One God

Here's something to chew on, and I'm sure to come back to it again and again over time...

I have done a considerable amount of study in my own search for a religion that would fit with my brain. Not that I'm a theology study by any means, but in general, I know quite a bit about various religions. All this searching has led me to one strange understanding:

There is only ONE God (or set of Gods, at any rate)

Different religions use different names for this higher being, have differing means of worshipping it. But all in all, every human is praying to the same one (or set). All through human history, or at least recorded history, the one theme that has always remained constant is that there is a higher power, sometimes more than one.

Monotheism vs Polytheism

It would seem on the surface that these two concepts break apart the argument I just laid out above. But consider this, the Catholic religion states that you pray only to God, but just in case you need some extra help with something specific, feel free to plead with one of hundreds of saints to come to the rescue. Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like a system of Chief God (Zeus) and lesser gods and goddesses (Aphrodite, Ares, etc.), only with different names and titles. Am I to seriously contemplate the idea that by changing "pray" to "plead" and "God" to "saint" that I am in essence doing a damn thing differently?

So, why bring this up now? With the apparent troubles between largely Christian America and largely Islamic Middle East, I have one point to remind everyone of: We follow different prophets (Christianity follows Jesus, Islam follows Muhammad) but WE PRAY TO THE SAME GOD! Just something to chew on when you think there is nothing in common between us.