Supreme being, God, Allah, Creator of the Universe
Over the years we have witnessed the rise and fall of many great religions. Most of them all point to one deity being responsible for the creation of everything in the universe. Many of today’s religions refer to this being as: The Great Spirit, Allah, YHWH, Father, or simply God. Despite what some may believe, even the pagans of old believed that there was one God that created all the other gods. There is even a growing number in the scientific community that will admit there must be something or someone responsible for creating the universe. (A universal conscience)
It is quite sad that everyone that looks to this being believes it is the ultimate source of peace and tranquility, but they utilize its name to facilitate their actions of hate, abuse and murder. Thousands of people throughout the world are killed each and every day simply because they do not call this being by the same name or choose to worship it the same way as others. Why is it that we all pray for peace yet we are unable to accept our fellow brothers and sisters as they are, flaws and all? If we truly wish to have peace on earth, we must stop focusing on our differences and start focusing on our similarities. Most faiths claim that God is the ultimate source of good and he is a forgiving God that always gives second chances to those that seek him. I believe it is also important to point out that the purpose of God or Gods is that there is someone out there that has more power and is wiser then we are. It is a fact that we cannot use all of our brain capacity and exactly what we are fully capable of is still being discovered. Whether you believe there is a God, multiple Gods, a universal conscience or there is nothing out there but empty space and we are all alone, one thing is for certain, humans have a tremendous ability to do great things or horrible things. It's up to us to determine our path!
I understand there is much debate on this topic and I am in no way picking a side here. I write this as a way to point out what each of these groups believe and highlight some important similarities in an attempt to help find a common ground. I understand some believe their GOD and religion is the only right one and if that is you please do not read any further. When you look at how everything works together and how intricate things are down to a microscopic level it is hard to imagine it just randomly happening. That being said, I have a hard time believing in a perfect all-knowing God that is constantly playing favorites and getting involved world affairs. I believe we were put here to take care of this world and to learn how to work together for our own benefit and the benefit of the animals and plants that were given to us. There is so much greed and fighting going on and it doesn't make sense. Why does one person or one group have to be better or stronger? What's the point of making someone feel inferior and dominate others?
I will start with the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Islam and, Christianity. Now, I understand that to link these three together for many is heresy; however, I encourage you to indulge me for a moment and you might just be surprised. I grew up Christian and was taught that only they had things right and both the Jews and Muslims were flawed but similar. Some say yes, they all worship the same God they just call him by different names. Others say empathetically no, but when pressed cannot give good examples of how. One difference that many people seem to get confused on is when Muslims refer to God as Allah. Allah is simply the Arabic word for God. The Islamic faith arose from Arabic speaking people therefore, they use the name from their heritage, but it is still the same God of Christianity and Judaism. Now, despite this there are some fundamental differences in the way each of these groups see God and I will go into detail on each.
Judaism
We will begin with the religion that was established first and the one that both Christianity and Islam grew from. In the traditional teachings of Judaism, they teach that there is only one God. He created everything and established physical and moral laws. Their God walked and talked directly with his creations for a while. Eventually choosing a nomad by the name of Abraham to father a mighty nation that GOD set up as an example for other nations. Their God demands burnt offerings and extremely specific physical offerings as evidence of obedience and repentance. He gave his chosen people a particular set of laws. There is a famous rabbinic saying that implies that every word in Judaism's sacred texts can be understood in 70 correct (but related) ways, even going as far as suggesting that human reasoning can trump divine intentions. Their God judges his people yearly and tradition claims he will accept imperfection as long as one is repentant. Obedience is what he wants more than faith and more concerned with the behaviors of Jews then he is of non-Jews. Tradition talks about a World to Come after death for moral accounts to be settled, but the details are vague.
Christianity
Moving to Christianity we quickly get hit with the traditional teachings of the Trinity. Now, admittedly not all Christians adhere to this teaching however, it is a popular teaching that must be addressed. Basically, they teach that God is one God. However, God is a term given to three distinct individuals: there is a Father, a son and a holy spirit. These three individual beings, the father being an unseeing spirit forever in heaven, the son a spirit with the father at creation and later being put in a human body and resurrected, and the holy spirit being a spirit endowed with the power of the father that gives this power to humans. Confused? Sorry it’s a confusing belief and that's the best I could do. They say it’s a mystery how it's done, but if you truly search scriptures you find their major flaws in this belief. I can go into this more, however for the sake of this paper I will not. My next paper will cover the Messiah more in-depth and we will break this down a lot more. Putting this confusion aside the Christian God also seems to have put aside the instruction book. Instead of insisting on being big on laws and sacrifices, Jesus is the only sacrifice needed to atone for sin and Love is the only real law that must be followed (well, that and the ten commandments) and a few others thrown in as they see fit. Forgiveness and loyalty to Jesus and God are key, however, I have met many people that will agree that many want forgiveness, but few are free to give the same forgiveness and non-judgment to others. Christianity is quite complicated and has changed a lot over the years. It would seem that as politics and society change so does the way Christians interpret their bible. However, this is a much bigger discussion that I will have to have on another paper.
