Alright, let's be straightforward here. It depends on what religion's viewpoint you are looking at it from. To decide whether the rest of the beliefs are invalid depends on which religion you are looking at. For example, Islam would consider the 'Christian God' the same as the 'Muslim God.' They believe there is only one god, and that Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in him. On the other hand, Christians don't follow that belief. You can see where I'm going with this. All religions are unique in their own way, and to decide which one is valid depends on your viewpoint.

Also, about the violence. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, all religions are involved in violence. Let's take Islam here as an example again. Terrorism is mainly blamed on Muslims. Why? Simply because a couple of terrorist groups call themselves 'Muslims'. I guarantee you that 90% of true Muslims don't consider those terrorists as Muslims, and rather as sinners who are not Muslims. The same holds true for almost all violence conducted by religious groups. (Except let's say Jihad for Muslims since I've used Islam as an example here).

Edited 4/15/2014 05:09:28

You are all not really answering the question which I postulated here.

Atheist are people who deny all religions

Monotheists are people who accept only one god.

How can monotheists if they are religious of nature so easily disregard the possibility another god - be it Allah, God, Zeus, Vishnu, Boeddha (not a god really), Isis etc. is wrong ?

You are so narrow minded and inflexible, is thinking in the abstract or determining an answer based on your feelings so unrelatable a concept to you that your eyes glaze over when you read answers from people who can?

To be blunt It depends on the monotheist, this may come as a surprise but theyre all different and have different motivations and judging processes.

Edited 4/15/2014 11:46:37

Who cares about what god you believe in.this isn't a contest about who is right, chances are no one is right. The important part is that we all make good decisions to make this world a better place

Am I the one who is narrow minded and inflexible ????

There are literally thousands of religions to choose from....I think the person who isn't even willing to consider all those other religions aside from his own is being narrow minded and inflexible UNLESS he has good reason to deny the validity of those other religions.

Henche the question how people rationalize for themselves that only their religion can be correct for somehow they must have made this decision.

Don't be stupid piggy, aranka makes a good point. I don't think it matters to us whether god exists, because it is a philosophical dead end, nothing more can be drawn from it. Even if you accept that God exists, nothing about life changes, because that single fact tells you nothing about how to live your life, or what happens when you die, or anything at all. Religions do that, they say god is like this or god is like that. And those people are obviously making that stuff up. Like aranka says, among monotheists there are as many different beliefs as there are among atheists or polytheists, beyond the one that they all share, "god exists". Therefore, the existence or non-existence of god is functionally irrelevant, "does god exist" is an unimportant question.

Furthermore, you have people claiming to speak to god or to witness miracles or whatever, that also happens in every religion. So a religious person who believes in miracles actually denies many more 'miracles' than they accept, just as there are more 'gods' they don't believe in than ones they do.

All glory to Zeus!

Most religious people haven't actually chosen a religion or a god - they have inherited them from their parents. As such, many of them don't even stop to consider that other religions/gods might actually be correct.

I think most people who do think about this fall into one of two categories. They either suppress those fears so that they don't have to worry about them, or they come to the conclusion that all of these different gods are actually the same God that people are approaching from different directions.

In my church we don't view other church's as being "wrong" but they don't have the whole truth. also on the subject of the trinity we believe them to be three separate beings but heavenly father to be god jesus christ to be his son who came to earth to atone for man kind so that we can repent to return to heaven and the holy ghost to be a messenger. to believe in a god you must have, as incaman said, blind faith" faith is believing in something you can not see. I can not go to lee way street and ring his doorbell but I believe that he is there and can hear my prayers. there is no way to scientifically prove the existence of god but the miracles that jesus performed and a testament to the power of god and he said that god existed the world exists there are many ways to prove he exists just not scientifically. that's why many people say that there is no way. That's just my beliefs though so take it how you will

YAAT

kinda missed it though, welcome back Aranka!

So, basically, the points made here have been that the monotheist believes in their god because:

To be blunt It depends on the monotheist, this may come as a surprise but theyre all different and have different motivations and judging processes.

...

Seriously? This completely dodges the question by stating that people subjectively chose their preferences about god. So, it's an opinion and they fail to look at things critically and impartially.

This admits that monotheists have absolutely no reason to believe their god over another.
There it lies, plain and simple.

In conclusion, some people are crazy enough to think that they can determine a real thing by their own "judging processes". Honestly, this can only be described as sheer insanity.

Yes you are being narrow minded. If you had empathy, imagination or diverse life experience you would be able to answer this question yourself. I, incaman and Richard sharpe all gave a plausible answer, we are not religious. You expect someone to justify themselves (1), with logic (2), to you (3). You are too lazy to climb down from your ivory tower and dirty your hands mixing with the intellectual peasantry in order to see things from their point of view.

Edited 4/15/2014 16:25:47

Amazing that no one seems to see the correlation between this thread and julkorn's loaded evolution post. Or at least those who have noticed the obvious haven't chosen to point it out.

Both are asking hypothetical questions in such a fashion as to make it completely and utterly impossible to truly answer them.

Edited 4/15/2014 16:31:45

coolie:
I attacked the assumption inherent in the flawed question. It was a low ball so dodging it was a no-brainer. People do subjectively arrive at their preferences, you included. Some people do not asses information from a position of emotional detachment like you do. Its different and equally valid, so are the conclusions that they come to. They aren't insane. Conrad and Myhand both do it.

Hence the reason PS called YAAT, because this thread is about entertaining Aranka :)

Edited 4/15/2014 16:35:28

Yes, Haupt, because four random letters convey such significant meaning.

Unless of course those four random letters are xkcd.

Well, he just skipped the explanation and went right to calling it out :P

piggy: born-again jungian.

Ah.
I wasn't bothering with whether you were religious or not, piggy. I was just using that quote because that summed it up pretty nicely what was going on.

Maybe I don't like opinions because I am exposed to a place where mine aren't very welcome. (It's a Catholic school) Also, whenever I get emotionally attached I usually blow up, so at least I've found a way to cope. I was baptized Catholic anyway. Tell me I never really understood Christianity. I probably didn't, but whatever. At least they tried to lure me in with their Sunday schooling.

Yeah, that last part I said earlier wasn't so cool. But, how are they equally valid methods? You can't just suppose things about the universe because you subjectively feel it to be that way. Well you can, but it won't be true.

Edited 4/16/2014 00:13:13

Supposing things about the universe because you feel it to be that way does lead to true conclusions. Especially when dealing with other people, an area where logic struggles. This thread is a testament to that. You keep saying subjective in a derogatory way, but everyones viepoint is subjective whether youre a touchy feely person or a thinker.

No zealot like a convert.

Edited 4/16/2014 03:15:48