The Search for God Page 5.5
The Elimination
The first elimination is simple, atheism and agnosticism’s claim to knowledge is humankind or lack of external evidence. For Zoroastrianism, there was one prophet at a time. Traditional Chinese religions are really more philosophies like Confucianism or Taoism.
While I loved reading the Tao Te Ching, it is an eastern philosophy akin to Plato or Socrates, not a religion claiming God spoke. The challenging one here is the catch-all ethnic religions, in which Judaism and Hinduism are both included on the Wikipedia page.
When I began my search, I did not consider a small localized ethnic religion in this day and age, unless there was also a clear well-distributed written tradition. If anyone can point to a religion in the ethnic religion category that I don’t have here that meets our current criteria, please let me know.
I included Buddhism, even though there is a single person, Buddha, the attachment to Hinduism made me consider the evaluation for completeness’ sake. In addition, Buddhism does have a larger following. Even though I did not include a large following as a criterion, a large following seemed like a rational criterion, so I added Buddhism back.
Religion | Year Founded | Written Tradition | Two + Communications |
Judaism | Approx 3700 BC | Yes | Yes |
Hinduism | Approx 2000 BC | Yes | Yes |
Jainism | Approx 800 BC | Yes | Yes |
Ethnic religions excluding some in separate categories | Approx 1000 BC | Varies | Varies |
Buddhism | Approx 600 BC | Yes | No/Hindu |
Chinese traditional religion | Approx 1000 BC | Yes | No, philosophy |
Secular/Nonreligious /Agnostic/Atheist | Very Old | Yes | No |
Zoroastrianism | Approx 1000 BC | Yes | No |
So by this point we are left with four religions that meet the criteria we have laid out.
- Judaism
- Hinduism
- Buddhism
- Jainism
What Next?
- What is the crucial concept?
- I would expect an all-knowing, eternal, timeless being to communicate at least two times with humankind if he exists
- Why is that significant?
- We eliminated additional religions to be left with four.
- If you agree, the next steps.
- If you disagree, please consider reading.
References and Links
- Wikipedia – Confucianism
- National Geographic – Taoism
- The Library of Consciousness – Tao Te Ching
- Wikipedia – Hinduism and Judaism