The following table shows a very brief breakdown of the five major religions in the
world:-Buddhist Christian Jewish Islamic Hindu
How many
followers 376 million 2 billion 12 million 1 billion 900 million Principle
I have brought all my children up to be Catholics, which is not to say that I believe the Catholic Church to be better than any other religious denomination, or that I believe that other religions are less significant or contain less truth in them. I brought them up to be Catholic because I was brought up as a Catholic so I knew the Catholic religion better than any other. I also consider the Catholic Church to be an adequate religion to follow that would give my children a sound
foundation in which to begin their spiritual journey or path.
Christians assume the existence of a divine being identified with Christ and speaks through him, there are Ten Commandments that lay down, ‘the right way to live’.
My eldest daughter has shown a keen interest in all things religious which pleases me greatly.
Though she chose to change her religion, - as I agreed she could-, on her sixteenth birthday to Evangelical. I believe she did this as the Evangelical church is far more directed towards the youth and therefore delivers its message in a far more enigmatic way than the staid Catholic Church which is bound by tradition.
Many of the more successful churches at this time deliver their message in such a way and are therefore automatically more popular with the young in heart and mind than those churches that stand with traditional methods of preaching. By failing to adapt to modern ways of thinking, the Catholic Church has suffered the price of loosing parishioners over recent years. This is a pity
though because the Catholic Church tends to stick to whatever it believes is right despite the changing conviction of Western societies, and because the world has become more materialistic, social attitude has changed to a more liberal attitude which rarely coincides with what is
spiritually correct. I feel that the Catholic Church is correct in sticking to its principles, though by doing so has to accept its resulting loss in parishioners. Although society may change, God does not, and to change the truth to appease the masses is clearly wrong. The road to spiritual enlightenment is often a difficult one, and to dress it up with uplifting music and to over
emphasise the love and joy part of the path is both misleading and false. Focusing on holytexts rather than the, ‘spirit of the message’, merely plays to the whims and weaknesses of people rather than guiding them correctly.
The Evangelical does study the bible well and I would be the first to admit that my daughter knows far more about the theory of the bible than I. She can reel off large quotes from the bible by heart and can name all the books etc. I really do not have the memory capacity to hold such vast amounts of information.
Though to my way of thinking and in accordance to my own personal experience, having the knowledge of the bible does not necessarily mean that you have grasped the wisdom of the bible.
There is a certain amount of practical experience that you must have before proceeding very far down a spiritual path.
My studies into different religions revealed to me that the five major religions have many things in common. As the table shows, all religions believe in the same God though they have different ways of worshipping God. These relatively minor differences have been the roots to many wars between men over the generations, even though none of the religions believe in violence.
This Chapter attempts to emphasise the fact that Christians, Jews and Muslims have the same roots, namely that of Abraham. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that they are worshiping the same God. The differences between the religions are based on how the
individual religions decide is the best way of worshiping him and differences of opinion to the meaning of holy texts. The spirit of the texts as translated by the individual religious leaders however are very similar, and the morality, the same. The main reason for disagreement and segregation between these three religions therefore is solely based on human opinion.
It appears that all five of the world’s major religions, namely Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Taoist havecertain things in common. They all believe in one God though these religions do not believe that they are worthy to pray directly to God. Part of religious thought is that you should be humble and therefore you should not feel that you areworthy to talk to God directly. Therefore devotees to these religionstend to pray through deities such as Jesus,
Mohammed, and Buddha etc. They all believe that God is divided into several parts and that in order to understand God better then you should understand yourself better.
All believed in a, ‘Good’, way of life or consequences would be suffered.
That being said, wars have been fought many times in the past over which of the religions hold the truth, even though the likelihood is that all religions worship the same God albeit in different ways and therefore all bare the truth.
None of these major religions condones violence; it is the individual practitioner of a faith that believes that his religion contains the truth and is not prepared to accept that another’s religion can as a result. It is true to say that, anyone who believes this way has not understood the message of his or her faith.
The situation is ridiculous, it is mans ego that causes these wars and is not the fault any religion
or faith. The Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions have the same roots and havevery similar beliefs. Though Christianity believes that Jesus was the Son of God and the Muslims believe he was just a prophet. Both religions believe he was a great prophet, but because Jesus called God,
“My father”, Christians take this statement literally when it could just as well imply that he respected the life form that he was addressing, calling him father as a mark of respect. Muslims believe that Jesus refers to him as, “My Father”, because his soul came from and is part of God and he, like every other man was a child of God. I have never seen anything in the Bible that categorically goes against this idea though it is true that the words suggest that either could be true. The disappearance of the body of Jesus can be explained by the well documented
phenomena of, ‘Rainbow Body’, and the description of Jesus dying on the cross could also mean that he had died in the process of carrying out the, ’Kabbalistic Cross’, which was a common meditation technique at this time. I am not saying that this was necessarily the case, only that we are human and fallible, we must, -as we are fallible-, keep an open mind as it is arrogant of any religion to state categorically that it is the sole source of truth, and that their version of the truth is un-reprehensible.
Judaism too has its roots in the bible, specifically the first four books that it centres on. It does not suggest at any point that it disbelieves in the other books.
What makes the world religious situation even more complex is that each religion has differences in denominations;these denominations are further sub divided into factions. Christianity for example has Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Evangelical, Baptist and born again Christians etc. etc.
The list is endless and all imply that other denominations are inferior and that their translation of the bible or holy text is the truth.
One of my favourite jokes that highlight this fact
is:-A man is walking over a bridge and sees a man standing on the bridge railing clearly preparing to jump. Being a good Christian he felt that it was his duty to try and talk him out of it. After the preliminary small talk it transpires that the jumper is a Christian as well. The man says, “What a wonderful coincidence, so am I. Which denomination are you?” The man replies that he is a Baptist.
“That’s marvellous so am I.
To which the man replies, “Heretic Scum”, and pushes him off.
This highlights the ridiculous prejudices that many denominations have against one another. I too have experienced these prejudices that are born out of ignorance. Someone said to me that they did not believe in the Catholic religion as they, pray to Mary. This, as any Catholic is aware is not strictly true as we do not pray, “Too Mary”, but, “Through Mary”, in other words using Mary as a deity to ask her son Jesus to ask God to answer our prayer. This is done this way as that we believe that it is better not to ask God directly as he is so great. It is considered
beneficial in all spiritual ways of thinking that one should remain humblewhilst in prayer. The asking of a deity to ask a deity, to ask God is a slightly more humble way of praying than normal.
In retrospect it seems advisable to me, to prevent further millions of deaths over religion, religious leaders from around the world should search for common groundrather than focus on their differences. It should be installed into our children whilst they study religion that all
religions worship the same God but in different ways. Perhaps a, ‘Book of God’, could be published and distributed around schools that contain all the major religions holiest scriptures under the same cover. This would allow them to decide for themselves, having been armed with all the different outlooks of different religions, how they wish, and if they wish to worship God.
The reduction of conflict would result in a worldwide increase of religion, as religion would not have such diverse side effects that today give it such a bad name.
Platonic metaphysics depicts man as mind, body and soul - the soul being a chariot rider being drawn by two horses, (Mind and Body). Mind wants to soar high into the heavenly realm of ideas and contemplate them whilst the body wants to immerse itself in the physical world. Soul is trapped in prison (Body). Whatever harmony the soul manages to accomplish during life, remains after death.
Bishop Berkley held that there was no physical word, only ideas. That the natural world is presented to us as a kind of sign language for interpreting God’s mind. That our mind can only influence a small amount of ideas, the rest is influenced by God.