Religious folk, is Allah=God=Vishnu=Jahweh?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Protestant Christian (Charismatic Evangelical Christian in the Anglican tradition to be more specific)

Catholic and Jew, no doubt about it - same God in essence.

Muslim - much doubt, but still willing to extend benefit. The Islamic teaching that Jesus was only a prophet, and a lesser one than Mohammed, is clearly contradictory with the orthodox Christian position that Jesus is divine/part of the Godhead. I know Christians who believe that Islam is a religion of Satan, and who will refuse to eat Halal food as a result, but tend to believe that this sort of error is a result of human corruption of God’s message rather than anything more sinister.

Hindu - even more doubt, the central world-views appear inherently contradictory, and I would say that they worship “false gods”. Having said that, I would share the view that FriarTed expressed, that a devout and faithful Hindu would have more in common with God than many who claim His Son as saviour.

22

I hope this excerpt isn’t too long to quote, but I feel it’s worth reading in its entirety:

"“Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou shouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.” (C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, New York: Macmillan, 1956, p.156-157.)

Basically, while I feel there are valid religious differences and that certainly some religions are more right than others about the nature of God, basically if one is loving and honest then they will meet God in the end. As to those differences, I do feel Judaism, Islam, and Xianity are more similar than Hinduism, but that’s besides the point really.

Oh, I’m a Catholic from Boston.

23

Hey, everyone! Wiccan here, American ecletic branch.

I do not agree with the idea that Allah=God=Vishnu=Jahweh. In other words, it’s just not one god wearing a different face for different people. If that were true, then would the rules, guildelines and life-ways for each religion be pretty much the same? I mean beyond the basic “be good to each other, don’t kill each other, don’t steal, etc.” For example, the basic rules of living as expressed in the the Hebrew bible are pretty different from what’s expressed in the Hindu Vedas. And the difference is more fundamental than because those two groups arose in different geographical and environmental areas.

IMHO, what each religion acknowledges as “God” (in whatever way you want to define the term) is actually just a part of a greater awareness or consciousness. To draw a physical example: in the way white light is broken apart by a prism and we perceive the different colors therein, human consciousness breaks apart and perceives that greater awareness or consciousness as different gods. Just as white light is an overwhelming mixture of all colors that our eyes perceive it as simply ‘white’ so that greater consciousness or awareness is so overwhelming that we have to break it apart into different gods to even begin to understand it.

24

Slight nitpick: Jesus was not a human being who became deified, but rather God who chose to incarnate as a human: He was fully human and fully God at all times. And most protestant branches while not prohibiting artistic depictions, do not in any way worship them or put them near an alter.

25

That’s it? How about there is and there isn’t at the same time? If it works for the cat in the box*, it can work for you too. If God is all powerful, he can certainly exist and not exist at the same time. And it finally answers the question of whether God can make a rock so heavy he can’t move it: yes, both.

*Schrodinger’s cat.

26

Heh! Well my very first SDMB post was more or less to that effect, so who am I to argue?

27

If there exists a single Entity who created the Universe, then “the Creator of the Universe” is a unique label. All who identify the object of their worship as the Single Creator of the Universe, then, are worshiping the same God, whether they call that God by the name of “Yahweh”, or “Allah”, or “Manito”, or “Illuvatar”. There are presumably, however, also those (who may even call themselves members of the same religion as the above) who define the object of their worship differently, and such folks are not necessarily worshiping the same God.

So far as I know, “Creator” is the standard definition of God in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I can’t speak to any other religions.

28

PasCAT’s Wager?

29

It certainly goes a long way towards explaining the purr puss of life. So you’re best off learning your catechism.

30

Thanks- I just simplified it down to using Baal & YHWH instead of Tash & Aslan.

31

Too bad I can’t put up a Blushy smiley!

During the Board transition weekend, was it you that said that the results on a religion-test came up very close to mine? Which another Doper then helpfully commented on by saying that you as well as I were both blithering idiots? Of course I can’t look it up as that weekend was thankfully lost from the archives.

32

Let’s put it this way:

  1. Every Jew believes there is exactly one God, who made everything that is or ever was, and that this God formed a covenant with Abraham and gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

  2. Every Christian believes that the God Jesus called “The Father” is the same God who gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.

