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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Orange Wizard]

I think it's actually kinda irreverent. Judaism and Islam both deny Christ's divinity (sort of, can't think of the right word), so having Christians worshipping alongside them is a little weird.
I mean, they can follow whatever religion they like, but the point here is that they're not Christian. Having them do their things in a Christian church undermines the Christian bit.

...

"This is something God wanted us to do a long time ago, and we were completely blinded by doing other things," says Aryeh Azriel, the rabbi at Temple Israel.

Also, ew.

[Rolan7]

"A house divided cannot stand."

What point is there in shoving 3 mutually exclusive religious faiths into one crowded center of worship?

Renewable fusion power?  The situation sounds explosive enough.

But seriously...  Eh, dunno.  This doesn't seem terribly surprising to me, but I used to hang out with Unitarians and I know a few "All gods are, like, the same god" type people.  (Which I follow as far as the Abrahamic God, but when they try to shoehorn Buddha and Vishnu in...)

I kinda hope it works out though.  Being exposed to other denominations like this will hopefully encourage them to learn about their faiths.  I have a lot more respect for religious people who bother to study, yaknow, the most important topic possible (as opposed to blithely believing what they were taught as kid).

Though I see some people are worried about terrorists taking offense and action, and I think that's a real concern here ):

[Frumple]

It's... not really shoehorning? Hinduism has an explicit mechanism (so to speak) for that belief, and the abrahamic religions have trinitarianism (which is by and large just the hinduism bit writ small and exclusionary, something that can easily be claimed as mistaken in scope) from christianity and a god of many forms and many messengers regardless. Saying Vishnu, YWHW, Buddha, and so on, are all expressions of the same entity/concept/thing makes about as much sense as anything theological. You can easily say that the abrahamic god(s) are just another divine expression of the brahman (which, shit, they more or less are according to hindu metaphysics), or that Vishnu and co. are just another sort of burning bush and/or angel and/or prophet and/or etc., etc., etc.

About the only thing meaningfully contradicting the stance is some of the holy texts occasionally saying otherwise, and it's not like that's ever really stopped anyone.

[Orange Wizard]

Yeah, you can mush a bit of Hinduism in with Christianity without messing up either all too much. Mostly just boils down to "nature of the Father" stuff that we don't really know anyway.

[Rolan7]

...Maybe I haven't studied Hinduism enough, recently?  I remembered it as far more polytheistic than that.
But even if you find common ground between Hinduism and Christianity in that they both have a "main" deity who is one-but-many, which seems like a stretch similarity-wise, Islam and Judaism very strongly reject that concept.

Not to mention the old religions...

[Orange Wizard]

Eh. It's kinda hard to say, semantically. The Bible declares that all gods other than the Lord are "false", but that doesn't necessarily mean "nonexistent". Even in the OT, most of the stuff about other gods seems to look just as much like they're subservient to the Lord, or at least beneath him in terms of power/authority, rather than necessarily made up.

Culturally, Christianity/Islam/Judaism is very monotheistic (or close to it, re: the Trinity), but in terms of literature there's not much to say that there's only one deity, beyond semantics around "the Lord is the greatest" sort of thing.

[TempAcc]

Christianity doesn't exactly exclude the existence of other supernatural beings apart from God, it just makes sure to stablish God as the greatest and most powerful being, and then conlflates everything else into either angels or demons. Pagan gods are often described as demons, etc. Hinduism/buddhism are also very adaptable once you actualy study it a bit, in counterpart to judaism and islam, which are far less maleable since they are very specific in regards to a lot of things, specially the nature of God. Islam is specially different in that sense, since while other religions speculate/teach about both what God wants/like/plans and the nature of God, Islam seems to focus specially on God as a personality, IE what God likes and dislikes, and seems to dwell very little on just what God is or may be.
 
Spiritism is also very maleable in that sense, in that it can adapt to pretty much any major religion and encompass it completely under its teaching, altough it throws away the whole dichotomy of angels and demons or any concept of purely evil beings, and stablishes that there is only one actual omnipotent and truly benevolent God, but it explains why it does so. It also makes quite some interesting arguments on reincarnationism in the bible. The Gospel According to Spiritism is quite an interesting book.
Its also maleable/adaptable to science, in many ways.

[i2amroy]

...Maybe I haven't studied Hinduism enough, recently?  I remembered it as far more polytheistic than that.
But even if you find common ground between Hinduism and Christianity in that they both have a "main" deity who is one-but-many, which seems like a stretch similarity-wise, Islam and Judaism very strongly reject that concept.

Not to mention the old religions...

Hinduism has a lot of divisions rather similar to Christianity actually, though our general lack of Hindus over here cuts down our knowledge of them a fair bit. Some of them work wonderfully with things like the all-gods-are-one idea, with a few of them actually go to the point where it's mainly the intent behind your acts that matter, not the acts themselves, so if you are worshiping Christ doing the rituals that he laid out or worshiping Mumbo-jumbo with the rituals that he proscribed it doesn't matter as long as you are doing it with the right intent. Others are a lot less tolerant and compatible with that type of thinking.

Buddhism is a bit harder, because in many cases they don't even really have a god, just a variety of spirits and other supernatural stuff since many treat the Buddha not as a god, but rather just as the very first human to ever reach the enlightened state (though others proscribe to a more "western" style of worship, with Buddha as a god and so forth.

[origamiscienceguy]

I thought that hinduism basically tries to incorporate any God that someone tells them about.

[TD1]

Can you explain why you think that?

I mean, I could say the same thing about Jesus, citing any number of divine sons that had an immense influence on potential converts in the religion's birth-era.

[Rose]

I can't speak for any other branch of Hinduism, but I can talk about the one I was raised in, which is Vaisnavism.

There is only one God, Krishna. Everybody else are still mortals, like you or me, even if they might be much more powerful and longer lived.

Krishna does commonly send down avatars, which go by different names, but are still ultimately Him. Indeed, he is described as having infinite names, and it is part of our teachings that every religion worships the same God under different names.

[Orange Wizard]

I guess that makes me a closet Hindu.

[TD1]

Purge the heathen!!!

[origamiscienceguy]

Can you explain why you think that?

I mean, I could say the same thing about Jesus, citing any number of divine sons that had an immense influence on potential converts in the religion's birth-era.

There are quite a few hindus (is that how you say the plural of hindu?) at my school, and from the few ones I've had a spiritual conversation with, they told me that they would worship Jesus too if it would make me happy. (or something like that) Leading me to believe what I said earlier. Although I doubt this is what all of them believe.

[Adragis]

I know it's fiction, but wasn't the main character of Life of Pi like that?