Can We Find True Religion?
Can we find true religion? There are two components to this question. The first is whether we can know if any religion is true. Can we refute agnosticism? The second is whether we can sift through the thousands of religious ideas and find the right ones. Can we pick the right religion among the estimated 4,200 of them?
CAN WE KNOW IF ANY RELIGION IS TRUE?
People have proposed several arguments to prove the necessity of God and religion. Among them is the design argument. Entropy is a law. Everything is dying. The whole universe is moving from a more organized state to a less organized state. Things fall apart. It appears to have been necessary for a creator god to organize and build this universe at some past point. We couldn't be alive if the universe had already experienced an eternal history. Entropy would have already disintegrated all material organization. Life would be impossible, and earth wouldn't even exist.
Another defense of religion is the cultural or psychological argument that points to every society of people in human history possessing some kind of religion. If religion is a giant farce then it's the largest one in history. Billions of people, countless generations, and innumerable communities covering every aspect of human diversity have all fallen into the same massive delusion. It's easier to believe that religion is true than that humanity was collectively deranged for thousands of years. Even modern attempts to create atheistic societies have failed to accomplish this. Political and cultural revolutions in former communist countries failed to eradicate the "superstitious" elements of their populations. Even weak primitive faiths like Taoism survived in these hostile environments. Christianity is surging in China despite government oppression and cultural pressure to "remain loyal to atheism."
Finally, Braise Pascal suggested the best proof of religion was that it was a better bet than atheism. Even if we're agnostics, there's no reason not to wager on religion because agnosticism and atheism have no post-death benefits. If religion is true then we win eternal reward and avoid hell. If atheism is true we die and nothing happens. Agnostic atheism, then, is meaningless from a practical perspective.
However, none of these arguments actually tell us whether we can know if a religion is true or not. They strongly suggest there's a spiritual dimension to reality, but this doesn't necessarily tell us what religion we should believe in.
CAN WE DECIDE BETWEEN RELIGIONS?
Can we decide between religions? This question is actually easier than it first appears. Many discouraged searchers despair at the outset because they can't imagine evaluating the validity of 4,200 separate religions. However, there's a way to clear away much of the complexity and simplify the issue. It's possible to divide almost all the world's religions into two categories. There's paganism and monotheism.
Paganism can be further broken into two parts. The first is "primitive religion" in the form of animism, shamanism, African religions, and similar belief systems that resemble magical thinking. Primitive religion can be described as organized superstition. Practitioners pay homage to various inanimate objects in the hopes that some endeavor will succeed. Worshiping a rock in order to give it more potency before carving it into an arrowhead is an example of this kind of thinking. Ascribing spirits to inanimate objects is a trademark of this kind of religious system.
A more advanced form of paganism is represented in polytheism and its deity pantheons. These include religious systems like Greco-Roman and Norse mythology and Hinduism. Forces and events are linked to particular gods who must be worshiped in order to secure favorable outcomes. The best examples of this religion can be read about in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Monotheism can also be divided into two forms. There's the Abrahamic religions and the non-Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic religions are usually represented by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These religions take the promise made by God to Abraham as a starting place. Non-Abrahamic monotheism includes Zoroastrianism and Egyptian Aton worship.
There are religions that fall outside the scope of these categories, but they often address problems unrelated to what modern westerners regard as religious concerns. Confucianism, for example, can barely be differentiated from philosophy.
CALCULATING THE ODDS
How do we begin trying to decide which of these religions, or religious categories, are correct? It's impossible to fully eliminate any religion from the possibility of being true. This is the primary point of the atheist's "flying spaghetti monster" god. No amount of evidence can fully eliminate the possibility that a flying spaghetti monster is the real universal creator god, but that doesn't mean this bizarre creature is equally likely to exist as the God of the Bible or even Zeus. So, from a Pascalian perspective, it's not wise to believe that the flying spaghetti monster is real. His likelihood of existing is low.
