Vicar Philip

Often when I used to argue about religion with my wife, I would always ask her, "How do you know Christianity is correct and Islam is wrong?"

She would pooh-pooh the question for a little while, then eventually I always got the same response: "There are many religions, but they are all worshipping the same God (her capitalization). He is just called by different names to different people."

Is this an excuse that theists frequently use to defend their belief systems? Is there an effective rejoinder to such a defense?

DMB

I think it depends what else they believe about their god. How do they obtain knowledge of it? If via a holy book, then clearly there is a big problem because they say incompatible things.

Scandal

DMB,

You said, "How do they obtain knowledge of it? If via a holy book, then clearly there is a big problem because they say incompatible things."

I agree that basing ones belief in God solely on a holy book is problematic. My personal belief in God is based mostly on intuition of the heart. Is there really any other way to know It, to experience It?

I sometimes have my doubts about Its existence but I choose to believe that my limited experience of It is real.

Family Man

In the case of Islam and Christianity, she actually has a case. Islam and Christianity derive from the same Judaic heritage. Old Testament figures such as Abraham are just as much a part of Islamic tradition as it is of Christianity and Judaism.

Of course, the difference is the requirements this God puts on his followers to gain admittance to heaven. The Christian god requires belief in Jesus, which means all Muslims are sent straight to hell (even though they are purportedly worshipping the same god.) Similarly, I'll bet Muslims believe that Christians are being sent to the Islamic hell (though I don't know enough about Islam to tell you what their requirements are.)

The bottom line isn't whether they are worshipping different gods, but why, if they are worshipping the same god, are the requirements for salvation different? And salvation is the raison d'etre for the Christian religion, is it not?

Armchair dissident

If she's comparing Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, she may have a point (within reason: I'll get to that), as they are derived from the same abrahamic god. But what happens when one also includes hindus, or pagans, or wiccans into the mix? There's no question that these are not simply incompatible gods, but completely different gods.

Even limiting oneself to the abrahamic gods however, one runs into difficulties: namely the "no true scotsman" fallacy. In a church of England church I used to go to, there was a chap there who used to tell me "we both worship different gods". It wasn't until I became atheist that I understood what he was telling me:

A persons' god is not just defined by it's name, it's defined by what limits one puts upon the gods, which actions one believes that god approves of and which actions it disapproves of, and by the very fundamental nature of that god. If one persons god is a loving caring god, to whom hell is simply a mythical separation from god, then that is a very different god from a loving caring god to whom hell is literally a lake of boiling sulphur.

The question then is which is the "real" god each of these people worship? Not only do the different abrahamic religions worship very different gods - each individual believer believes in a different god from the next. So there's as many gods as there are believers.

DMB

Jesus is recognised in islam as an important prophet, but Islam teaches that it is blasphemous to call Jesus the son of god or to claim that god is a trinity. And you know what happens to blasphemers...

DMB

I imagine that most xians would deny that Muhammad was a valid prophet of their god, and that would also be grounds for getting to hell.

Family Man

The point being that they may be worshipping the "same" God, they may all end up in hell. That's how you attack it. Which salvation plan is correct?

Shinobi

This is an interesting thread. I think many Xians use the "same god" defense. Speaking more broadly, if we used Thor, or Zeus as an example and the xian said that zeus is god and thor is god, just thier interpretation of him, then what would be the best counter of that argument?

Ojuice5001

And what about my beliefs, which are the other side of the coin?You might call it the "They're all different gods" defense? Basically, I say that all numerically successful religions that worship a personal god or gods (and some that don't) were founded by different gods. Then, when you compare the teachings of the different religions, you find little that conflicts with the initial assumption of polytheism.* After all, saying that Jupiter and Juno ruled over Italy and Greece in the second century BCE doesn't really contradict the people who say that Ra and Isis ruled over Egypt in the same time period.

The monotheistic religions, of course, contradict both polytheism and each other. The likely explanation is that certain gods find it advantageous to claim to be the one true god, although they are not. And I think the best assumption is that the historically important religions have had only two such gods between them--Yahweh (Christians and Jews) and Allah (Muslims, and also its offshoots like Sikhism).

This paradigm takes polytheism farther than some people would like to, but I think it's best. And that's oddly analogous to the monotheists you mention in the OP--their thoughts about comparative religion force them to take monotheism farther than a lot of other people, like say the writers of the Bible, would have thought best. Funny how things like that work out.

*Unless you think it's necessary to believe that myths are accurate descriptions of the physical world, as well as the spiritual world (that creation myths are scientifically accurate, etc.). But virtually no Western revivors of paganism fall into that category.