The Christian god is a warring desert god.

That is if I have read my Bible correctly, so basically the Jews had an entire pantheon and they chose 'Yahweh' when they became monotheistic. 'Yahweh' was a god of war worshiped by the wandering desert tribes. So then 'Yahweh' morphs into the god that is worshiped today. Makes since if true, explains a lot of the wars that have taken place over the past few millennia. Any Theologians in the house?

gets all nice in the New Testament.

The "new and improved" God.

:shrug:

bad god

it's throwing fits like it did in the OT. Weird how god can be so childish yet so mature at times. Seems almost Roman.

n/t

..but as always, I could be wrong...

Unitarian Universalists call it the Flaming Chalice. It's meaning varies greatly but to me, it symbolizes Knowledge, Wisdom, (chalice) the Enlightenment that comes from those 2 which leads to Peace (flame).

Beautiful sentiments that I like to think all of humanity shares.

But when I hear fundies go on on about crap, I wish they could see that god really wants us to get along and learn from each other and the universe. What other meaning could our lives have besides survival.

"Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition".

he's manipulative, cruel and angry. Yahweh was chosen by the Jews because he best represented their lives - they had to have someone on which to blame their suffering.

It is always interesting to me that the Old Testament's God and the Koran's God had the same fits and temperment. It's as if they were both of the same civilization and family (which they were).

and they are the same god, in effect. The god of Abraham.

The Pope gave reference to this when meeting with Palestine and Israel. He said "we are all brothers". Where most Jews do not accept Christ as the son of God, they accept him as a Prophet which Mohamed was to the Islams.

I am so encouraged that the new Pope will also show that we are all of one family.

a Pope who might succeed in uniting the three religions of Abraham - opening all eyes to recognize they come from the same place.

notions about the deity.

Since as far as I'm concerned they are all made up anyway, I don't know they're all the "same" god anyway - more like the same source story.

believers who are Jewish, Christian and Muslim know their god is the same - comes from the same source story, as you put it. Why then can't they all get along? (you don't have to answer that).

others. It's designating the inferior other and exploiting that other that leads to war...same shit, different day, for hundreds of generations before these three psycho sects were even a gleam in the eye of whatever deranged megalomaniac first dreamed them up.

I'm about full up on reading religious bullshit right now.

But let's not just finger point at Jews/Muslims. We have plenty of wonderful Christians in Northern Ireland, who have been murdering each other for years.

and they have to stamp out the people saying things they consider false about THEIR god.

realise they're the same, especially on the Christian side.

How many fundamentalist Christians know that Jesus spoke Aramaic and that the Aramaic for god is "Allaha"?

The reality is that Islam is a development of Judeo-Christianity. In fact the language and customs of muslims are probably much closer to those of the original Christians than today's Christians are.

Sufism especially recognizes and honors the saints and prophets of Christianity and Judaism. And as Murshid Saadi said recently-"If people only realized Jesus' name for God was 'Allaha', maybe they would decide to find out more about Islam's concept of God called 'Allah'"

is what we should call ourselves, since the Muslims had a HUGE influence in Europe prior to the conquest of the Americas. I'm really tired of hearing Judeo-Christian when it should either be Judeo-Christo-Islamic. All three religions are religions of "the book" and all three come from the same root.

God, how much would that freak out the Freepers if people started adding Islamic to the end of that compound adjective (since Islam is the most recent of the three, it seems logical to put it at the end).

Sufis are big on ecumenism The Dances of Universal Peace, which were started by an American Sufi master, is a practice that honors ALL spiritual paths.

Mystics all seem to agree that we are all One. The writings of the holy books show, imho, how people's concepts of God have changed over the millenia.

have very similar concepts of the Deity, not mutually exclusive at all.

so puh-leeeze.

The gods of pagan Greece, with their human characteristics -hmmmm

An EXCELLENT book if you're interested in the history of the God of the three monotheisic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Karen Armstrong is an ex-nun and no long identifies with being a Christian; she has devoted most of her adult life to studying theology.

