Curious Questions Series: Do all religions worship the same god?

If you compare the Native American Indian god with the Christian god, you can have an easy answer: No! The Christian god isn't the same as the Indian god!  The sun god couldn’t even resemble the biblical god Yahweh (God).  On the first religion, the sun is worshiped as the creator, as the observer and punisher. On the second religion, the god, Yahweh, is an invisible figure; creator of the suns, the moons and the stars. The Omniscient being Yahweh is a lot more complex and a lot more approachable. If we compare Yahwer with Brahma, a Hindu god, we would have another decisive answer: They are completely different; They cannot be the same god. 
To make the title's question a little more difficult, let’s explore if the gods in the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islamic and Judaic) are the same one; To do so, lets travel trough history, dividing it in four key points: The Beginning, The birth of Judaism, The birth of Christianity and the Birth of Islamism; and find out exactly where Yahweh (God) originates, and how God's name branches out into more modern religions. 

The Beginning
Mesopotamia was the "cradle of civilization" . From there, complex civilizations branched and flourished, such as Sumerian in 4000 BC, Egypt in 3000BC, China in 2200BC, Babylonians in 1700 BC and Semites in 1500BC. From the Semite's civilization, branched many Arab tribes and the Hebrew society. It was on the Hebrew's tribe where Abrahan was born. 

The Birth of Judaism
Around 1450 BC, Abrahan and his people (Hebrews) were chosen by God to carry out his message of great promise to His loyal worshipers. Abrahan's descendants left Canaan (modern Israel) and settled in Egypt due to a severe famine caused by drought. There, the Hebrew's tribe was slaved for four hundred years. A man called Moses was chosen by God to lead the Hebrew people away from Egypt's tyranny.  It took forty years for Moses and his people to reach the land of Canaan. During the "desert wondering", Moses received the ten commandments from God. Moses died before reaching Canaan. The new leader, Joshua, was instructed by God to kill everyone in the now occupied land of Canaan and establish the Hebrews in the Promised Land. 

After many generations, the land became divided and weak. The Hebrew people became conquered over and over by many Empires until they were ultimately destroyed by the Roman Empire around 66 AC.

Jesus Christ was a Jew who was born in times of great Roman oppression. Before him, many prophets tried to lead the Hebrews back to God's path, described in the old texts of Moses,  and prophets. Over time Jesus developed profound knowledge of the those old texts.  Around 33AC, Jesus started preaching and revolutionized the Jewish world with a new message of God and a astonishing title: He was claimed the son of God. 

The Birth of Christianity


Jesus' views of the old texts and his disciples' assumption of Christ as being the son of God were seen as severe blasphemy from the old Jewish priests. In spite of all the repression, Jesus teachings were becoming dangerously popular. Before the year's Passover, the Jewish people's most traditional holy day, Jesus with his disciples decided to go to Jerusalem, capital of Judea, and stay there for the Passover.  Fearful of a uprising during the holy day, the Jewish priests denounced Jesus to the Romans authorities and Jesus ended up arrested and crucified.

Jesus' apostles, Peter and Paul, brought the preachings of Jesus to Rome. There, the Christian sect were victim of harsh persecution by the people. Christians were a small minority, but a threat in the Roman's polytheistic system. During the rule of Emperor Nero, around 200 AC, Romans persecuted and killed Christians by the thousands, in spite the impossible means, Christianity continued to grow.

The Roman Emperor, Constantine I, was exposed to Christianity by his mother, Helena.  During a battle in 312, Constantine commanded his troops to adorn their shields with the Christian symbol in accordance with a vision that he had had the night before. After winning the battle, Constantine was able to claim the emperorship in the West.  The accession of Constantine was a turning point for the Christian Church. After his victory, Constantine supported the Church financially, built various basilicas, granted privileges to clergy, promoted Christians to some high ranking offices, and returned property confiscated, destroyed and expropriated pagan temples. 

Around 350 AC the Catholic Church, a centralized Cristian sect;  formed commissions to collect the old texts before and during Jesus's time. 66 books were chosen between thousands available to form the Bible.

As the Church grew, more and more people became unhappy with the priests' views of the holy Bible. It seemed like few were really listening and obeying God's biblical words. During this crises, shines the figure of Muhammad, claimed as the last prophet of God.

