Posted on 04/19/2016 8:52:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Most Americans say they believe in God. And around the world, religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims all say they believe in God, as do many people who do not identify with any formal religion.
But this statement is actually meaningless. To cite but one example, the God in whose name Muslims cut innocent people’s throats and rape women cannot be the same God as the God of those who believe that God hates such actions.
Who, then, argues that all those who say they believe in God believe in the same God?
Two groups make this argument. The first consists of people who have an anti-religious agenda; in order to discredit God and religion, they say that all believers believe in the same God. The second group consists of people who have an “inclusion” agenda and wish to depict Muslims as believing in the same God that Jews and Christians do. (And some Muslims do indeed believe in the same God as Jews and Christians — see below.)
So, then, how are we to know whether any two people who say they believe in God in fact do?
I will answer as a believing Jew: How do I know if another person believes in the same God as I do?
I ask the following three questions:
1. Do you believe in the “God of Israel”?
Those who cannot answer this question in the affirmative do not believe in the same God that believing Jews and the majority of believing Christians do. As for Muslims, they should have no problem answering in the affirmative. But in our time, at least, many wouldn’t.
The God of Israel is, among other things, the God introduced to the world by the Jews and their Bible: the God who created the world, revealed Himself to the Jews, and made His moral will known through the Ten Commandments and the Hebrew Prophets.
2. Does the God you believe in judge the moral behavior of every human being?
There are many people today who say that they believe in God but not in a God who judges people’s actions. These people do not believe in the same God that traditional Jews and Christians worship. Those who believe in a God that is indifferent to the moral behavior of human beings believe in a “God” that is so different from the God introduced by the Jews that they might as well use a word other than “God.”
This does not mean that such people cannot be fine upstanding people (any more than everyone who believes in a morally judging God is necessarily a fine upstanding person). But in general they are less likely to be moral for the obvious reason that most human beings act better when they believe their actions will be judged (by God or by man).
At the same time, one need not be a Jew, Christian, or Muslim in order to believe in the God who judges people’s moral behavior. Benjamin Franklin was one such individual. He did not affirm the Christian creed, but he did believe in the morally judging God introduced by the Bible.
One might argue that violent Islamists also believe in a judging God and that Torquemada, the infamous head of the Spanish Inquisition, did. But this argument is not valid, because Islamists do not believe — and Torquemada did not believe — in a God who judges people by their moral conduct, but solely by their faith, a faith that they alone determined God approves of.
For the record, Jews never believed — and the Jews’ Bible never suggested — that one must believe in Judaism or be Jewish in order to be favorably judged by God.
3. Do you believe in the God who gave the Ten Commandments?
This question needs to be asked. After all, if God never revealed his moral will, how do we know what behaviors God demands from us and what He judges?
Finally, what about all those people who answer the three questions affirmatively but who have additional theological beliefs that separate them from others who believe in these three things? Do they believe in the same God?
For example, what about Christians who believe in the God of Israel, the God who morally judges human actions and who revealed the Ten Commandments — but who also believe, by definition, in the Christian Trinity? Do they believe in the same God as Jews and other non-Christians who believe in these three things? I think they do. And the same would hold true for a Muslim who believes in those things but also believes that the Koran is the only fully valid revelation.
Whether or not one uses these three criteria, we should all at least acknowledge that saying one believes in God tells us nothing about the God one believes in. And regarding faith, that is what matters.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code, was published by Regnery. He is the founder of Prager University
We can't even define it completely.
“I believed in Santa Claus and the easter bunny when I was 4.
God is the same.”
That was lost on lightweights like Newton and Pascal. A shame they didn’t possess your incisive intellectual powers.
Jews and Christians, yes; Muslims, no.
Duhh...'cause he WAS seeing a devil?
imagine if newton didn’t live without the risks of being exposed as a skeptic and burned as a witch. we’d have been space faring between stars 200 years ago
No.
“imagine if newton didn’t live without the risks of being exposed as a skeptic and burned as a witch. “
You mean like the skeptic Voltaire, who lived at the same time and yet mysteriously lived a long and irreligious life? I guess no one could find the matches.
