Friday, May 01, 2009

Monotheism

It seems that in the evolution of religions, monotheism has become the predominant mode. Of course, there are polytheistic religions that are still widely practised, such as Hinduism, but monotheism seems to have captured the minds of the majority. The three predominant monotheistic religions are of course, Judaism and its two offshoots, Christianity and Islam. My question is, do these three religions worship the same one abstract God? It stands to reason that if there is only one abstract God, as each of the religions proclaim, then he/she/it must be the same one in all three of them.
But, as we know Christianity is unique in that it worships Jesus Christ as "the son of God." Now clearly an abstract God cannot have a son, and it is evident that this relationship bears a lot of resemblance to former Greek pagan religions, where such relationships between Gods and humans were common, and this was carried over into Roman beliefs. Further, we now know that originally there were many forms of Christianity, that regarded Christ as being God himself, a mere mortal, and everything in between. It was the Emperor Constantine, who proclaimed himself a Christian in 313 ce, who as head of the Church convened the Council of Niceae in 325 ce and charged it to adopt a compromise solution by majority vote that Jesus was the "son" of God. All other forms of Christian belief then became heretical. Even though today there are also many forms of Christianity, all of them derive from this decision by Constantine and the Council. While Constantine also persecuted the Jews he explicitly reinforced the connection with Judaism by adopting the "Old Testament", the Jewish Bible, as sacred to Christianity. Consequently, through continuity we must conclude that Christianity worships the same one abstract God as Judaism.
In Islam the situation is different, although Muslims regard Mohammed as the "seal" of the prophets, in other words the last (and best) one, they do not extend any divinity to him. That is why their rallying cry is "Allahu akhbar," God is great. But, if they also believe in the same abstract God, then why do they show such animosity to the other montheistic religions. Actually, they don't or shouldn't, since during the late Middle Ages they extended protection to the "peoples of the books" namely Jews and Christians, whereas pagans, nonbelievers in the same one God, were subject to execution if they failed to convert. Later on this distinction seems to have been glossed over, so that all nonbelievers in Islam have become infidels (kaffirs).
So now we have established that there can only be one abstract God that all montheistic religions believe in. This has been called the Abrahamic connection, that all three religions originate from. However, the fact is that in the name of this one abstract God, Christians and Muslims have killed each other and killed Jews with great abandon. Now I don't blame the God, if he exists, for this, I blame the believers, who seem to be able to find any distinction to justify killing their fellow monotheists.

Corrections:
1. In the listing of plans that I sent on 27/4 I forgot to include the Allon Plan, proposed by Yigal Allon, Israeli FM, to include the Jordan Valley within Israel.
2. An alert reader has pointed out that the poem "On a silver Platter" was not by Nahman Bialik but by Nathan Alterman.

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