A Christian professor from Wheaton College has been censured for wearing a Habayyah in solidarity with her Muslim counterparts. The College claimed she violated their “evangelical Statement of Faith.” by publicly stating that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God”.
The irony (and ignorance) of this is that she was literally correct.
Allah translates directly to “the God” or more correctly, “THE God” (In the sense of the “one and only”). Arabic Christians and Arabic-speaking Jews also refer to God as “Allah”.
The Koran contains numerous references to a number of persons who also appear in the Bible. Some of these appear in the list that follows:
(Notice that most of their names are very similar in Arabic and English)
Ādem (Adam); Idrīs (Enoch); Nūḥ (Noah); Ṣāliḥ (Salah); Ibrāhīm (Abraham); Lūṭ (Lot); Ismāʿīl (Ishmael); Isḥāq (Isaac);
Yaʿqūb ( Jacob); Yūsuf (Joseph); Ayūb (Job); Dhul-Kifl (Ezekiel); Shuʿayb (Jethro); Mūsā ( Moses); Hārūn (Aaron); Dāūd (David); Sulaymān (Solomon); Yūnus (Jonah); Ilyās (Elijah); Alyasa (Elisha); Zakarīya (Zechariah); Yaḥyā (John); Īsā (Jesus); Miryam (Mary).
original stories
Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are all based on what is referred to as the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the old testament). The books were originally recorded on clay tablets by the Sumerians, and then translated into Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and eventually the King James version in English. The similarities of the names you mentioned are indeed the result of these being the same stories.
One major difference from the originals to today is the monotheism, which was introduced sometime in the (later) first millennium BCE, and then wielded as a political tool. Before that the stories were polytheistic and make sense as the acts of many gods and goddesses rather than the schizophrenic ramblings of a single bearded white male god.
“Allah” comes from the ancient Semitic root for god or (war)lord, “El” in Canaanite. (Remember the Canaanites? They were the people that suffered one of the first recorded genocides when the upstart deity “Yahweh” told the Hebrews to kill them all and steal their land. We know them today as the Palestinians.) The original name for god in Hebrew is Elohim, which is the single male root “el” with a plural feminine suffix, so the word really means “gods and goddesses.”
Cripes, when is this species going to move on…???
This is a good example of what a real mess this whole muddled business of god/goddesses/divinities/etc., really is. It begs the question; does anybody really need gods at all?
Can’t people stand on their own two feet using the pretty damn good mind in our brains that women helped to give us through the evolutionary widening of her hips to accommodate our big brains to pass through her birth canal??
While I think it’s great that we have logic and vivid imaginations, we should put ourselves to better use than all this rubbish about the derivatives what god was who, what was “his” names, who wrote about the god when, in what languages in the many and various versions, and on and on and on.
Cripes, when is the species going to move on and leave these mythologies behind us and realize the real value of our intelligent, proficient, first-rate and gifted minds????
stories
The Sumerians didn’t believe in gods. The Sumerians “served” the “lords.” The Sumerians make it clear they were talking about flesh and blood beings that like to eat and have sex, especially with humans. They traveled about in aerial vehicles. The ancients were not making up gods, but describing experience. Subsequent translations have changed the original meanings of these stories. Servitude came first, religion came later as a tool of social control, but it does not invalidate the original experiences.
The older a culture is the less I would trust their claims
Original experiences?? Describing an experience, by word of mouth or in writing does, not make a valid experience.
I put very little stock in the ancients. Especially if they made claims the “lords” they “served” traveled around in “aerial vehicles.”
I’m not denying the possibilities of ancients achieving air and space flights. Maybe they did. If so, it is not well documented, nor historically or scientifically accepted and established as fact, insofar as duration and integrated flight usage in a society. Of course, Leonardo Da Vinci, the best known for aerial considerations by historical people is quite real and closer to our times, not particularly ancient.
I’m not about to “believe” the Sumerians. The older a culture is the less I would trust their claims as truth. I certainly do not depend on the ancients for real world and real time accuracy.
I can’t even trust everything we read or are told in modern times, I’m certainly not going give ancient cultures their due or precedence, especially as it applies to the current world humans live in. More importantly, they oftentimes have very little real world applications in our day-to-day existence…which by the way, is all that most people care about.
Divine Chariots
“Chariots of the Gods?” is a book published in 1968 by German author Erich von Däniken. It involves the hypothesis that the technologies and religions of many ancient civilizations were given to them by ancient astronauts who were welcomed as gods.
According to von Däniken, humans considered the technology of the aliens to be supernatural and the aliens themselves to be gods.
