out of the abrahamic faiths [judaism, christianity, & islam (& i guess the baha'i faith for all you scenesters)], which one of these seem to speak out the most to you? or what are your criticisms on one or the other, if not all?

i was baptized catholic by my father's side of the family, but was raised baptist cause of my mom. & personally, i never really felt an effinity with religion because i found it all kind of lame &, at times, scary. there's just something about singing to a mural of a guy bleeding from the head & nailed to two pieces of wood, then forced to drink his blood & eat his body that is just not appealing to me. who subject their children to that?

christianity never really seemed to vibe with me. it may have been i was overloaded with it (being in catholic school & being in a religiously strict, ethnically-dominated family may have something to do with it), but i honestly just don't see two-sided a religion really can be. how can all your "sins" be forgiven just at the wave of a hand? i don't understand it. & some of the most bigotted, most distrustly & evil people i've ever met have been xtian, or some form of it.

& then there's judaism.
FOREWARNING:, this is the one that might piss people off. but i really am pretty ignorant to judaism & their ways & beliefs. i'm just going by a crash course. feel free to correct me.

i had heard things about it, yeah. yay madonna & whatnot. but as i started looking into it, i'm just honestly apalled at some of the stuff i read. like, this "the chosen race"? how everyone else is pretty much the inferior to them. NOT cool. & how they're more into their writings & their practices & rituals more than their God (p.s, what's with the "G-d" thing?). & how difficult they make it to convert to judaism just to weed out the people that might make them "look bad". yeah, some people do just find religion to make themselves look better & not for actually believing in it, but i doubt taking jew 101 & fooling a rabbi into converting you is really going to make you look any more cooler.

& i'm not even going to mention the other sects of judaism, because some of it is just flat-out crazy.

there's just so much that i just really couldn't comprehend from this.. maybe i'm taking it the wrong way. maybe i'm not.


last & not least, there's islam.
FOREWARNING: i've done my homework on this shit, so don't even try to test mine on this one.

recently, i've been reading up on islam. in america, its kind of a xenophobic thing here to go deep into the muslim culture, but i've kind of ignored that & done my own research on it. originally, just out of curiosity..

but if there's any religion i've been able to relate to more, its this one. i think, personally, its one of the most open-minded, sensible, & beautiful faiths i've ever heard of. from the little things like not having any portraits or any figures of God (because, seriously, who knows wtf this guy looks like so why make a statue of him?), to the ideology of hell not being an eternal burning pit of pain & despair, but a place to burn away the sin that we lived on earth & then released into heaven, it all just kind of makes so much more sense to me. even science seems to agree with islams "big bang theory". everything islam seems to check out with scientific facts, & with other religions. & the fact i love the most is the fact that the qu'ran & the hadith have never been tampered with since the day they were written, unlike the gospel, torah & the talmud.

i even agree with alot of the different sects of islam, especially sufism (which i hear is equivalent to judaisms' kaballah, but as said before, i wouldn't know anything about that) & sufi prophets. as with every religion though, there are those freaks who are just flat out scary.


i, personally, am not really associated with any of these religions, or any religion in general. but i definitely seem to lean on more of the islamic teachings as opposed to the xtian & judeo way.



now what about you guys? how right am i, how wrong am i, whats your view, etc.


illuminate me.


ignore typos, grammatical errors, etc. i kinda just wrote this up on a whim.

i seriously BUST OUT LAUGHING when i read the slaughtering of jews under a tree. maybe it was a mix between that & the smiley.

i really haven't gotten that far in the qu'ran [i've got the d-list english translation, & still only a couple of surah's into it]. but when i & if i get that far, i will definitely commend you.

& i'm fairly sure daylight isn't sweating about losing his jew badge anytime soon.

Perhaps you haven't studied about Judaism.
Being "the chosen people" doesn't mean they are better than everyone else.
In fact, Judaism is the only religion out of Christianity and Islam that believes that non-members of their faith will have life in the world to come.

Christianity says if you don't accept jc as your savior that your damned.
Islam says basically the same thing only concerning Mohammed.

