Ok, so we’ve established through science and logical reasoning that it is more likely that there is a supernatural creator or overseer than it is that there isn’t. From this point on we will assume that the common man understands the 2 simple absolutes (does exist/doesn’t exist) and has made a choice to believe that there is a God. Our thinking now turns to understanding exactly whose God it is, or whose Gods they are. Whose religion is right? Do all paths lead to the same God?

Science tells us that the universe, and time, had a beginning and formed together. The best theory we have for that beginning is accepted by scientists as the “Big Bang” and also led onto the process of abiogenesis, which fostered life on our planet. Because our universe is governed by the laws and nature of physics, we can reasonably assume that the “Big Bang” had a cause, and it was caused by an intelligent creator. That creator exists outside time and outside our universe, possibly in at least 11 spatial dimensions, but is able to co-exist in ours and also to act outside the natural laws that make it up at will.

An overview of the world’s main religious groups
Religion is intimately entwined with culture, so most people follow the religion that is most prevalent in the culture they were born into and dogmatically preach it is the right one. Most people in the Western world claim to follow Christianity, and most people in Arab countries tend to claim to follow Islam. It’s no surprise that in the East, most follow Tao-focused philosophies. So for most, the true religion is the one they’ve grown up with and been indoctrinated by. That, however, does not make it true or legitimate. When we search for God, it’s important to bear in mind our own prejudices and assumptions, and be able to put them to one side.

There are hundreds of religions in the world today, and many ancient religions that are no longer practiced. It is possible, and perhaps likely, that all religions contain some truth and/or good moral advice. However, in examining religious teaching, it is important to examine the fundamental beliefs of each religion and compare those to each other. When this is done, it is apparent that primary religious teachings contradict each other. Judaism says that the Messiah is coming, Christianity says that He has come, and Islam says that Mohammad provided all the information necessary for religious life. Obviously, these truth claims cannot be simultaneously true, since they contradict each other. Logically, we must reject the idea that all religions lead to God.

Equally, we cannot exclude the possibility that they are all wrong, as unlikely as this may be.

World religions can be placed into 4 very wide groups, in the order at which they appeared historically on the world stage:

• Dharmic/Indian – Hinduism, Sihkism, Buddhism (Many gods)
  Based around India, these all share common traits in the form of karma, dharma, samsara, moksha, and various yogas (e.g. belief in reincarnation etc) and differ in their interpretation of what those concepts mean and how they applied by historic religious teachers.

• Far Eastern/Taoist – Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto (Many gods)
  Based in East Asia (China, Japan etc), Far Eastern religions are highly incestuous but can be grouped by their veneration of Tao (flow of the universe) and De (good intention), along with their belief in multiple gods that are linked to their ancestors.

• New Age/Neo-Pagan – Spiritualism, Shamanism, Wicca (Many gods)
  New age mysticism spans a massively broad sweep of syncretic beliefs, but can be distinguished by belief in universal “energy”, synchronicity between all things, ancient knowledge and the freedom to combine as many elements from anywhere to create one’s own faith system.

• Abrahamic - Judaism, Christianity & Islam. (One God)
  Based around the Middle East (principally Israel), the 3 main Abrahamic religions all worship the same God, but differ by their scriptures and in the interpretation of what role prophets played. They share a common historical figure in their past in the form of Abraham.

• Atheism (no God or gods)
  Found all over the world, atheists believe there is no God or Higher Being at all, and all we see and understand does not have to be viewed through religious goggles, but can be explained through other methods, such as science.

But how come it’s the God or Gods of any of these religions? Can it be my one, or one we don’t know about or have got wrong? Yes, it can be any of these, but that philosophy puts you firmly in the New Age bracket.

How you can test and evaluate
It’s important to look at all the religions of the world and test every claim they make, as well as consider all the possibilities so you have a firm spiritual foundation. You can test them, and then eliminate them one by one to deduce which one you believe holds the truth. Man is a spiritual creature and all of us search and long for God – the first evidence of that implicit spirituality was that during the Neanderthal age we buried our dead. The search and curiosity for God has been with us since the beginning and won’t be going anywhere soon.

Our process to discern which one is right goes like this:

1. One god or lots of gods?
2. Personal or have no personal connection to humans?
3. Eliminate the illogical
4. Compare and test the ones left

We can use certain criteria to “score” the religions to get to some kind of idea as to whose is the most legitimate and authentic, and dare we say it, the truth.

