Why the God of Abraham?

They were the loudest and most violent. Therefore people are mostly Christian or Muslim.

Industrialization and science. Not necessarily in that order.

My God can eat your God.

They were monotheistic, and amongst the belief systems prevalent from 3,000 BC to 500 CE, monotheism made a lot more sense.

Who knows. There’s a lot of possible answers, but I think “who knows” is the best one.

I really don’t know, and all things considered (especially the violence in the Old Testament) it is (indeed) questionable. How can the two main religions that are supposed to have a “Loving God” at the center of each religion’s theology, how could this have sprung from the violence of the Old Testament? The only reason that I can come up with is that both of these religions had laws/beliefs in place that gave the religious heads of the churches control over the people who espoused belief in each of the respective religions. In all of the Bible (I do not know about the Koran), there is no verse that praises intelligence. There are any number of verses that condemn women, multiple verses that say that slavery is perfectly ok, multiple verses that say it is ok to kill your children, & multiple verses that praise going to war, & multiple verses praise killing EVERYONE when you go to war. In that respect, it is a perfect fit for our modern world.

They were the most active in spreading their disease, by building empires, colonies and missionaries, forced conversions.

Really good marketing.

They are superior religions.

I’ll explain what I mean by that, and I am kind of in a hurry, so it wont be my best work.

In the beginning, (see what I did there) mostly there was doubt and questions, tribal religions. The kind of religion you can see today still in some tribes, a mix of questions and mythology.

As time passed, the manipulative people figured out they could use peoples inner doubts about life as a way of controlling them.

Religion evolved with this in mind for a long time, until you got to systems with ever more powerful gods.

Eventually, the shaman, priests and holy men, figured out from trial and error, what works best. What ideas and beliefs will allow for more and more control, until you arrive at a point, where there is just one big god, with unlimited power, unlimited knowledge and unlimited presence, who has rules and a reward system, and deals in absolutes.

Once you reach this point in religious evolution, all you need is some sponsors and endorsements such as the roman empire and a bit of violence multiplier effect, and wala, you have yourself a successful religion.

You make members born in to it, to maximize membership. You have members convert others, some times by force, you punish leaving the religion, some times by death, and your members grow and grow.

Teach a religion that is peaceful, that is less intrusive, and that then allow others to join at will, and chances are your numbers will dwindle, and your religion will disappear.

I agree with @Ron_C @ragingloli and @poisonedantidote – it’s basically religious darwinism.
When your religion can, and will, beat the fuck out of another, yours is what’s left standing.

There’s lots of evidence that the bigger-brained Neanderthals had more cooperative societies and were less warlike than regular Homo Sapiens. They might have been smarter but would rather negotiate than fight. But tough to negotiate with a flaming arrow on your roof or a club to the head.

I can’t speak for the rise of Islam, but I do have an opinion about why Christianity became prominent. It has to do with one simple thing. The Roman Emperor Constantine made it the state religion of the Roman Empire, and it spread like wildfire. That’s an important component.

It’s easier to manipulate one god to your ideologies than make an entire pantheon match your ideals.

Which is kind of sad since the Norse gods are much more badass than the God of Abraham.

Mostly because of Constantine the Great, I think.

The solution to this riddle will give you a definite answer.
“The way of the crowd is to follow the man, but the way of the man its never to follow the crowd”.

So whose way is right, the man or the crowd?

Considering that the way that ignores both the man and crowd is also crowded.

BTW…. concerning Issac and Ishmael, both did not go the way of their father, only one did.
So to put them in the same group is misleading, and made plain by the way they lived.

@Ron_C Muslim, Christian, and Jew, thank you very much.
Because He is real!

@filmfann
It’s a fake!

Anyhow, I am going to go with the theory I read in a good Cahill book. If you look at all of the other religions going around the Jews had invented something new. Their story has a real begining, middle, and projected ending. It is a technological innovation that boosted Western Civilization as much as Guns, Germs, and Steel. All other belief systems focused one on the cyclical nature of the universe. The Jews added a drive to something at the end.

Think of the Norse or original Greek Gods. You can hardly put the stories in order.

He had a couple of good sales reps. Jesus Christ and Mohammed. Nobody else must have passed muster.

@Ron_C That certainly helped.

@burntbonez Interesting observation. A number of other contenders tended to discourage that. Perhaps that is a part of the Abrahamic religion’s success.

@bookish1 Wow. My god likes getting eaten. So do I, but I even more like to return the favor. :-)

@zenvelo Perhaps. That might account for the powerful condemnation of Ba’al.

@tups Who knows, that might be the most honest answer, as well.

@Linda_Owl That “Loving God” thing gave me a lot of grief as well. It finally led me to the conclusion it was all a load of nonsense—a test to select for willful ignorance, which God seems to demand of his servants.

@ragingloli They did do that.

@cookieman Really good marketing never hurts. More on that later.

@poisonedantidote Absolutely excellent answer. That’s got to be a major part of it. But that occurred for a reason. What might that reason have been?

@dabbler I guess I understand the “will” part of crushing the opposition. They were, after all, under orders to crush all opposition. Failure to do so meant death and being cut off from God and Heaven. But what made crushing all opposition a practical possibility, given their small starting numbers?

@Hawaii_Jake Yes, Constantine definitely gave the struggling religion a jump start. He also eliminated a great number of competing sects within Christianity. His mom may have helped push him in that direction. She was obsessed with the magical power of Christian religious artifacts, even though the Bible condemns reliance of pieces of wood and metal.

Constantine probably tol the lead from his mother’s efforts. But it appears that Constantine may have not been all that smitten with any religion.He was, however, definitely in love power. He knew that if he could consolidate the many fragmented Christian sects, and just kill those like the Gnostics who wouldn’t cooperate, he could then merge in this and that from “Pagan” practices and come up with a universal religion to let him consolidate political control. He also knew that the simple minds around him would find the artifacts his mother has collected to be of enormous power.

@amujinx I feel your pain. But I’m still not worshiping Thor or Odin.

@wildpotato Great link. Thanks. In the image, Constantine looks older than his mom. I didn’t know he was Serbian. Maybe Serb men age quickly.

@kess The group that Israel and Ishmael are both in is that of Abrahamic religions. Whatever the rightness or wrongness of the way they participate, they both revere the God of Abraham. I think they and their followers both chose a wrong path. I follow the way that ignores both Man and Crowd. And it is crowed. 19,6% of Earth’s population is now on that road with me.

@filmfann If he is real, omniscient and omnipotent, don’t you think it’s high time he set the record straight, since Christian and Muslim eschatology are mutually exclusive?

@ragingloli That has to be the most annoying YouTube mashup I have seen.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Astute observation. That did make the God of Abraham accessible.

@josie Compelling personalities plus the powerful marketing strategy that @cookieman mentions are a powerful combo. Add to that Constantine as Holy Roman Emperor picking a winner and decreeing death to all who disagree. Likely to be more powerful than the marketing psychology of top agencies like LFI today.

@ETpro No. The Muslims got it wrong, which is in keeping with the conception of Ishmael.

@etpro Since you are here to speak with the confidence that belong to those of the crowd, I am sure the logic within the following will prevent you from ever understanding.

…God must be One otherwise He cannot be.

… The One God concept and religion(S) are mutually exclusive concepts.

…The term “Abrahamic religions” is coined by those who neither understood God neither the man Abraham.

… Those who belong to the Crowd will always be that other religion, who primary purpose is to wage war against their compatriot.

…Those of the crowd would only know the “truth” that belongs to the crowd which stand so as to oppose Truth.

@ETpro : How are Muslim and Christian eschatology mutually exclusive?

Some religions are hereditary, which makes it difficult for them to expand the way that a proselytizing religion like Christianity or Islam can. This is why Judaism is the smallest of the Abrahamic religions, and one of the smallest major religions period. Others are tied to a specific region in ways that make it difficult or even impossible for natives of other regions to participate, or have nearly identical equivalents in other regions that make it unlikely anyone would give up their version for another (think various pagan mythologies). And still others have neither of these problems, but just aren’t concerned with world domination. Christianity and Islam are largely free of these limiting factors, so they’ve spread across the world.

