Does God = Allah

But it is also fundamental to Christian belief that their God is the God of the "Old Testament" - the Christians may disagree with Jews on the nature of God but they insist that they are talking about the same entity. Christians insist that their God is the God who Abraham worshipped, who gave the law to Moses and who inspired the Jewish Prophets. Likewise Moslems insist that they worship the God who did all those things.So there is a sense in which Jews Moslems and Christians claim to worship the same God, and if that sense is not accepted then Christianity - at least as the vast majority of Christians believr it -is false.l

It seems you've gotten the wrong end of the stick. I'm not sure how you got most of what you said from what I said. That is not what I was saying at all. I was discussing things from the point of view of the worshippers, not the worshipped so what you thought I was saying doesn't seem connected at all with what I said. I'm not saying anything that could be taken to mean any different. Indeed, the entire point of my post was discussing where the religions differ. The major sources of disagreement are the significance and authenticity of the prophets and bearers of the Word.I understand your point, obviously only one version is right and from a certain perspective the Gods as described are very different Gods.I'm quite surprised you would describe my comments as propaganda, since I wasn't trying to persuade anybody of anything. It certainly isn't anything that isn't commonly accepted. Muslims believe in the God of the Bible, but believe the records are imperfect and have been corrupted. You used emotive language in response to my suggestion of this: It's entirely irrelevant if you think that Muslims believe a bald lie. Obviously, as a Christian you believe that entire founding of Islam was on either a bald lie or a delusional man. The point is that Islam does believe this. They believe in the same God, they just think that the only inerrant text that contains His Word is the Qu'ran. You can argue that they're wrong to believe that if you like, but they still believe it. I'm sure Jews would argue that you're wrong to believe that Jesus was God made flesh, but it wouldn't change the fact that you believe it. If all the accounts are assumed to be accurate, then obviously they are not the same Being. However, the entire point is that the different religions disagree not on the being but on which texts are His inspired Word and which ones are outright false or corruptions.Three different people can describe the same thing in three different ways. It doesn't mean they are describing different things, its just that at least two of them are wrong.

No, I'm right from an objective logical perspective, it has nothing to do with the book per se. The three religions constradict each other. Why won't you face this simple obvious fact that has been proved many times over? I only use the Bible because I'm familiar with it, in order to demonstrate how utterly at odds each religion is from the other belief systems, the OT from the NT and from Islam, the NT from the OT and Islam, etc. {ABE: Writing too fast. The OT as the Jews read it versus the OT as the Christians read it, not the OT versus the NT as such} Believe what you please, but you are at odds with historical Christianity. You are confused about what the Bible is about, confused about what truth is. Truth is truth. Certainly there are truths about God that far exceed anybody's ability ever to comprehend, let alone be contained within the pages of a book, but no matter what marvels are yet to be known about God, it will all build upon the truths that are in the Bible, and never ever contradict them, which it would have to do in order to include Islam and Judaism as valid religions. In spite of yourself, Phat, you seem to have succumbed to a postmodern mind set that treats truth as relative. Yes, exceed magnificently, fill up the whole universe, but never ever contradict the Bible. It just means that Jesus did tons more of what He is reported doing in the scriptures, more miracles of the same sort, teachings along the same lines, simply way too much to report, but certainly nothing that would contradict anything He'd already said and done, which is what you are implying if you think any of it could justify either Judaism or Islam. Nope, you have to choose, Phat. You can logically treat as valid in God's eyes only one of the religions, not all three, and not even two.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-27-2006 06:10 PM

Yes, and my answer back a ways in this thread is that the God of Moses is now the God of the Christians and not the God of the Jews, despite what is believed by anybody. Jesus pretty much said so. See my Message 74. Yes they insist, but they falsely insist since their God has different attributes and they even ridicule the sacred Name of God He gave to Moses. Yes, this is claimed but not true nevertheless. Well certainly at least two of the religions are false. Take your pick.But again, what people believe is not the subject here. What the religions teach is the subject and I've pointed out direct contradictions that preclude their being about the same God.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-27-2006 06:16 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-27-2006 06:17 PM

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So there is a sense in which Jews Moslems and Christians claim to worship the same God,

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Yes, this is claimed but not true nevertheless.

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Yet at the start of the post you agreed that this sense is true - that Christians do worship the God of Abraham, Moses and David. Either Christians, Jews and Moslems DO worship the same God in this sense or Christianity is false.

