How is it a straw man argument to say that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism

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kellygreentwig

New member
worship the same god? Someone earlier today asked if Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same god or different ones. I pointed out to them that they all come from the same source. Judaism came first, Christianity came from Judaism, and Islam in its own weird way comes from those two religions. I said that in addition to coming from the same source, they also worship the same violent god form who claims to be all loving so yes, it is the same god. The questioner tells me I'm creating a straw man argument. How is it a straw man argument?
 
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polskajason

Member
I can tell you that Judaism is different in some ways as a belief system, but it's the same God as worshipped in Christianity (well, not the Son of God and Holy Spirit trinity) and Islam.

Furthermore, Judaism does NOT require blind belief. Israel means "to wrestle with God" and as a Jew you're supposed to question everything about the faith, and Jews will have (and are allowed to have) different beliefs. However, most Christians (and ex-Christians) only know Judaism through the prism of their own religion and are constantly making the wrong assumptions about Judaism, i.e. that it's as dogmatic as Christianity or Islam.

And to the previous poster: there is no "hell" in Judaism and God doesn't punish anyone for not believing. Again, stop assuming things work the same in Judaism as they do in Christianity.
 
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AeMeDeG

New member
Christianity and Judaism share the same roots and the same Old Testament scriptures, but Judaism rejects Jesus as the Messiah, and as Jesus is regarded as God. Judaism rejects the Christian concept of a Triune God.

Islam claims to recognise Jesus as a prophet and the Messiah, but that is as far as it goes. Because Islam contradicts virtually everything else about Jesus. It rejects the Trinity, denies the historical Crucifixion of Jesus, denies the resurrection, denies that salvation is through the sacrifice of Jesus, and contradicts most of Jesus' teaching and example. Allah was originally one of the polytheistic gods of the Kaaba which was selected to represent the one God of Muhammad's new found monotheism. So the connection with the God of Christianity and Judaism is very tenuous and is based on the fact that Islam has taken some parts of the Bible, the Talmud etc. that suits it, and applied them to its god.
 
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Enigma

Member
Because the believers can't contemplate their "loving" god to be a mass murderer (smiting Sodom and Gomorrah, etc) and with human emotions like jealousy, anger and hate. An all-loving god who is petty enough to send non-believers to hell for not believing him.
But such traits betray the loophole that only men envisaged such god in their imagination replete with men's emotional vulnerabilities.
 
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