Is God also Allaha and Jahawe?

[Disturbed]

If so, is Jesus the son of Allah?

If Christians, Jews and Muslims all pray to the same God why do they fight each other for thousands of years?

[LaurenG]

1. IMHO

The answer is yes. Particularly if one believes in one God. All paths lead home. That is why religious wars are stupid. We basically fight over the same energy or spirit.

A rose by any other name...

[batsauce]

2. or Irish Catholics or Irish Protestants

[universalcitizen]

3. I Am That I Am, was His reply when Moses asked His name. He doesn't

have a name that the human mind can comprehend and all attempts to do so are vain. Jesus called most of the religionists of His day hypocrites because, just like it always has been, men say they believe one thing but their actions prove they lie. They say that they believe in peace and they practice war. They say they believe in righteousness and yet they practice sin.

Therefore, they do not all pray to the same God, but instead pray to the god of their own imaginations, who answers with the manifestations of their own corrupt hearts.

My Father and faithful Husband says "Come out of this confusion, my people."

Will you?

[Mich Otter]

21. all attempts to do so are vain

What kind of silliness is it that a god would demand to be worshiped, kill people who don't worship to please the god but, then says, in effect, "you cannot know my name".
What if we all decide to call the god "the god known as Bob". Then we would all know who we were talking about and could get past the BS that the god has no name pronounceable by humans.
Whether or not we are capable of accurately pronouncing a name is a very specious argument. Any name can be used as long as there is agreement among everyone.

[Rainbowreflect]

4. Because, unfortunately most people prefer to concentrate on

their differences rather than what they agree on.
Small minds believe the only way they can be right is if every other point of view is wrong.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Well, Jesus called God "Allaha"

which is "God" in Aramaic, the language He spoke. I'm sure Jesus considers himself the son of the Creator, by whatever name you call him/her, just as we are all children of this same Divine Spark.

In the Dances of Universal Peace, we talk of this, and even chant different names for God as a counterpoint to singing/dancing the first line of the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, in hopes that by chanting

Allaha-Aramaic
Allah-Arabic
Elohim-Hebrew for the God Within
Elot-Ancient Middle Eastern Goddess

we can bring the different faiths together.

[Tux]

6. Yes

People fight over religion simply from ignorance. Most religions teach that only one can be right and all others are wrong. Thus, war can make ours right. That is false and certainly using religion for socio-political reasons. If they are so certain they are right, why are they so scared?

To me, all religions are right and wrong. To me, as a Deist, Divine can be seen in many ways depending on how you observe it. If you see 2 gods, there are 2 gods. If you see none, there are none. Just as light can be seen as particles or waves, the Divine can be viewed in many ways. So all religions' views of God are right yet wrong since the Divine is dependent on our limited understanding of it.

As for the Muslims and Christians fighting over religion, it's all about control which Abraham taught them well.

[aneerkoinos]

7. Answer

God and Allah mostly refer to the Supreme God, or Philosophers God; and or the Creator God, which are not necessarily the same thing.

Yahweh is the name of the tribal God of Israel.

Jesus called himself Son of the man.


People fight because they believe in borders between either or, and project that limited self-image outwords, over God.

[Disturbed]

8. Another concept that people have killed &/or tortured...

others over is the Tri-level deal: God the father, son and Holy Ghost. doesn't the 1st commandment state: Put no other gods before me? Isn't that admitting that there are other gods?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God"

Arab Christians call God "Allah."

In some of the early Hebrew scriptures, God is referred to as "Elohim," which comes from the same root and was originally a plural.

However, early on, the Jews developed a taboo against saying the name of God, which is always written only in consonants (YHWH) in the Hebrew Bible and never pronounced out loud. When Jews read the Bible aloud in Hebrew, they substitute "Adonai," which means "Lord." No one knows exactly how YHWH was originally pronounced, but it is believed to be related to the verb "to be," so that when God tells Moses, "My name is 'I Am,'" in the usual translation, the intention may be, "I am Existence Itself."

Before the time of Mohammed, the Arabs were polytheists. It is believed that Mohammed was influenced by his business contacts with Jews and Christians to embrace monotheism.

[supernova]

10. Yes, it's all different names for the same entity

We all worship the same God.

As to why we fight and kill each other over it. :wow: Beats me. Greater minds than I have pondered that for centuries.

[Governor]

18. or no god at all.

Perhaps the simplest answer to all the discrepancies is that gods are just man-made ideals.

Since people have different ideals, they'll have different gods and argue about which one is the true god.

I certainly see no reason to believe in any of the gods I've been shown, even though I did strongly believed for many years.

The deeper I studied, the harder I looked, the clearer that creation became. We created god.

[hecate77]

20. Arguing about god is simply a sign of imperfect faith (in whatever)

If you have doubts about your place in the scheme of things (however you want to phrase that) in terms of religion, politics, whatever, then you have a lack of faith. Sticking to the religious paradigm, then, if you have a lack of faith that you are on the right track, or believe the right things, or believe in the right god, or are doing what you have to do to be saved, good, compassionate, whatever, then you will often find a need to question other people's choices, since you are uncertain as to your own. The ones with the least faith are the ones who challenge others the most. A person who deeply believes they are connected to the divine (I use divine loosely), part of all creation in some inalienable way, will hardly bother to question anyone else's beliefs, and certainly would never be brought to the point of using violence to either defend their own belief or try to force it on anyone else.

Those of the least faith find the greatest need to declare that they are the chosen ones, that they are right, that their god is the only god, that all others are damned, etc. Those who are the most uncertain and most fearful of being wrong in their own hearts, are the ones who commit the most heinous crimes in the name of their god/government/social system.