@filmfann There are very few Jews left in the world. That’s why @Ron_C said people are mostly Christian or Muslim. And if the explanation for the dominance of YHWH/Jehovah/Allah is that he’s real, why isn’t the number higher than 54%?

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought I don’t know if that can really be it. Norse mythology has a chronology. It has an origin story (Ymir and Audumbla), a plot line (Baldr’s youth, death, and ressurection), and a projected ending (Ragnarok). The plot line and ending are even recycled into Christianity (Baldr is a peaceful young man whose death is fated; he descends into Hel, but returns to herald the end of the world; the end of the world takes the form of a great battle; Baldr leads the forces of good against the evil trickster and tempter Loki, who has finally managed to manifest in the world despite being imprisoned below it for so long; and when the battle is won, Baldr will rule over a new kingdom of peace where all who remain are reconciled).

@kess The term “Abrahamic religions” just refers to Jews, Christians, and Muslims collectively. Whether you think those groups understand God and Abraham or not, they still exist and share some important beliefs. So there’s nothing wrong with having a way of referring to them collectively.

@filmfann If you have an interest in waging that battle, have at it. I’ll sit that battle out, though.

@kess Declaring your beliefs superior and right isn’t the same as your beliefs being right.

@bookish1 The concept of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is entirely absent in Islam. Jesus is seen by Muslims as one of the Prophets who paved the way Mohammed’s advent; but only those who follow Mohammed’s laws will secure the greatest blessings in Heaven. Despite Christian infighting about how much of a role faith in Jesus plays versus good works and adherence to the law and the prophets, Christians clearly do not believe that only by following Mohammed can they attain the highest rung in the afterlife.

@Patton Excellent observations. Are you a student of comparative religion?

@ETpro Not formally. Just something that’s always interested me.

@Patton Aha. Well thanks for chiming in. I hope you decide you enjoy Fluther enough to stay, as your knowledge on the subject will be welcomed.

@Patton Ragnarok itself, is an illusion of change, and part of an eternal cycle. I just double checked myself. The Earth is Reborn and repopulated, and that world will in turn come to a similar fate.

I just pulled up Loki on Wikipedia to see if I can find discrepancies, and the entire entry says his mythology is contradictory.

Not replying to be argumentative, this stuff fascinates me.

In practical terms, I do not believe true narrative story telling began until the Jews, and was perfected by the them codifying their history around the time of Solomon. We think almost exclusively in narrative, having been raised subsequent to their introduction of it into world thought. I don’t think we can even imagine what people thought of the future and the past prior to the introduction of Narrative by the Jews.

@Patton Those who say , I am this and not that and by extension we are this and not that, aree those who find it neccessay to classify themselves.
Thus the terms religions and abrahamic religion was born for those who love to compare themselve one to the other, who infact made it a point of study.
You merely restated my point but only as a naysayer.

@etpro Do you know that you are absolutely right?
How can you declare anyone wrong?
You can if your goal is to be hypocrisy’s High Priest.

@ETpro did not declare himself absolutely right, or anything like that.
He simply points out that there’s no reason to think a religious claim is true just because the claimant is adamant.
Historically we can see that more often than not adamant religious claims are baseless, and often horribly hypocritical. Two easy examples would be the Inquisition and the Crusades, both conducted quite adamantly in the name of God.

The writer Christian Nürnberger claims that Abraham was the first human to have created the idea of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Abraham was a simple man, not a powerful ruler. Nürnberger wrote an excellent book about it, but it hasn’t been translated yet.

@dabbler..you must first know that you are absolutely right before saying someone else is wrong otherwise you will be the same hypocrite you seek to expose….

If he cant or wouldnt say he is absoluty right then what point is he making, other than forwarding confusion?