Additionally, there are many religions we might label "irrelevant" because they don't apply to us nor deal with heaven, hell, or creation. Some ethnic religions, for example, belong to specific nations but don't claim any hold over outsiders. These religions are often syncratistic and non-exclusive, meaning that even if they were true we wouldn't be obliged to follow them, they could simply be fused into any random religious practice we might want to follow.
How likely is primitive paganism to be true? It's difficult to calculate because there are so many variations within this religion. It's certainly true that some superstitions have turned out to be true. It may be that the rock chosen to be carved into an arrowhead really does have a spirit, but how could we prove which rocks have spirits and which don't? Perhaps a rock has a spirit at one moment but not at another moment? The problem is that animism and magical thinking are too hard to pin down. They often have no doctrine, and they're not necessarily predicable or orderly. A shaman might change an entire religious rite based on his feelings about how the weather has effected some spiritual reality. Perhaps the only way we could assess the truth or falsity of animism would be test the results of those who practiced it, but even this kind of study would have holes. What if the mere fact that we were testing somehow effected the results? This has been a proven to change experiments in the realm of quantum physics in the double slit experiment. The probability of some aspects of primitive religion being true are very high, but the problem is that the religion as a whole has not been demonstrated to be true on a consistent basis. So our ability to act on this religion is very low.
Is polytheism likely to be true? Atheists often claim the biblical God is just the last remaining god among the thousands that have already been disproven. Therefore, they reason, we might as well abandon him too. While the opinions of internet atheist trolls aren't good representations of sound logic, we can take from them society's general assumption that polytheism is false. Very few people, even neopagans who follow Greek mythology, actually believe Zeus is real. If we were lazy, then, we might simply dismiss polytheism on democratic grounds. The overwhelming majority of humanity has rejected Zeus, so he must not be real. However, we still don't have any proof that Zeus isn't real or that he never existed. Perhaps he did exist at some point in the past, but how do we know he survived this long? How do we know he wasn't locked away with the titans and is now incapable of helping us despite our numerous hecatomb sacrifices? The real problem with following polytheism is that we don't know the state or mindset of the gods we might serve. They're often unreliable and only questionably immortal. Furthermore, they typically don't care if we follow other gods. Zeus wouldn't care if we were Christians so long as we poured out our daily drink offering. Polytheism wouldn't necessarily be relevant to us even if it were true. After all, Zeus won't save us from Hades even if he does help us land that job promotion.
This brings us to monotheism. It's hard to prove that monotheism is true, but we can at least say that it's the most relevant religion. The biblical God is a jealous God, if he exists, and he'll send us to eternal hell if we worship his rivals. He's also an eternal God who doesn't change. These two traits make him the only God worth serving. Why? Because if he's not real than we probably don't have much to fear from the other gods and spirits who won't change our eternal destiny, but if he is real than we have a lot to lose by not following him. Abrahamic monotheism has been wiping out polytheism in its long march to global domination, and this seems to suggest the biblical God is at least powerful enough to overcome every other god people have worshiped. We might as well join the winning side. The biblical God also seems extraordinarily clever. No one seems able to disprove his existence, and the terms he's laid out for humans seem calculated to be unrejectable. He's made it infinitely beneficial to join him and infinitely disastrous not to join him. He's left us with no sideline option.
What about Buddhism? The problem with Buddhism is that it's build on the assumptions of Hinduism. It takes the Hindu worldview as an accurate representation of reality before advocating its theory of suffering and release. If the God of the Bible is real then Buddhism has started with the wrong first principles, and its whole infrastructure has been corrupted by the results of that. Buddhism is too intimately tied with polytheistic Hinduism for much of its philosophy to be salvaged.
One question still remains. Can we distinguish between the Abrahamic religions? Judaism is the least relevant of the three to most of us. Judaism is an ethnic religion that never applied to non-Hebrew races. Gentiles were only required to keep the postdiluvian Noahic covenant in order to attain holiness, so there's little reason to become a Jew if you weren't born one.