Islam
The Muslim God is a lot more similar to the Jewish God. They do not believe in the Trinity and believe that Jesus was another prophet in a long line of prophets ending with Muhammad. They believe god has never had anything like physical attributes and has no gender. In Muslim tradition, God wants one thing from humans: Submission. In fact, the word "Islam" is defined as "submission to the will of God." Muslims believe that all true prophets in Jewish and Christian Traditions were actually Muslim because they knew to submit correctly to God. They teach that the differences between Muslim, Jewish and Christian interpretations of God are due to errors that crept into the other two faiths. (yea, I was shocked too...) The Muslim God initially demanded that Abraham sacrifice a son, however they teach that Abraham was told to offer Ishmael not Isaac as a sacrifice. (yea, because who was supposed to be sacrificed is what's important...) Yes, as many may already know they believe that from before the world began, a perfect man was to be the final prophet (no not Jesus) Muhammad! God only has his perfect truths in the Quran and the sayings of Muhammad. Unlike the Jewish God, but similar to the Christian God, the Muslim God will welcome believers into paradise and condemn many non-Muslims to eternal torment.
Final thoughts
So, do Christians Muslims, and Jews, really all worship the same God? Well, technically they do. It would appear they all believe in one supreme being creating everything and being responsible for the well-being of all humanity. However, the way they see this God is different and their arrogance and insistence on their version being the only "True Faith" makes things horribly complicated and volatile. They differ on how this creator wants people to act and who should be considered "special" ; they all claim to follow a God that only loves them because they are fully devoted to him and do anything that he or someone that claims to have heard him commands them to do with no questions asked. They differ on who exactly heard from God, but each one is convinced that "their people" did and the other people are fakes. Of course, this could all be cleared up if God would simply come out and tell us himself, I'll wait.......
Zoroastrianism
Zoroastrianism is an ancient Aryan religion that originated in Persia more than 2500 years ago. It only has less than one hundred thirty thousand believers in the world. However, it is one of the oldest religions in the world. The Iranian Prophet Zoroaster was the founder of Zoroastrianism. It is also known as Pariism and the sacred scripture of the Parsis is the Dasatir and Avesta. God in Zoroastrian religion is known as Ahura Mazda. Ahura means Lord. Mazda means the wise. So, Ahura Mazda means, "the Wise Lord of the Wise God. Ahura Mazda stands for a strict form of a Monotheistic God. The Dasatir claim the Ahura Mazda have the following qualities: He is one, nothing resembles him, he is without an origin or end, he has no father, mother, wife or son, without a body or form, Neither the eye can behold him, nor the power of thinking can conceive him, He is above all that you can imagine of, he is nearer to you than your own self. According to the Avesta, the Gathas and the Yasna give the following characteristics to Ahura Mazda: Creator, Most Mighty-the Greatest, Beneficent-Hudai, Bountiful-Spenta.
Hinduism
The word Hindu is a Persian word that stands for the inhabitants of the region beyond the Indus Valley. Hinduism is a blanket term for an assortment of religious beliefs, most of them are based on the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagwad Geeta. Hinduism is commonly referred to as a polytheistic religion. Most Hindus would agree that they believe in a multitude of Gods. Some believe in the system of three Gods while some believe in the existence of thirty-three million Gods. Many Hindus that are well versed with their scriptures insist that a Hindu should believe in and worship one God. I know it is a bit complicated, but the main thing to point out is, Hindu's believe in the philosophy of Pantheism. Pantheism considers everything that is living and non-living divine and sacred. They consider the trees, the sun, the moon, the animals and human beings as manifestations of God. Basically, everything is God. So, unlike the three previously mentioned religions that believe Everything belongs to God, they believe, everything is God.