Judaism believes that people of all religions can be good people and have a share in the world to come. We believe that every person serves a purpose and is valuable to G0d.

Being the "chosen people" means that Jews are chosen to do more commandments. Why are they chosen? Perhaps it's because they will follow the commandments. Do you know how many commandments Jews have to follow? 613! Do you think that makes them better than you? No. It just means they have a different role. You too have a role. The creator of this world wakes you up every morning so obviously you have a role to fill.
This human view of looking at things in terms of inferior and superior is primitive. Having more commandments to follow doesn't mean you are superior. It means you have been chosen to do something different and it means more obligations.

I don't think many people would want these obligations. Do you? Would you take on 613 obligations?

Look at Chrisitanity, a watered down mix of Judaism and Paganism. No Christian holidays are authentically Chrisitan. The jesus myth comes out of greek legend...mixing hercules together to make a half moral, have G0d type figure. All of your holidays are basically pagan. And 'the underword', hell you refer to comes out of Greek legend. (The Hebrews came before the Greeks by the way - way before! A lot of people don't know this)

The original followers of jesus were Jewish and in no way did they believe that he was G0d but they did however believe he was the Messiah. They followed all the practices of Judaism. Why do you think Jesus celebrated Passover? He was Jewish and if resurrected today, he would likely feel more at home in a Jewish Synagogue than in a church where in many you have a man on the cross. If you read the 10 commandments from the beginning....it says that you should not have an engraven image of a man and that's what jesus is on a cross! An engraven image of a man. How could anyone who accepts the 10 commandments as the word of G0d accept that?

200 years after Jesus' death, Paul came along and wanted to market Judaism to the masses, so he said, 'okay I'll rename it Christianity and get rid of all the laws so people will accept it" because the pagans did not want to take on all the laws! So they stripped away the laws, the kosher laws, etc. moved the Sabbath to a different day which makes no sense because the Sabbath is the day G0d rested...you can't just move that day! lol It's like trying to re-order creation.
So what you get is a mix of different religions that you refer to as Christianity.

So Christians went around killing people to convert them to Christiantiy. And they rule people by this notion of 'faith'....Jews on the other hand aren't told to simply have 'faith'...we have to prove to ourselves that G-d exists and study. A lot of these bible belt Christians are uneducated as opposed to many Jewish people who win noble prizes. If anyone tells you that you simply have to believe, be suspicious.
Blind faith is used to control the masses and to brainwash.
Religions that encourage you to think allow for questioning and don't tell you should simply have faith to big holes in the story. Like, 'how do they know Mary was a virgin?' etc. etc.
How many witnesses does Christianity have? 1-10?

Judaism has 600,000 witnesses at it's birth. No other religion claims to have 600,000 witnesses who lived. hare krishna claims to have 600,000 but then they all died and one witness carried on that tradition. Our 600,000 lived.
And there's a reason that Judaism is the only religion that has this.
Other religions, 1-3 witnesses.

Everyone should question their religion.
That separates people with a mind from people who are brainwashed.
Questions are good.

I wouldn't trust a religion that was changed 200 years after the death of it's main character to market to the masses. Many people buy into marketing hype. Look around today...All the people who constantly buy buy buy without giving it much thought.

And I wouldn't trust a relgions where a large majority sends their children out to be suicide bombers. Any religion that blows up their children in the name of G0d, I think is a horrbile thing! How can people kill their own children like that, like they are a walking bomb? like they don't matter? Has Christianity ever done that??? Do they do that today??? No. Did they do that to win land from the British? How many princes are there in Middle East? Did you ever notice that the ones who kill themselves to get 70 virgins are poor? Why doesn't a Saudi Prince ever blow himself up? It's because the rich have the poor under their thumb. They will give money to terrorism and to suicide bombers but they won't kill themselves. They'll let a brainwashed 15 year old boy blow himself up thinking he'll get 70 virgins. Why didn't Saddam blow himself up to take out a few Americans? Why? Because they aren't stupid. It's the uneducated masses that these people control. The people who simply have faith wihtout studying. That's dangerous. To live in ignorance is not bliss, it's just plain dangerous. The rich in the middle east use the poor who are misguided by the leaders of their religion to hate rather than love. If more time was focused on loving than maybe then their society would pick up and life would be better off.