That's another way of saying the same thing, as long as you keep in mind what they are wrong about. I think my way gets the point across more clearly. Being wrong, they have a false image of God in mind, which is the same thing as worshiping a false God. Yes, certainly there is only one true God and He is whatever He is no matter what any of us believes about Him, and He doesn't lie, at least according to the Bible, but the point is that we have three completely different mutually contradictory beliefs about Him which amounts to three different concepts of God and some of what is imputed to God has to be a lie. The real God can't lie, but the fake God can, if you get my drift. But to be wrong about Him is to have a false idea about Him, a false image of Him -- in a word, to be wrong about Him is to worship a false God. The true God is not being worshipped because the true God is not like that false wrong God they are worshipping.

I would hope that others here at EvC who understand me (which is itself quite a feat! ) would say that my thinking is more absolute and less post modern.By being so unbending, you are not being a good witness IMHO, Faith. You, like the Pharisees, may be doctorinly correct but by all measures of common sense wrong.Do you honestly think that, for a science minded atheist, the only way to salvation is through acknowledging the literalness of the Bible???It may have worked for you, but my God is bigger than that! Jesus spoke to a variety of unbelievers and sinners and had no Bible. They were changed by an encounter with His character.If you expect to change people, you are better off allowing His character to speak through you rather than trying to hammer everyone with a stubborn stance on Biblical literalism. It just won't work.

Since you never quote me I never know what you are referring to, but my answer to this is that what we THINK we worship is not necessarily what in fact we ARE worshipping, and if the true God is not like the image of God we are worshipping then we are simply not worshipping God.If the true God is like Allah then the God of the Jews and the Christians is a false God. If the God of the Christians is like the true God then the God of the Jews and Muslims is a false God. It's an objective matter. Idolators often think they are really worshipping God.

The quote function was disabled to avoid excessive quotes. If it is too difficult to remember what you said only a short time before, too difficult to scoll a little waty up the page and too difficult to click the link to the previosu message then I woudl say that the lack of a complete quote is the least of your problems.In reply to your message, I would add that if your understanding of the entity you worship is crucial to identifying WHICH entity you worship then you have some serious problems. The worst is that the Christian God is suppsoed to be beyond human understanding. Thus if your argument is correct it would be impossible to worship Him - you would always be worshipping an idol - your own image of God, not the true God.

But this is the point, and I guess I'll rpeat it although I said it to you earlier.Being wrong about God, worshiping a wrong idea of God, is worshiping a false God, a different God than the real God, and that is idolatry.I understand that the terminology gets confusing. But I'm talking about ideas of God, images of God, concepts of God when I talk about different Gods. They are different Gods because we can ONLY worship what we conceive to be God, being unable to see God or know Him in any way except through what the various religions teach.Since the three religions' image of God contradict one another we have three different Gods in the sense of different ideas of God that people take to represent God. In one of them God has offered His Son, God like Himself, to pay for the sins of humanity; in the other two God does not have a Son, and the very idea is ridiculed, but requires obedience to certain laws and precepts. Judaism has denounced and anathematized Jesus Christ as a fraud at times in their history. Islam insists that Allah does not have a son. In Judaism God chose a man named Abraham to father a tribe of people through his son Isaac, who would represent Him on earth. In Islam He did not choose Isaac but Ishmael and God's name is not Yahweh but Allah, and the Bible is corrupted and only the Koran is correct, considered to be the newest revelation of God's will over the Bible.I would think it is obvious that these involve MAJOR differences in the concept of the personality and character of God, to the point that at least two of them have to be false concepts of the character of God, which is the same thing as idolatry.

This is all anybody can worship, the image or representation of God that is received through the various religions, as nobody can see God or know Him in any other way. It becomes crucial then that we have the true image of the true God to worship. The three religions contradict each other about God's character, so at least two of them give a false image to worship. You take your pick. All three cannot be the true representation.

I'm sure that you are relatively speaking more of an absolutist than a relativist but your posts are very often relativist nevertheless.You are asking me to give up the truth for a fuzzy lie.

I answered this post of yours to someone else instead. The answer is Message 142

Everything you said simply sounded like the Usual propaganda, minimizing the differences, maximizing the similarities as is commonly done, to support the idea that the three religions worship the same God. If you weren't doing this I still don't get what you WERE doing.If you are agreeing with me that two of the three main religions have to have a wrong idea of God, I can't get that out of what you wrote, but maybe I just have to come back later and reread it.

Hi Folks. This is the first time I've even opened this thread and haven't read it, though in my busy life I've been intending to get to it eventually. It is my opinion that Muhammed's vision was real and demonic, given that Muhammed, via this vision went about to do the opposite that Jesus, messiah of the NT taught, i.e, violence, et al. Likely it was inspired, but by a different/opposing spiritual entity than was the Bible.Edit for typoThis message has been edited by buzsaw, 04-27-2006 09:47 PM

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