Dear Peter and Dan,
I don’t believe that the substance of a religious faith is quite the same thing as an ideology. After all, people in these various religions might object to being compared to a political group or a mere philosophy.  

I find it odd that you seem to question the dynamic of natural consequences, as that is what it seems you are doing. If you don’t eat anything or drink anything for 90 days, you will die.  Do you question that?  If you leap off a 20 story building in some city, you will have an abrupt stopping point that will shock your system so badly that you will die. God told Adam that if he disregarded what God said, disbelieved Him and knowingly ate the apple, he would die.  And he did.  Adam is not around here anymore.  Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land because, in his anger, he struck the rock instead of speaking to it and commanding it to give forth water, which is what God had instructed him to do.  Consequences.

Read Psalm One.  Consequences, both positive and negative, for two different kinds of people.  These are not about ideologies; they are simply stories and songs that illustrate natural consequences that follow actions, and actions that are based on belief or disbelief.  Your questioning, your problem, is with God and not with ideologies. Nor with me or Sheila.

The ten commandments and the issue of polytheism: the ten commandments are given in both Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21.  In Deuteronomy 5: 7 & 8 there is a retelling of what is listed in Exodus for this issue, and in verse 7 is what Peter and Dan refer to (You shall have no other gods before me).  In verse 8 is a kind of unpacking of that statement when the text goes on to talk about people making idols, or any likeness of anything in the sky or on the earth and then serving and worshipping those idols as if they were gods.  It is also true that the Jews came out of a polytheistic culture in Egypt and passed through polytheistic cultures along the way before the giving of the law.  So, God was saying there would be consequences of maintaining a polytheistic stance in life; they were to become monotheistic and worship only Him. Not because there ARE other gods, but precisely because there are not.  That becomes obvious later in the Hebrew bible.

Deuteronomy 4:32-40 (just before the restatement of the ten commandments, so in that same context):
32 Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? 33 Has any other people heard the voice of God[a] speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? 34 Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. 36 From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. 37 Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, 38 to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today. 39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. 40 Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.

But to be sure, the early Jews struggled with the issue of monotheism, and it was an ongoing theme in the Old Testament to correct the tendency to stray into the worship of other gods. To that end the prophet Isaiah said:

Isaiah 45:18-25
18 For this is what the Lord says—
he who created the heavens,
    he is God;
he who fashioned and made the earth,
    he founded it;
he did not create it to be empty,
    but formed it to be inhabited—
he says:
“I am the Lord,
    and there is no other.
19 I have not spoken in secret,
    from somewhere in a land of darkness;
I have not said to Jacob’s descendants,
    ‘Seek me in vain.’
I, the Lord, speak the truth;
    I declare what is right.
20 “Gather together and come;
    assemble, you fugitives from the nations.
Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood,
    who pray to gods that cannot save.
21 Declare what is to be, present it—
    let them take counsel together.
Who foretold this long ago,
    who declared it from the distant past?
Was it not I, the Lord?
    And there is no God apart from me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
    there is none but me.
22 “Turn to me and be saved,
    all you ends of the earth;
    for I am God, and there is no other.
23 By myself I have sworn,
    my mouth has uttered in all integrity
    a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
    by me every tongue will swear.
24 They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone
    are deliverance and strength.’”
All who have raged against him
    will come to him and be put to shame.
25 But all the descendants of Israel
    will find deliverance in the Lord
    and will make their boast in him.

I could point to other places in the Old Testament, the Hebrew bible, where God excoriates those who follow other  gods and how He demands that people acknowledge that He alone is God.  But this is enough.  So, Peter, it’s not true that Christianity is alone in this regard, and it’s the same God that is in view in both religions.

Phil

> On Apr 7, 2021, at 5:46 AM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Phil and Sheila,
> 
> No keep posting and I will keep responding.  I don't want to censor.
> 
> Because what is important to me is to question an ideology that tells people 'If you make the wrong answers there will be (bad/painful) consequences'.  The equivalent would be if I said 'Unless you switch your political views, I won't tell you when or what, but one day we'll be round to your house and do something really bad to you'.
> 
> Sheila, I've been told about Jesus Christ, about the Buddha, about Krishna, about Mohammed, about Zoroaster, about Thor and Zeus.  I've been told about the God of Abraham, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Scientists.  I've met Wiccans and Satanists.  In each culture historically based on religion it seems natural to believe in the God of that culture and to oppose the Gods of another culture.  Gods are in the end mostly tribal.  If you look at the 10 commandments, it doesn't even talk about monotheism, it just says 'I am your (tribal) God, and you will put me before other Gods'.  Christianity, unlike Judaism, demanded that everyone follows the same God or else.
> 
> To follow the same God as those around you is not 'totally crazy': it is the Christians who are saying that it is disturbed to follow a different God, that homosexuality is 'objectively disordered' etc.
> 
> Peter
> 
> On Tue, 6 Apr 2021 at 02:53, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Peter
> So I should be transparent somewhere else and here I should pretend and deceive about who I am?  On a list about GT? It’s a ridiculous inference but if absurd, what did you really mean?  What is the answer to “So what?”
> 
> Phil
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> > On Apr 5, 2021, at 5:23 PM, Peter Philippson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > 
> > Yet you do that transparency on this list about GT, and I repeat that I strongly don't accept that as a meaning for the world.  I am not lost.
> 
> ______________
> Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter (Philippson)
> [log in to unmask]
> ______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.