Which religion is right?

Andy, we had hundreds of questions come through on Maidenhead's questions.

And our fifth most popular topic was on religion and why there are so many.

And how do you know which religion is true? Thanks so much for being willing to come on the podcast today and answer these questions for us.

So let's kick off with an easy one.

Do all religions believe in the same God?

Well, that's a great question, Adam.

And by the way, we didn't say in the intro, I'm unusual.

I'm a Christian philosopher, but my PhD, I have a PhD, is actually in Islamic studies.

I spent seven years diving into the Arabic of the Quran, looking at how the Quran was put together.

And in fact, now 30 years of engaging with Islam.

So I've always been thinking about this question.

And one of the challenges in it is, and I think one of the things that trips us up, is that there are words that we throw around quite lightly without defining them.

very very well lots of everyday words that we use and we don't think about the meanings of them and god is one of them because it's easy to say i believe in god or if you're an atheist you might say i don't believe in god but that really should invite the follow-up question what do you mean by god um so if you're an atheist listening to this and you say i don't believe in god well what is it you don't believe in and i've had atheist friends say well i don't believe in the guy in the sky with the beard and the lightning bolts which I like to say, well, that's a relief, because that sounds a little ridiculous.

That sounds like Thor and Father Christmas got together.

And that's not what Christians, Muslims, Jews believe in.

So, you know, what you're rejecting is not what we would believe.

But then when you come to religious people, you have to ask the word, what do we mean by the word God? And Particularly when we come to Christianity and Islam, let's use that as a test case.

When you go to the text of those religions, when you go to the Koran for my Muslim friends or the Bible for Christians, and you ask the question, what is God like? You get some very, very different answers.

So very briefly, the Bible, I would say on page after page is clear that God, we're talking about God, We're talking about a being who is, aside from being all powerful and the creator of everything, which we have in common with our Muslim friends.

What is God like? Well, he's relational.

He can be known.

He's a God who is love in his very nature.

And he's a God who's demonstrated that love by suffering, by entering history in the person of Jesus and going to the cross, actually suffering and going through that in order to make a relationship with him.

Possible.

So he's relational.