Originally Posted by
DogOfDanger
No... Muslims, Jews, and Christians believe in the same Abrahamic God, the conversation in the chat box has nothing to do with many-gods. What the religions disagree on is the essential nature of God. They also disagree on which traditions to follow..
Your many-gods argument should really be a many-traditions argument.
Traditions are not all inspired the same, some traditions are derived from beliefs about God, some of them are social, some are practical, alot of them are just inherited by one culture from another... it's pretty common that traditions even are misinterpreted or confusingly mixed with other traditions, when their original meaning or purpose is long forgotten...
For example.... many Catholic traditions are actually taken from Paganism, but many are also taken from the apostle Paul.
And the reality is that the Bible was translated across 6 different languages and the text changed radically throughout. It's also 60 some odd different books from different authors, not even all originally written in the same language.
So this requires more thought than you've given it, but yes, there are traditions that are arbitrary and can be ignored.