But then skepticism has absolutely nothing to do with Newton anyway. Newton had a fascination with Christian prophecy and fully half of his extensive writings deal with the subject.
One thing I enjoy about amateur atheists is that they will say the stupidest things as long as it conforms to their prejudices.
and I was commenting on the article, not to you as such....
“The late, great Lawrence Auster used to call Dennis a confused liberal. And in fact Dennis used to correct callers who referred to him as a conservative- he is and was a ‘60s RFK liberal. People seem to conflate religious observance with conservatism more than is warranted.”
You have no idea what your talking about. It’s funny.
Oh yeah? Well I heard it from Dennis himself on more than one occasion, but what would he know compared to you.
“One thing I enjoy about amateur atheists is that they will say the stupidest things as long as it conforms to their prejudices.’
I take it you were a fan of Torquemada.
Or the god that has no proof.
Religious people say and believe the most idiotic of things, like condoning and approving of unjust human sacrifice in order to get into a place they must first admit that they shouldn’t go to begin with, and think that god is such an idiot they can fool him by wearing a jesus-skin suit.
BUT the they claim jesus only was dead for a day or two and so really there wasn’t a sacrifice only a temporary inconvenience.
1 John 2:22-23 NABRE http://bible.com/463/1jn.2.22-23.NABRE
” I take it you were a fan of Torquemada.”
Unsurprisingly, you are wrong again.
Guessing is no substitute for knowledge, despite your obvious preference for it.
Guessing is no substitute for knowledge, despite your obvious preference for it.”
faith=guessing
knowledge= proof
Exactly. Those who reject the Lord can not possibly worship the Lord.
How about a 3rd option? One that’s much cheaper....keep them out.
Let me clarify.
By quarantine I mean keeping ALL the moslems locked into the moslem countries. A moslem should NEVER be allowed out of the Mideast (or possibly Indonesia). No copy of the Koran should be allowed to exist in the free world. I'd go so far as to cut off all trade and communication with moslem countries.
By eradication I mean that every moslem (men, women, children, dogs, pigs camels, the whole nine yeards!) must be killed. Every copy of the koran destroyed. wipe it from mankind's history.
your talk of “quarantining” and “eradicating” has been used by neo-cons and liberal interventionists as an excuse to send lots of troops and money around the world
They have NEVER considered either quarantine (why are there still moslems in the west if they had?) or eradication (why are there still moslems at all?)
If Europe doesn’t want to keep them out, then let them fall...but don’t waste one dime subsidizing their defense costs.
Europe is not my problem. If they want to fall to the plague then let them. However the moment a nuclear country becomes moslem dominated we would have to carpet nuke them for our own security.
What we have is an infectious plague (islam) that is worse than rabies. enabling it's carriers to live and spread is a crime against God and humanity.
“That is one huge leap to be made.”
It’s not that huge. The politics of that region have been dominated by western powers since before WW I. As for the oil purchases....a very small number are made extremely rich. The oligarchies over there have been largely established and funded by western powers. If the same were happening here, there would be the same resentment. One need only take the example of someone like George Soros and multiply it many fold to imagine the reaction.
But that’s neither here nor there. The bottom line is that Islamic culture is not one that I want to live in/under. To prevent the spread of that culture we need immigration controls.
Next, we need to stop subsidizing the security of European nations that are hell bent on proving how intellectually and morally superior they are for embracing multiculturalism.
Lastly, the biggest enemy to religious liberty (and really all the liberties that I care about) is the secular Left...not Islam.
“By eradication I mean that every moslem (men, women, children, dogs, pigs camels, the whole nine yeards!) must be killed. Every copy of the koran destroyed. wipe it from mankind’s history.”
Let’s stick to options that are at least reasonably feasible. Your solution would turn the whole world against us, since it’s basically a version of the “Final Solution”.
A shame that you know so little about either.
But seeing as there isn’t a comic book series on epistemology it’s not like you would have blundered across it in your extensive forays into deep thinking.
How many Gods are there???
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