The Final Three

I am now on my final post of this whatever-it-might-be on various possible truths. This will be the largest and most complex of them all--Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I have put the three together for a good reason: Christianity and Islam are both derived from Judaism, and thus the proving-wrong of Judaism would cancel out both of those. Their purpose, essentially, is to complete Judaism in some way (this is less accurate of Islam than Christianity, but more on that below).

So, to begin, Judaism must go under the lights. Let's look at what it is first of all:

Judaism was the first strictly monotheistic religion in history. According to their beliefs, God existed when there was nothing. He then created the universe out of nothing. This God, according to their belief, is actually three in one. This is characterized in the use of the word "Elohim" to describe Him. This is a pluralized word, in Hebrew, meaning that there is more than one.

The next part is that this God takes part in the lives of humanity, by giving them laws to obey, and then rewarding or punishing them according to their obedience to these laws. Because no one is able to follow the law perfectly, sacrifices must be made in order to appease the wrath of God and take the punishment deserved by us.

No problem, so far. No flaws so far, but also no evidence in favor. So let's compare it to life.

First of all, the idea that we are imperfect. This is not a strictly Jewish belief, but it lines up very well with what we can see in our own lives. Where do you think the phrase "only human" came from? We recognize without being told that we are missing something. But if we are imperfect, there must be a standard.

What is that standard? The standard, according to Judaism, is the Law. Interestingly, upon looking at the book of Leviticus, everything makes perfect sense. For some reason, it seems natural to us that it is wrong to kill. Why? If we came about by chance, we would need to kill simply to survive. Yet this makes sense. Or how about this: the Sabbath. Although some say the Sabbath is no longer relevant, this doesn't matter. The Sabbath makes perfect sense.

In the Soviet Union, at the height of Communism, their leaders decided to change a week to the length of ten days. The seven-day week comes clearly from the Bible, and they wanted an atheistic country. To make a long story short, they had to go back to the seven-day week. Nine days between each break doesn't work. Neither does it work to have four in between each break. The only system that works is a seven day week.

So the law fits with what works in our lives. This fits with the fact that the designer of the law is the same as the designer of humanity. So this is a rather strong point for Judaism.

As it turns out, this is not the last post in this set. Due to the current length, Islam and Christianity will be brought up tomorrow.