The religions of the book, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, all accept the Mosaic Pentateuch. They thus share the belief, expressed in Genesis, in a God who fashioned the world. From this belief they draw two very different lessons. The first is a universal claim drawn from the conception of a unique creator of the universe. They assert that the laws that express his creative will are all-encompassing. Philosophically, this translates into a sense that things are