(January 5, 2019 at 6:32 am)T0 Th3 M4X Wrote: If you take Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the proponents all generally believe in a Creator/God. A lot of the variations in belief surround Jesus. The Hebrew people believed that a glorious king would come, so many don't accept that Jesus is the Son of God, because he was humble in origin. Obviously Christians do believe he is the Son of God. Islamic Muslims believe he was merely a prophet. Understanding can also be tricky because God is believe to exist as three persons, but they are also unified. One of the struggles too, if you're using and English translation of the Bible, is that instead of translating to the specific names, which are descriptive, we usually just see "God."
Sure, the Abrahamic faiths all purport to worship the same god. But the question I was trying to formulate was: Assuming that the one Abrahamic god exists (as you believe) how can you assume that the Jews and Apostles are the only ones who have related to him and properly described him? When a Hindu saint describes Brahman in the Vedas, how can you be sure that he isn't describing the entity you call Yahweh?
The criticism that I am thrusting at the Judeo-Christian doctrine is that it not only posits that the authors of the Bible accurately describe God (which entails faith in people, not just God) but it also monopolizes God. To believe that the Bible accurately describes God is one thing. To assume that the Christians and Jews are the only ones who have had contact with God is quite another.
Some time ago, I posted a more exhaustive version of the argument here. If you're in the mood to look it over, I'd at least like to hear your opinion on it. It's a real sticking point with me, and one of the reasons I find religion so nonsensical. It just doesn't add up. Long story short, I find it incomprehensible that the God who created the great wide cosmos would be so petty as to not communicate with mystics who fail to call him by his proper Jewish name.
Hence (to me) it seems more rational to conclude that "religion" is merely a petty device that the ancients adopted to distinguish insiders from outsiders. And it serves much the same purpose today. (Not that I think religion is entirely reducible to that or anything. But that explains a lot, doesn't it?)
