Board Thread:Board Room/@comment-6191837-20130227200639/@comment-6191693-20130312211826

1. Your taking issue with my remark would be much like taking issue with me saying that all possums are marsupials, like kangaroos. You could go on and on about how pretty much all other marsupials live in the southern hemisphere (mostly in or around Australia) etc., but your refusal to acknowledge what makes a marsupial a marsupial does not make a possum not a marsupial.

2. Actually, I did mean judge. You're basing your statement, which is primarily a moral one (a poor card to play in what should be an objective discussion), primarily on personal prejudices, saying that they can't worship the same God as you just because they worship Him differently. In fact, most of your arguments concern Jesus, who, quite frankly, is irrelevant to this argument. The belief in Christ's divinity determines whether or not you are a Christian, not whether or not we all worship the same deity, whether you call Him Yahweh, Yehowah, Jehovah, Adonai, Allah, or simply God.

A better way of wording this just occurred to me: It's a judgement call on your part because you're acknowledging that there are different ways of worshipping the same deity, so long as it's not too different.

3. See my marsupial analogy. And I am not merely "appeal[ing] to majority thinking" because, unfortunately, at least in the United States, the misunderstanding that you are subscribing to is so prolific that it is not majority thinking. I would provide you with more sources, but I don't recall the specific sources of everything I learned in college -- I was almost a religious studies minor and only chose German instead because I tested out of half of the minor program. I still took plenty of religious studies classes before that point, though, plus reading for my own interest I've done over the years. If there's any doubt I have in my statements, I try to be clear about it and if you have any doubts, you may feel free to elaborate or go elsewhere online to confirm or deny them.

a) Again, Christ is irrelevant to this discussion. The Jews believe Jesus was a heretic, yet you do not deny that they worship the same God as we do. The main thing that separates the three religions from each other is the way we regard Jesus (messiah, prophet, or heretic), not God the Father*, who is, like it or not, the same deity for all three of us. You cannot use Jesus as an argument that Muslims don't worship the same God as Christians unless you claim the same for the Jews -- something about which Jesus would disagree with you.


 * I use "God the Father" in this context out of convenience; I'm aware that neither the Jews nor the Muslims believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, but I was unsure of what other name to use in this context to differentiate Him from the Son. From this point on, for the sake of clarity, I will use the named used in Hebrew tradition, which is "Adonai." Side note: His actual proper name in Hebrew (יהוה ) is Latinized as YHWH, which is usually Anglicized as "Yahweh," which Jews are actully prohibited from speaking or writing in full, which is why I'm going to use Adonai.

b) While I admit Wikipedia is far from the best source in the world, it does often serve as a handy introduction to certain matters, such as your apparent unawaredness that the Muslims also believe in a Second Coming. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah#Islam

And again, I'll repeat that one's regard for Christ's divinity does not factor into one's regard for Adonai.

c) I also submit that there are Christians who do not believe in the Trinity, too. They still worship the same God (Adonai), but in a different way.

d) I'll skim over the bit about Jesus because I've grown tired of repeating his irrelevance to this discussion. Moving on to your analysis of the translation of "Allah": here is an opportunity where semantics are relevant, or, more specifically in this case, capitalization. All of those other gods your mentioned are what are sometimes referred to "small-'g'-gods," denoting a deity of a non-Abrahamic and/or polytheistic religion, serious or not, and are irrelevant to this discussion. "Allah" does translate directly to "God" with a capital "G"; "god" with a lower-case "g" in Arabic is "ʾilāh." In fact, while on that topic, why don't you do some reading on what the term "Abrahamic Religions" means. Again, Wikipedia is not a bad introduction, if not the best for details. Pay special attention to the "God" subsection.

@ Fox News: I think you misunderstand me. I did not intend to attack or discredit you by associating you with Fox News. I was only pointing out that the use of "Allah" by the general public as a way of differentiating "Allah" from "Adonai" stems from the media's similar usage of the word as a way of making Allah and Adonai appear to be two separate deities and, therefore, Othering those big, bad, scary Muslims who want to blow you up. Today, this is not always done on purpose, as most Americans are unaware of the real reasons why we use it, for example, yourself. I was not trying to insinuate that you yourself are guilty of intentional Othering, but rather an unfortunate victim of it. You've been spoon-fed this particular tactic most of your life and it's sadly been an overwhelming success in this country.

e) Well, I agree with the first part, at least, but Scriptural Literalism is an argument for another time.

f) ""If God is love, then why do bad things happen?" I never asked that. Your source claimed that "no sinners" would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which is simply untrue. We are to be Judged. How is one judged Worthy? It's not our place to say, but a reasonable (and common) simplification is that our sins will be weighed against our virtues, with repentance taken into consideration. At its core, this is not all that different from your own description of admission into Heaven in the Muslim faith; the only difference is we have Christ's Sacrifice helping us out. That doesn't make Allah different from Adonai, though; that's just a difference in how we treat Jesus.

It seems I was mistaken about Jews' beliefs in Hell -- I have a Jewish friend who told me that and I simply didn't realize that not all Jews believed that. Still, though, you yourself admit that some do. Still doesn't mean they don't still worship Adonai.

@ Demons: What does that have to do with anything?

g) Again, I was not trying to pin others' reputations on you. All I was doing was pointing back at my point about Othering; your mistaken differentiation between Adonai and Allah is the result of propaganda spread by men such as Bill O'Reilly and Pat Robertson, who are merely two of the worst perpetrators who happened to come to mind.