Way of the Mind

While it is common for the more fundamentalist believers to believe that following their religion (or even their variant) is the only way to be saved, more liberal believers tend to claim that Judaism, Christianity and Islam worship basically the same god, that they are just varying interpretations of the same deity, and of the same “truth”.

I beg to differ.

Yes, the three main monotheistic religions have the same historical origins. Both Christianity and Islam claim to be extensions of Judaism, revere the same patriarchs (such as Moses or Abraham), but then add new claims, and refuse some of the original ones. I am not disputing this fact. Even the two newer religions’ holy books either include parts of the old one, or are inspired by it.

But having the same historical origin doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the same religion, or that they worship the same god. Not when they claim that their god has completely different attributes — sometimes even opposing ones.

Think about it. Is God a being who needed the blood of his son (which is also himself) in order to forgive humanity for their sins? One religion says yes, the other two say no. And whether the answer is yes or no, it means God has a completely different character than he would have otherwise. Does he need blood, suffering and sacrifice in order to forgive? Or can he do it on his own? Is he the kind of being who believes that guilt can be passed from those responsible to an innocent, or is he not?

I can argue that a god who wants and needs a bloody sacrifice is very different from one who doesn’t. Unless God is schizophrenic, one can’t rationally argue that it’s the same god. Either he wants that, or he doesn’t — to say that he wants it from some of his believers and not from others is far too ridiculous. In other words, if Christianity is right about that facet of God, then Judaism and Islam must necessarily be wrong — and vice-versa.

It’s easy to find more examples. Take hell, for instance. To me, with my human imagination, I cannot imagine something worse, more terrible, than the idea of eternal punishment. Can you even grasp the meaning of “eternal”? Human minds can’t quite conceive of it. Even eternal boredom, without any actual, active torture, would be a fate infinitely worse than any kind of finite torture inflicted on Earth by the worst imaginable sadist. It also follows that there can be possibly no crime — even hypothetically — that warrants such a punishment. No finite action, no finite crime or “sin” is ever deserving of an eternal anything — much less eternal torture. It follows that a god who does inflict such a fate on even one sentient being would be more unjust, more sadistic, more evil than our minds can conceive of.

Yet, of the three monotheisms, two say God is that evil. The other one says otherwise (there is no hell in Judaism, and the Old Testament says several times that death is final). Can “more evil than we can conceive” be the same as otherwise? Either God is the ultimate sadist, or he isn’t; it’s absurd to claim that Jewish sinners die a final death, but Christians and Muslims go to a lake of fire and burn for eternity. If that was so, then either God was insane, or we’d have to be talking about two very different gods.

I could go on. Does God have a favorite group, a “chosen people”? One religion says he does, and therefore doesn’t actively attempt to recruit outside of it. The other two say differently.

I’m not claiming that there are three different gods, each one worshipped by its own religion. In fact, I don’t believe that even one exists (what with being an atheist and all). My point is that the three monotheisms worship vastly different gods, with vastly different personalities and desires. They can’t all be right, of course. In fact, even if one was right, the other two would have to be abysmally wrong — worshipping not just a slightly different variant of the same god, but one with completely different (and often opposite) traits. Despite the historical origins, whatever the three main religions worship these days can’t possibly be considered the same god — unless, of course, God is the ultimate case of multiple personality disorder.