Which do you most identify with? (more inclusive poll - 54 options)

[Kingpoleon]

Calvinist

Burn the Heretic!

[Kingpoleon]

Fair enough. So then why is it generally agreed that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship "the same God"? The only real similarity is that these religions are monotheistic, but otherwise their perceptions of God and His relationship with man and nature are very different.

That’s hardly true. All three religions trace the beginning of religion back to Abraham. All three were inseparably influenced by Hellenic Philosophy and Metaphysics, particularly that of Aristotle and Plato. All three agree upon Jerusalem being a holy city - which is the issue Samaritanism, another Abrahamic religion, and Judaism are split over to this day. Finally, all three agree that the Old Testament is, to some degree, authentic Scripture (although Islam and to an extent Christianity view it as corrupted).

I wouldn’t say they “worship the same God” - I would say they share a religious ancestry(Abrahamic), as well as a philosophical ancestry(predominantly Hellenic), and could be recognized as agreeing upon a host of metaphysical concepts as a result.

[Kingpoleon]

Well, in most iterations of Christianity, God is described as triune, which is considered shirk in Islam

The Islamic god also appears to be less personal than the Jewish one (at least in orthodox conceptions), which is why he can only be known from natural signs (and not represented in pictorial form) and spoken about in parables

None of the great theistic traditions (predominantly Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) deny that God is a person. Classical theism, as advocated by David Bentley Hart, Brian Davies, Edward Feser, and others, has it that God is infinitely more personal than we are. Being in the Thomistic tradition pure actuality, and in neo-orthodoxy wholly other, we can similarly only speak of God by analogy to beings, which by their very nature exist between Being and Nothing, between Actualia and Potentia. Theistic personalism, as advocated by William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, and Alvin Plantinga, turns God into a passable, contingent being - a demiurge who, if he exists, must necessarily do so only by virtue of an impassable and necessary being who is nevertheless more personal. Theistic personalism is a conception of God which arose in the last couple of centuries and is far less intellectually respectable than classical theism.

[Kingpoleon]

Any newcomers or changed beliefs?

This doesn't really count as a full-on change in belief but in the past year I have become a lot more Anglo-Catholic/high church/Catholic adjacent than I used to be, as I was raised a fairly middle-of-the road Episcopalian.

I've read a lot more about Catholicism, the differences in theologies, and have gone to a couple Masses actually. I really doubt I'll ever convert to Catholicism (there's still a gulf in theological and ethical thoughts between the Catholic Church and myself) but I do appreciate some facets of it.

I know a lot of post liberals who admire Catholicism. Its most fervent admirer is a fairly well known postmodern libertarian socialist sociologist named Steve Fuller, perhaps the most erratic thinker of our day.