• Popularity
  A lot of people believing in something doesn’t make it true, but it can show a degree of common wisdom and testimony to truth
• Logical structure
  Spirituality transcends logic, but the universe is ordered, so we can expect the creator to be ordered too
• Age/longevity
  Being around a long time doesn’t make it true, but fads die out quickly, and older things have more time to be scrutinised
• Moral actualisation
  You can have morality without religion, but spiritual principles that lead to the betterment of humankind are crucial
• Prophecy fulfilment
  The more prophecies that are fulfilled, the more likely it is they aren’t coincidence and the creator is the right one
• Scientific validity
  Spirituality also transcends science and the laws of the universe, but scripture that correctly profiles the universe as we understand it today through science is likely to be one of the true creator
• Personal experience
  Provided it is not other factors like our subconscious mind or indoctrination, what we feel and know through the spirit ourselves is most likely to be the religion that is true.

If we’ve suggested that the existence of God is more probably than there not being a God, we can immediately discount atheism as being a viable belief. Likewise Scientology isn’t included here as it is so ridiculous that it’s not even worth talking about.

And this is how they score:

Abrahamic religions win on popularity, logical structure, prophecy fulfilment and scientific validity.
Dharmic religions and paganism win on age. Arguably Abrahamic religions and Far Eastern also win on moral actualisation as they form the majority of the world’s legal systems and have provided the most helpful innovations and momentum to human development. Personal experience is obviously different for everyone.

Does that supernatural being have a personal connection with us or not?
The universe demonstrates some remarkable evidence of design, and by design we mean the brilliance of natural selection and other natural systems. Most people who believe a God exists would agree with the argument that a supernatural force who designed the universe must be a personal one. For that force to put so much time and care into the design of the universe and life, it would seem logical to conclude that that he/she/it really cared about that creation, and would be personally involved in it. Any force who did not care about his creation would never be expected to spend 14 billion years of development just so that humans would have a nice place to live for a few thousand years.

A powerful and personal Creator God of the universe would probably want to reveal Himself to His spiritual creatures. So, it seems likely that He would have revealed His true nature to one or more of the peoples of the earth.

Therefore, it would seem likely that the true God (or gods) must be personal monotheistic God, and not the God of deism, pantheism, Buddhism, etc. So, it would seem that these religions probably do not represent the true nature of God.

Einstein famously made a serious logical error in his judgement that the Creator he believed existed was not personal because he could not rationalise evil and suffering in the design of the universe. He failed to understand the reason for our existence.

One god, or many gods?
We can see immediately that mankind’s thinking and experience of God comes in 2 forms – that there are lots of gods (polytheism) or there is only one God (monotheism). The idea of multiple gods is one of the very oldest and most primitive religious concepts, and tends to be personalised according to some kind of object or natural force/event. For example, Horus, the Egyptian sun god, Jupiter the Roman planet god, or Dana of the Wiccan Mother Earth. It’s also the case that families of gods, such as the ones the Greeks worshipped, are suspiciously human-looking.

Many polytheistic divinities are also impersonal, but as we’ve seen, the logical conclusion about a supernatural creator is that he/she/it would be personally involved.

But probably the biggest argument polytheism is that it is impossible. Logically flawed, and logically impossible. We come back to the first cause issue – who created god, or the first set of gods? Was there a master God, and if so, all others must be his creation, rendering them very in-godlike. Gods in polytheistic religions create often create and squabble for rivalry, which leads to disorder in a very ordered universe. All in all, the many gods theory doesn’t really make much sense.

So we write off polytheism.

Cutting through the rest
We can immediately write off any religious belief that encourages the worship of anything within the universe, because our scientific understanding is that a God or gods caused it and must exist outside time to be logically plausible. Planets, animals, natural earth features, energy systems, human ancestors – all are within the creation itself. Worshipping the creation rather than creator is foolish, inane and illogical.

We can also quickly write off any “gods” that appear to be human and man-created – they will be typically permissive as they serve the purposes of man.

If any of them do not account for the formation of the universe or answer specific questions about the nature of our existence, we can rationalise that they are not in touch with the creator.

New age philosophy (inc. paganism) is so incredibly diverse and syncretic that it nobody quite seems to know what anyone else believes, or what they believe and why. Ultimately we can generalise and say that most of these belief systems tend to favour the idea of the creator being “energy” and the creation itself (“We are all one” etc). But as we know, these philosophies don’t answer any of the bigger questions and are an logical impossibility when it comes to our scientific understanding of the universe.

