Tens of thousand of years ago early civilizations honored and prayed to many gods and types of gods.The Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians had many gods and goddesses for whom they built numerous elaborate temples. The ancient Egyptians also believed that their pharaohs were gods and treated them as such. Other ancient people prayed to the gods of nature, such as the sun, wind, fire, animals and the forest. People prayed to different gods who represented different aspects of life. About 4000 years ago the idea of, monotheism or"one"god was introduced by Abraham in the founding of the Jewish religion. A few thousand years later, Christianity, an offshot of Judaism was founded. At about the same time Islam was founded. All three of these religions honored one single God, who was basically the same God with different names, Jehovah, Allah or God, according to what religion you belonged to. All of a sudden praying to only one God became the norm. Even though the same one God is recognized as the same "one true God" each of these religions have been at each other's throats for thousand of years, professing to be the "only true religion". Even the different sects in Judaism, Christianity and Islam are professing to be the true sect of their religion. Millions of people have died and thousands continue to die to this day, all in the name of God.
All of these religions believe that God is an all loving, all powerful and all forgiving God. One thing that baffles me is, how God lets this bloodshed continue. Why does he stand by an allow people to murder each other in His name? Why doesn't He come out and say "cut the crap and accept and love one another in My name instead of killing your fellow man in My name"? Surely God can do that.
If you look at the Bible, you will see that God had talked to Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Ezekiel, Noah and a few others. But that was about 4,000 years ago. Why was God so talkative way back then, but suddenly so quiet now? As far as I know God has not talked to anyone in at least 2000 years, if you don't count some of the present day Republican candidates for president. Another question I have on this subject is "where was God all of those tens of thousand of years before he supposedly spoke to Abraham"? What made Him decide suddenly to talk to Abraham and tell him to found the Jewish religion? I don't uinderstand it. I am sure if I were to address these concerns to any devout member of the above religions I would get the response, "It's God's will". The standard response a religious person gives when he can't come up with an logical answer.
What I am really worried about is that if by some amazing miracle God reads this blog and decides to talk to someone about the religious violence ocurring in the world today. Would that person believe that God was actually talking to him? And what would happen when he communicated to the rest of us what God had said? We all would probably think he was crazy and pay him no heed. Who knows? Maybe God has already told us to stop the killing and violence in the name of religion and we just laughed at the messenger. I really believe, however, that is intrinsically human for people to hate and to kill for no reason at all, other than slight differences in opinion. Animals kill for food and for defense. Humans kill for no reason at all. And we consider ourselves superior! Maybe God is just fed up with us all.
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