Questions to open Christians' minds a little

So my question is this:

What do the five major religions:

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.3 billion
3. Hinduism: 900 million
4. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
5. Buddhism: 376 million

encompassing over 4.5 billion people, share as common beliefs? If I took the claims of all five religions into account, what do they ALL have in common? Please consider the following questions:

1. What factual claims do they all share?
2. What claims about the nature of God do they have in common?
3. About the path to salvation?
4. Also, to someone who grew up without contact from these religions, what compelling reasons can you offer to follow one religion to the exclusion of the other four?

Looking forward to your responses.


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For those interested:

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion

Atheists are not included because they are widely recognised by religious people as lacking faith/hating God/overthinking/being self centred/going to hell anyway. I only include good, religious people here, those that are not lacking in faith, morals, and/or good sense. I want to know what specific beliefs those people with faith and sense have in common. Salvation, my soul and my eternal afterlife are at stake.

[carlo]

Consider; all the above religious perceptions focusing to the event on Golgotha. Reality; Christ, the being of the Trinity who was perceived by each of the above religious enterprises in their particular way comes to Earth as a sacrifice of His Spiritual Nature and becomes the Spirit of the Earth post Golgotha. He worked outside prior to the baptism by John and then worked on the Earth for three years manifested in the body of Jesus of Nazareth to the event on Golgotha.

Christ is that Being who works in the hearts and minds of ALL men. As the work goes on with mankind the specific religious differences will fall away and that Being which brings mankind together and no longer differentiated by family, tribe, nationality, nation, religion, and race is known as the Christ.

This activity is(and was) not brought about by force, disputation, conflict, etc. but has spread by the Christ Impulse working in the hearts of men. The differences are being worked through by individual men in freedom and love.

carlo

Umm, there is a problem with your question in as much as Buddhism is NOT a theistic religion, So for your question to be valid/make sense you may have to exclude Buddhism from the set you are investigating.

[BluffTHIS!]

As a Catholic the answer is easy. All religions could possibly contain some truth, especially moral truth, and also concerning the basic nature of the deity such as being monotheitic. Any such truths and goodness come from God, but the entire truth is found only in the Catholic Church.

[ QUOTE ]
Umm, there is a problem with your question in as much as Buddhism is NOT a theistic religion, So for your question to be valid/make sense you may have to exclude Buddhism from the set you are investigating.

[/ QUOTE ]

A religion is a spiritual philosophy/belief that is shared by many people, and often is deeply held. It is considered the best and deepest explanation that various societies have come up with it for the mysteries of life, death and existence, and its core beliefs are taken on faith and are shared by millions.

I simply chose the five largest religions as listed by adherents.org. Why is that unreasonable? I don't see why a religion should have to be theistic to be valid. My question was, what specific beliefs do the world's spritual philosophies (i.e. religions) all share?

You can exclude Buddhism if you wish, but I see no reason for doing so in the context of the original question.

[ QUOTE ]
As a Catholic the answer is easy. All religions could possibly contain some truth, especially moral truth, and also concerning the basic nature of the deity such as being monotheitic. Any such truths and goodness come from God, but the entire truth is found only in the Catholic Church.

[/ QUOTE ]
Please read your your statement carefully, and tell me how it's different from this:

"There's some goodness in all of them, but only those who agree with Catholic Church are correct."

How would you feel if you were born in Pakistan to Muslim parents? Would you say the same thing? Or born in India to a polytheistic religion (Hindu)? Can you offer compelling reasons (not necessarily evidence) for your choice of Catholicism over another religion?

Thanks for responding, but no one so far has really answered the original question(s).

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
Please read your your statement carefully, and tell me how it's different from this:

"There's some goodness in all of them, but only those who agree with Catholic Church are correct."


[/ QUOTE ]

You did not quote what I said accurately. Insert "100%" in front of correct in your restatement above. Thus some other religions might possess/espouse some truth, but only the Catholic Church teaches the whole truth.

Regarding why I am Catholic and not something else, you can search the forum as this has been discussed in other threads.

Exactly. They're correct in points where they agree with Catholicism, incorrect where they conflict with Catholicism.

I believe that's what I said.

And I still don't understand why, to an outside observer, a Muslim or Hindu saying the exact same thing would be any different to you. Do you wish to elaborate?

[ QUOTE ]
4. Also, to someone who grew up without contact from these religions, what compelling reasons can you offer to follow one religion to the exclusion of the other four?

[/ QUOTE ]

edit: Just to clarify, what objective criteria would you use to determine the truth of one religion over another? What would you offer under these criteria to someone trying to decide? This is not specific to Catholicism.

[ QUOTE ]
1. What factual claims do they all share?

[/ QUOTE ]

Buddhism does not share any factual claims, afaik, with the other religion mentionned since its fundamental concerns are so different.

[ QUOTE ]
2. What claims about the nature of God do they have in common?

