Surely They Can’t All Be Right!
September 2019
Ever wondered how many religious people there are in the world? In 2012, the top 5 of the Adherent list estimates had the following religions, numbers and percentages of the world population:-
Religion Adherents Percentage
Christianity 2.4 billion 33%
Islam 1.8 billion 24.1%
Secular/ Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 1.2 billion 16%
Hinduism 1.15 billion 15%
Buddhism 521 million 7%
This is from the most recent list I can find on the web at the time of writing (Sept 2019).
According to the latest United Nations estimates the current world population is 7.7 billion. If the number of adherents to Christianity and Islam is more or less the same now as in 2012 then just over half of the world’s population identifies with one of these two religions.
The group of “Secular/ Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist” is included under the catch-all title of religion. Some people may think it unusual to see this. However, although strict atheists would deny they have a “religion” I think the compilers of the table want to emphasise that non-religious beliefs are a fast-growing part of society. Personally I am pleased that not having religion has been placed on the same footing as having one and that non-religious groups have been recognised as such.
Having said that, Islam and Christianity are the 2 major world religions and they are what I want to concentrate on in this article. However, to do this, we also need to include Judaism for several reasons. In numerical terms, Judaism is rated 11th in the world for adherents with approximately 15 million followers. Despite these comparatively low numbers, it holds an additional importance. Both Christianity and Islam revere Yahweh, Abraham and Moses and both respect the writings of the Jewish Tanakh/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Judaism is also considered as one of the world’s major monotheistic religions. It therefore naturally sits better with Islam and Christianity in that respect.
Now it is obvious that all of the people in these 3 religions hold beliefs in their own particular faiths. Having said that there have been endless splits within each religion.
In Islam, Sunni and Shia are the 2 most famous branches with Sunni as the larger of the two. Sunni differs from Shia in its understanding of the Sunna, its conception of religious leadership, and its acceptance of the first three caliphs. The roots of the Sunni-Shia divide can be traced all the way back to the seventh century, soon after the death of the prophet Muhammad in A.D. 632. While most of Muhammad’s followers thought that the other elite members of the Islamic community should choose his successor, a smaller group believed only someone from Muhammad’s family—namely his cousin and son-in-law, Ali—should succeed him. This group became known as the followers of Ali; in Arabic the Shiat Ali, or simply Shia.
Judaism too has its differences – Orthodox Jews, Conservative or Masorti and Reform Judaism. One of the most famous historical differences was between the Sadducees and Pharisees. This is vividly (allegedly) portrayed in Chapter 23 Verse 6 of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament where Paul had been taken put on trial before the Sanhedrin.
“Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.” 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)
9There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they said. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” 10 The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.”
This is one of my favourite passages from Acts not least because Paul behaves in a purely human manner. He splits the Sanhedrin in a way that arguably has little to do with religion and simply makes use of their internal differences to do so. Paul knows that both groups will argue against his beliefs about Jesus, but he also knows that they will argue against each other even more!
In Christianity, the big 3 sects are Catholicism, Protestantism and the Eastern Orthodox Church – with 2 billion followers between these 3 groups alone. However, according to the World Christian Encyclopaedia there are literally 1000s of individual Christian sects – 33,000, they reckon. Now 33,000 sounds a lot to me maybe they have mis-counted? At any rate I am sure many of these will consist of something like 1 small church with a congregation of 8 in some out of the way town in Alabama, but presumably each denomination has split from a previous incarnation and each believes its own branch of Christianity to be the one true version.
Let us now look a bit more closely at what these 3 major monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have in common.
Each has a single god - Yahweh, God [consisting of 3 persons] and Allah.
Each has a major prophet/protagonist - Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.
Each has a divinely inspired set of scriptures – the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran.
However, it is exactly these same kinds of core beliefs they have in common that ultimately divides them.
From a Jewish point of view their scriptures foretell the coming of a Messiah and Jesus is not the Messiah so Christianity has been wrong from the word go. The Jews may respect Muhammad, but he is not the final answer as the Messiah is still to come.
From a Christian point of view the Jews (as the chosen people) have been right from Abraham’s time circa 2000BC to 33AD, but wrong from 33AD to the present because they don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. Again the Christians may say there is no reason why the Angel Gabriel could not talk with Muhammad, but Muhammad remains a man whereas Jesus is the Son of God and therefore must out trump Muhammad.
From an Islamic point of view, Jesus and Moses are respected as prophets in the Quran, but Allah is one God who is not made up of 3 personalities. Muslims therefore regards Jesus merely as a man not a member of the Trinity. Also, the Quran was revealed to Muhammad as the final word of Allah and it therefore supersedes the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
So which is right? At most one and a half of these three viewpoints might be right. And that is only if you adopt the Christian point of view i.e. the Christians are right as were the Jews initially (for their first 2000 years), but for the last 2000 years Judaism has been wrong.
What is undeniable is that no two of these three religions can be right. Only one of them could be truly correct. If one of them is true then everyone else would at best be misinformed. Do you find it a little unsettling to think that 2 billion Muslims may be right and the other 2 billion Christians wrong or that 15 million Jews may be right and 4 billion Muslims and Christians wrong. It is considerably worse than that though as I have only taken monotheistic religions into account. The table above shows that Buddhism and Hinduism between them make up another 1.7 billion people. If one of the other religions is true then the Buddhists and Hindus must also be operating under some delusion. Alternatively if either the Buddhists or Hindus are right then all the Christians and Muslims etc… No matter how you look at it, at the very least three quarters of the combined religious population of the planet must be wrong.
There is one last possibility to consider though and I shall leave you with it. Maybe all these religions have something else in common which is far more fundamental than ancient books and prophets. Maybe none of them are divinely inspired. Maybe all of the faiths consist of stories which have been made up/enhanced/ misinterpreted in some way just as the Greek myths were made up over time and so maybe… open your mind real wide now… maybe all of these religious people are wrong.
Brian Madican
Sept 2019
