Theology

Hey Veeky Forums.
I've been speaking with my girlfriend about religion quite often recently because she's a Christian and I'm an atheist. I've become more interested in theology and wanted to ask a few questions I came up with for every religion. When you respond please also type your denomination for that religion.
Christianity:
If God is there and he created all, who created heaven? Is heaven just a medaphore for everything and everywhere?
Do you believe there's a man in the sky or is God just a symbol of hope?
Buddhism:
Do you praise Buddha as a God (as he was mortal and only spread the word of spirituality, asking specifically not to be praised.) or do you worship spirituality?
Islam:
What do Muslims have against Christians? I know they aren't fond of them, hence the bombings, but why?
Is it true that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and the Jewish but just have different traditions?

Thanks and remember to leave your denomination.

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Hello there, I can try to address some of it.
Background: Raised Protestant, becoming Catholic as soon as I can after years of personal theology study.

Heaven is a "place" as far as I understand it, but the reason is is Heaven is not because of any intrinsic value in it. Rather, it is the place where the Christian has direct, unrbroken contact with God. We believe that sin has made a barrier between us and God, and that as we become more righteous, the more and more that barrier fades. Heaven is a place but what makes it Heaven is that its the place we go when there is no more barrier.

Things like the feeling of intimacy, of selfless love, all these good things have their source in God. If you have ever made love before, the feeling of bonding and closeness is the defining characteristic of Heaven. We do not have sex with God, but it is the most infinitely intense feeling of intimacy and closeness that is only poorly approximated by sex.

Also, we consider God to be not a "man in the sky" but we consider Him to be a living God who is singular but exists in 3 persons: The Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He hears prayers, acts in the world, brings people to salvation and redemption, and loves us very much.

As far as the Muslim thing goes:

We all (muslims, jews, christians) claim to worship the God of Abraham. A comparative study between the attributes of Allah and the attributes of the God jews and christians worship show them to be different beings entirely.

tl;dr Same in name only

>Is it true that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and the Jewish but just have different traditions?
Jew here. That enormously depends on how you define "God" in the first place. I mean, all three of us claim it's the God that created the universe, but the conceptions of the three are so radically different that I at least tend to think of them as completely separate concepts/deities.

>If God is there and he created all, who created heaven? Is heaven just a medaphore for everything and everywhere?

Heaven is just a level where you're connected to God. It does not bind nor contain God. God's presence is there so God is said to be there.

>Do you believe there's a man in the sky

youtube.com/watch?v=BXlBCZ_5OYw

>What do Muslims have against Christians? I know they aren't fond of them, hence the bombings, but why?

Muhammad wanted more power so he shifted from reinventing Christianity to his own liking like a proto-Protestant to making a new cult around himself.

>Is it true that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and the Jewish but just have different traditions?

Greatly different ~understanding~ of that God is the proper way of looking at it. Jews and Samaritans or Catholics and Orthodox have different traditions.

>Christianity:
>If God is there and he created all, who created heaven?

GOD DID; "HEAVEN" IS PART OF THE ALL.

>Is heaven just a medaphore [SIC] for everything and everywhere?

NO.

>Do you believe there's a man in the sky[,] or is God just a symbol of hope?

NEITHER.

GOD IS NOT A "MAN IN THE SKY"; GOD IS A FORMLESS BEING BEYOND EVERYTHING, INCLUDING "HEAVEN".

>Buddhism:
>Do you praise Buddha as a God (as he was mortal and only spread the word of spirituality, asking specifically not to be praised.) or do you worship spirituality?

SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA BUDDHA WAS A HUMAN, AND SHOULD NOT BE WORSHIPED.

SPIRITUALITY IS MERELY A CATEGORY COMPRISING WHAT PERTAINS TO THE SPIRITUAL; IT IS NOT AN ENTITY, OR A BEING, AS YOU SEEM TO ERRONEOUSLY BELIEVE.

>Islam:
>What do Muslims have against Christians?

NOTHING.

>I know they aren't fond of them, hence the bombings, but why?

?

>Is it true that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and the Jewish but just have different traditions?

