On the other hand, I do not think that people are necessarily wrong in worshipping and experiencing awe. What is wrong is in using the products of other peoples’ awe-experiences, such as scriptures, as an inhibition on thinking for oneself.
Now, again from the point of view of a historical and anthropological point of view, it isn’t strictly correct to view Baal as the god of child sacrifice. In point of fact, “Baal” was simply a general term meaning “lord” or “god” in many semitic languages. In the OT, it was used most often to refer to the local Caananite dieties, which were both looked down upon and considered highly seductive - there was (regretted in the OT) a tendancy to assimilate and syncretize. One of the things that offended Israeli sensibilities was the use of sexual worship, and the use of human sacrifice - both of which were proscribed in the OT (the latter famously in the story of the aborted sacrifice of Issac).
But this did not mean that Baal was the god of child sacrifice, merely that children were, on occasion, sacrificed to the local Baal. Baal was more likely simply the local diety, “god” of a particular area. It isn’t correct IMO to view this in any way analogous to modern abortion, which is not a sacrifice to any diety.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Also ‘gods’ are reinventing themselves (I do personally take them as supernatural evil beings), Baal is the ‘god’ in scriptures of child sacrifice, some would claim that that ‘god’ is still being worshiped by the practice of abortion.
[/QUOTE]
First, Molech, not Ba’al, is the deity associated with child sacrifice (cf. Leviticus 18:21; it’s the verse immediately before That One).
Second, nice effort at a hijack. But I think we’ve had plenty of morality-of-abortion threads already.
In case I have not made my point clear:
Now, those three (or five) belief systems all claim to be pointing to the same figure, although all of them conceptualize Him in radically different ways. Or, as John G. Saxe paraphrased Gautama:
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
[QUOTE=Malthus]
I suspect we have somewhat different opinions concerning the literal existence of supernatural beings.
[/QUOTE]
Yes that was clear from your post.
Seems pretty clear here:
[QUOTE=Jeremiah 19:5]
They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.
[/QUOTE]
As if modern day abortion is or is not a continuation of this is a interesting side issue to me.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Seems pretty clear here:
As if modern day abortion is or is not a continuation of this is a interesting side issue to me.
[/QUOTE]
Well, to my mind the fact that they used a particular form of sacrifice doesn’t mean that this was what they were the god of. They may (for example) have been the “god of war” or the “god of the harvest”, or simply the “god of that location”.
Just as for example the fact that burnt animal offerings were made to Yaweh in the OT does not mean that Yaweh was the “god of burnt animal offerings”.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
As if modern day abortion is or is not a continuation of this is a interesting side issue to me.
[/QUOTE]
Smells like a separate thread you could start -but don’t expect friendly responses.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
Just as for example the fact that burnt animal offerings were made to Yaweh in the OT does not mean that Yaweh was the “god of burnt animal offerings”.
[/QUOTE]
But He is the God of blood sacrifice, He offered His own Son Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice and His blood was what redeems us. Drinking of that blood is a sacrament that we have to this day.
So I think it’s fair to define Baal by the type of sacrifices he requests. I have heard Baal described by 3 traits - child sacrifice, sexual promiscuity and war. In scripture Baal seems to be represented as a single entity as opposed as a common word for local ‘god’ as you seem to be taking it.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
Smells like a separate thread you could start -but don’t expect friendly responses.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps in time, I’m no stranger to unfriendly responses here. Actually most dissenters here are pretty civilized.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
But He is the God of blood sacrifice, He offered His own Son Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice and His blood was what redeems us. Drinking of that blood is a sacrament that we have to this day.
So I think it’s fair to define Baal by the type of sacrifices he requests. I have heard Baal described by 3 traits - child sacrifice, sexual promiscuity and war. In scripture Baal seems to be represented as a single entity as opposed as a common word for local ‘god’ as you seem to be taking it.
[/QUOTE]
Well, these are both perfect examples of a later interpretation being put on someone else’s notions of a diety.
The whole “Jesus” thing is of course a later gloss on the OT diety. During the time when the OT was redacted, that diety was “the god of the Israelites” - essentially, a tribal diety. The whole blood-sacrifice-redemption thing would be, of course, totally alien to those same Israelites.
Similarly, the gloss put on Baal in the OT is a reflection of what the priests of those same Israelites thought about another people’s god - in this case an unflattering portrait.