People have used religion as a tool for war and the two religions who own the most land today, and I mean continents! Christianity and Islam.
Religion in the wrong hands can be most destructive.
The irony of it all, Israel (look at a map - google it). Compare that to the land that is "owned" by Christianity and Islam. It's like someone eating an entire cake and not allowing a crumb of that to go to a child in the room.

There is much good in Christianity and Islam that can be taken and used for good. Christianity has progressed a lot since the Crusades. And Islam has many good principles. While I don't personally believe in Christianity or Islam, I think that people should be able to practice their religion freely. The societies that allow for that are based on the Jewish and Christian law system.

And why I write G-d or G0d without spelling out the name of the creator, it is because Jews are supposed to respect the name of the creator and not take it in vain. People overuse words all the time. Treating a name as special such as the creator of the world is important because it shows respect. When people abuse the name of the creator, they bring it down to the level of any other word but it isn't on that level, it's higher and so by writing it that way, I'm aknowledging that the name of G0d is higher than any word in this universe.

Andthe poster above, who writes that he's not part of any religions...ha ha Yeah right,
Ok guys just look at his user name, rearange the characters, get what I'm saying?

I might not believe what you believe but I think we as humans should still respect each other.
It would be a better world if we could learn to live with each other's differences.
I don't think anyone has the ultimate truth, although there are people who have more of the picture.
I am Jewish because I believe it to be true.
You probably believe your religion to be true.
What matters is that we are all G-d's people and we don't have the ultimate perspective of the creator, so we need each other to understand the greater picture.

What is it about Islam that makes it open-minded, sensible, and beautiful?

but anyway...if this is about truth, to argue these religions on an intellectual level...no name calling allowed! This is about evidence.

look at this:
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ier/islam.html
http://www.holysmoke.org/hs00/old.htm
http://debate.org.uk/topics/isamasih/apr99/archeo.htm
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/quran.htm
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1957/JASA12-57MacRae.html
http://www.churchhopping.com/jingle-...batman-smells/
http://www.humanists.net/alisina/

sensible - i like their idea of the three-fold journey. the whole animalistic self, the accusing self, & the restful self. just how islam breaks it down just makes so much more sense more to me than any other kind of religion. & how the idea of the 'original sin' was forgiven by God, & that he didn't doom us all to hell & bring pain & suffering into the world. islam seems to be the only religion i've read up on that doesn't paint a portrait of God to be this unforgiving tyrant.

open minded - islam's ALSO the only religion that seems to acknowledge ALL the prophets of God, & not deny any of them. who gives the right to say that Jesus wasn't a prophet? or that Muhammed wasn't a prophet? who's to even say that there isn't a prophet amongst us these days? the reason i find islam so open-minded, is that its willingly accepting that its a continuation of judaism & xtianity. its just that judaism is still living in the past, & xtianity is broken down into so many astrayed sects that nobody knows what it really is anymore. islam is the only one that seems to keep moving forward, until the end. what's true thousands of years ago may not be the truth anymore.

beautiful - some of the most beautiful things i've ever seen/heard are from the muslim world. whether it be their architecture, or their poetry [look up Rumi, if you don't already know], it just seems like everything was a step ahead of what the people of that time were capable of. i just find it all so fascinating &, yes, beautiful how its all put together. & how the qu'ran reads as a mesmerizing poem, instead of a japanese radio instruction manual. it draws you in, makes you want to read it more.



& to the chick who wrote the essay; i like it. especially this part:
i never thought of it that way, & it's pretty eerie how the similarities collide between jesus & hercules.

but in the end, i definitely meant when i said i'm not part of any religion &, despite your forensic analysis of my username, ashlee simpson still gets more credit for it than a'lla.



