Agrippina wrote:Monotheism means you worship one god, and only one god and that god is infallible and all-powerful and does not need the assistance of assistants. The worship of any god that has angels, demons and other whatevers helping him, is not all powerful.

Worshipping the sun, praying to the sun, or as in the case of the other thread the god invented by Akhenaten, the actual sun disc, that is monotheism.

You are creating a rather odd definition of monotheism. If we can go around create our own definitions of everything, and then say that, say, Islam isn't monotheism because my definition says it's not, we can keep making it stricter and stricter until no monotheism exists or whatever; if that is the case, having terminology at all is useless!

We could easily claim no monotheism can exist then - Judaism kind of includes the belief that there are people (and angels, and so on, sure, but let's ignore those). Any god that has people and whatever helping him (or even just existing with him!) isn't all powerful/all one/etc. (This is kind of a reductio ad absurdum of your argument.)

We must use these concepts as they are used by the religions that use them, we can't just start inventing our own definitions of things like these. (At least not normative descriptions. Descriptive terminology is ok, but not normative terminology, in this case. Normative terminology is kind of either religious or strangely platonic.)

Whatever! My definition says "mono" means "one" therefore "monotheism" means one god, not one god and all his hangers-on.

Agrippina wrote:Whatever! My definition says "mono" means "one" therefore "monotheism" means one god, not one god and all his hangers-on.

... but the other things aren't Gods.

Srsly.

I mean, you could just as well object that "oh, but there's stones and trees in the world, hence God is not alone, hence no monotheism!"

Also, who cares what your definition says, you are sort of doing a etymological fallacy, and ... so on. Your argument seriously sucks.

klazmon wrote:They are just equivocating. They believe in the god Satan. Satan is a god just as Hermes or Odin are gods. Worship has nothing to do with it. Ancient Greeks didn't necessarily worship all of their gods either.

It looks as though we need a definition of "god". Preferably not one that just says "Allah".

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Agrippina wrote:Whatever! My definition says "mono" means "one" therefore "monotheism" means one god, not one god and all his hangers-on.

... but the other things aren't Gods.

Srsly.

I mean, you could just as well object that "oh, but there's stones and trees in the world, hence God is not alone, hence no monotheism!"

Also, who cares what your definition says, you are sort of doing a etymological fallacy, and ... so on. Your argument seriously sucks.

What are Jesus and Mo? Prophets, Conveniently Jesus is part of a trinity, that's conveniently like saying that a married couple are one person, or to use a modern analogy, a corporation is a person. No, God is the Father and Jesus is the son and who the hell knows exactly what the holy ghost does. It is tri-theism made up to be monotheism, just nonsense.

And the same with Mo. If Allah is the god and Mo is his Prophet then why can I draw pictures of Muslims but not of Mo? Because he's a god, yeah yeah yeah, get off my back, he's not strictly speaking a god, just like I'm strictly speaking not the boss of my house, He's a god. And anyone who wants to argue can bite me!

Agrippina wrote: And the same with Mo. If Allah is the god and Mo is his Prophet then why can I draw pictures of Muslims but not of Mo? Because he's a god, yeah yeah yeah, get off my back, he's not strictly speaking a god, just like I'm strictly speaking not the boss of my house, He's a god. And anyone who wants to argue can bite me!

My understanding is that the proscription against pictures of Muhammed is actually an aspect of the denial of his divinity, that it arises from the concern that physical depictions of him could lead to his deification, as with Jesus.

So where exactly should I bite?

Agrippina wrote:

What are Jesus and Mo? Prophets, Conveniently Jesus is part of a trinity, that's conveniently like saying that a married couple are one person, or to use a modern analogy, a corporation is a person. No, God is the Father and Jesus is the son and who the hell knows exactly what the holy ghost does. It is tri-theism made up to be monotheism, just nonsense.

Christian monotheism is a strange thing, and it does live on the edge of the definition of monotheism. Judaism and Islam do not always agree to consider Christianity monotheistic, actually!

And the same with Mo. If Allah is the god and Mo is his Prophet then why can I draw pictures of Muslims but not of Mo? Because he's a god, yeah yeah yeah, get off my back, he's not strictly speaking a god, just like I'm strictly speaking not the boss of my house, He's a god. And anyone who wants to argue can bite me!

