What if all the gods of all religions got together.
How many gods would speak of great wars waged in their name?
How many gods would say how they had more followers than another god?
How many gods could honestly say that their followers sought to be pious and peaceful in all aspects of life, and always obeyed their rule?

just a quote i thought id put up, ive had it sitting at my desk for ages. :D

Mmm, interesting idea this, about how many gods we´ve had in the human history.
Or...perhaps a good parlour game, hehe, people do a cut-paste and add 3 Gods and the last poster to add wins. See how many in total we´ve had then. Anyone in for a round? (I mean, it´s a better past-time than cleaning the flat ;) ).
(Edit: I guess after we´ve got the complete list, we can move on to the questions posed...)


1. God/Allah
2. Horus
3. Mars

I'd like to clairfy a bit...

Perhaps we should differentiate God and Allah.
For the Jewish God, we might say YHWH.
For the Christian God, let's say "Trinity"?
And for the God of Islam, let's say "Allah."

For all other "gods," let's say the figure/person/object that is the source/head/founder of the religion. So Sakyamuni would be the "god" of Buddhism, since there is no real "God" in Buddhism.

I would define the Judaic God, the Christian God, and the Islamic God as all being one and the same, but that's just me.

It seems to me that it's a hypothetical question that assumes that the Gods of all religions are different...

I would as well, and I'm not entirely sure why most people don't.

I see what you all are saying.

But for one, a Muslim might not necessarily see the God of Islam to be the God of Christianity. Allah is not Jesus. And for the Jewish, Jesus is not God.

Second, the situation is not a question of divine theology necessarily, but an exercise in comparing the believers of particular religions. In asking "what if the gods of all religions got together," it assumes that the gods of all religions are separate. Why does the question assume this? Well, the question is not to be taken literally. The gods of all religions most likely do not all get together and discuss what their followers do. Hence the "what if."

The point of the original question is to compare the followers of the religions.

The reason why I distinguished among the various gods was so that we could play along with the hypothetical game. Instead of saying "the God of Judaism could say that his people never converted people, we could more simply say "YHWH never asked his people to go out and convert the world."

But then where does one draw the line? Does one make a distinction between the god of orthodox Christianity and the god of Mormonism?

To be honest, like posters above, I see it as: (quote from above)
"I would define the Judaic God, the Christian God, and the Islamic God as all being one and the same, but that's just me."
too. I remember a Pakistani (devout) Muslim in Birmingham UK telling me one evening many years ago in no uncertain terms that we all (ie Christians, Muslims or Jews) - in different ways - have the same God, the one God - and that there is only the one God.

After that basic "premise", other considerations would then be secondary: whether the "truth" be reflected in the Koran, Tora, Old Test., New Test, whether Jesus is a prophet or Son of God, whether one can have/worship pictorial depictions or not, role of saints, how literal is Bible etc.).
The subdivisions seem endless to me anyway - now many branches or sub-brances of what is basically Protestantism are there in the US for example?

"In England, there are 60 different religious sects but only one sauce." -Francesco Caraccioli