Islam is unlikely to be true for a number of reasons. Firstly, Islam was founded by a "prophet" who performed no miracles or signs. Every new covenant from God has been accompanied by proofs, but Mohamed never gave any. Secondly, Islamic revelation is internally inconsistent. It discredits itself. The Koran repeatedly states that the Old Testament and Gospels were inspired, but then it reveals alleged accounts of Bible events with vastly contradictory details including the fusing of different Bible stories separated by centuries. Islam deconstructs itself.
CONCLUSION
If Judaism is correct then Christians are righteous because they already inadvertently keep the Noahic covenant. If polytheism is correct than Christians serve the most powerful God in the pantheon. If atheism is correct than Christians are good moral people who die meaningless deaths just like everyone else. If Christianity is right than everyone else is going to hell and Christians win an eternal reward in heaven. Christianity, then, is the only relevant religion. We may be incapable of "knowing" with human reason what the true religion is, but we can can at least estimate the most relevant and prescient religion.
Christianity was founded by a prophet who's miracles and resurrection from the dead were witnessed by thousands of people. His twelve apostles were all martyred, save one, in affirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. Historians now admit that Jesus' resurrection from the dead is perhaps the most well attested single event in ancient history. Not even Julius Ceaser's existence is so well supported.
Christianity is headed for world domination. The only question is whether we'll join it. There's been so much talk recently about being on the right side of history. Christians believe history is headed in a predetermined direction, and that direction is the kingship of Christ and glorification of those who've aligned themselves with the true religion.
Related: Truth We Are Capable Of: Pascal's Wager & Reality
CAN WE KNOW IF ANY RELIGION IS TRUE?
People have proposed several arguments to prove the necessity of God and religion. Among them is the design argument. Entropy is a law. Everything is dying. The whole universe is moving from a more organized state to a less organized state. Things fall apart. It appears to have been necessary for a creator god to organize and build this universe at some past point. We couldn't be alive if the universe had already experienced an eternal history. Entropy would have already disintegrated all material organization. Life would be impossible, and earth wouldn't even exist.
Another defense of religion is the cultural or psychological argument that points to every society of people in human history possessing some kind of religion. If religion is a giant farce then it's the largest one in history. Billions of people, countless generations, and innumerable communities covering every aspect of human diversity have all fallen into the same massive delusion. It's easier to believe that religion is true than that humanity was collectively deranged for thousands of years. Even modern attempts to create atheistic societies have failed to accomplish this. Political and cultural revolutions in former communist countries failed to eradicate the "superstitious" elements of their populations. Even weak primitive faiths like Taoism survived in these hostile environments. Christianity is surging in China despite government oppression and cultural pressure to "remain loyal to atheism."
Finally, Braise Pascal suggested the best proof of religion was that it was a better bet than atheism. Even if we're agnostics, there's no reason not to wager on religion because agnosticism and atheism have no post-death benefits. If religion is true then we win eternal reward and avoid hell. If atheism is true we die and nothing happens. Agnostic atheism, then, is meaningless from a practical perspective.
However, none of these arguments actually tell us whether we can know if a religion is true or not. They strongly suggest there's a spiritual dimension to reality, but this doesn't necessarily tell us what religion we should believe in.
CAN WE DECIDE BETWEEN RELIGIONS?
Can we decide between religions? This question is actually easier than it first appears. Many discouraged searchers despair at the outset because they can't imagine evaluating the validity of 4,200 separate religions. However, there's a way to clear away much of the complexity and simplify the issue. It's possible to divide almost all the world's religions into two categories. There's paganism and monotheism.
Paganism can be further broken into two parts. The first is "primitive religion" in the form of animism, shamanism, African religions, and similar belief systems that resemble magical thinking. Primitive religion can be described as organized superstition. Practitioners pay homage to various inanimate objects in the hopes that some endeavor will succeed. Worshiping a rock in order to give it more potency before carving it into an arrowhead is an example of this kind of thinking. Ascribing spirits to inanimate objects is a trademark of this kind of religious system.