As pointed out, pictures of Mo are generally forbidden in Islam in order that he not be deified- this is actually part of the uproar about the Danish comics! But as my religion teacher in high school told me, when she and a group of religion teachers visited Iran or somewhere, the place was full not only of pics of Muhammed, but even of Allah himself. So local practice of course varies - we can't really assume Islam and Christianity to be very unified things.

@shrunk

Really I get so irritated with the stupidity about religion. I know Mohammed isn't a god and I know it's to do with his supposedly not being set up as a deity, it's just that it's stupid. The man was a crook. He pretended to write a whole lot of garbage, when he was a camel tender or something I don't know what, he married his boss's wife and then to get some recognition came up with a story that fooled a whole bunch of other camel herders into becoming whatever they're becoming now. Next thing there'll be a fatwa out on me or something so maybe I should just shut up or I'll be stoned or something.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

What are Jesus and Mo? Prophets, Conveniently Jesus is part of a trinity, that's conveniently like saying that a married couple are one person, or to use a modern analogy, a corporation is a person. No, God is the Father and Jesus is the son and who the hell knows exactly what the holy ghost does. It is tri-theism made up to be monotheism, just nonsense.

Christian monotheism is a strange thing, and it does live on the edge of the definition of monotheism. Judaism and Islam do not always agree to consider Christianity monotheistic, actually!

And the same with Mo. If Allah is the god and Mo is his Prophet then why can I draw pictures of Muslims but not of Mo? Because he's a god, yeah yeah yeah, get off my back, he's not strictly speaking a god, just like I'm strictly speaking not the boss of my house, He's a god. And anyone who wants to argue can bite me!

As pointed out, pictures of Mo are generally forbidden in Islam in order that he not be deified- this is actually part of the uproar about the Danish comics! But as my religion teacher in high school told me, when she and a group of religion teachers visited Iran or somewhere, the place was full not only of pics of Muhammed, but even of Allah himself. So local practice of course varies - we can't really assume Islam and Christianity to be very unified things.

You know, I could respect the believers if they all agreed on the thing they believe in. But even the Jews get stupid about what is and isn't part of their religion. It's ridiculous how much nonsense there is about these religions, which is one of the reasons that drove me to abandon it in the first place.

But it does give us wonderful material to debate, doesn't it?

Agrippina wrote:
You know, I could respect the believers if they all agreed on the thing they believe in. But even the Jews get stupid about what is and isn't part of their religion. It's ridiculous how much nonsense there is about these religions, which is one of the reasons that drove me to abandon it in the first place.

But it does give us wonderful material to debate, doesn't it?

Are you seriously saying you would respect them more if they forced more beliefs on their members? That's .... quite backwards for an atheist, no?

Noooooo! Not at all. I'd respect the people who could claim that they have one system, one dogma, one set of beliefs, that they at least have some sort of cohesive system. Even if I thought what they believed in was rubbish.

Hmm! Let me think of an analogy. No I can't you're right. I can't think of a reason to respect religion or the people who believe in it, except for the things they do that don't involve religion.

Shrunk wrote:My understanding is that the proscription against pictures of Muhammed is actually an aspect of the denial of his divinity, that it arises from the concern that physical depictions of him could lead to his deification, as with Jesus.

Mine - which I suppose amounts to much the same thing - is that it was from fear of idolatry. Either way, it seems to be a relatively recent prohibition.

Fundamentalists of Islam support the idea that any depictions of Mohammed (also spelled Muhammad) must be forbidden, but in fact such depictions had not been prohibited until the 16th or 17th century and they are never condemned in the Koran.

(many pics included) http://facesofmohammed.an3.es/
The above has lots of non-Muslim illustrations but there is a collection of historical Muslim images of Mo here: http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full/ where you can also see the fabulous Buraq.
EDIT: I read a while ago that the Saudis were covering large tracts of Mecca and Medina with concrete, to obscure locations famous for Mo's presence in the past, so as to make sure they couldn't become shrines. Mo's grave was the first target, IIRC.

I wonder what would happen to me if I used that one of him holding his skin open showing off his insides as an avatar.