Abolish "Allah"

I agree with that last statement. I think people, especially Christians, use it in order to distance themselves from muslims. I've had this conversation with someone very close to me. Their response was that "we don't worship the same god, their 'Allah' is not 'God'".

Suppose you abolish "God" and only used "Allah". According to the logic of the proposition this should work equally well ! :wink:

Fine with me.

Doesn't make any particular sense to use the Arabic word rather than using the English one, but yes, my overall point is that it's the same God so why not use the same term across all three religions.

sozobe,

As an atheist I can only comment that cultural variants of monotheism serve differential tribal functions. "Same God" and "Brotherhood of Man" appear to be intellectual con-tricks to disguise the actuality of such tribalism as evidenced by its blood soaked history.

It's not like Buddhism or Hinduism or something, though, a generalized "higher power" that many religions share by virtue of being religious. Jews think the Old Testament is holy, Christians think the Old and the New Testament are holy, Muslims think the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran are all holy. That relationship is often ignored or completely unknown by Americans. (I started this after reading yet another false dichotomy between the Christian and the Muslim God.)

What name do atheist's use for god? Is there an Atheos?

atheos - "godless"

You don't give name to something you don't believe exist. You could try to describe it, like a lot if atheists do.

Well I don't think there should be an Atheos anyway.

They should just call Him God like everyone else.

Do you mean "her"?

Allah Chick-bah!

No CJ, then it would be Athea...

I call 'Him' a figment of an indoctrinated imagination.

Should it not work better, if the claim is true; that muslims are the only ones to acknowledge all three prophets?

My main point is just that it's a translation issue.

"Allah" is Arabic for "God." It means "the God," and is referring to the same entity that we refer to when we say "God."

Yet when you read an article that contains a translation it's "English English English Allah English English..." Why not translate "Allah" along with everything else?

I don't actually think the word should be abolished in general of course. In keeping with my point, I would love it if Arab-speakers translated English uses "God" as "Allah," too. (Maybe they do, I don't know.) That'd be awesome, in fact -- George Bush saying "Allah bless America." :-D (With "bless" and "America" also being in Arabic, of course...)

That makes sense.

The few muslim people I know do say "god" when referring to the one in the muslim book. I don't know if it's a common thing though.

But I think muslims do believe that it's the same god in both religions. Perhaps the problem is with christianity?

No, it would be Shekinah.

Not a bad idea.


Now...if we can only get this god to stop telling people to hate other people and stuff.


Think we can get it to a god school?

Well I think we now have the makings of a script comparable to Monty Pythons "Spanish Inquisition"! I have a potential scene in mind involving some Muslim clerics (John Cleese & Co) suddenly discovering that "Allah" is female (a Python "Old Lady").

I like where you're going with this generally, Sozobe. Muslims and Christians will both tell you that there is only one God, and the most sane religious folks won't have any hangup with what anyone calls him, IMO. I think some of the worst conflicts between muslims and christians (on a not-world-wide-terrorism-war level) stem from the fact that christians name Jesus as the son of God, and muslims don't.

I think this only makes sense if we assume a god (just one) exists, and that we can also safely assume that both Muslims and Christians (and all the other monotheists) have that particular god in mind when they refer to him. If the god is imaginary, then every Christian has a different god, before you even bring Muslims into the equation.