“The writer Christian Nürnberger claims that Abraham was the first human to have created the idea of liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
That explains the equal rights for women, the tolerance for homosexuals, the condemnation of slavery and the complete lack of any form of God-commanded mass murder and genocide in the Bible.
Oh wait…

@kess Neither did @ETpro declare anyone wrong, what he did say is :
“Declaring your beliefs superior and right isn’t the same as your beliefs being right.”
Which only means someone’s not necessarily right just because they say so.

I don’t know what your point is, are you claiming you “know that you are absolutely right” ? You do seem to be declaring other people wrong here.
What does “absolutely right” mean to you?

“If he cant or wouldnt say he is absoluty right then what point is he making, other than forwarding confusion?”
I thought it was a discussion. I don’t expect someone to claim they are absolutely right in order to participate in a discussion.

@dabbler you are very selective reader I see….
Wonder if the one youre defending will correct you?

So then is the purpose of this discourse was just to meander on and on with no particular decisive goal?

This is why I said “forwarding confusion…”
Pardon me I must bow out, there is no place for me here.

Bless you on your path. Please pop back if you become interested in sharing some ideas.

@dabbler Thanks. Just got back to this and I see @kess has plonked us just as his pontifications were getting interesting. Oh well, it was an off-topic direction anyway.

@ETpro I didn’t mean to discourage @kess I just wanted to find out what he meant by some of his statements.

Personally, I’m here for the meandering, bring it on!

“Aristotle’s philosophy laid out an approach to the investigation of all natural phenomena, to determine form by detailed, systematic work, and thus arrive at final causes. His logical method of argument gave a framework for putting knowledge together, and deducing new results. He created what amounted to a fully-fledged professional scientific enterprise, on a scale comparable to a modern university science department.”

But Aristotle was also a child of his time. He expressed the belief that some people are slaves by nature.

All the different writers of the Old Testament were also children of their time. Progress often requires centuries.

“Quakers played a major role in the abolition movement against slavery in both the United Kingdom and in the United States of America. Quakers were among the first whites to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe.”

@mattbrowne Aye, but if the Bible was divinely inspired, I’d expect way better than what the Quakers finally came to. I do not find that. Instead, I find a ringing endorsement of slavery, injustice, the death penalty for wearing mixed fibers, eating shrimp, planting a garden with mixed flowers, loving someone of your own gender…

@ETpro – Divinely inspired is a very vague term, unless one is a biblical literalist. We need to investigate the origins of ancient text in order to understand the world behind the text. We need to look at interpretation and implications. Let’s look at an example I recently found in some other forum:

God told Moses: “But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.” [Deuteronomy 20:16–18]

We shouldn’t confuse history and theology. God clearly ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God’s will, for good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that, history. It happened. God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law. In short, biblical accounts of violence are descriptive, not prescriptive. The words and deeds of the patriarchs, though described in the Old Testament, never went on to prescribe Jewish law. Neither Abraham’s white lies, nor Jacob’s perfidy, nor Moses’s short-fuse, nor David’s adultery, nor Solomon’s philandering ever went on to instruct Jews or Christians. They were understood as historical acts perpetrated by fallible men who were more often than not punished by God for their less than ideal behavior. As for Christianity, much of the Old Testament law was abrogated or fulfilled, depending on one’s perspective, by Jesus. Eye for an eye gave way to turn the other cheek. Totally loving God and one’s neighbor became supreme law. Jesus’s legacy is characterized by passivity and altruism. The New Testament contains absolutely no exhortations to violence.”

@mattbrowne Yada ayda yada… Bo matter how absurd the biblical message is, believers come up with some scheme of justified thought to make it all sensible when it is actually utter nonsense.

The easy way out: When you run out of arguments, just call the counter-argument nonsense.

Now imagine the Nazis had won WW2, had succeeded exterminating the Jews, and committing Holocausts against entire ethnic groups were never “codified into Nazi Law”, but just perpetrated whenever the Führer commanded it.
It would not make the Nazis any less evil.

There is no doubt that the ancient Hebrews were also evil. They were shaped by the thinking and the way of life of their societies. The Bible and other ancient texts clearly document this. There are other parts showing their capability for goodness as well. A good example is the story of Josef, loved by his father, but hated by his half-brothers. He was tricked by them and sold off as a slave ending up in a prison of the pharaoh. You probably know how the story develops. It’s a story about forgiveness and kindness.