Sikhism
Sikhism is a branch of Hinduism that was founded by Guru Nanak at the end of the 15th century. Its origins are in the area of Pakistan and North West India called Punjab. This means the land of the 5 rivers. The best definition that a Sikh can give regarding the concept of God is a quote from the Mul Mantra, this is the fundamental creed of Sikhism and occurs at the beginning of Guru Granth Sahib. According to, Sri Guru Granth Sahib volume 1 Japuli 1st verse, "There exists but one God, who is called the true creator, free from fear and hate, immortal not begotten, self-existent, great and compassionate. They follow a strict monotheistic belief. They believe in One supreme God who is called ek omkara in the unmanifest form. In the manifest form he is called Omkara. He is referred to in many ways: Kartar-the creator, Sahib- The Lord, Akal- The Eternal, Sattanama- The Holy name, Parvardigar- The Cherisher, Rahim- The Merciful, Karim- The Benevolent, and Wahe Guru- The one true God. They do not believe in Avataravada- the doctrine of incarnation. The Almighty God does not incarnate himself in what is known as Avatara. They are also strongly against Idol worship.
Polytheistic Creation
There are many creation stories in what we refer to as Pagan stories. In these polytheistic creation stories the world is typically organically created. There are various ways this is accomplished such as: sprouting from a primal seed, sexually, by miraculous birth, parthenogenesis, hero's games, violently, by slaying a primeval monster, or artificially, by a divine demiurge or "craftsman". There is usually a god involved, either wittingly or unwittingly in bringing about creation. A few examples are:
Africa
Mbombo of Bakuba mythology- this deity vomited out the world because of a stomach ache
Egyptian mythology has multiple theories
Atum in Ennead- his semen becomes the primal component of the universe
Ptah- created the universe by the Word (sound familiar)
Neith- She wove the universe and existence into being on her loom
American
Nanabozho (Great Rabbit), Ojibwe deity, a shape-shifter and a co-creator of the world.
Cōātl īcue in Aztec mythology
Chiminigagua (and/or Bague) in Muisca Mythology
Viracocha in Inca mythology
A trickster deity in the form of a raven in Inuit mythology
Asia
Ēl in Canaanite religion
This one is particularly interesting because it ties back to Judaism. I will write more on this later.
Esege Malan in Mongolian mythology, king of the skies
Kamuy in Ainu Mythology- the world was built on the back of a trout
Izanagi and Izanami-no-Mikoto in Japanese mythology- he churned the ocean with a spear and created the islands of Japan.
Marduk killing Tiamat in the Babylonian Enûma Eliš
In Hinduism- the Vedic scriptures call the unchanging eternal reality Brahman. The Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda expresses doubt whether there is or is not any creator deity and expresses doubt as to whether gods know who or what created the universe. Later, during the Puranic period, they equate the Brahman to Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva or Devi, and each major sub-tradition of Hinduism calls them respectively as the creator deity.
European
The sons of Borr slaying the primeval giant Ymir in Norse mythology
Rod in Slavic mythology
Ipmil or Radien-Áhči (Radien Father) in Sámi mythology
Oceanic
Makemake- creator of humanity, the god of fertility and the chief god of the "Tangata manu" or "bird-man" cult of Rapa Nui mythology
Ranginui- the Sky Father, and Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother in Māori mythology
Platonic demiurge
Plato described a creation myth involving a being called the demiurge in his dialogue Timaeus. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism continued and developed this concept.
Neoplatonism- the demiurge represents the second cause or dyad, after the monad.
Gnostic Dualism- the demiurge is an imperfect spirit and could be an evil being that is transcended by divine fullness (Pleroma). Unlike the Abrahamic God, Plato-s demiurge is unable to create ex-nihilo.
Science
Many people claim that science is the enemy of religion, and for many many years religion has fought against science. However, science has never sought to be the enemy of religion. Science simply seeks to find the answers that religion refuses to seek. Some say that science has disproved the existence of God. This is not the truth. We have learned a lot about how the universe works. In fact the amount of human knowledge about the universe doubles every couple of years.
When it comes to physics and cosmology, we know what happened to our universe as early as a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang and as we speak some are even believe they have discovered what caused the big bang.
In chemistry, we understand the most complicated reactions among atoms and molecules. In biology we know how the living cell works and mapped out our entire genome. However, the question still remains, does something exist outside our universe or more importantly was there a per-existent outside force that launched our universe?
There have been many findings over the years that challenge religion. In the 1800s, discoveries of Neanderthal remains in Belgium, Gibraltar and Germany showed that humans were not the only hominids to occupy earth, and fossils and remains of now extinct animals and plants further demonstrated that flora and fauna evolve, live for millennia and then sometimes die off, ceding their place on the planet to better-adapted species. Naturally these discoveries lend credit to the theory of evolution put forth by Charles Darwin in 1859. In 1851, Leon Foucault, a self-trained French physicist, proved that earth rotates around the sun rather than the sun rotating around earth. Geological discoveries over the years have proved that the earth is billions, not thousands, of years old as the “young earth” hypothesis goes. All of this hurts the literal interpretations of Scripture.
