tallowood wrote on May 1^st, 2010 at 9:41pm:



I'll be an atheist tomorrow, because Sunday is the day of rest from religion. It's been quite an exhausting week. Pentecostalism in particular - all that jumping around and arm waving. I was glad to be Rastafarian, and just bum around the next day.

I had the most fun as a Hindu a couple of weeks ago on  the Vishu Festival. The fresh fruit was great. It's a pity they don't have any more festivals until June. I have a soft spot for Hinduism.

Buddha Purnima is coming up next weekend, and I'm really looking forward to that too. I have my oil lamps and gold leaf all ready.  

The concept of monotheism in Abrahamic religions is a fraud and is maintained by all three religions only from logical necessity.

However, this theological illusion of singularity is most useful to proselytising religions in persuading potential converts to embrace a new faith safe in the knowledge that the convert is worshipping the same god.

The gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are not the same, albeit those of Judaism and Islam are fraternal while the Christian god is more like their 3rd cousin - A little bit Jewish on his father's side and Pagan on his mother's.

mozzaok wrote on May 2^nd, 2010 at 10:32am:

Dunno about holding onto anything... "atheism" is not an object but a state of disbelief.

muso wrote on May 2^nd, 2010 at 6:40pm:

To step back a bit from the punchline…

Not henotheistic in their respective theology but each is somewhat crypto-henotheistic as evidenced by the at best thinly disguised rejection (at worst violent intolerance) of the others’ theologies – Not so true regarding Judaic attitude towards the others, but more so as far as Christianity and Islam are concerned. It is doubtful that Jews would accept the Christian god and Allah as Yahweh.

Nor polytheistic in their respective theology, at least indisputably not in Judaism and Islam but arguably crypto-polytheistic in Christianity with the doctrine of the trinity and veneration of the saints.

Each permutation of Abrahamic religion has arrogated the concept of monotheism to itself, adapting it to the cultural sensibilities of the people it first served. Each (Christianity and Islam), from logical necessity only, recognizes the others as worshipping the same, one god. But the god at the centre of each religion is different enough in temperament to be in fact an entity distinct from the others. Although it’s true to say that Yahweh and Allah are more fraternal in that they are both essentially warrior gods, while the Christian god is distinctly unwarlike.

The charade of oneness is betrayed by the fact that no religion truly tolerates the existence of the others (except where necessary) with two of the three committed to usurping and obliterating the others. Jews soon lost interest in pursuing Christians as Jewish heretics when it became clear that Christianity was a distinctly separate religion worshipping a god no devout Jew would recognize.

If one accepts that religions are human devised concepts, it is no great leap to assert that the god worshipped by one is not the same as the others. Given that Mohammed apparently had little knowledge of Judaism or Christianity, while Paul (and his successors) was determined to de-Judaise the nascent Christianity, the founders effectively created new gods.

NorthOfNorth wrote on May 2^nd, 2010 at 9:26am:



This is half-baked at best.

Platonism sounded the monotheistic bell separately from the Jews, although how much they both - Jews and Platonits - owe to earlier mystery religions and rites remains debatable.

The only relationship between Yahweh and Allah is that the latter is a parody, a misunderstanding of the former. That is the only kind of kinship you can attribute to them, apart from the geneology in genesis about that 'wild ass of a man' the father of the Arabs. Mohammed tried to do the 'Christian thing' of updating judaism for the jews but they laughed in his face and thought him a complete smacking prat. That made him murderously angry and so he killed the jews and got the phone call from Allan declaring the jews the sons of apes and monkies. In other words, he was first trying to ingratiate himself and got mad only when the jews told him to p!ss off.

Christianity is much more jewish than Islam. It is at the very least NOT a parody but a development of judaism. It is no acccident that it has been called a jewish superstition. It extends the 'chosen people of god' option to the gentiles through a new covenant.

Soren wrote on May 2^nd, 2010 at 8:38pm:

This is laughable at best given Christian theology. Mosaic law nearly all overturned. Dietary laws largely abolished, the requirement of circumcision abolished. The gross mistranslations of scripture in the gospels particularly in Matthew. The literal understanding of Jewish scripture by Christians where once were understood as metaphoric. The eventual adoption of Pagan rituals, the trinity, the crypto-adoration of saints, the Virgin birth, the death of the pretender Messiah by nailing to a tree, the resurrection, the rejection by Paul of all that was distinctly Jewish.

What Christianity arrogated from Judaism (and the only thing it ultimately really needed from Judaism) was the concept of monotheism, which, as you say, was in fact developing in Greece. However, for the learned Paul, it clearly wasn't logically acceptable to simply ignore the already established monotheistic Judaism... For him the One in Greece had to be the same as the One in Jerusalem, otherwise he'd have had to argue away the problem of two... But he was always ready to ditch Jewish rites in favour of whatever was more acceptable to non-Jews.

Soren wrote on May 2^nd, 2010 at 8:38pm:

Understandable that Mohammed in his mission to usurp monotheism would seek approval from monotheists first before attempting the much greater challenge of de-polytheising the Arabs, not to mention that it would have greatly enhanced his chances with the polytheists were he able to claim communion among old monotheists with his new monotheism.

Given that Mohammed lived close to the time of the resurgence of the Roman Empire under Justinian, its probable that he expected Jews outside the empire to have considered him an ally against a common religious enemy - Christianity.

Soren wrote on May 2^nd, 2010 at 9:42pm:

Then it is not a sect of Judaism nor anything like Judaism and the Christian god is about as much like Yahweh as Mars is like Krishna.