What matters is how Jews and Christians have evolved and how they behave today. And most do not follow commands to destroy the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite tribes or their descendants. There are figures like the Ugandan Joseph Kony, but there are also figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King.

My point was not just about the worshippers, but about the worshippee, the abrahamic God.
This is a god that commanded genocide, slavery, murdering gays and “adulterers” and treating women as property. By all standards, this god is evil, and consequently, any religion that centres around such a god, is evil as well.
Sure, western Christians largely abandoned killing gays and adulterers and wizards, but that is because they went against the will of the god they worship (and no, Jesus did not do away with those laws, as he explicitly stated that you are to follow the OT laws to the letter if you want to get to heaven).
And there is another open question: Sure western Christiand largely do not commit genocide anymore, but there has not been any commandment from their God to do so in recent times.
If suddenly their god showed up and commanded them to kill all muslims, would they obey, or would they defy their god?
After all, one of the ground rules of the abrahamic religions is that you always obey your god, hence the story about abraham trying to sacrifice his son on command of his god, or Onan being killed by God for disobeying the command to knock up his brother’s wife.
So would they defy their god, and thus cease to be true christians/jews/muslims?
Or would they obey their god, as a true follower of such a god would do?

Violence and power usually wins out, and Christianity and Islam definitely don’t have the most pacific past.

@Paradox25
*pacifist

@ragingloli
*pacifistic

(But “pacific” is also correct. It means “peaceful in character or intent.”)

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought But as far as the Norse narrative goes, it’s the end. And it’s not like the Christian Armageddon is the complete end, either. It’s just the end of the narrative, with a promise that life goes on blissfully afterwards. We should expect some of the details to be changed, though. That’s what good plagiarists do.

Writing with narratives is both old and ubiquitous. As good old Wikipedia says, “Stories are of ancient origin, existing in ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Chinese and Indian cultures and their myths. Stories are also a ubiquitous component of human communication, used as parables and examples to illustrate points. Storytelling was probably one of the earliest forms of entertainment.”

@Patton You know, when you build a certain reputation on here you generally have to deal with the ‘heads’. LMFAO.

@ragingloli – Most people today don’t believe in the evil abrahamic God as he was described 3000 years ago. Even at the time the view of the various tribal gods kept evolving. There were competing gods such as El, Baal and Yahweh. The path to monotheism was a difficult one. Societies evolve and with them their view of God and the notion of obedience. For a Christian this is based on the loving your neighbor as well as yourself.

@mattbrowne : Isn’t Yahweh the Abrahamic God?

@bookish1 – Yes, but he had competition, which disappeared only gradually. But even as a the sole god, the view of him gradually changed over time. Later, the Roman sun god had to go as well, but he survived in the word Sunday at the beginning of 4th century CE.

This labling phrase ‘God of Abraham’ is just a form of identity, more like stating where you come from, for example in my country every ethnic group has got a poem that describe that particular group of people and the poem will go into mentioning the heros or past prominant people mostly being chiefs..So in this case, when someone identifies himself as of the ‘God of Abraham’, he is actually trying or emphasizing his belonging. That is one way of justifying oneself or being clear in the midst of the so called God of this world. I don’t think this kind of emphasy is more louder than other emphasis that are discriptive as this one. It is just a matter of numbers of users of this phrase mostly being christians who ofcourse are great in mumbers.

Mind you, this is a quote from the bible. Just an emphasy of which God one is refering to. Again not forgetting the present was the promise to Abraham, meaning Abraham was promised the Future, the multitudes and honor of Son of man being under his linage. Who then can stop identifying himself with the Heros?

@ebasboy Christians, Muslims and Jews alike worship the God of Abraham, or the God of the Desert if you prefer. That’s nearly half of all humanity. Pretty interesting when you consider that all this sprang from a relatively small band of nomadic, tribal people wandering through the Middle East 4 millennia ago.