Deity only answers Muslim, Christian, or Jewish Prayers?

reply to post by debris765nju


If god created us, we're all wheat. Even human free will can't change that fact.

reply to post by Joecroft


I gave you a star for your reply, because I see your sincerity. But I'm honestly confused by it.

I presume you are a "liberal" Christian who believes in Jesus? You consider other faiths' prayers to be answered by the one god. Right? But how about this:

John 14:6: "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

So, Muslim prayers are answered, i.e. the baby gets healed, but she (as a Muslim) is condemned to an afterlife in hell, because she's got the wrong belief system?

I think you pick and choose what to accept and what to reject from the Bible. Can you explain? I'm confused ...

All 3 religions worship the same God, albeit that Christianity must go through a Proxy which is the Son of God, not "God Almighty" Himself, read genesis 1:26 and He said "Let US create man in our image, to OUR likeness"

reply to post by clever024


And your point is ...?

I find the concept of "Prayer" very difficult to fathom. It seems to me that when you pray you are telling God that it screwed up and needs to change some things in your favor. If humans are supposed to have free will why are you asking God to interfere in that? If God has a plan why are you telling it the plan needs to be altered? If God is omnipotent and knows everything that will ever happen wouldn't God already know what you would be praying for and have granted your prayer before you asked for it?

I personally find that the prayer experiments that have been performed show conclusive experimental evidence indicating that prayer has no effect on the outcome of events.

Modern Medical Science and extremely long periods of medical schooling seem to get ignored many times in favor of conclusions that a deity granted a wish.

Originally posted by AllIsOne

Why would a Muslim prayer be answered when you look at it from a Christian view? The prayer is addressed to the wrong god and should go unnoticed.

God (assuming there is one of the kind described by those three religions) would answer the prayers of each sect because no matter how much they fight with one another, they all worship the same God.

They just fight among themselves about who does it best, who Gods favorite is, and who the Messiah is. The Jews and Muslims believe the Messiah has yet to come, the Christians believe Jesus was the Messiah. The Muslims believe Jesus and Mohammad were prophets, not Messiahs, and the Jews just think Jesus was a trouble maker.

But its all the same God. So that God would be willing to answer any prayers of any of the three versions in theory.

reply to post by idonotcollectstamps


I generally agree with your post :-) You've shown nicely the many trap doors a personified omnipotent, omniscient god opens.

But don't underestimate the power of our mind ---> prayer.

reply to post by AllIsOne


my point is that all their prayers are answered, and NO ONE is condemned to HELL yet because final judgement has not occurred, all souls are resting. The only sure fire way to get to hell is Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, its the 1 UNFORGIVABLE SIN. Sure there are athiests out there but even them are not condemned to hell yet, all souls have a chance at retribution

Originally posted by Illusionsaregrander

But its all the same God.

Well, try to argue that with a believer ... I'm on your side, but your statement totally negates religion.

reply to post by clever024

Thanks for your quick reply :-)

What does this mean and who defines it?

Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

reply to post by AllIsOne


basically it means to Deny the holy spirit or the works of the Holy spirit ; I.E. To blasphemy a miracle performed through the spirit of God

Originally posted by clever024
reply to post by AllIsOne

 

my point is that all their prayers are answered, and NO ONE is condemned to HELL yet because final judgement has not occurred, all souls are resting. The only sure fire way to get to hell is Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, its the 1 UNFORGIVABLE SIN. Sure there are athiests out there but even them are not condemned to hell yet, all souls have a chance at retribution

And whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says ‘Fool’ will be sent to fiery hell” (Matthew 5:21-22)

That's what Jesus said. Are you redefining the Bible?

Originally posted by AllIsOne
reply to post by debris765nju

 

If god created us, we're all wheat. Even human free will can't change that fact.

Not really well versed on the New Testament or just distracted?

reply to post by AllIsOne


I'm not redifining the bible, but those people arent in hell yet. those who said "Fool" are those people called "athiests" and even if they said fool, they are still at rest before judgement, hence the part about council

reply to post by AllIsOne


Just to let you know Islam, Christianity and Judaism all worship the same God.
I can see how some people may think Islam has a different God (they don't) but most people know that Judaism has the same as Christianity and that there is only 1 difference and is that Christianity believes Jesus is the Messiah.