Von Däniken asks if the oral and literal traditions of most religions contain references to visitors from stars and vehicles travelling through air and space. These, he says, should be interpreted as literal descriptions which have changed during the passage of time and become more obscure. Examples include Ezekiel’s vision of the angels and the wheels, which he interprets as a description of a spacecraft, the Ark of the Covenant, which is explained as a communication device with an alien race, and the destruction of Sodom by fire and brimstone, which is interpreted as a nuclear explosion.
Von Däniken attempts to draw an analogy with the “cargo cults” that formed during and after World War II, when once-isolated tribes in the South Pacific mistook the advanced American and Japanese soldiers for gods. Courtesy: Wikipedia
Mistook is a good way to say it
As you might know, Sagan would never accept von Däniken’s hypotheses, as he indicates here:
“That writing as careless as von Däniken’s, whose principal thesis is that our ancestors were dummies, should be so popular is a sober commentary on the credulousness and despair of our times. I also hope for the continuing popularity of books like Chariots of the Gods? in high school and college logic courses, as object lessons in sloppy thinking. I know of no recent books so riddled with logical and factual errors as the works of von Däniken.”
— Carl Sagan, Foreword to The Space Gods Revealed [Story 1980, pp. xi-xiii]
religion and science
While religion has killed many, many people, science has now taken the mantle away. Pollution from glorious scientific progress kills 19,000 people a day. So is the bigger threat brainwashed terrorists, or the unrelenting death of materialistic progress?
Don’t misconstrue this as an argument for religion–it is not. The non-physical realms of reality are more profound than any religion can describe.
I know you're not a proponent of religion(s)
I know you’re not a proponent of religion(s)However, you are clearly belief-dependent.
And, I am well acquainted with the misuse of science. That doesn’t make science at fault. An analogy might be, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
The True God is One That Makes One
Interesting discussion. In the early Church it was said of them, “And all that believed were one. They had all things in common and there was not a needy person among them. They sold all they had, shared all they possessed and were being perfected to have a common heart soul and mind! All as a result of the love that had been poured out in their hearts for one another.
It was all that John Lennon (in my opinion and search) was speaking about in “Imagine All the People Living Life As One”.
Melevav
Belief-dependents are the most divided peoples on this planet
The notion of homogeneous believers as one (“all that believed were one, had all things in common”) is that it is truly misstated and definitely wrong. (It actually is ridiculous, something only a dreamer believer would say.)
If anything belief-dependents are the most divided peoples on this planet. The Jukrislim perpetual wars are the best example of the dangerously divisive believers.
The worst part of it is that believers can never be united, as evidence by the vast array of beliefs and spiritual/religious people, who rarely agree on anything, much less everything. Even within individual spiritual/religionist groups very few seem to agree on every established tenet. (It’s called cherry-picking your beliefs.). Not to mention the various so-called “interpretations.”
Moreover, the word love is one of the most used and abused words in most languages. In essence it really has no real meaning and most of the time the alleged love is a real washout. It also varies day-to-day, and very unreliable to boot.
Growing up as a Beatle fan, I can’t help feeling put off by your using John Lennon, more than once on these pages, to back up your religious personal belief-dependent views. Yet, if Lennon truly ‘believed’ people should live life as one (as opposed to using it as a lyrical license) I’d stand in opposition to him, too.
beliefs
I think instead of “belief-dependent” you mean belief in religion. Everyone has beliefs. We’ve had this discussion before and you claimed you didn’t have any beliefs. Again, read Yale professor emeritus Henry Margeneau’s “Nature of Physical Reality” Everyone has a belief system, or reality tunnel, which they inhabit. With the nature of perception in cannot possibly be otherwise.
I think the point you are trying to make is that your beliefs are based on scientific theory, but it’s still belief. And while the scientific method is an invaluable tool for understanding the universe, it is still fraught with assumptions based on beliefs and littered with propaganda of corporate progress.
Only a believer would claim that “Everyone has beliefs.”
We’re going to have this discussion again.
Only a believer would claim that “Everyone has beliefs.”
I did not mean “belief in religion.” I meant “belief-dependent.” It is well establish as a part of my philosophical outlook.
I’m not the only nonbeliever. Like me many of us do not -believe in believe.- Naturally, we are referring belief in the context of spiritualisms and religions.
I don’t care what Margeneau says. Let him speak for himself. He does not speak for me. Nor do I think he can speak for all humans.
Reality tunnel? Really. Gee, whatever happened to just good old plain “reality.” I see no reason for the human mind’s perception of reality, it’s own or the really around them, to inhabit a tunnel.
I know enough about science that it is the best self-correcting, peer-review, and experiential analysis of reality, no matter how much it may be tainted with corporations or scientists who are also believers.
ignorance
It must be nice to be the only person in the world to not have beliefs. In one sentence you praise science and the next you dismiss the scientific fact (yes, fact) of how human consciousness creates belief systems. If you will not read the existing literature and debate on the subject your opinion does not carry much weight. I’m glad you made up a new phrase and called it a philosophy, but that is not how science works. You refuse to read the scientific experts on the subject and just blithely say “let Margeneau speak for himself.” Well, he speaks for the scientific establishment.
