Ed: No offense taken, although I think it's a mistake to discount my views simply because I regard the gods in question as human inventions. Whether they're real or imagined is irrelevant to the question. Anyone can see the similarities and differences in the teachings of the Abrahamic religions.
If ANY of such gods or God isn't real, then the question is irrelevant. But if any or all of them might be real, we must compare the gods or God as they are BELIEVED TO BE. So, per what is asserted, can they be the SAME God - not can any one real god or God be mistaken for another one, or even the REAL One. So you have three major, monotheistic religions describing Jesus: Muslims: Jesus is only a prophet and is a created being (he's not God). Jews disbelieve both that Jesus was sent from God as well as deny Him to actually BE God. Christians believe that Jesus was God. The law of non-contradiction shows that, as believed and described, these cannot all be the same God or gods.
Ed: Truthfully, I think that a nonbeliever might actually be better suited to look objectively at those similarities and differences, not having a dog in the fight.
Remember, Ed, from a Christian point of view, believing in whatever similarities or origins of belief (all of which are the Old Testament), it is not belief in similarities that even matters - because if the Jesus of the New Testament is not believed in, whatever beliefs in similarities are irrelevant. And the same would be true from the viewpoints of Muslims and Jews - that belief in Jesus as God is considered blasphemy. And, of course, Jews do not believe that the God of the Old Testament is Allah, nor that Muhammad is a messenger anymore than they believe Jesus was.
Ed: I think he had a point. I once came across a passionate online debate between two groups of Christians, of which one believed that a correct reading of the Bible indicated that drinking alcohol was improper, while the other argued that scripture only discouraged over indulgence. Both groups supported their positions with the same lines from the Bible, and neither saw the debate as the slightest bit absurd.
Which is an irrelevant and far secondary issue to the central questions and beliefs as to Who is actually God. These two groups of Christians all claimed Christ as God - meaning, whether right or wrong about alcohol, they still believed in the same God.
Ed: Those kinds of debates are common both within and between the different faiths. To me, again as an outsider, it seems glaringly obvious that religious texts are open to interpretation and that no one is in a position to claim much of anything as an inarguable truth. And if you look back at all of the inquisitions, heresies, and schisms over the last two millennia that view seems to be overwhelmingly supported.
Ed: I'm not passionate about this issue because, as you know, I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me that the claim that Muslims worship a different God than Jews and Christians is erroneous.
Ed, per your stated beliefs, I'm not sure why you care - other than you appear to believe the differences in who people consider God or god, to be mostly irrelevant. Usually, the case is, atheists and agnostics want to minimize the differences because of the frictions they have created. But that's still not answering the question. Clearly, if any one of these God or gods truly exist, then cannot be the same as described. One says lack of believing Jesus is God means they'll not inherit Heaven, and that all claims of a God that deny Jesus is God, are lies which will fail to save them. One insists all denying Allah to be god will be damned by Him. The Jews still look to a promised savior that has never come, said Jesus was a man and a fraud and that Allah is a merely false religous belief - and thus blasphemous to believe in. So, to Jews, the God Who is Jesus - the one Who has a Father and Spirit, existing in a Trinity with Him - they deny such a God exists. Now, one could take the position, even if wrong, that NONE of these so-called gods or God actually exist. But if any one of them, or even all of them, exist as described, it makes no sense to believe they can be the same God or god - that's immensely contradicted by the beliefs of these three different faiths.