Please note that i mean God the Father.

For the record, Jews, Christians and Muslims do not all believe in the same God. Let me help ya out here...

Christians claim to worship the same God as the Jews, God Almighty or YHWH. They also claim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and a part of the Trinity or God-head. For this reason, both Jews and Muslims reject Christians because they view God as one and not a Trinity. Christians have a hard time explaining that the three are one God and not three seperate gods, but quite frankly, we have a hard time explaining God and generally have to admit that we don't have the perfect answer for that... but we do believe in ONE GOD.

So Jews and Muslims say that we Christians worship a different God since we include Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Muslims claim that God is completely unknowable, even though he has certain characteristics as evidence by the commands he gives to Muhammad. This cannot be the same God as the Christians and Jews because the Christians believe that God is knowable through the scriptures, nature, and the God-man of Christ. As it turns out, the Muslims are worshiping the tribal God of Muhammad's family, who's name is, you guessed it, Allah. Symbol look familiar for the religion? Wonder why. The characteristics of Allah do not match those of YHWH. Muslims will say they are the same God to try and convert you, but then this same god who will not let the quran be corrupted failed to do the same for the Torah and Injil.

Christians claim to worship the God of the Jews with the addition of Christ because they have a more complete understanding and have found the messiah. Muslims claim to be the retorers to truth that was corrupted in the Jews and Christians, and claim that we worship the same God and should come back to being Muslims (you dont convert to Islam, they say you revert because everyone is born Muslim). Jews say we are both wrong and that we must still wait for the messiah because they reject both Jesus as messiah and Muhammad as a prophet of God.

Hope that makes sense.

edit;Yes, Christians do believe in the same God as the Jews in the sense of God the Father (YHWH) but no Jew would say we worship the same God since we include Christ...

[edit on 29-8-2010 by Mykahel]

Originally posted by AllIsOne
Islam, Christianity and Judaism all encourage prayer. Billions of people have prayed to their respective god and claim to have received devine help. How so?

One word, Faith. Faith give you hope and strength when your life is about to end. Faith give you hope and reason that sometimes miracle can happen. Faith keep you going against all odds no matter how impossible it seem.

Originally posted by AllIsOne
Why would a Muslim prayer be answered when you look at it from a Christian view? The prayer is addressed to the wrong god and should go unnoticed. So, are Muslims fabricating stories about answered prayers? The same goes in reverse for Christians. From a Muslim point of view Christian prayers can't possibly work. The believers must be lying about the results.

Why? Because the 3 Abrahamic religions pray the same God. It doesn't matter HOW and WHERE you pray. What's matter is, do you have the faith? Are you surrendering your whole soul ( consciousness )?. Are you willing to admit your sins and ask for His forgiveness? or do you expect God answer's knowing you haven't redeem yourself?

But then again if you're an atheist, I don't think you can understand. Because true praying require a lot of faith. Something which you are lacking and resist to cope.

Originally posted by AllIsOne
My questions is:

a) Are all religious believers making up stuff. Any prayer goes unnoticed?
b) Are only ... prayers (insert your preferred belief system) answered?
c) God doesn't care what name you use, and helps out anyway.

And in answer c lies the conspiracy aspect. If c is true, all "exclusivity" of religious texts is a fairy tales.

Exclusivity? hmmm... I haven't read all the posts in this thread so if anyone have already answered this, please forgive me. If you research all the 3 Abrahamic carefully, you will find there are similarities. Judaism, Christianity and Islam worship ONE God. The same God that create Adam and Eve. They acknowledge that Moses was a prophet of God. They believe in Heaven. They believe in revelations from God through Abraham, Moses ( Judaism ), Jesus ( Christianity ) and Muhammad ( Islam ). The Jewish Torah, David's Psalms, the New Testament, and the Qur'an are believed to be The Book of God. They also believe in angels and devils. This similarities are what I assume to be the foundation of Abrahamic religions and certainly not one of those pink unicorns This is what I believe so please do not try to sway me as I have no interest in physic principles.