To recap, we’re writing off:

• Atheism
• Ridiculous asinine crap (e.g. Scientology, Mormonism);
• Polytheistic religions because the divinity structure is logically impossible;
• Any “gods” that resemble humans or are obviously man-created;
• Any “gods” who are impersonal;
• Anything that encourages worship of anything inside the universe, as science tells us it had a beginning and was caused;
• Religions that do not offer answers to the “big questions”, as if the universe was caused by that creator, they should have information about it;
• Disordered and/or syncretic pick-n-mix chaos, because the universe is ordered, as will the creator be;
• Beliefs that feature bad/incorrect science, because if they get the nature of the world wrong, they’re not in touch with the creator.

And so we end up at the Abrahamic religions and their single, almighty God. It is important to understand that all worship the same God and claim their base as Jerusalem – Judaism calls Him Elohim, Christians just call Him Lord, and Islam calls Him Allah. But He’s the same God.

It’s easier to understand them together when you look at them on a historical timeline – Judaism came first, then Christianity, then Islam. The Jewish faith specifies a prophecy of a Messiah who will come under certain conditions. Christians believe that the Messiah was a spiritual one in the form of Jesus Christ and worship the Trinity (3 forms of God), whereas Jews believe that prophecy ended with the Old Testament (or their Tanakh). Muslims see Christ (Isa) as the 2nd to last human prophet before Allah’s final chosen messenger Mohammed, and reject that there is any form of God (Allah) that isn’t separate and transcendent. In short, Jews and Muslims think Christians are blasphemous, and hate each other anyway for the sake of it.

Generally to be a Jew or a Muslim, you are either born a Jew or an Arab; few actively convert away from their own cultures, and these religions are tied to the people. Arabs are Allah’s people, and Jews are Elohim’s people. If you think that God is a little more wide-ranging and inclusive than that, you probably want to look at Christianity, as it is essentially more secular, pluralistic and non-discriminating. Christian scripture says God always chose Jews to be the chosen race that received things first, and then it would be for gentiles (non-Jews).

The question is who rightly portrays God as He is, and accurately explains what He is like, what He has done and why He did it, and what our relationship has been with Him.

You essentially make your mind up about these 3 by your decision about the nature of Christ. Christianity is seen as the fulfilment to Judaism, and Islam is seen as a correction to Christianity – Christ is Judaism’s Messiah, and Islam’s prophet. They all share the same God, so your judgement as to which is right generally rests on history, their prophets and their individual scriptures.

You have to ask yourself which one of these 3 religions understands the true nature of God and fulfils your own criteria as to be truth, and you must do it by not deliberately ignoring the faith’s dogma and the history of its institutions. Faiths aren’t built or decided on what their followers have done, but on the spiritual truth they attempt to reveal to us all. The institutions are flawed and man-made, so will be full of men’s stupid mistakes and dark nature, just as any institution is. Mohammed is not corrupt because those who claim to follow him commit atrocities, and the Christ isn’t wrong because the Church indulged in the Crusades. But you also cannot say both were right and accept the two, because what they taught was fundamentally different and at odds with each other.

If you believe Christ and Mohammed were false prophets, then Judaism would fit your understanding of God. If Christ was the Son of God and resurrected, then Christianity is the truth. If Christianity is false and Mohammed painted the right portrait of God, then Islam is the true religion. We put each of them through the same tests of popularity, scientific validity, age/longevity, prophecy fulfilment etc. Islam’s credibility cannot ride off the back of claiming Christianity is false. Just because something else is claimed to be false does not mean the person claiming it is right.

The logical conclusions we come to are:

• Christianity is the most widely believed, scandalous and grew against the odds in spite of persecution;
• Christianity would appear to have the most logical structure that explain’s mankind’s situation and nature;
• The Bible is the most scientifically valid (and yes, we will examine this later);
• We cannot credibly and conclusively disprove the resurrection;
• Christianity has endured the most scrutiny, is most open to scrutiny (by publishing its mistakes) and has the most sources;
• Christianity provides the most cases of alleged fulfilled prophecy;

But most importantly:

No other religion provides a provision for God’s forgiveness of sin and to reconcile ourselves with Him, and all other religions are man’s attempt to become acceptable to God. Only Christianity says that God alone provides the only means to be acceptable to Him. So, either Christianity is true and all other religions are false or Christianity is false and God does not hold people accountable for law breaking.