Palestine Action demo 9 August

@quantumbutterfly ”It is completely fascinating how broadly the Abrahamic faiths have spread and evolved.”

Being an atheist, I cannot comprehend how anyone believes God exists, or follow any religion. In fact most Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews only pay lip service to their religions, basically stopping at dietary requirements.

Shoot me down, but I strongly believe that religion was created, certainly used, to control people. With what science has discovered in the last 200 odd years, if someone came up with the concept of God now, in a non-religious world, they would be laughed out of the room.

There is only one faith causing most religious issues in the world today, and it’s not Judaism.

Does Afghanistan have a ‘Mumsnet‘?

I fell into it as a choice of study - I happened to be at a religious school - down to geography rather than choice so we were required to take RE and I just ended up enjoying it because it ties in sociology, history, literature, law, politics, psychology and philosophy but even as a person who I wouldn't describe as at best agnostic, I found a lot of the religious texts I studied really beautiful once you unravel them.

My final year thesis was essentially about how in Judaism and Christianity, the relationships described, particularly marriage, are metaphors for our relationship with God. So in other words, sort of looking at how the expectations put on us in relation to God (such as fidelity, loyalty, honesty and so on) are the same ones we need to integrate successfully with each other. Even thousands of years ago we understood instinctively before songs, movies, or real literature that on some level these basic behavioral choices are what love and things of value are built from.

I feel quite similarly about Greek mythology. Far fetched stories, but when you really listen to them they are so clever too. I find that intellectually just really interesting. human's haven't changed much - we are still here, discussing politics in a way we feel defines our identity or provides us with meaning. People still want to belong to a tribe, still want a hero and a villain and still are just as foolish in many ways as we were in Biblical times.

And as you say, had empires and politics and colonialism not been what they were, perhaps other faiths may have dominated us. What is certainly (and sadly) true is that the two dominant faiths in the world today are the two (Islam and Christianity) which imposed themselves rather forcefully on populations some years ago.

Both religion and politics are fascinating to me because of what they teach us about the human condition, but I am still surprised and sad at anyone who exploits that to violence or oppression.

Thanks, I have actually really enjoyed chatting about this!

It is completely fascinating how broadly the Abrahamic faiths have spread and evolved.
I agree with many of your thoughts about how and why that should be. In some alternative universe perhaps the Buddhist faith dominated, or a Pantheonic faith like that of the ancient Romans, Greeks, Norse or Hindus - which may have echoes in the saints of Christianity.
Christianity is a different beast in Europe, Africa and South America, each culture has made it their own, (I note that Ethiopia claims to have the oldest African Christian tradition - not bounced back from Europe).
I can also see some similarities between Jesus teaching and Buddhism and there are certainly some overlaps in their geographic influence, the Bamiyan Buddhas were around circa 600bc in Afghanistan.

"research" is stretching it a bit 😅I just did a bog standard masters, I am not an academic, I am a lawyer now!

Yes, Abraham is considered a key patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and his life is traditionally dated to around 2000 BCE with his birthplace thought to be in Ur Mesopotamia, which is modern Iraq.

In Judaism, Abraham is regarded as the founding father of the Jewish people and his life story is mostly told in Genesis, where he is seen as the first to make a covenant with God. So I suppose, the first "Jew"!

In Christianity, Jesus is described as a descendant of Abraham (and obviously as Genesis is also part of the Christian Bible it includes the same stories). In Islam, Abraham is considered one of the prophets and a model of submission to God. So important to all three but I suppose his significance became less over the iterations.

Whether he existed in real life or not, I don't know. There is no evidence to definitively prove he ever existed as described in religious texts.

There are some (many actually) biblical events and figures who's existence and parts of their story are supported by actual evidence. For example the life of John the Baptist is supported by multiple Gospels, and a respected non-Christian account by a Jewish historian - Flavius Josephus - a Jewish historian born in 37 CE in Jerusalem, who later became an ally of the Romans and wrote important works on Jewish history. Anyway, he describes John The Baptist's ministry and execution by Herod Antipas.

So some of what is in the scriptures is actually corroborated and historians tend to agree they occurred. But most historians view Abraham as a mythical figure, who's stories were passed down over generations. How interesting that he (real or not) ended up being the foundation of so much!

I am waffling away. Opportunity to talk theological history rarely comes up in daily life! A hill I am prepared to die on is that theology is fascinating, even if you're not religious. But you might argue that! It tells us all about how our societies were formed - law, morals, war, culture.

All of this - at least for some of us - were things cooked up in the middle east thousands of years ago!

Jewish people are absolutely shafted in this country. They have excellent British values, work hard, pay their way, they don’t take enormous religious offence at anything other people do.

