Religion

Rants

Oct 26

Written By

I'm famously annoyed with religion if you know me well enough. I did the heresy week and formally left the Catholic Church almost a decade ago because I was too annoyed with it.Honestly, I feel that religion is something of a crutch. It explains things that most people don't want to spend the mental and emotional effort to explain using alternate ideas. Getting to the truth is a taxing burden. Now I'm not going to say that there isn't anything good that can come out of faith -- certainly many good things have come from people who are deeply connected to the ideas they believe in. (Though I think they would have been just as good without religion as well, but that's not something that can be measured)But what turns me off more than religion is not understanding whatever faith you claim to be an adherent of.I was involved in a debate with someone who claimed that the Christian god was not the same god as the God of Judaism and the God of Islam.What?All three are Abrahamic faiths that grew on the same vine.

When I'm using capital-G "God" I'm talking about the entity that people worship. The constitution of that entity is different between the Abrahamic religions, but the underlying entity, the creator, remains consistent.In terms of Christianity, since the Torah (aka the Pentateuch - the first five books of the Christian bible) is shared between it and Judaism, ipso facto God, the creator, is the same.For Islam:

Islam teaches that God is the same god worshipped by the members of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Judaism (29:46)

Quoting the translation of the Quran of that verse:

And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best, except for those who commit injustice among them, and say, "We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you. And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him."

How can they not share the same God?I don't care if you do or don't believe in a god or this God. But you have to understand the history of what it is you're in the business of believing in. Moreover, don't start wielding your god as a weapon when you yourself don't know what it is you're talking about.Underlying all this -- be a good person. It shouldn't take threat from your God(s) to force you to be a good person, you should be a good person because it's the right thing to do. But if your faith helps out and helps you be good, I'm not going to try to talk you out of it.And for the love of God, fucking stop killing one another over your God. The God of the main faiths on this planet said to not kill people -- at least believe and act on that if nothing else.