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Title: Re: Comparative monotheism 101: Shema vs. Shahadah, Allah vs. Yahweh round 1 Post by: Matt on February 15, 2008, 05:19:27 PM 1. The way I try and explain the need for one God is the fact that I feel for anything to happen (namely, this life), there must be an originator, or a first cause. If it were like a team of gods, you'd wonder where they came from, and so on and so forth. To have a single source that was always there ends this infinite loop of us asking "Where'd this come from? etc" theologically. Why can't this supposed "team of gods" be the first cause, but the one God can? Why can you wonder where they would come from but not even question where God would come from? The way I see is that multiples do not usually simply come into being, there is usually a progenator or something else of the sort. It introduces several questions like, "which one is most powerful? do they not like eachother? do they wonder where the others came from?" A single first cause, a spark of some sort that starts it all makes the most sense to me. Kind of what Lex said. If your God is to be truly and absolutely omniscent, omnipotent and everything, it should be an it, not a them. And, if you can declare that a god does not need a cause, why do you assume that time and space need one? I feel that to feel such a way is what could possibly limit human potential. If you take time and space as forever constant, you begin to work in such a framework. We know that time and space can be manipulated, and if I were to submit to a higher force, I'd place it outside realms we know, so it is almost like a goal to work towards. So it doesn't interfere with our progress (like creationists who try to stop legitimate science). I think what we do agree on is that something must be constant. Things have to have originated from somewhere. To think that things (other than the originator) simply pop into existance is what I see as irrational. But that's the science side of things. I feel that once you've settled on faith, it soothes the soul more to find belief from the inside, rather than from outside. The inability to answer this scientifically is where mankind has always made up the answer: God. |