And yet 🤷‍♀️

Notice how many 'genuinely' inquisitive about Judaism, eventually show their true intentions.

Haha yeah I will do for now at least as I've a visitor arriving shortly!

😆 🤣 @gentlesheep I really would give up x

I agree with most of your philosophical points.
I have always been taught that a man called 'Abraham' was patriarch to judaism, christianity and islam and was believed to have originally lived around 2000bc in Ur. You're saying your research contradicts that?

with respect...baaaa humbug

Guys, you've convinced me... Jesus was a Jew.

(Not the son of God though, just a normal man).

I'm talking about a lot more than the Trinity/personhood of God.

That should say Islam and Judaism have many more similarities*

You are incorrect. Islam and Christianity have many more similarities in their belief in God than with Christianity. They both believe in one God, whereas the Christian belief is that Jesus is the son of God and ofcourse there is the concept of the trinity which is not compatible with mainstream Islam or Judaism.

According to Christianity and Judaism! We know their god isn't the same as ours as he doesn't have the same characteristics.

Islamic extremism is the crux of the thread. The poster, was the one, wanting to explore the bible. Sometimes, you just have to sit back and wait for the inevitable.

Judaism is different from Christianity and Islam in that it doesn’t have one single historical founder or a clear “start date.” It’s something that grew and developed over thousands of years as a shared faith, culture, and national identity of the Jewish people, with roots going back over 3,000 years to the ancient Israelites in the Levant.

It came with a shared moral and legal framework for everyday life, bringing people together through common laws, worship, and festivals. Those traditions became the backbone of Jewish identity and helped the Jewish people survive dispersion, persecution, and even periods when many weren’t religious at all, while still keeping that connection to their history. Personally, I think that’s a beautiful story of endurance and resilience.

Christianity started as a movement within Judaism, centred on the belief that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God. Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad, sees both Judaism and Christianity as earlier revelations, and considers itself the final and complete message from God.

People either accepted those new and "updated" beliefs or didn’t - and a lot of history since then has been shaped by the struggle over who’s “right.” And a great deal of blood has been shed too obviously.

I’m not really religious myself, but I do see meaning in all of them. I think religion began as a way for people to make sense of a scary, unpredictable world and to form communities with shared values. I found studying the birth of Christianity to be quite moving really on some level -because the people all that time ago were really looking for answers to the things that scared them. Like "what happens when I die?".

Unfortunately of course much of it became polluted, and over time, it also became a tool for gaining power and control, especially once empires came into the picture - and that’s when it often got used for the wrong reasons, which is a shame. Today, in my view this is certainly the case with radical Islam which is a complete perversion of the Abrahamic moral standards.

I'm not an expert of Islam, I focussed completely on Judaism and Christianity, but in the modern world, religion can still be twisted for violent ends. Radical Islam is one example - it takes selective, extreme interpretations of Islamic texts and uses them to justify terrorism, oppression, and intolerance, often targeting both non-Muslims and Muslims who don’t share their views.

This isn’t representative of Islam as a whole, which has a long history of scholarship, art, and peaceful practice, but it shows how dangerous religion can become when hijacked by political agendas and extremist ideologies. The line between a group which unifies people and supports communities and basically a cult, is quite a fine one!

I think our modern politics actually mirrors this too - we can be unified in causes like human rights, or women's rights and then these very good things can become quite perverted when people try and claim people who are committing acts of violence and intimidation as allowed to do it because..."the cause".

Maybe they were also shocked at the turn the thread took.

According to who?

I think we saw an agenda in your earlier question, which, thankfully Jewish people chose to ignore.

Unfortunately the Muslim God isn't the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that Jews and Christians worship! Islam isn't an 'upgrade' of Judaism and Christianity, it is quite different and a perversion of those faiths.

Thank you, that's interesting.

I did a masters in theology some years ago and as I remember it, in Islam...

Anyone who submits to God as per the laws of Moses, is a Muslim. So they consider all the biblical Jews to be Muslim - Noah, Abraham, Moses - all.

That doesn't mean they think that they followed the religion of Islam as that was revealed later. To Muslims, Islam didn’t start with Muhammad, but was the final, completed form of the same faith delivered through all prophets.

So I suppose the way I understood it was thar there were Jews, and then Christianity came along and said "oh yes that was all correct but now there's a new messiah" and upgraded / converted everyone. Then a thousand years later Islam came along and did the same with Mohammed. So the three built on each other and declared what came before as part of the story but not the full story.

But of course, Jesus was a Jew. That is how he himself would have identified and it's quite naughty if people deny that!

Agree. And the usual emoji level responses.