Re: Mykahel

Thanks for your friendly and competent answer to me (and also your later post). You appear to be a worthy and respected 'foe' ('foe' isn't really a good word for this).

Though not being an academic scholar on religion, comparative religion has been a lifelong interest of mine, and I'm familiar with doctrines and history of the major religions (and some minor). This said, I must also add, that I'm very critical to both scripture and later christian doctrines, which I consider basically wrong (as a model of ultimate 'reality') and the way the material is presented (in my opinion confused, selfcontradictory and easy to twist into justification for egotistical purposes); but I'm not critical to the point of violence (in words or deeds), if an honest dialogue can be maintained.

I'm neither theist, nor atheist, but work from a critically inclusive epistemological model. This has lead me to a general criticism of beliefsystems of all kinds.

As you know, fundamentalists (religious, political etc) already have all the ultimate and inflexible answers, and the epistemological methodology is equally rigid; e.g. 'faith' VERSUS logic (exclusive, not inclusive). There's no possibility of a dialogue. If an ideology also contains elements of commanded monopolistic and exclusive expansion, the unavoidable result of conflicting fundamentalistic systems will ofcourse be violence, as two different 'one-way communication systems' never can meet.

From assuming a liberal basis, I therefore find, that the only way to relate to beliefsystems is in a social context; otherwise laserguns will be the certain outcome. Many fundamentalists (of all kinds) find it vary hard to accept, that they are not allowed to push their beliefsystem too hard, because the intrinsic missionary 'command' expects them to do so. So we have the paradoxial situation, that liberal society allows for ALL beliefsystems to co-exist (with a few exceptions), which the fundamentalist can benefit from. While this right to exist is OK for the fundamentalist's own system, he/she doesn't want it for competing systems, and in the end liberal neutrality becomes the worst enemy because of its 'permissiveness'.

So the peculiar situation arises, that fundamentalists band together to form a public common front against opponents (while still backstabbing each other behind closed doors). It's exemplified very clear on this thread. Faith against action/experience; A common christian front against non-christians; A common Abramic front against non-Abramics; A common 'God' front against non-God religion. A common religious front against non-religion. Often expressed in dogmatic and final form: "THIS is the truth".

But sadly, none of the fundamentalists want to pay the price of the liberal system, basic open-ness, which makes practical co-existence possible. While efforts of finding synthesis have been made, it's more like a street filled with competing prophets.

That was the psycho-social perspective, There's ofcourse also a doctrinal one (hopefully more academic than fundamentalist), but that's not for this post.

reply to post by clever024

my point is that all their prayers are answered, and NO ONE is condemned to HELL yet because final judgement has not occurred

If this "!final judgment" has any place in reality then it cannot but have occurred. If the being that is alleged to have created everything is to remain omniscient/omnipresent then this would necessitate that the "final judgment" was/is/ brought into being at the same moment as the alleged offense requiring judging.

Everyone that will be condemned to hell has already been condemned to hell but luckily for us, hell is an imaginary place created in the mind of humans who wrote/revised/edited the new testaments.

It goes without saying that as there is no evidence of the yahwh/jesus godman ever having intervend in human affairs as a result of humans grovelling to him/it with eyes wide shut, then it is a bit of a moot point as to which one of the deluded thinks they are getting a heads up.

Originally posted by The Djin
It goes without saying that as there is no evidence of the yahwh/jesus godman ever having intervend in human affairs as a result of humans grovelling to him/it with eyes wide shut, then it is a bit of a moot point as to which one of the deluded thinks they are getting a heads up.

I would be very careful with your statement because you are saying 2.5 billion Christian, 1.8 billion Muslim and 18 million Jews are delusional. That haven't included other major religions who have deities such as Hindus.

Source: Major Religious Groups

Try to not resort to name calling, will you? And your video is hillarious. Do you really expect prayers ask for milk from god? Careful there, as you might insult the Hindus because cows (which generally where we get the milk from) are believed to be sacred animal.

[edit on 30-8-2010 by EasternShadow]