She says that it isn't quite clear who the god of the Jews was: Yahweh or El.

One of the most eminent Biblical scholars in the world, and an atheist like me.

That's your choice and it should be respected. In fact you have my sympathy in today's world when everyone is killing each other in the name of their God and asking you to pay for it with your taxes.

I am just saying that the cradle of humankind and it's history came from the same people(family) and the same culture and it is very interesting.

tens of thousands of years before this patriarchal hierarchical judeo- christian religious crap that we have devolved into

I hope my response didn't sound snarky. It certainly wasn't meant to be. This is an interesting thread.

:toast:

My job has taken me to the Middle East several times. In Saudi Arabia, I lived about 30 km from Mecca for over 2 years. And I just spent this past January in Egypt...speaking of old religions!

Bad Charlton Heston movies aside, in Cairo I saw the only mention of Israel in all of recorded Egyptian history. It's written on a huge stone tablet in the Egyptian Museum.

The tablet was a P.R. effort by Pharoah Meneptah (the son of Ramses II), after he led a military expedition to Libya and Palestine.

The tablet just says something like: "Israel is no more. The seed of Israel is desolate."

I thought that was pretty funny, since the Seed Of Israel is still in the exact same place and annoying the Egyptians to this very day.

He could not believe the differences between the Sinai desert, Cairo, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It is still mind-boggling to him. Religion, culture, and economics. Yes, they are still all there fighting the same old fights that they have fought for centuries.

Noah's ark ends up on top of a mountain and it all starts from there. Then we have brimstone and fire in Sodom and Gommorah, fast forward to Egypt, the Pillar of fire, Mt. Sinai and the burning bush. Yep, he was a volcano. Didn't Abraham go up into a mountain to sacrifice Isaac when he was stopped?

They viewed the universe, or at least the Earth, as being created by Yahweh/Jehovah, who was a Demiurge, an imperfect and violent lesser god. The real "God" could only be understood through a life of seeking knowledge and good works. Jehovah was considered evil and jealous of mankind reaching the true God. If you compare Old and New Testaments, I can understand that interpretation.

It explained why the world is imperfect, having been created by an imperfect god.

Sand gods, is how I think of them. I'd rather worship a tree. But that's probably just the German in me talking.

I was in the third grade when I started realizing that there was a very clear difference between Man-made Laws (of the Church -- I was raised Catholic) and God's Laws, and that the Man-Made Laws were mostly pretty stupid. I also decided that I didn't want anything to do with any God that wasn't more rational and compassionate that I was.

God never changed, we were given free will. I personally believe we changed. Where does our conscience, for those of us who have one come from? Why do we feel guilty?

I do not believe it is because some human told us to. Do you really believe that?

I actually believe in Darwinism and God's creation at the same time, no conflict whatsoever. If you are strictly Darwin, then where would our conscience come from?

Edit for are to our

Consider dogs and their behaviour. Under a strict Darwinist approach, a conscience is a successful behaviour that reinforces cooperation. Social animals will have one. Humans have the most complex behaviour, so our conscience is the most developed.

though too many Christians forget that and worship Jehovah, son of Yahweh: ("sacrifice your son for me, Abraham") rather than The Christ ("I sacrfifice myself for you, my children") and get the whole point of Christianity exactly backwards.

confusing anyway. Jehovah and Yahweh are actually the same word, in the same way that Jesus was probably actually called Yeshua (i.e. depends on the translation).

it bugs me the most that "Christians" are constantly citing reactionary Old Testament dogma, when it seems to me that Jesus came to tell people to stop doing that cruel shit and follow a NEW way! If the Lord was around today he'd be as controversial as Osama!

WOw! I get to quote the Beat Farmers twice in one 24-hour period.

:D

Or maybe Iraq. :-)