CHRISTIANS WORSHIP GOD, MUSLIMS WORSHIP ALLAH; "ALLAH" IS ONE OF THE MANY NAMES OF GOD.

JEWS WORSHIP YHWH; YHWH IS DJINNI/DEMON.

>If God is there and he created all, who created heaven? Is heaven just a medaphore for everything and everywhere?

I would assume you mean metaphor.

1. Heaven is created by God and his abode in which he dwells with his divine beings, the concept of heaven is expressed more in human terms. Language of heaven is associated with the sky while hell/sheol is associated with the ground is nature terrestrial language that can't express the divine realm. We do it ourselves today, though the divine realm cannot be express in human terms unless associating it with human knowledge. So it's not a metaphor, it's a literal location in the divine realm.

2. The idea of God being from the sky is again associated with terrestrial language, since the Ancient Israelites believed that the heaven were above the sky, they would express it that way, though knowing that the divine realm was different (again we do this today!). But it is also true that God has a physical body that is not of this world. As YHWH said to Moses, that he would reveal his full glory to him but he could not see his face cause it would kill him. Meaning that the body of God and his glory are powerful things.God is not mere symbol. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. The language indicates that no one has ever seen God, until God made known.

>and wanted to ask a few questions I came up with for every religion
>lists 3 religions
>asks the same questions everyone asks

>What do Muslims have against Christians? I know they aren't fond of them, hence the bombings, but why?
Not to do with Theology and it's not the Christians they hate. It's the West which was overly involved in the middle East and Afghanistan because of Oil and the USSR
>Is it true that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and the Jewish but just have different traditions?
Yes, at least that is what we believe. We just believe that he Jewish scholars edited the old testament and the Revelation given to Christ was not properly recorded.

This guy is a gnostic who posts on /x/. His declarations run counter to mainstream Christian thought.

i.e. heresy

What's an appropriate name for God the father?

>Yahweh
The name Yahweh equally applies to Jesus and the Holy Ghost as well
>God
Jesus and HG are also God, and can be called such
>the Lord
Jesus and HG are also the Lord

Is there any origional name for God the father?

>Is there any origional name for God the father?
Yahweh

I like this approach, if I understand you correctly, a lot of misconceptions about God comes down to people focusing too much on the language we use to talk about him and belief. Language, no matter which one, is extremely limiting in our ability to describe or understand our experience of the world, let alone concepts such as God or Heaven.

In regards to God being a metaphor it is tough to say. I adhere to the theory that all language is simply a metaphor, in that we simply relate everything to universal concepts and thus we don't see or talk about anything as it actually is as particular. Thus we can only talk about the spiritual, heaven, and God through universal concepts in language, meaning we can only relate them to what we can conceptualize and talk about. The common "understanding" of God is that he is the ultimate universal and thus cannot be reduced into categories that we use for language. So even the word God is simply a metaphor for what he actually is.

Following from this there are many things we seem to understand but cannot conceptualize and articulate due to the limits of language. However sometimes we are able to express these thoughts, intuitions, and understandings through art, which includes stories. Thus the stories of the bible, for example, while some may be based on actual people and events act mainly as a metaphor. They come close to articulating belief and understanding but they aren't perfect.

There is a clear and definite meaning behind these stories that are expressed but not fully conscious or conceptualized but we are aware of them when we notice them. This is why again many stories or concepts are shared cross culturally. The specifics of the stories, places, people, and events may all vary but we can still recognize a shared, implicit meaning. I feel that to say that one religion has the perfect understanding and concept of God and how to worship him kind of categorizes, and thus reduces God

>Not to do with Theology and it's not the Christians they hate.
So why bomb Coptic Christians in Egypt if it's the west they dislike?

Buddha isn't seen as a god, but as being greater than a god, because while the gods live for a very long time and have a vast but limited power, they are still subject to change and decay - to samsara, the round of existence, cause and effect. A Buddha has transcended this cycle and is totally free from conditioned existence. This is how Buddha is perceived in Mahayana Buddhism. I myself practice according to Tibet's Mahayana.

That's Jesus' name as well, plus his spirit buddy's

Yahweh is Yahweh. Yeshua is Yeshua. The Holy Spirit has no name.