After all, there really is only one message, whether you believe in some religion or not, if your relgion is secular humanism or devout Catholicism, whatever, the one thing that is clear in all of these is simply

Love everyone, no killing.

[Bill McBlueState]

11. who knows...

A Southern Baptist would say no; a Unitarian Universalist would probably say yes. Is there any way to decisively answer the question?

[htuttle]

12. Actually, I think ONLY a Southern Baptist would say no

Along with the Universalists, you'd want to add Catholics, mainstream Jews, Muslims and all Sikhs onto the side of 'all of those are the same God'.

I don't think anyone but Southern Baptists thinks that they are different 'beings'. At least I can't think of any that do.

[Bill McBlueState]

13. So is it subject to a majority vote?

It's fine if it is; I guess that's the way a lot of theological questions are answered.

I'm just trying to understand what it means to say that two gods are in fact the same god. As an atheist, it's hard for me to understand. Please don't take this example as trivializing the matter, but if we say that "The Big Unit" and "Randy Johnson" are the same person, it's easy to prove. But how does one show that two gods are the same?

[htuttle]

14. Seems to me that each organized religion defines itself...

...according to it's own methods, whether it's via 'councils' (like Nicea), or writ of the pope or other ecclesiastical leader(s), or reading the entrails of a slaughtered rooster, etc...

Some of them DO involve some people voting, I guess.

Whether the 'gods' are the same or not depends on what the religions itself decides. Islam, for example, is very clear about the fact that it is a continuation (or update) of the Jewish and Christian religions. Same with Sikhs. Different Christian sects decide whether they consider newer 'versions' of "Jehovah 2.0" are compatible with the version of Jehovah they are running, etc... It's up to each sect to decide using whatever methods it thinks are appropriate.

I suppose historians and anthropologists as a profession might also have a say on whether a particular 'god' is based on or related to previous versions. The Roman gods, for example, are commonly thought by historians to have been related to their Greek counterparts (ie., Zeus -> Jupiter, Ares -> Mars, etc...), but I'm not sure how ancient Greeks and Romans actually felt about it. Then when you bring Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung into it, there's still another way to look at the whole thing.

There obviously is no way to definitively (objectively?) say that two gods are the same or not, anymore than there is a definitive way to say that any particular god exists at all.

[Bill McBlueState]

16. I think you're onto something.

"Whether the 'gods' are the same or not depends on what the religions itself decides."

This is really the heart of the issue. In a multicultural world, practitioners of a religion need to be able to define their own beliefs. If Muslims say that Allah is the same god as the one who the Jews claim spoke to Abraham, then non-Muslims need to accept that. To say as some Protestant fundamentalists do, "No, Allah's really a Moon god," is intolerant and can only lead to friction.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all say there's one God

Judaism started the idea, Christianity took it up, and Mohammed was influenced by his contacts with Jews and Christians, although the pre-Islamic Arabs were polytheists.

Therefore, they're all the same God. If you're an Arab Christian, then Jesus IS the Son of Allah.

[Igel]

17. They fight each other because that one God gave them

very different sets of commands, and said incompatible sets of things to them.

The Allah/God/El nonsense is largely just linguistic twaddle. Just as medieval Russian monks believed God spoke Old Church Slavic, and some fundamentalists have been known to say that God spoke in KJV-style English, so some Arabs long ago believed Allah has always spoken the dialect of Arabic imputed to Mohammed, and that the full richness of the Qur'an can't ever be translated. The tradition stuck, and untranslated "Allah" it is.

But if the different gods say different things, with the explanation being "the others wilfully corrupted what God gave them", I have a problem with equating them. I don't believe that the Xian "Father" is the same as "Yahweh", but do accept continuity between the two faiths (more than probably anybody else on this board, in fact); I also don't buy that the Islamic "Allah" is the same as either of the other two. Muslims have to claim continuity, otherwise how can they tell Jews and Xians that Islam is merely Godspeak v. 1.0, with the OT being a badly corrupted alpha version, and the NT a similarly corrupted beta? I can see why Muslims would want to believe that. But in my opinion, the only reason Xians and Jews buy into it is to try to pretend the differences don't exist and pretend we live in some kind of magical ecumenical wonderland; I think it's better to discuss the differences than to ignore them.

My view, for what it's worth.

[Dcitizen]

19. The truth is the unknown, and the unknown is the knowing.

The first five books of Christian Bible is the books of phrophet Mose,
written around 17th century before Christ, which the name YHWH comes from. It means "Here I am". The word Allah means "One worthy God"
revealed by Archangel Gabreil to phrophet Mohammad (570 EC) in the Revelation of Qu'ran around 610 EC long after phrophet Mose's time.

The true name of the Creator can be found in the revealed scriptures of the Semitic languages was 60-94 Latin letters long, from one of the volumes of the books of Moses. Nobody claims to know how to pronounce this highest respected name or can memorize or sure the accuracy of the translation. Phrophet Moses also wrote about two dozen names of God/s in this volume, and the Creator is YHWH.

The Babylion oldest stone scripts called the Creator as Ea.
The New Testament still contains an element of its Semitic roots. Mathew 27:46 refers to God as being Eli, and its twin narrative, Mark 15:34, refers to God as Eloi.

In conclusion, Ea, El, Eli, Eloi, Eloh, Eloah, Alle, Elah, Alah, El-lah, Allah, or Allaah, all of these transliterations point towards one common name of the One God of the Hebrews, Arabs and mankind.