Biological evolution has not helped us understand how the first living organisms emerged from inanimate matter on this planet or how the advanced eukaryotic cells emerged from simpler organisms. It also does not explain how consciousness arose in living things. Where does symbolic thinking and self-awareness come from? Where do symbolic thinking and self-awareness come from? What is it that allows humans to understand the mysteries of biology, physics, mathematics, engineering and medicine? What enables us to create great works of art, music, architecture and literature? Science cannot explain these deep mysteries. On top of all these questions we have the persistent question of the fine-tuning of the parameters of the universe: Why is our universe precisely tailor-made for the emergence of life? The problem is, the deeper we dive into the mysteries of physics and cosmology, the more the universe appears to be intricate and incredibly complex.
For instance simply explaining the quantum-mechanical behavior of one tiny particle requires many pages of extremely advanced mathematics. The tiniest particles of matter are extremely complicated and there is a vast, hidden “wisdom” for the most simple-looking element of nature. Then add to that just how large the cosmos is and well we have only begun to scratch the tiniest bit of the surface.
What we do know is, 13.7 billion years ago, a huge burst of energy, whose nature and source are completely unknown to us and not understood by science, initiated the creation of our universe. Then suddenly, something came into being (also revered to as the “God particle” and was discovered by Higgs Boson inside CERN’s powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider) and miraculously gave the universe its mass. This mass consisted of elementary particles, whose weights and electrical charges had to fall within extremely tight bounds for the next phase to occur. Within the primeval soup of elementary particles that made up our young universe all the quarks suddenly bunched in threes to form protons and neutrons, their electrical charges set precisely to the exact level needed to attract and capture the electrons. They then began to circle nuclei made of the protons and neutrons. The masses, charges and forces of interaction in the universe needed to be in just the right amounts in order for early light atoms to form. Then larger ones could be cooked in the nuclear fires inside stars. This would give us: carbon, iron, nitrogen, oxygen and all the other elements that are so essential for life to emerge. This would eventually lead to the highly complicated double helix molecule, the life-propagating DNA being formed.
So, as you see we understand what happened, but we don’t understand how or what made it happen or how exactly it was done? The great British mathematician Roger Penrose has made a calculation, based on only one of the hundreds of parameters of the physical universe, that the probability of the emergence of a life-giving cosmos was 1 divided by 10, raised to the power 10, and again raised to the power of 123. (yea, Wow) Basically, this is a number as close to 0 as you can imagine. Naturally scientific atheists have attempted to explain this troubling mystery by suggesting the existence of a multiverse. This is an infinite set of universes, each with its own parameters. Some universes have no conditions for life, however by the sheer size of this putative multi verse, there must be a universe where everything is right. The problem is, if it takes an immense power of nature to create one universe, it will take a whole lot more power to create infinite universes. So, this hypothetical multi verse does not solve the issue of God. Although science has helped us solve a lot of questions it has not come close to answering the question of God. Religion fears what science will find and they have a right to be afraid. Science has answered many questions and some argue the morals of the scientific community are way above those of the religious community. I mean let's face it religion tells us rape is a property crime against the father or husband and how to govern our slaves.
In the End
Science and religion are simply two sides of the same coin. We are both trying to figure out who or what created everything. We both want to know where we fit into everything and what our purpose is? What we do seem to agree on across the board is that there is a very strong possibility that something was the cause of all of this. What we disagree on is what or who that was. Many people use this as an excuse to be mean, hateful and straight up murderous. However, if your God is the one that created everything and everyone then aren’t you just killing his people? Why are you better than them? Do you seriously believe that he will thank you for killing his people in his name? (wait, don’t answer that, history says, yes!) This is absurd and is why so many are leaving religion behind. Many don’t care what ancient texts written by people that see women as lesser beings and promote slavery have to say about who or what created everything. They are looking and waiting for science to figure this out. I know many religious people say without their teachings there is a morality problem, but that is not the case. We see many atheists doing good and having great morals every day. In fact, in Buddhist philosophy they believe that we are all born good and are taught evil. One simply has to look at the actions of a toddler to see this. They do not initially act evil. It is only after they are taught to be selfish and to compete that they become aggressive and mean.
Spirituality can be controversial. For a unique outlook on spirituality.
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