Same Rhetoric; Different Religion

A few years ago, I got into a religious conversation with my ultra-Jewish cousin. This was a long awaiting exchange of ideas. My cousin is very smart and so I was expecting a pretty interesting debate-style conversation. What I got was the same typical arguments I have gotten from newly minted born-again Christians.

It was so disappointing. What shocked me the most was that my cousin’s arguments weren’t even specific to the Jewish religion. Why is it that a deeply fundamentalist Jew and a deeply fundamentalist Christian can you the exact same arguments in an attempt to prove that their beliefs are the correct beliefs?

Feeling a little left out — enter the Muslims:

This Muslim spoken word could almost be done by Jeff Bethke with only a few minor changes. The arguments are again the same as those made by Jews and Christians and yet the conclusion is that Islam is the only correct religion. It’s the same rhetoric with a different religion.

Sure, I could argue against the substance to the video, but a five minute Google search and some common sense could do that. I’m more interested in the obvious sameness of these arguments across the three Abrahamic religions – each claiming to have the one true belief. To me, that is a very good reason to question all three of these beliefs. Obviously all three can’t be correct at the same time in the same way, but they all could be incorrect at the same time in the same way. In fact, that does seem to be the most likely possibility.

I would love to watch a Christian and a Jew watch this video – or better yet, just listen to it thinking that the person talking belongs to their religion and then waiting for that moment when they stop nodding their head in agreement and start arguing that the Muslim has it all wrong and that it is the Gospel and the Torah respectively that is the one true holy book.

I guess it just reminds me of this other great YouTube video: