What causes an individual to belong to a certain religion and not another?
I respond: In almost every case—both nowadays and throughout human history as we know it—people belong and to a certain religion merely because their parents or other primary guardians belonged to it and trained them to follow it.
That is almost always the sole reason why someone is, say, Catholic rather than Muslim. Had the person been born to Muslim parents, he or she would have been raised and trained to be Muslim rather than Catholic, would identify himself or herself as belonging to that religion, and most likely pass it on to his or her children.
Yes, I am stating the obvious; —but nevertheless, this obvious information illumines much on people’s religious beliefs, and carries central importance when it comes to understanding religions.
Now then, if we go back a generation back in order to determine why a person’s parents or other guardians followed a particular religion, we will find that the reason in almost every case is essentially the same—they also followed the same religion that their parents or other guardians followed and trained them to follow.
And in virtually all cases, religions are passed down from generation to generation this way within particular families, and religions themselves endure this way as the decades and centuries go by. It is essentially a process of people almost unfailingly identifying themselves with the religion that circumstances placed them into , without ever seriously considering the possibility of abandoning that religion and not passing it down to their children.
Now, if we trace this process back far enough to see why someone within a family lineage would initially join a certain religion (and thereby abandon the religion [or lack thereof] he or she was already following), what will we find?
I answer: In almost every case, a new religion is adopted due to to sort of arbitrary adherence and conformance to a certain local religious-political-community standard, usually headed by one or several powerful and/or charismatic leaders.
And this is also almost always (if not always) the main factor that causes a particular religion to flourish.
For example, this is how Christianity—which during its first three hundred or so years was a major sect of the small, regional, and somewhat obscure religion of Judaism—suddenly flourished* in the 4th century in the Roman Empire, after being legalized and promoted by Emperor Constantine in the early part of that century, and backed by Emperor Theodosius in the latter part of that century. And this is how Islam—which after its first few years consisted of just four followers (Muhammad, Khadijah, Ali ibn Abi Talib, and Abu Bakr)—quickly spread in the Arabia region in the early 7th century during an ambitious and successful Islamic military campaign.
It does not seem as if there was not much done in the way of reasoning, investigation of religious claims, or scriptural study and analysis when these religions first gained a major following, or when they later spread to other regions and groups of people.
In fact, the spread of these religions seems to have had very little to do with what people knew about them--or in other words, what these religions were in and of themselves seems to have had very little to do with their gaining a mass acceptance and following.
And generally speaking, when people side with one religion rather than another, it seldom ever has much to do with the religions themselves and with people’s acquaintance with these religions, but it almost always has very much to do with how a religion becomes tied to social power, social ties, political power, wars, money, environment, community, standards, and authority, and how through influence, suggestion, repetition, and training, a religion endures over time.
In fact, it seems as if, at least to a certain extent, almost all religious beliefs are obtained and accepted by people arbitrarily, and in a certain sense, almost mindlessly, or if not mindlessly, at least not for what can be considered the right reasons and motives (from the standpoint of truth.
And it seems as if all of this is only slightly less true nowadays than it was in the past—that is, the people of today still generally do not take much of a personal role in choosing a religion, and their adherence to a religion still does not have much to do with the religion itself what people know about it.
Some people might respond: After acquiring a religion at chance, most people eventually investigation their religion.
I respond: This is simply not the case.
In fact, even today, and even in regions where people have a great deal of religious freedom and access to religious information of all types, most people know very little about their religion’s real fundamental teachings, even less about the origins of their religion and its scriptures, and almost nothing at all about other religions. And as for those who have made some headway into any of these matters, most of them seldom make a truly broad and objective investigation.
In other words, when it comes to religion, people seldom go much into the matter; and of those who do, few of them do so with a mind intent on objectively examining what they encounter, rather than merely rejecting or accepting things based on their biases, viewpoints, and motives.
And also consider how most people today and throughout history have obtained their religious information.
In most cases, almost all of a person’s religious information is obtained from perspectives and sources that favor his or her own religion. This is especially true during childhood—a period when most of us receive repetitive, solemn, and authoritative impressions affirming our own religion/sect, and denouncing anything that promotes views contrary to it.
Moreover, few people go very far in utilizing firsthand sources of religious information, such as a religion’s actual scriptures, or other sources that earnestly aim to remain strictly faithful to the scriptural content; whereas most people for the most part depend on or perhaps even prefer to obtain their religious information primarily from secondhand or even further-removed sources--for instance, community religious leaders’ assertions that often veer from the religion’s core teachings, or general hearsay that seldom has much in the way of broadness and accuracy.
And again, while this has been truer in the past than it is nowadays, it still seems to be very much the case even today. After all, hearsay remains one of the main sources of religious information, community religious leaders are still a mainstay and often regarded by many as almost absolutely authoritative, and novels and movies such as The Da Vinci Code and The Passion of the Christ are a surprisingly major source of religious information for many people.
In fact, even though people today generally have freer access to more sources of religious information than they did in the past, they also generally take far less of an active role in religious matters. In other words, even though religious information is hundreds of times more freely and abundantly available today than it was in the past, people for the most part continue to remain ill-informed about religion--in the past more because they were usually confined to and exposed to whatever favored their religion and sect, and today more because they seldom take advantage of the broad and abundant sources of religious information liberally available to them.
For instance, in the past, the typical Protestant Christian was exposed to mainly pro-Protestant sources of religious information, but at least had an active religious life that included a great deal of firsthand or close-to-firsthand familiarity with Protestantism’s core teachings and scriptural content; whereas nowadays, a typical Protestant has a far broader amount of information available, but lacks much exposure to Protestantism or any other religions.
And all of the matters brought up over the last few pages also bring up another related and very important point: People today often accept the veracity of a religion largely due to the fact that it has survived for so long, yet they seldom seem to adequately consider how people in the past generally lived in environments that were high in religious bias, low in free religious information, and lacking much in the way of objective religious investigations.
In fact, considering how far back virtually all of today’s religions date to (--including Islam, which as founded in the 7th century; Christianity, which was founded in the 1st century; and Judaism, which has roots that go back to many centuries before that—), and how, over most of the time these religions have been practiced, the world was for the most part marked by (a) low world literacy rates, (b) a lack of effective mass communication methods, (c) a limited availability of religious scriptures in general, (d) a limited availability of scriptural translations, (e) an excessive reliance on biased and/or corrupted secondhand religious information, (f) an abundance of people who accepted and rejected religious teachings mainly due to arbitrary reasons, and (g) a lack of people who objectively investigated religions and had access to a wide variety of information, does it really make sense to give so much credit to the fact that a religion has been passed down for a long span of time?
Some people might respond: Even if most people obtain and retain their religious beliefs arbitrarily, some people objectively examine religions, cause others to do the same, and ultimately end up influencing the masses.
I respond: This is not so.
Some people might might look into religions--but all in all, their effects on the world's religious beliefs and practices usually don't amount to much.
After all, in order to preserve their safety and social benefits, most people who have held unorthodox and controversial religious views have generally been very reluctant to outwardly state them.
Furthermore, even when such views have been shared openly, they haven't been enough to actually cause many others to consider them with an objective mind. Mere religious dissent by investigative people will not prompt a multitude to objectively examine its religious standards and beliefs.
And also keep in mind that religions rely on "take my word for it" type claims, and lack much in the way of concrete data and observable results that can directly reflect on the validity of their theories, teachings; not to mention the fact that people tend to be atttached to their own religious beliefs.
Of course, all of this also brings up another central theme this essay is built on: The fact that factors such as authority, renown, reputation, custom, and arbitrary credit generally play such a major role when it comes to people’s acceptance of a religion’s validity.
For this topic, allow me to use Judaism, Christinaity, and Islam as examples.
Of the hundreds of millions of people who affirm the validity of these religions, don’t virtually all of them do so largely based on their judgment of the following: (a) the fact they have endured for so long and are currently followed by over half of the world; (b) the vast numbers of temples, synagogues, churches, and mosques that currently exist and can be found so plentifully in so many regions throughout the world; (c) the vast number of religious authorities such as rabbis, preachers, priests, mullahs, etc. who devote their lives to these religion; (d) the long and vivid histories of these religions and the conquests they have made; (e) the economic power and financial success of these religions and their adherents; (f) the various accomplishments, literary works, artistic works, social positions, etc. of these adherents; (g) the existence of various religious scriptures produced by these religions; (h) the tens of thousands of books written about these religions; and (i) the vast number of people who identify themselves as members of these religions—all of which combine to prove, or at least make it seem reasonable, that there is a great deal of truth to be legitimately credited to these three religions?
I certainly think so—and I would imagine that most people would agree that this is the case.
But do any of these items have their basis in what these religions actually are, and can they constitute factual evidence for these religions’ validity?
I respond: Obviously, they cannot—not to mention the fact that (a) other (non-Abrahamic) religions can use (or in the case of religions that have not survived till present day, could have used) similar data to make similar claims, and (b) some of the items listed above are actually examples of people having gone astray from their religion’s fundamental precepts .
Thus I say: It seems to me as if people generally base their acceptance of and allegiance to these religions mainly on authority, renown, reputation, custom, and arbitrary credit, and not so much on what the religions actually are in and of themselves, independent of anything and everything else.
Not to mention how, to some extent, most religions (—including and particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—) are based on the claims that certain events occurred centuries and centuries ago—a number of which seem essentially impossible for us to verify.
After all, history in general is filled with all sorts of uncertainty, ancient history in particular is filled with even more guesses, unreliable information, and blank spaces, and ancient history regarding regional events and people is almost always more or less a ton of conjecture for every ounce of fact—so is it possible for anyone at all —save God/the-gods himself/herself (if he/she/they exist/exists)— to *legitimately confirm the occurrence of certain events / claims/ that date so far back—events that religions have their very basis founded on? Can we really determine whether or not, for instance, Mary was impregnated through God / the Holy Spirit, the Angel Gabriel gave revelations from God to Muhammad, or God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, etc.?
In addition to this, also consider how in most cases, there is no way of verifying how accurately any religion’s scriptures and teachings have been passed down, transmitted, compiled, and collected. It is not like there was an Internet, printing press, and Library of Congress three millenniums ago in the Middle Eastern desert. Teachings could have easily changed dramatically over a course of a few years, and could also have differed widely in different regions—so just consider how much alteration could have occurred over many centuries, and how often certain influential religious leaders could have made a somewhat arbitrary choice between several differing versions of their religion’s teachings, and thereby caused a new standard to become widely accepted.
And related to all of this is the fact that today, not only do Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each claim to have the only real teaching of the Abrahamic religion, each also has internal disagreement—that is, each has varying sects whose teachings and practices differ from and often directly contradict one another; and yet, despite the fact that there is really very little that we can do to determine which sect of any particular religion really has the most accurate version of it, each of these differing sects asserts with complete assurance that it follows the true teaching of the religion. For instance, there are dozens of different modern sects of Christianity—many of which have widely differing teachings and practices—and yet, each sect claims that it contains and follows the real teaching of Jesus, even though an objective investigation of all these sects really could not make much headway into determining which sect really does most accurately represent Jesus’s authentic teaching.
Plus, of the scriptures we have today that are accepted by religions and their various sects, many contain a great deal of obscure and/or ambiguous content that can have multiple and widely varying interpretations—so can anyone really be sure that a particular interpretation is the correct one? In many cases, aren’t people for the most part just offering their own different assessments of what they think the authentic interpretation is, thereby resulting in human interpretations that cannot claim the same kind of divine authority given to a scriptural revelation attributed to a divine non-human source?
So ultimately, aren’t almost all religious convictions (of both individuals and groups)—for a variety of reasons (such as those explored so far in this chapter)—founded mainly upon assumptions and arbitrariness?
What are religions? Where do they come form? Why are there religions? Which one—if any—is right? Why do people follow religions in general? Why do some people follow one religion, while others follow another? What do religions tell us about human nature? Do religious scriptures correspond with scientific data? What do we mean by the term “God”? If we accept God, then what? If we do not accept God, then what? What is the difference between accepting God and not accepting God? Is there really that much of a difference between atheism, pantheism, agnosticism, deism, the various types of monotheism, and the various types of polytheism? Can God be proved or disproved through reasoning? What do the religions of the world teach? How do the religions of the world explain creation and existence? What is “faith”? What is human life and human existence? What is the universe?
These are questions we intend to explore in this book. These questions have always fascinated us and have been subjects that mankind has pondered for ages.
Let’s look at the general concept of God right now.
The Ancient Greek poet Simonides said, “The longer I contemplate the subject of God, the more enigmatic it becomes.”
And indeed, the subject of God is perhaps one of the most perplexing there is. Let’s take the subject of God—not gods, as in various supernatural beings—but God as a supreme and ultimate being.
What do people mean when they say God? To me the issue is not as clear-cut as it we make is out to be. Throughout time, billions of people have made innumerable references to God—but what are they really referring to? And is everyone’s concept of God the same?
To us, God is a basis to and an explanation for what is unexplainable. Our existence and the existence of the universe do not really make sense in the scope of our typical reasoning. We do not know what we were before our birth, we do not know what we will be after our death, and we do not really know what exactly we are facing right now at the present. Our reasoning does not offer answers. All of this probably falls out of the scope of conventional reasoning—and from this, theology is born.
French philosopher Henri Bergson said, “The emotion felt by man in presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.”
And certainly, God is strongly linked to a concept we refer to as “Nature.” So what is the difference between “God” and “Nature”?
Most people would answer that God is the origin and creator of Nature. Some people reason that, “Since things exist, then God—a cause and creator of things—must also exist.
However, if you use this line of logic and reasoning to analyze it shows its limits when you must also reason, “Since God exists, then a cause or creator of God exists, and since that cause exists, then a cause of that cause exists, and so on and so forth.”
So what is the difference between stopping at Nature, or stopping at God? Either way you are stopping at something—right?
But perhaps we can say instead that the term God is simply a reference to this paradoxical situation. But still, from the angles we have explored thus far, the distinction between God and Nature is not very apparent. Form a standpoint of God as the Creator, there is really not that much difference between saying that “Nature exists,” and “God is what created Nature.”
Obviously, the Creator role is simply not enough to define God as God. Just saying, “God is Creator” is not enough. And as we have touched upon, it is not necessarily something that we can prove logically. Not only does the reasoning “Since things exist, then God, a Creator of things, must also exist” not hold up (as we have explained earlier), but additionally, a concept of God creating the universe “In the beginning” also is one that runs into some paradox. After all, if God created the universe in the beginning, then what about before the beginning? Or form a Biblical standpoint, what happened before Genesis 1:1? Did time exist? And if it did, what is the relation between God and time?
Of course, we also cannot logically prove the opposite—that there is no God who created the universe. To say that time and the universe are without beginning—this too, runs into some paradox—namely, the paradox of infinite time, and / or a perpetually existing universe.
All of what we have said so far by no means proves or disproves the existence of God, or whether or not the universe and/or time are with or without a beginning. But it shows how such a line of reasoning does indeed run into problems when we are considering concepts of God, time, existence, and the universe from the angles we have explored so far.
However, we have shown defining God as the Creator, does not do much for us in attempting to distinguish God from Nature.
However, the concept of God does indeed extend beyond a role of Creator. In what way or ways?
Well, for one thing, most people’s concept of God possessing something in the way of intelligence, consciousness, awareness.
Additionally, in most religions and for most people, God, passes judgments on people based on their actions and thoughts.
And related to all of this is how many people consider God responsible in determining various phenomenons on Earth, and also how God rewards and punished to humans.
Plus, God is usually considered some sort of designer, in the scope of the universe, as well as in being responsible for ultimate truths and realities, and concepts of life and afterlife.
Furthermore, God also generally takes the role of a personal being like human, who has a personal relationship with each person, and allows some form of God-to-human and / or human-to-God communication.
And of course, according to some religious teachings (most notably the Old Testament / Tanakh of the Bible), God is portrayed very much like humans, and prone to human emotions such as jealousy and anger. (In fact in one instance in the Old Testament, God refers to himself by name as Jealousy).
And most religions have also taught that God has sent human beings teachings in various human languages, pointing out God’s decrees and ordinances, and his detailed description of the right way of life.
Of course, not every person and ever religion accepts all of these various roles of God.
And also note how some of these roles of God are strongly tied to Nature, making us have to wonder if Nature is something that God created and is aloof from, or if Nature is something that is tied strongly to God.
And the what about when we consider concepts like the Taoist cosmological Tao, or the Deist definition of God, or the Pantheist definition of God, or the Chinese concept of T’ien [Heaven]. We will describe all of these throughout this book, but all of them fall somewhere between the line of Nature and God.
And then there are also polytheistic religions, often with a main God and other gods. Plus there is the religion of Jainism, which is not really theistic or atheistic.
And there are also a vast number of philosophies that deal with issues like God, Nature, existence, etc.—and offer their viewpoints on the matter.
As a matter of fact, I think it will be a good idea right now if we briefly acquaint ourselves with many of the various religions and religious thought, on order to get a broad look at the subject.
Let us begin with the most dominant group of religions today—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As Dean pointed out in Seeking the Truth, these three religions have so many similarities, that it is indeed appropriate to look at them together and then consider their distinctions.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are for the most part monotheistic religions, and their doctrines stipulate that God directly revealed the proper-way-of-life to humans, and that these revelations are recorded in human language as instructions and guides for people to follow in order to tread God’s way.
Judaism records this revelation in the Tanakh. It ascribes the Hebrew name YHWH to God, and portrays him as a humanlike creator of the universe. In the Tanakh, God decides to create everything, and does so “In the beginning.” No reason in particular is stated for his act of creation, but according to the story, he is pleased by it.
God later feel regretful about his creation, and about 1600 years after making it, he decides to kill almost every being—except for 8 people, and two to seven of every animal species.
About 400 years later, when the world is repopulated again, God picks a man named Abraham, and tells him he will be a father of a great nation, and an inheritor of a great land. Abraham has several children and dies, and his descendants soon are enslaved in Egypt, and rapidly grow in numbers to around two to three million about 600 years after the time of Abraham. God then frees them from slavery and brings them out of Egypt, and gives them law. A few decades later they make many military conquests, under the guidance of God.
None of the above, of course, disproves (or proves) the concept of God or Tao, but it does expose the faultiness of certain reasoning sometimes used to prove them.
Big bang theorists also do not offer a solution to the beginning or pre-beginning. They simply use the fact that the universe is expanding, in order to conclude that the further back in time you go, the smaller and more condensed the universe was. Based on observing the present and using cause-and-effect in order to make inferences as time is traced back, they believe that they could conceivably calculate or estimate the way things were one hour after the beginning, or one minute, or one second, or 0.1 seconds, and so on. But this line of calculations offers no data on what the actual beginning and pre-beginning was. Some say it was the conversion of one form of dimensions into the current form of four-dimensional time-space. Others say the universe is just the result of an inside out universe before it that was contracting, like a balloon with air being sucked out of it, until it flips inside out. And others offer other theories.
We can also use Chuang Tzu reasoning and say: “There was a beginning; and there was a beginning before there was a beginning. And there was a beginning before there was a beginning before there was the beginning. Since there is existence, then there had been a non-existence. And there was a non-non-existence when even non-existence did not exist, before the beginning of the non-existence. And there was a non-non-non existence before there was non-non-existence before there was non-existence. If non-existence suddenly sprang up, we do not know whether it was really something existing, or really not-existing. Now I have just communicated what I just communicated—but I do not know if I have just communicated anything or not.”
The Jainas say that the universe is beginningless and without a creator.
In all these cases, every line of reasoning leads into some paradoxical concept. This is why I say it is wrong to use reasoning in order to conclude that there is fatalism.
Perhaps the thing that bewilders ourselves most about ourselves is that each of us did not seem to make or produce ourselves and / or put ourselves into existence. That makes people feel really not in control. But perhaps even this is not absolutely true when you looked at the situation form multiple-angles.
And now as I wrap up my challenge, allow me to momentarily be more opinionated and unreserved, and take the offensive.
And so, these religions continue to be supported by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, despite all their flaws that have been pointed out.
And unfortunately, there most likely is very little anybody can do about this, and I doubt that even a book like this will make more than a trivial dent in their popularity. Like Chamfort said, “All corporate bodies—judges, academies, assemblies—no matter how corrupt, are buoyed up by their sheer bulk, and there is nothing you can do about it. Disgrace, ridicule, everything bounces off of them…”
But getting back to my conclusion,
Religions show how most the people of the world often lack objectivity and do not base their assertions and beliefs on their own investigation and experience, and instead mainly follow the herd and the authority and their early impressions and their need to believe something.
People’s religious beliefs, teachings, and practices differ from religion to religion, and also differ from sect to sect within the same religion—and yet, each religion and sect insists they have the authentic teaching of the true religion, and they assert that that the others are false. Many of these religions are based on events that happened many centuries or even millenniums ago. It is clear that we cannot go back in time to ascertain and verify which religion is right, and also, which sect within each religion has the true teaching of that religion. So how can anyone possibly assert that one is right and the other is wrong?
Not to mention the fact that few people are familiar with religions other than their own, and few people are even familiar with the actual teachings of their own religion. Most people only know their religious information from secondary sources. And few people actually live according to the religion they belong to.
And yet despite all of this, people are sure of the legitimacy of their own religion, and are willing to go to great lengths in order to defend it.
We cannot even agree on events that happened a few hundred years ago. So how can we even begin to ascertain truths about matters that religions say happened hundreds or thousands of years before that? It is clear that we cannot be sure of anything at all! So, can anyone truthfully assert that they are sure of their descriptions of events that happened so long ago? They cannot! And yet people do.
Muslims are trained to pray with their faces turned towards Mecca, five times a day, and they never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross themselves on certain occasions, to bow, and so on.
Religions are one of the most effective tools for training, because they authoritatively train the way people think, usually starting from a young age. Isn’t it true that you can firmly plant any belief at all in the human head by inculcating it through constant repetition with an air of solemnity and authority?
Religions are also an example of how people often cling to and defend what is common, regardless of actually considering what it actually is, and investigating it and weighing it against anything else.