(i'll respond to the above post once i read it all; you posted it right when i was writing mine)

Did you read the parts of the Koran that say kill the infidel? There is a lot of beauty to the Muslim world but you are making it sound like it's all flowers and roses. It's not. Are you just skipping over the bad stuff?
There might be a lot of beauty in the Koran but they certainly don't accept all people...look at the Sunni's in Iraq killing the Shiites?
How can you claim this?
A lot of what you said was beautiful about the Koran, the idea of hell as not being eternal damnation etc. comes directly from Judaism. Check out sites like http://www.chabad.org, inner.org, etc.
You say Islam aknowledges all prophets!!
No....Islam does not believe Jesus is G0d!
Islam is monotheistic.
Islam believes that idoloters should be killed and worshipping a man as G0d is idolotry under Islam...ask any Muslim!!!!
You say Judaism is dated...Yeah, it's old. It's older than Christianity and Islam. It's older than the Greeks. It's the source.
I would rather go to the source than read mistranslations from rebel "prophets".

How do you know they are mistranslations? Look up the Bible Codes. The bible codes, equidistant letter sequences have only been found to the highest degree in the Jewish bible, the Torah by top Mathematicians. The future is predicted in our books. And also (look up the Esther Prophecy) and it has come true!

And I don't think we as humans should aknowledge all prophets as being sent from G0d if it's not true, if they are telling things that aren't true. That's like saying you should aknowledge liars.

I am arguing these points from an intellectual persepctive. I am not trying to attack you personally or anything.

While I do not believe in Islam or Christianity, I still respect people for being created by the creator.
I mean, just because you don't believe what I believe, doesn't mean you are any less valuable in the eyes of G-d from my perspective. We each have a role to play. It's not about being inferior or superior. No one is perfect. No one has the absolute perspective and because of this we need each other to understand G-d's creation.
You are G-d's creation and there should be respect between people even if we don't believe what they believe.

lol about your username but you do admit, that is kind of funny that your user name re-arranges to spell a word characteristic to the religion that you are promoting???

i said there was a lot of beauty in it, yes, but i didn't say it was perfect either. i'll reply more to this one below** the sunni & shi'ite feud is ancient, & is simply a war over petty power. these men didn't care about their faith or their people, they plain & simply wanted to control over the people. that's not islams. God never told them to fight to the death & the victor would be the worthy caliphate. he specifically condemns feeding into the basic instincts of war, greed, & violence.

the sunni & the shi'ites are just as twisted as the catholics & the baptists, or the jews & the zionists. looks like the pots kind of calling the kettle black, here..
& i never said islam completely came up with that ideal. i said islam picked up where judaism & xtianity left off. i wouldn't be suprised if it did in fact come from judaism. judaism really does have a lot of accurate facts & history. but the problem is, that's all it really has; texts, scriptures, & history.

i said acknowledged, not worshipped. & it does acknowledge all the prophets. it recognizes jesus as a prophet, just as much as it recognizes abraham & moses as well. it also says that the last prophet will come soon, toward the end.

even jewish scriptures claim that there were prophets prior to muhammed who were rejected by jewish tribes, but were actually genuine. so you'll excuse me if i don't take their judgement to be all that accurate.

that is speaking in only one truth.

islam scholars divide the qu'ran into two parts; the verses which were revealed in mecca, & those that were revealed in medina.

the meccan verses talk of pacifism & accomodation & whatnot. general peace amongst the people. but the medinite verses focus on self defense against the meccans who had injured & slain Muhammad's followers. they basically tell the people to fight against unbelieving opressors (which i'm sure is what you coined as "idolators"), & promise paradise to those who fall in jihad (which i'm sure you'll have a response to). & if they do in fact war, they are to war in a formal way. no women, children, livestock, farms, or even plant life should be harmed. they must not declare war, but they will defend their lives, livestock, & property. which i don't see the inhumanity in that at all.

Only argue with the People of the Book in the kindest way - except in the case of those of them who do wrong - saying, 'We have Faith in what has been sent down to us and what was sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and we submit to Him.**

ouch. rebel is kind of a harsh word.

judaism IS dated. & it may have been the source at one time, but over the thousands of years the "source" has been around, its been tainted & misconstrued. nobody knows what the source is anymore. whereas the qu'ran has remained the same the moment it was written. it exhalts the truths that are in the bible & in the jewish scriptures, but rejects the lies. judaism, xtianity, & islam all have the same source, but judaism & xtianity's source has been corrupted & divided into whole new interpertations. & then those interpertations become interperatated & soon you don't know whats true & whats false.

the qu'ran is the only one to have maintained in its original form throughout it all.

