Do all religions indirectly attack each other?

Why are you attacking all people of faith?

Why should they argue with others of different faiths?

They are secure in their own beliefs.

Yeah, you figured it out. Religious people are all a bunch of cowards, and that’s why they used to willingly die for their faith, way back before we had freedom of religion. Millions were persecuted for their faith and rather than denounce their gods, they faced death. They sound like a bunch of fucking cowards, yeah?

And by the way, pretty much any person of faith is going to believe in their god and in their belief system, and they will typically think that their god is the only true god. This is not some new religious development.

And your question title makes no sense.

Human nature dictates that we attack each other, regardless of faith but it’s usually a good excuse………it might not be admitted but that’s another side of human nature… “Who, me”

@marinelife The answer for those is that different religious people have different God/s.

Many religions consider God to be the same entity, but have different names or worship practices. And many also participate in ecumenical meetings to find common ground.

The same impulse that makes someone ask a question like this exists in some religious people.

@zenvelo Really? But those different Gods have different background and history, why would they deny that?

@Your_Majesty It’s much more complex than your question implies. Christians don’t think they worship a different god from the Jews. They just think that He came later and updated his religion as Christianity.

Muslims don’t think they worship a different god than Jews and Christians do. They just think that He later came and updated his religion as Islam.

B’hais don’t think they worship a different god than Muslims, Christians or Jews. They just think that He came later and updated his religion as the B’hai faith.

Some attack the rest but not all. In the end ti doesn’t matter how you express your believes as long as you can tolerate other people around with other believes.

@thorninmud I agree with that. Hindu and Buddhist also worship the same basic Gods but in different version. It makes me wonder if we bring these polytheistic religions to those monotheistic religion. With not even a single similarity surely, there would be contradiction.

@Hibernate But it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t prove the essence of the religion itself. If YHWH said that He is the only God, then why His followers must tolerate people that worship other Gods? Weren’t people attacking other people with different religions in ancient times? If religious people believe in their ‘reality’ why they mustn’t show this ‘reality’ to the world? Instead of keep it for themselves.

Hindu texts are pretty tolerant compared to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The creation myth in the Rig Veda actually takes a full-on agnostic approach to the big question (which is why it’s my favorite religious text):

Who knows and who can say, whence it was born and whence came this creation?
The Gods are later than this world’s creation.
Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not,
He who surveys it all from his highest heaven, he verily knows it,
Or perhaps even he does not!

@Your_Majesty Hinduism and Buddhism are an interesting case. Hindus look at Buddhism as basically a sect of Hinduism (Hinduism is not at all a coherent belief system anyway, but an amalgamation of many related sects).

Buddhists don’t worship the Hindu gods, generally speaking. They do often appear in Buddhist scripture, but more as character actors or allegorical figures in the great cosmic play, not as objects of worship.

You’re right that the monotheistic faiths have been downright hostile to the polytheistic faiths from early on. The God of the Bible and the Qu’ran doesn’t allow for any other gods. I don’t think Hindus or Buddhists would see such a conflict with the concept of a supreme being, though. Both acknowledge that the gods of the Hindu pantheon are not the ultimate reality. They would just refuse to personalize that ultimate reality, as the monotheists have.

@Your_Majesty while what you say is true and I should say that not you I always had some problems with the verse about Faith from Hebrews 11:1.Yhwh states that He is the only God but that verse states about faith and believeing in things one can’t see. THis doesn’t say anything about other religions not being true or about existance of any other Gods. In the Old Testament there are a lot of places where Yhwh told to their people the other deities weren’t able to save them but He never said they did not exist. They did not manifest but it nothing like “those Gods are just pure fiction or hallucination”.
This may sound weird. I go by the idea that Yhwh is the only true God though I do not contest existance of other deities. Maybe demons manifested there still we can’t really know to much about these things. It’s a long and in the end will be a useless discussion.

Most religions don’t assume that the existence of their gods negates the existance of other peoples gods. They just happen to like theirs better, or state that their gods like them better. The negation of others’ gods because of one’s own is specific to monotheism, and even then not always (in the cases of henotheisms).

@thorninmud

Oh, I like that. So we have various forms of Judaism as Abraham 1.0.x (in all its permutations).