The Birth of Islamism


Muhammad(570 AC) was claimed as the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. Muhammad  was a trader later becoming a religious, political, and military leader. Muhammad started receiving revelations from God. The content of these revelations, known as the Qur'an, was memorized and recorded by his companions.

During this time, Muhammad preached to the people of Mecca, imploring them to abandon polytheism. Although some converted to Islam, Muhammad and his followers were persecuted.  His death in 634 resulted in the Muslim expansion deeply into Persian and Byzantine territories. From there, it grew throughout the world.

There are very deep differences of God's personality between the Jewish' views, based on the Old Testament's books, Christian's views, based on the New Testament's books and Muslim's views, based on the Q'ran; Although the god of the Hebrews, the god of Christianity and the god of Muslin originated by the same man.
 If we consider the creator of the universe, God,  as the All Knowing Being, we must to assume that He doesn't regret or make mistakes. God couldn’t send information to one prophet and change his mind on the second one.  Only one messenger can be right. Inside the Christian's faith, for example, is contradictory to say that they have the same god as the Muslims or Jewish. Assuming that, confirms that God thought one way before and changed his mind, sending Jesus to fix his mistake or after sending Jesus, He regretted and sent Muhammad.

The way Christians understand god is based on Jesus' views. The way Jews understand God is based on Moses and prophets' views. The way Muslims understand God is based on Muhammad's views. If their views are different from one another, the god that a Christian sees is different from the god Muslims and Jewish see and so on.  If they are referring to the same god, only one messenger must be right. Only one Abrahamic religion should be indeed, inspired and blessed by God.

Curious Question Series: Aren't you an atheist?

Do you see this tittle as an insult? If so, this text is for you! Learn where the fear of atheists originates, what it really means, and find out if you really aren't an atheist.

               To understand why the expression of atheism is negative and uncomfortable, it is necessary to look in depth at our recent history. In 1945, right after the second World War, the growth of communism encountered the advance and consolidation of North American capitalism in the world. The communism proposed the end of social classes through the division of richness and also wanted the absolute control by the state. Fearful for the capitalist economies in the word, the United States used many resources to detain the communist advances, such as military support to threatened countries and massive use of propaganda. The American propaganda pointed the communist regime as evil and anti-religious.  The image of the communist regime was associated with the image of the old USSR destroying and expropriating churches and prosecuting religious groups. The fear of losing the religious freedom added by the nightmare of losing its own richness, promoted the terror and hate of the atheist-communists by most of the western world.  These roots are still alive today;  We tend to associate the word atheist to communist, anti-god, oppressor or fascist.

                 Atheism is nothing more than a lack of believe in deity(s). Atheism does not deny the existence of a architect of the universe. Atheism just denies the religious belief in mystical gods. Atheism isn’t a religion, or a political view, much less an instrument of proselytism. The atheist doesn’t have to believe in scientific theories such as Evolution of Species nor in the Theory of Big-Bang.  The atheist doesn’t have to be skeptical to the existence of aliens, gnomes, fairy or any other popular myths. The only thing that makes you an atheist is the lack of belief on the “local god”.

                 The “local god” is the only acceptable god for the most of the population in certain area. The conviction that every religious group have that, “there is only one god”, disregard the belief in other gods of the other religions, because these other groups do not believe on the “true god”.  So the lack of belief on this “true god” would turn these other religious groups, atheists.   It is estimated that there are more than four thousand religions around the world. Between them, there are more popular religious groups such as Christianity, with two billions of followers, Islamism with one and a half billion, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Between the religions less well known, we can find hundreds of African religions and many others with roots in popular religions. If we take into consideration the extinct religions such as the Greek and roman polytheism, the Nordic beliefs, the primitive religions of the native Indians, the Egyptians, Sumerians and etc., the quantity of gods in the world would be staggering.  When one religious group believe to have knowledge of the “right god”, it indirectly sends  all other religious groups to the atheist group. No religious group can avoid that stigma.  The god will never be the right one everywhere.

            We can assume with absolute conviction that your actual belief in your god, in some place in the world would be against the local consensus.  Your lack of belief in the "local god" would turn you, in the sense of word, an atheist. In a visit to India for example, your lack of belief in the gods Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva or Shakti, would give you the “despicable” title of atheist from the local residents. Your Indian, African or oriental friends that don’t believe in the “only god” Yahweh (biblical god) should be regarded as atheists by you because they don't believe in the "only true god".  Your only condition for not being an atheist in this moment is because you are in the right place at the right time.