& that all may be true. islam acknowledges esther as a prophet & any prophecies she may have gotten. it never claims that any of the previous prophets were fakes or rebels; that's judaism.
you're absolutely right on this. & there will be prophets that are liars. the qu'ran states that there will be nearly 30 of them, with the last one being the antichrist (da'jal). that's when the final true prophet will rise & bring the middle east together. (i'm not sure on this, but i believe there's something along the lines of this in judaism as well?).

so of course its good to be skeptical on someone who claims themselves to be a messenger of God. but islam teaches that their fitrah should lead them down the right path, not to completely shut everyone else out, as judaism teaches.
no offense taken, i'm actually enjoying this. i just wish more people would be get involved as well.

xactly. couldn't have said it better myself. nobody knows the xact truth, & nobody ever will know. but if there's one thing true in all religion, it's that everything happens for a reason, whether big or small. i'm sure that's one thing everyone can agree on.

i'll give you that one, it was pretty good. it even took me a few minutes to figure out, & usually i'm on point with that kind of thing, haha.

You made some interesting points.
However, when you say Judaism is 'dated' basically what you are saying is that G-d makes mistakes. We believe the Torah is a divine document. 600,000 Jews stood at Sinai and heard the word of G-d and lived. No other relgiion claims this. If G-d wanted to add something...'why would he do this anyway?'...why wouldn't he arrange for another huge mass revelation of 600,000 people instead of just having a revelation to one man? Why is Judaism the only religion that can make a claim of 600,000 witnesses? No other religion could do this? Why? Because in order to say a whole nation heard something, you would have to have mass consensus but if you have one or two witnesses, you don't need mass consensus. Anyone can start a religion with 1 or 2 witnesses which is what you see with Christianity and Islam. Judaism is the only religion that claims so many witnesses.

Buddhism and a lot of eastern religions believe G-d is outside of Time. If G-d is outside of time, it would make no sense to send another prophet to correct mistakes. G-d does not make mistakes. People do.

I believe the Torah, the Tanach is a divine document. The other books, interpreted by Rabbi's, I don't believe it is divine, however they contain much wisdom. Likely there were mistakes made by the Rabbi's. They are human. This happens. But I don't believe there are any errors in the actual Torah, both from a mathematical perspective and from a theological perspective.

Assuming that a Rabbi were to make a mistake with commentary, if G-d is outside of time and divine, he might oust the individual Rabbi's who made the mistakes. But for G-d to say that 'all the laws he prescribes' such as the Shabbat which is written in the Bible and in the Christian Bible that the Christians don't even really follow is mute and void is wierd. Because G-d is outside of time. G-d doesn't make mistakes. The whole story about jc 'dying for our sins' doesn't make any sense. It's Greek Legend mixed with Paganism and Judaism. A creation of a man to market Judaism to the non-monotheistic masses.

The Torah can be seen as a divine document because it is written in a high language, Hebrew which has Gematria, numerical values to it's letters. It can be analyzed mathematically on many different levels! And people's names from the 19th century and throughout history are hidden in it. There is many secrets encoded in the Torah. Shakespeare, one of the worlds greatest authors can be analyzed on maybe 10 different levels but the Torah can be analyzed on over 70!

Christianity translated the Torah into many different languages and it lost it's meaning and so did Islam.

If you believe in prophets coming to rectify the Torah and change laws, you are saying 'G-d made a mistake'...G-d is perfect. G-d doesn't make mistakes.
G-d is not on our human level. Sometimes we don't understand the reasons for things like Kosher laws...but if you look at all the sicknesses that come about from eating non-kosher animals than you can understand this on a human level... (ie such as poisoning from shellfish, and diseases that come about from eating pig)

If you look at Christianity and Islam, you see their main figures as being these larger than life figures that don't make mistakes. If I wanted to start a religion, that's exactly how I would portray it...have a superhuman character who doesn't make mistakes. That 'perfect' character in the stories of Islam and Christianity is a reflection of a human creation.