“Like me many of us do not -believe in believe”
What does that really mean? You don’t believe in the concept, or the word?
“Reality tunnel” is a term used in the discussion of perception for decades. That’s right, there is already a whole field of discussion on perception and beliefs. Read it sometime, it might be enlightening. Unlike you, I did not make up a term and call it fact. A reality tunnel is reflecting the perciever’s beliefs. And if you say you don’t believe in that, I would say I don’t believe in your intelligence, and that would carry the same logical weight.
Do we have anyone here with experience in psychology/neurology to offer their view?
The term “Jukrislim” stands
Let’s be clear:
I am not the only person who is a nonbeliever. What world do you live in to make such a claim?
If you can’t understand the statement that “I do not believe in believe’” then just move on.
I didn’t dismiss or deny that human consciousness creates belief systems. What do you think I see as the problem? Too many people “create belief systems.” That –is- the problem!
You have no idea what I’ve have read or not. Please do not speculate.
In any case, what does “Margeneau speaks for the scientific establishment” mean? The phrase “scientific establishment” is pretty damn broad. Moreover, I never said that the “scientific establishment” speaks for me, or that everything science makes public is something I always subscribe to, including your Margeneau fellow.
What you believe” about me is irrelevant and of no consequence.
I made no claim my Jukrislim term was based on science. I did not say it was a fact, I said it is a term I use to describe the three religions as “one.” Except for occasionally referencing “one” of the three religions, I typically would not dignify any one of the three religions by name. By doing so it gives them standing that they don’t deserve. They are “one” religion. The term “Jukrislim” stands.
The fact that there is a “whole field of discussion on perception and beliefs” does not mean it follows that it is applicable to everyone. It is not.
I would welcome “anyone here with experience in psychology/neurology to offer their view.” This is an author driven open dialogue, which includes the comments section.
no perception
Ok, you just claimed that perception and belief are not applicable to you and perhaps others. You can’t just opt out of perception and beliefs. It’s like a high rise building opting out of the steel framework.
Your speculation is not verifiable
Beliefs are not a part of my framework. There is nothing to opt out of.
However, perception is obviously a part of the human consciousness, therefore, it is certainly a part of, with few exceptions, the human consciousness.
It is not a given that beliefs are a part of every human consciousness.
Your speculation is not verifiable……
Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. In other words, belief is when someone thinks something is reality, true, when they have no absolute verified foundation for their certainty of the truth or realness of something. ~ Oxford Dictionaries – definition published by OUP [Retrieved 2015-08-08]
Jukrislims.- A Perpetual Death Culture
In reference to Tom’s original piece above – “The irony (and ignorance) of this is that she was literally correct” that A Christian professor publicly stated that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God”.
That is precisely why for the past ten years I coined term “Jukrislims.” I see the Jews, Christians and Muslims not only worshiping the same god, but, for all intents and purposes they are one religion.
They are one religion with one god. The fact that they broke into three dominant Sects is why this family of monotheism are the most dangerous people on our planet. They have established a perpetual Death Culture that has been and is now killing us and our planet.
Perpetual Death Culture
“They are one religion with one god. The fact that they broke into three dominant Sects is why this family of monotheism are the most dangerous people on our planet. They have established a perpetual Death Culture that has been and is now killing us and our planet.”
There’s a lot of truth to this statement.
And it’s easy to see that the ensuing wars between the sects are enriching a very small number of already very rich families who may or may not subscribe to any of the three dominant sects you mention.
It’s also easy to hypothesize that these very rich families and individuals, let’s call them “elites” are deliberately exploiting the divisions between the sects to enrich themselves enormously, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, if, indeed, they have any.
My point is that it’s not about religious beliefs; it’s about wealth, and the concentration of that wealth to the detriment of ALL the rest of us that don’t belong to the elites.
Welcome to the NEW WORLD ORDER .
The death culture lives...
Yes, the religious believers are the cement that holds the infrastructure together that the “elites” own and operate, that also perpetually enriches them, while the believers and other sheeple get sucker punched every generation.
The irony isn’t lost when you see that historically it was Christian monasteries that invented incorporation’s to indemnify themselves and church properties from personal/property liability.
The new world order actually began back them.
What a trail of debris is left in its wake. It also ensures that the trail will continue to grow, hence, the death culture of the elite lives…
We're on our way Vidda
We will Vidda. As soon as we evolve along enough and the superior and productive members of our society can reign in true freedom to do as we please.
Hey, just like the Nazi’s eh?
If you say so, mr. mike.
If you say so.