Raised messianic Jew and baptist, but leaning towards Lutheranism.
I just want to post this

>The first rule of investigations is to control your presuppositions. Don’t let a presumption about your suspect change the direction of your investigation; instead, let the evidence lead you where it may.
archive.is/dnM8C

Learn to seek the truth, not some flavor of the truth.

>If God is there and he created all, who created heaven?
There are three heavens; our two (atmo and space) and the third heaven in which God and the angels dwell. It overlaps our two heavens at all points and times. People in the third heaven can speak to people on earth.

Is heaven just a medaphore for everything and everywhere?
No.

>Do you believe there's a man in the sky or is God just a symbol of hope?
God dwells in the third heaven, and he became a man so that he could redeem us. He is also God. The Son of Man, and the Son of God. He is the only hope for mankind to not receive what we deserve.

>Buddhism:
>Do you praise Buddha as a God (as he was mortal and only spread the word of spirituality, asking specifically not to be praised.) or do you worship spirituality?
Buddhism is a godless pain management lifestyle that does not deal with the afterlife in any meaningful way. It is a rejection of the vedas and gods of Hinduism.

>Islam:
>What do Muslims have against Christians?
We're not muslims.

>I know they aren't fond of them, hence the bombings, but why?
Because we know the truth; that they worship the devil and belong to a vicious cult started by a psychopathic murderous pedophile.

>Is it true that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and the Jewish but just have different traditions?
No. They claim to, but the claim is false. The God of the Jews has never been the god of the Arabs. The God of the Jews is YHWH, and the god of the Arabs is El, with sons Ba'al and Molech and daughter Ashteroth.

To both the Jews and the muslims, Jesus said that if you do not have him, the Son, you do not have the Father; and if you do have Jesus, the Son, you also have the Father.

Neither the Jews nor Muslims have the Son, because once they do, they cease being Jews and muslims and become born again Christians.

There's only one God, and YHWH is not his name.

It's a placeholder for a name.

It means "I Will Be Who I Will Be".

Nobody knows Jesus' name; he has given himself a new name that nobody knows. And the Holy Spirit is Ruach Elohim, the Breath of God.

Why do those morons watermark their images?

He's also a Mexican natsoc retard, which is more germane to the discussion.

>I have never read the Bible because I am retarded.

Hell, even the "I will be what I will be" from Exodus 3:14 isn't how God "introduces himself", it's merely in response to Moses's question as to what to tell the Israelites in the previous verse. When Moses first approaches, it's "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob".

Again, not a name. A placeholder for a name.

Commonly mistranslated as "I Am Who I Am", but is actually in the future tense.

I Will Be Who I Will Be.

Both are correct.

"I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" is not a name, just as "You must be the son of two down's syndrome siblings" is not a name.

"I am that I am", is not God's name. When introduced, it is not as God's name, it is WHAT TO TELL THE ISRAELITES, and is explicitly said so in the previous verse. Furthermore, the Hebrew phrase is אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה and not יְהוָה.

>but is actually in the future tense.
Biblical Hebrew does not have a firm divide between future and present tenses, only between past and not-past.

>YHWH IS DJINNI/DEMON.
That last one is a blatant lie, the anacronism YHWH has no relation with djinn/ demon whatsoever
.
the ancient tetragram YHWH comes from a series of hebrew letters, making reference to the scence of god, although there are a few debates related to it's precise meaning i's been rougly translates as "the one who is" but it's actual significance tracends the literal interpretation of this translation.

Ok someone bring me up to speed on YHWH. Is this refering to Yahweh or is it something else?

What's your view on baptismal regeneration then? If leaning towards Lutheran?

>but is actually in the future tense
>when no one reads up on the subject

YHWH is not a future tense found in Exodus 3:14. The sentence ehyeh asher ehyeh (I am who I am) is a singular causative form of the third person of the name YHWH. YHWH is a causative form and Hebrew verb 'hyh'. Morphologically you are also incorrect, YHWH appears a (personal, singular, proper, masculine and absolute), meaning that it is his name.

>JEWS WORSHIP YHWH; YHWH IS DJINNI/DEMON.

No evidence of this and is a completely devoids of any exegesis or linguistic analysis.