In the Jewish bible, you see the Jews screwing up time and again, from the Golden Calf and onwards. People aren't perfect. When you want to sell a lie, you create these people who are perfect such as in the case of Islam and Christianity. What that does is raise a false human, to worship.

Moses, the Jewish people's greatest leader, stuttered and he made a mistake. He wasn't allowed to enter into Israel however G-d loved him and his descendants were. But G-d showed us by Moses making a mistake that people are human.

Any religion that raises people to be super-human is trying to create a false ideal and it's not a fact because these people, Jesus, Mohammed, died. They were people.

The Torah, not the Rabbinical writings does not vary. It's the same down to the very letter and has been for generations. Some letters are written bigger than others and it has been later discovered the meanings for this when events take place.

The Qu'aran likely has much beautiful language in it but
your claim that the Qu'aran hasn't been changed is false.
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/debate/part1.htm#B4
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/quran.htm#I

I find it puzzling when women support the oppression of women through forcing them to wear Burquas. Modesty is important but there's going to far. However, there are a lot of moderate muslims who just wear the hijab. Modesty is important but I am totally opposed to Burquas. And that form of estremism. Do people really feel that G-d wants a women to wear a Burqua and get osteoporosis?

Your term 'dated' is a reflection of the times that you are living in where consumerism has taken over and people constantly want new things. It shouldn't be about that. It should be about truth.

Mark Twain wrote:
"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded..;the Greek and the Roman followed...and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time,... but they now have vanished. The Jew...beat them all....What is the secret of his immortality?"

The secret is G-d.
G-d also blessed Ishmael (the father of Islam) and made the descendants of Ishmael a great nation but it is the covenant that was made with the descendants of Yitzhac and it has allowed Jews to survive from severe persecution.

In every religion there are power hungry people that seek to split off and start new sects.

It doesn't make their new sects 'true'.

Anything started from one person's quest for power, I would be weary of. I mean when you have a leader who was rejected by the majority...It wasn't the case with Moses and it wasn't the case with Avraham.

What has spread Christianity and Islam around the world? War and forced conversions.
As Jews, we turn away converts three times before they convert? Why? Because we want to make sure they are converting for the right reasons and not just marriage. Our strength is not in our numbers but in truth.

But Judaism isn't faultless. There are faults in Judaism as in every religion but not in the Torah itself. The Torah is true, it's just people are human so even in Judaism, you have some people acting unethically on occasion. We don't claim to be perfect.

You are right that the Sunni's and Shiites, fueds exist within every relgion....even in Judaism.

But the problem I have with Islam is that the feuds are written directly into their book, I think the western world knows what an infidel is now... where does the word infidel come from? The Koran. Take all that stuff about the Infidel out of Islam, give women more rights...and you might have a religion that is almost exactly like Judaism, though has a different flavor.

Islam and Judaism have more in common than Islam and Christianity. Both are monotheistic.

However, when I currently look at the world, Islam vs. Christianity, the Christian countries look a lot better to live in!
There is actually freedom. The superficiality of the Western World isn't a great thing but atleast there is freedom.

People from whatever religion should be allowed to practice their religion freely proving there is no things like murder, rape, etc. involved.

I don't see this in Islamic countries. Islam was once more tolerant of other religions. But I don't see this today. Do you?

We each have different perspectives for a religion and I believe that one should be able to learn from everybody.
So there is knowledge that I can learn from you and hopefull there is some knowledge that you can learn from me.
This doesn't mean that we will say, 'you're completely right', it just means that we are open to listening.

Not everyone is meant for the same purpose. We all have different outlooks on this world and different perspectives. I am against people forcibly converting other people to their religion. I believe that people should care for other people to respect that what is right for you is not necessarily right for them.

We as humans have an arrogance about us. So many people feel that what they are doing is right. I believe what is best is for us to let go of that arrogance and realize that everyone is valuable to the creator and what is the right path for someone might be the wrong path for someone else.