Christianity is Abraham 2.0.x (various flavors of that).

Islam is Abraham 3.0.x (because that has its own sects)

And if that idea isn’t controversial enough, we can express these as “Judaism 1, 2 and 3”. Oy.

@Your_Majesty People of different faiths, when they meet, may say “We believe in the one true God”, to which the stranger says “We believe in the one true God also; we call him Brahma, what do you call him?”

From the Baha`i :

The Bahá’í belief in one God means that the universe and all creatures and forces within it have been created by a single supernatural Being. This Being, Whom we call God, has absolute control over His creation (omnipotence) as well as perfect and complete knowledge of it (omniscience). Although we may have different concepts of God’s nature, although we may pray to Him in different languages and call Him by different names—Allah or Yahweh, God or Brahma—nevertheless, we are speaking about the same unique Being.

@CWOTUS Are you saying what @thorninmud Is incorrect? All the Abrahamic religions have the same God.

@Your_Majesty Many religions don’t care what other people believe. The Jews don’t try to convert others, they don’t try to get everyone to believe like them, and they don’t talk about their religion to convince others there is one true belief. They figure you believe what you want, we will believe what we believe. It seems to me the Buddhists might be the same, but I don’t know much about that religion.

Monotheism means one god. You can’t have your god plus somebody else’s god. The differences are due to different interpretations of the one god.

Polytheism allows for the existence of gods belonging to other religions. Each tribe views its choice of gods as being their defenders. Traditionally, when one tribe was defeated by another, they adopted the gods of the conquerors, since these gods were obviously superior. Nobody could understand why the Jews held onto their god through multiple conquests.

@LostInParadise Really? I never knew that. I just think of polytheism as being like the Greek Gods. One taking care of the seas, another holding up the world, or whatever the deal was. A little lightening when Zeus was pissed at Hera.

There isn’t a part of my ”religion” that calls for attacks on anyone. I don’t believe the same things as many other religions and so I often discuss the differences. However, my goal is not to attack them but rather to understand their belief.

I am certain that at times I have been crass or sarcastic toward people of all religions at one point or another.. including my own.

As far as everyone claiming their God is the God…. I’m not so sure it’s not the same God anyway.. Sort of like taking a different road to the same destination. Of course that is not all-inclusive…

Either way, the description for your question is dripping with generalization.

No

I think the confusion sometimes comes from the use of the term “god”. Many physical as well as spiritual beings have been titled and thought to be god. The bible references many beings from mortal men,, to fallen angles to half man half fallen angel (which were the heroes of old). It also seems to distinguish beings as sons of god or sons of men. It also refers to beings of light.

IMO There is a whole other world/dimension many call the spirit world; the physical worlds religions vision of what this world is, is like seeing through a clouded glass where we do not have a clear understanding of the order of things in the spirit world. There are hierarchies in the spirit world like the physical world and an order of things just like the laws of nature in the physical world.

I do believe there is a supreme being above not only our world but the spiritual world as well. This supreme being is the same being as the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religions purport as God (of course each of these religions believe they are the only ones in Gods true favor). I can not speak about the Hindu and Buddhist faith’s as I do not have a deep enough understanding.

Christians are charged to be a witness to what we know. We believe Christ will be our advocate before God the Father and we therefore are to be his advocates to men.

With regard to issue with proselytizing, let me explain something that I believe many non believers understand one dimensional (with regard to theist intent in witnessing) and at the same time give you argument to be left alone by religious proselytizing. As witnesses to Christ we are called to be advocates but only to those that have an open heart or need for God. There are those that don’t want to hear it and the specific direction I am taught by my faith is to simply shake off the dust from the bottom of my shoes and move on. Not to rebuke you, not to punish you, not to argue with you but to simply move on to those that have the heart and desire to hear. So if you do not have God or eternity in your heart and a Christian wants to witness to you, tell them it is not in your heart and they should shake off the dust on the bottom of their shoes and move on.

There are many paths to the same end. I think that religions recognize a large part of their significant is cultural and what someone was raised into, and therefore one is not necessarily more valid than another, even if they do not agree with all of another’s teachings. Without differences there could be no religion at all.

OH, YES!