Bush's Remark About God Assailed: Evangelical Christian leaders expressed dismay yesterday over President Bush's statement that Christians and Muslims worship the same god, saying it had caused discomfort within his conservative religious base. [...]
Bush's remarks sent immediate shock waves through Christian Web sites and radio broadcasts. A Baptist Press report quoted Richard D. Land, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, as saying that Bush "is simply mistaken."
"The Christian God encourages freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health. The Muslim god appears to value the opposite."
Yes, because we should judge a religion by it's worst-case nutcases, rather than the majority of it's believers...
So the worst-case Christian nutcases encourage freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health?
correct! the rest encourage the opposite :P
And here I thought he was going all right-wing militant on his own when he was implying a holy war. It seems his constituents want it that way.
"...simply mistaken."
It boggles the mind.
-bZj
"My God can beat up your God/
Your God can suck on my rod"
- Antiseen
i don't understand how monotheistic religions could say "ours is a different god" when by definition, there is only one. really what they're saying is that theirs is god, and the other dude worships an idol. which is ludicrous nonsense. any monotheist should have no trouble with acknowleding the singular, shared, atomic godness to the world's main monotheistic faiths. Go Bush for once.
That's the only thing Bush has been right about this whole time. Silly fundamentalists.
I think he's a simple man, but he is a man of true faith.
Those silly fundamentalists are a big part of Bush's electorate.
If he loses their votes... he may actually not get reelected. Otherwise, looks like he probably will.
He'll win the fundamentalist vote regardless of this flap. You see, he gets to pull the Bill "who else you gonna vote for" Clinton trick ...
Homer: Behold, I am King Talky Tiki. [a jet of flame erupts from
the idol's mouth]
Bart +
Lisa: Aaah!
Homer: Hey, Flanders! Can your god do that?
Ned: [looking over the hedge] Actually, Homer, you and I
worship the same god, so --
Homer: Irregardless, I am your god now. [another jet of flame
singes the hedge]
Ha, ha, ha, hee, hee!
Because they're not new-age nature-worshippers, that's why: the rules of their respective religions hold that anyone who does not worship a one-and-only god in exactly the way described by their respective manuals does not get to go to the magical fantasyland after death.
it's more than that though. if i'm not mistaken, both christianity and islam are derived from judaism - so they do believe in the same god. the religions simply just disagree on what the god said and such.
i don't see how they can say that Bush's comment is completely out of line. then again, it is religious people we're talking about here.
It's not merely "religious people", which is bad enough, it's "fundamentalists" -- this is the contingent that believes the earth is only 6,000 years old, beause that's what the "begats" add up to.
but not because they worship a different god. only an idol, a wholly false and counterfeit god. may as well be a gold cow.
Linux, BSD, and Sunos are all the same OS.
Turing Completeness: Delivering the architectural underpinning of 100% of digital computers for over half a century!
Up next: Mom says mall Santa looks the same as last year; children suspect otherwise.
Now, where have I seen that pose before... Oh yes:
Actually it's Buddy Christ.
Hmm.. Islam considers Abraham and Jesus to be among their prophets. Nah... couldn't possible be the same god as the Christians and the Jews.
I wish he'd continue doing the stupid shit he did before though. With this new "dodge center" strategy, he's looking like he man stand a chance of re-election. We DO NOT NEED four more years of this warmongering moron.
-Ben
Someone on Metafilter had an entertaining take on this (which is an event in itself, since generally the commentary on Metafilter is even more irritating than on Slashdot)...
In case you're curious about how these people think...
Spoiler: the big ugly Muslim folds in less than ten panels.
It frightens me how easily people will follow a wacko like Jack Chick.
Disclaimers: post contains pedantry, poster is an Agnostic and thus not a member of any discussed belief system.
The biggest difference that I can find between the monotheism of the three big monotheistic religions is that Islam may in fact be _more_ monotheistic than Judaism or Christianity.
Here's the pedantry part: the technical term for the Old Testament Monotheism-that-admits-other-gods' existence is either Henotheism or Monolatrism. Henotheism holds that other gods exist, and that their worship is appropriate for others, just not for the members of Faith X. Monolatrism holds that other gods exist, but the only one worthy of worship is the one venerated by Faith X.
Islam includes specific references like "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." The Old Testament (a big factor in the belief systems of the other two) admits to the existence of other gods: search the text for "Baal" or "Ashteroth." Also, as was mentioned earlier, it contains odd quotes from the Head Honcho that he's a jealous god and doesn't want his chosen people to have any other gods before him, using that odd circumlocution to avoid any mention of other gods' actual existence.
[Obligatory quote from Terry Pratchett's _Small Gods:_ "Thou Shalt Not Subject Thy God To Market Forces!"]
Mentioning Monolatrism and its explanation to Christian fundamentalists is good for a lot of backpedaling and tortured sophistry to explain that while the bible really is the literal Word of their God, he didn't mean it quite *that* way.
I've also heard that Christianity, in it's acceptance of a devil with supernatural powers is actually a dual-theistic religion.
I've also heard that Judiasm was Henotheistic originally, which does make some passages make a bit more sense. :)
but I've learned just enough about various religions to be able to screw things up really badly, so :D