If Jews, Christians, and Muslims could all live under one G-d and put aside the differences that separate us, unite with our common interest of serving G-d and doing what's right, and to not judge other people for thinking differently than the world would be a better place.

But this is idealistic? In Christianity, Judaism and Islam, even the members of the same religion can't even get along!!!!!!!
How crazy is that?

What we need to do is realize that there is one G-d and bond with that realization and not seek to exterminate each other for thinking differently.

In a Jewish prayer we say "Hear all Israel, G-d is our King, G-d is One." When we hear something, we internalize it more.
The sight is a deceptive tool. It's through sight that people judge other people by their appearance and not by their heart.
And it's sight that separates us from each other.

Since G-d is one, we all are important. It's not about inferior or superior. Those are human terms. G-d is above that. G-d is one. I believe each one of us has a unique relationship with our creator.

This is such an interesting debate. I have no religion at all, and not much knowledge of them either, but I am sort of fascinated. I need an idiot's guide to Judaism because I really know nothing about it. I'd like to learn, though. Much of this discussion is frustrating for me, because I don't know stories or beliefs or aims, but that's a good sign. I wish I could be more intellectually involved. Oh well! Keep writing...

__________________

<<In fact, Judaism is the only religion out of Christianity and Islam that believes that non-members of their faith will have life in the world to come.>>

Islam does as well.

As for me, I can't really do this, because while I call myself a Christian (aka, follower, or at least in my case, admirer, of Jesus, as I don't feel I do a very good job of "following" him), my idea of Christianity involves little to no actual dogma and I've found my truth within this by reading Jewish and Islamic texts and statements by theologians of these religions alongside those of Christian tendencies.

The few practices I actually do follow are mostly Christian, though I refuse to celebrate Christmas and a few other "Christian" holidays (c'mon, most of them are rip-offs of Pagan holidays).

After looking at a lot of different religions I realized the Abrahamic faiths are the ones I find the most truth in, but I tend to dismiss most of everything that's come out for Christian laws/beliefs post-Nicene creed, after lots of studying the history and contexts of these beliefs. Too much politics involved.

Judaism, oddly enough, probably has helped me/shaped my spiritual beliefs the most, but the person of Jesus is the crux of it all for me. I don't believe in his divinity nor do I believe in the notion of a trinity, but I do believe him to have existed as a savior in that he lived the ways of the law as intended, which at the time he had lived was veering in all the wrong ways. i see Christianity as going down that same path, as well as Islam.

i dunno; i'm also the type of person who sees christianity (particularly early christianity, the type that i personally feel is the closest to any "correct" christianity, should there be such a thing) as meant to be an anarchistic/communistic religion...

it's really difficult for me to be precise in my explanation of what i believe, as it's taken my whole life to get here, especially since there's my own personal studying and experiences and logic involved, but this is it in a nutshell so far.

anyway, though, i don't think any of them are more "right" or "wrong" than another.

in a book i'm reading about Islam, it's mentioned that the three are different paths revealed to different people at different times to the same thing.

the islamic end times are scary
you gotts stand naked with everyone else!

pdoll dizzle
youve tornapart christianity and islam
but havent really built up judaism?
tell us
EVERYTHING about judaism
including the613 commandments!

first off, i'm really glad somebody came in from the xtianity side & evened things out. i kind of gave up on this thread because it was turning into a judiasm vs. islam debate & those weren't my intentions at all.

but yes, i agree with everything i've said, but the last part you mentioned is what i was trying to stress the most. its the same thing revealed to three different people, leading towards the same path. give or take some customs & beliefs, but it really all comes full circle in the end.

as i said, i was baptized catholic & know all the customs & rituals & prayers. but it just never vibed well with me. mostly for the fact, like you said, alot of it was based off pagan ideology. i think out of the three, it was definitely the most corrupt. whether we'll know jesus was the son of God or not, we'll never know. but i do believe he was indeed a prophet sent from God. though his death, ressurection, & ascension are the things that i'm kind of suspuscious of.

again, whether i sound it or not, i am more of a spiritual person than a religious person. i was just seeing the general consensus on the subject, while trying to xpress my own.

maybe take two of this thread will be a little better than the first time around.

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