[/ QUOTE ]

Buddhism has no claims about the nature or existence of God.

[ QUOTE ]
3. About the path to salvation?

[/ QUOTE ]

Salvation is not a buddhist concept.

[ QUOTE ]
4. Also, to someone who grew up without contact from these religions, what compelling reasons can you offer to follow one religion to the exclusion of the other four?

[/ QUOTE ]

Just the answers to the above three points, I guess.

[ QUOTE ]
You can exclude Buddhism if you wish, but I see no reason for doing so in the context of the original question.


[/ QUOTE ]

What is not satisfactory with the question is that it rests on statements implied in your question which are not addressed, or of concern, to Buddhists. That is, the question tries to compare (or pigeonhole) Buddhism, based on a "context" that is totally irrelevant, to Buddhists.

I made no claims about "validity" of religion. I was pointing out that the questions are pretty much irrelevant when applied to Buddhism, and therefore it would make more sense to exclude that religion from the comparison. I only wanted to correct some implied misconceptions about Buddhism in your question, that are prevalent amongst non-Buddhists.

Cheers

The questions are irrelevant to Buddhism, but not in the sense of comparing it (as a worldview) with Christianity and other religions.

I disagree that Buddhist don't make factual claims. They believe in rebirth don't they? That living creatures are actually born again as other living creatures. They claim the actual existence of a soul and life after death.

Also, I disagree that salvation is not a Buddhist concept. Nirvana can be seen as a kind of 'self salvation'.

[siegfriedandroy]

It is impossible to know for certain exactly how many people fit into each category.

I think it may be impossible to even get anywhere close to the true # of how many people in the world are actually Christian, for example. You cannot assume everyone who professes belief is a Christian. Also, some Christians believe that those in Africa who have never heard the Gospel can somehow be saved through Christ by believing in the natural revelation given them (this is a controversial issue). etc, etc, etc

Anyway, my point is that it is impossible to come up with anywhere close to an accurate answer to the question, "How many people out of the 12 billion who ever existed were Christian (or were saved b.c.).

Dear ÖÖΘ,

[ QUOTE ]
They believe in rebirth don't they? That living creatures are actually born again as other living creatures. They claim the actual existence of a soul and life after death.

[/ QUOTE ]

I see three questions here. The answer to all is NO. This is a misconception due in part by the early translators (Annnie Besant supporters or theosophists).

[ QUOTE ]
Nirvana can be seen as a kind of 'self salvation'

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I have to disagree here too,

Dear ÖÖΘ, I do not wish to hijack your thread, only correct some misrepresentations. I am sure we can leave it at this or, if interested, you could start a new thread discussing these topics.


Cheers

MidGe

You said "I want to know what specific beliefs those people with faith and sense have in common."

I think it's funny that you think those that don't believe in God,aka, Santa Clause, Superman, the Easter Bunny, are the ones without sense. I'm not trying to engage and teach you, because obviously we both operate on different principles, but I thought I would address your incorrect view of reality.
Shooby

[ QUOTE ]
You said "I want to know what specific beliefs those people with faith and sense have in common."

I think it's funny that you think those that don't believe in God,aka, Santa Clause, Superman, the Easter Bunny, are the ones without sense. I'm not trying to engage and teach you, because obviously we both operate on different principles, but I thought I would address your incorrect view of reality.
Shooby

[/ QUOTE ]
Atheists (which I am) are often said to lack faith, deny personal experience, and be too involved with logic, reason and evidence to see the various truths of religion.

So, I wanted to see what things religious people, with ample faith, the benefit of the 'God/Jesus/Allah/Krishna experience', and an open heart/mind share in terms of common beliefs. By the lack of replies, it appears very little. Which I think says something about the power of the religious experience when it comes to being correct about historical events, or understanding physical or spiritual reality. Don't you?

[David Sklansky]

"Atheists (which I am)"

You can't be an athiest. You hate necrophilia.

[thatpfunk]

I'd like to see this thread get some more responses from Christians.

[RJT]

“Atheists (which I am) are often said to lack faith, …”

If this is said, I would have to disagree. Atheists do indeed have faith. They have faith that there is no god.

Agnostics on the other hand are those who have no faith (one way or the other).

[thatpfunk]

Why aren't any christian addressing this?

[RJT]

I haven’t responded, because I don’t know much about religions other than Christianity.

#3 the answer is different for different Christian denominations. One can read this forum to see many different answers.

If we look at #4:

Let’s look at the history of civilization and try to see what ours would be like had not Jesus ever existed. I recently just started thinking about this. I bet we will find that many (most?) things would be quite different without His teachings. I am referring to mostly the “Love thy neighbor as thyself” part.

I think His teaching has changed history and civilization quite a bit - for the better I think.

I am not talking about what man has done to the world in the name of religions. I am talking about when (if) man had done things according to His teachings. Would we be better off without Him? I think not.

Can we do without reincarnation and Muhammad? I venture to say yes.