Do Christians and muslims worship the same God?

[Umbran]

I can deny my parentage. Hell, I'd like to. That doesn't change my source. As I said previously the three fork from the same original stories. They differ in interpretation, not source.

That's taking it as a matter of history and mythology, first of all.

But, even then, consider this - we are not discussing whether they all come from the same root. We are discussing if the gods are the *same entity* in some sense.

Using your own analogy - you are not the same individual as your mother, are you? No, you are not. You are a mixture of your mother, and your father, and your upbringing, that lead to a completely separate individual - you may share some similarities to your ancestors, but you are not the same person. So, apply that to the Abramamic god(s). The Judaic god gets reformed into the Christian god. As myth and literature, Islam borrows from Judaism directly, and from Christianity, and from Persian and Arabic mythology, and changes it all and wraps it up together to get Allah.

Now, at any of these steps, as mythology and literature go, we might call the god the same entity, or we might say that the changes at one or more of those steps yields an entity that is sufficiently different from what came before as to not be the same thing.

As a pretty direct analogy, we will take the Norse god Odin.

The Odin most of us know is a war god, king of the Norse pantheon, called "All-father". He's the Big Cheese of the pantheon. But, note that the Norse didn't always have him that way. The war-god Odin is the god of the late, Viking-Norse. To the earlier Norse, before the Viking period, however, his brother Tyr was the king of the pantheon - and Tyr was more a god of justice than war (not strange, for a people who had not yet turned to aggression and raiding as a notable economic pillar). Odin had a role in the stories more equivalent to Hermes or Mercury - the messenger deity, rather than the king and war god.

If we told a story of the old Odin, without naming him, you probably wouldn't recognize him. The Odin we are most familiar with has the same name, and is said to have some of the same history, but some events previously ascribed to Tyr and others then gets ascribed to Odin, and he was transformed enough that he even takes a different role in the mythology - it would be reasonable to say that the older version really was a different entity by the same name.

And all that is setting aside the more philosophical and theological question - say one or more of the gods of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam *actually exist*. Are they actually all worshiping the same being?

 

[Ryujin]

It's more like a modern story taking it's cues from an ancient story, but people who read the modern version not knowing about the original when they read the new one. Whether or not they know where the inspiration came from is meaningless in the context of its actual origin.

They all worship the same God; just in different ways.

 

[Umbran]

It's more like a modern story taking it's cues from an ancient story, but people who read the modern version not knowing about the original when they read the new one. Whether or not they know where the inspiration came from is meaningless in the context of its actual origin.

They all worship the same God; just in different ways.

I think that's a bit of a reductionist way to think of it. By that logic, they *really* all worship Ra, but don't realize it.

 

[Ryujin]

I think that's a bit of a reductionist way to think of it. By that logic, they *really* all worship Ra, but don't realize it.

Well that route goes more into the death and resurrection thing.

 

[billd91]

That's taking it as a matter of history and mythology, first of all.

But, even then, consider this - we are not discussing whether they all come from the same root. We are discussing if the gods are the *same entity* in some sense.

I'm not sure why there's much discussion. Each newer follow-on to the Abrahamic tradition has been pretty clear that they're worshipping the same god as the guys ahead of them. It's the old geezers who don't like change yelling at the kids to get off the lawn who deny it and they really don't get a definitive say in the matter when their descendent say they're worshipping the same god, but a bit differently.

 

[Displacer Kitten]

Yes, but they worship him differently. Historically, Islam has been accepting of Christianity and other monotheistic religions, but for many groups that is not the case today. Christianity has not been accepting of Islam until recently, and even now many Christians and Christian groups are not.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, and they're given different names because they're different human experiences. And while a person may not be able to tell the difference for various reasons (low light, a defect in the eye, whatever), when they're measured objectively it will be found that, sure enough, there are differences.

Is "different things are different" really a controversial statement around here?

Green lights at stop lights are called blue lights in Japan. Is the "go" light green or blue? It is the same light.

 

[delericho]

Green lights at stop lights are called blue lights in Japan. Is the "go" light green or blue? It is the same light.

As far as I can tell, that's an artefact of the development of the language, and not an inability to distinguish the two colours - colour-blindness appears to be no more prevalent in Japan than elsewhere.

And that actually goes to support the point I made all those pages ago: although a quirk of language may lead to two different things being given the same label, that doesn't make those two things the same. The "blue light" in Japanese traffic lights, removed from the context of a traffic light, is green.

By the same token, a trinitarian and a unitarian both put the same label on the being that they worship (God). But if the traits that they ascribe to that being are significantly different, there comes a point at which it's hard to say it's the same being.

A group playing 3e and a group playing 4e are both playing D&D. But they're not playing the same D&D. Are they playing the same game?

What about a group playing d6 Star Wars, one playing d20 Star Wars, and one playing FFG Star Wars? They're all playing Star Wars, clearly, but are they playing the same game?

 

[Umbran]

Well that route goes more into the death and resurrection thing.

Yes. Those are certainly aspects of the Christian God. And you say they all worship the same god. Therefore...

That's what I mean by it being reductionist. You are reducing a possibly complex problem into only one axis of simplified logic.

 

[Staffan]

As far as I can tell, that's an artefact of the development of the language, and not an inability to distinguish the two colours - colour-blindness appears to be no more prevalent in Japan than elsewhere.

And that actually goes to support the point I made all those pages ago: although a quirk of language may lead to two different things being given the same label, that doesn't make those two things the same. The "blue light" in Japanese traffic lights, removed from the context of a traffic light, is green.

Except it actually does affect people's perceptions. People have made experiments with some tribes that use different "base" colors in their language, so they draw their conceptual lines between colors in different places. That makes it easy for them to distinguish some shades that, to us, are very hard to tell apart, but it makes it hard for them to tell others apart that are completely different for us.