  3. Every Muslim believes the God Muhammad called “Allah” is the same God Jesus called “The Father.”

The three religions are VERY different in numerous respects, but they’re all based upon belief in the one God who formed a covenant with Abraham.
Hinduism is utterly unconnected to any of these religions. It is polytheistic, and none of its many gods resembles the one God worshipped by Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Which means that, with difficulty, I believe I, as a Catholic, could craft a prayer that I could say together with an Orthodox Jew and a SHiite Muslim without any of us feeling he’d compromised his beliefs too much.

I could not pray along with a Hindu. That doesn’t make him a bad person, it just makes him someone I don’t share enough common ground with.

33

Oversimplified generic Hindi prayer:

“God, please bless my family, and help me live righteously. Thanks.”

What do you pray for?

34

Technically, we’re not Polytheistic.
I’ve always been taught/ and believe my religion is Monotheistic.

But that’s REALLY complicated stuff sometimes it seems for people to understand (then again, I liken it to being no more complicated than the Holy Trinity, but it’s tricky fun stuff to think about).
But yeah, Hinduism to me personally is Monotheistic, though I’ve heard it called Polytheistic, and I don’t really like that term- because at the core, it’s all the same thing, but if you wanted to you can separate it out. It’s sort of a personal matter/cultural upbringing/ regional thing on what you choose to believe. The mountain analogy is the best thing I’ve got at trying to easily explain it.

35

Hi. I live in the U.S. and was raised LDS (Mormon). I’m not anymore because some (but not all) of my beliefs have drifted away from the central LDS doctrine.

Basically, I believe in God but I don’t believe in organized religion. I believe God is a perfect being. I also believe (and know) that the human race as a whole are imperfect beings. Therefore, no one religion itself can be perfect and no one religion can be the “one religion” because religion is the interpretation of God’s will by man. I hope this makes sense.

To answer the OP in terms of what I believe, I would say that all four are religious and all four worship the same God, since in my opinion it’s not HOW you believe but THAT you believe.

36

Well, I understand that that is the Christian interpretation of the nature of Jesus, an interpretation which was by no means universally agreed with for the first six or so centuries of Christianity’s growth and spread. As a Jew, I do not accept that that is what was really going on. I don’t have a problem seeing that Christians worship the same god as I do, but I couldn’t, for example to use the sort of standard I see developing in this thread, participate in a prayer which was ‘in Jesus’ name’ or referred to ‘Christ the Lord/Saviour’, since I don’t believe he was/is part of the divinity.

I understand also that Christians do not worship images. However, Judaism does not have holy images at all, so they make me slightly uncomfortable in the sense that I wouldn’t personally want to pray in front of them.

37

Not all Christians necessarily believe that Moses was an historical figure.

Sometimes praying can be just remaining silent or in a meditative or contemplative state. Couldn’t you do that?

I am a Protestant who has always lived in Tennessee. Yes, I can accept that God is in all of these forms.

38

Feel free to believe what you like, but your logic is suspect. There are any number of possibilities more.

39

Answering the title question directly, not Vishnu, but the other three yes. Dios and Deus and Dio and… are the same one too. You’re looking at different languages, not even at different religions. When Arabic-language Catholics go to Mass, they call “God” Allah.

And once you get into the religious angle, the reason Vishnu is not the same as the other one is because Vishnu is a divinity in a polytheistic religion: he is not The Divinity.

40

I was raised Presbyterian (USA branch specifically, a bit more liberal from what I understand). What I got from confirmation was basically God is anything without free will at any given moment, possibly including angels. We were also told that God is essentially an amalgam of all the different Gods, be they natural (worshiping the earth or wolf), or deliberate deities. We also had a little side discussion with the Pastor that he believes it’s possible he may delegate his duties just for the hell of it (as he technically COULD do all of them and still have infinite free time), but we never really got too far into that, we got as far as Baal possibly being a delegatory agent (for fertility, iirc), but God felt either the tribes were forgetting about big G (i.e. forgetting the Overgod existed and making Baal their patron), or exalting this deity above himself and simply putting God ona lower “tier” so he “absorbed” Baal into himself and assumed full responsibility, hence Baal becoming “false” because God poofed him out of existence.

Yeah, my church was a bit… odd to say the least.