A more advanced form of paganism is represented in polytheism and its deity pantheons. These include religious systems like Greco-Roman and Norse mythology and Hinduism. Forces and events are linked to particular gods who must be worshiped in order to secure favorable outcomes. The best examples of this religion can be read about in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Monotheism can also be divided into two forms. There's the Abrahamic religions and the non-Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic religions are usually represented by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These religions take the promise made by God to Abraham as a starting place. Non-Abrahamic monotheism includes Zoroastrianism and Egyptian Aton worship.
There are religions that fall outside the scope of these categories, but they often address problems unrelated to what modern westerners regard as religious concerns. Confucianism, for example, can barely be differentiated from philosophy.
CALCULATING THE ODDS
How do we begin trying to decide which of these religions, or religious categories, are correct? It's impossible to fully eliminate any religion from the possibility of being true. This is the primary point of the atheist's "flying spaghetti monster" god. No amount of evidence can fully eliminate the possibility that a flying spaghetti monster is the real universal creator god, but that doesn't mean this bizarre creature is equally likely to exist as the God of the Bible or even Zeus. So, from a Pascalian perspective, it's not wise to believe that the flying spaghetti monster is real. His likelihood of existing is low.
Additionally, there are many religions we might label "irrelevant" because they don't apply to us nor deal with heaven, hell, or creation. Some ethnic religions, for example, belong to specific nations but don't claim any hold over outsiders. These religions are often syncratistic and non-exclusive, meaning that even if they were true we wouldn't be obliged to follow them, they could simply be fused into any random religious practice we might want to follow.
How likely is primitive paganism to be true? It's difficult to calculate because there are so many variations within this religion. It's certainly true that some superstitions have turned out to be true. It may be that the rock chosen to be carved into an arrowhead really does have a spirit, but how could we prove which rocks have spirits and which don't? Perhaps a rock has a spirit at one moment but not at another moment? The problem is that animism and magical thinking are too hard to pin down. They often have no doctrine, and they're not necessarily predicable or orderly. A shaman might change an entire religious rite based on his feelings about how the weather has effected some spiritual reality. Perhaps the only way we could assess the truth or falsity of animism would be test the results of those who practiced it, but even this kind of study would have holes. What if the mere fact that we were testing somehow effected the results? This has been a proven to change experiments in the realm of quantum physics in the double slit experiment. The probability of some aspects of primitive religion being true are very high, but the problem is that the religion as a whole has not been demonstrated to be true on a consistent basis. So our ability to act on this religion is very low.
Is polytheism likely to be true? Atheists often claim the biblical God is just the last remaining god among the thousands that have already been disproven. Therefore, they reason, we might as well abandon him too. While the opinions of internet atheist trolls aren't good representations of sound logic, we can take from them society's general assumption that polytheism is false. Very few people, even neopagans who follow Greek mythology, actually believe Zeus is real. If we were lazy, then, we might simply dismiss polytheism on democratic grounds. The overwhelming majority of humanity has rejected Zeus, so he must not be real. However, we still don't have any proof that Zeus isn't real or that he never existed. Perhaps he did exist at some point in the past, but how do we know he survived this long? How do we know he wasn't locked away with the titans and is now incapable of helping us despite our numerous hecatomb sacrifices? The real problem with following polytheism is that we don't know the state or mindset of the gods we might serve. They're often unreliable and only questionably immortal. Furthermore, they typically don't care if we follow other gods. Zeus wouldn't care if we were Christians so long as we poured out our daily drink offering. Polytheism wouldn't necessarily be relevant to us even if it were true. After all, Zeus won't save us from Hades even if he does help us land that job promotion.
This brings us to monotheism. It's hard to prove that monotheism is true, but we can at least say that it's the most relevant religion. The biblical God is a jealous God, if he exists, and he'll send us to eternal hell if we worship his rivals. He's also an eternal God who doesn't change. These two traits make him the only God worth serving. Why? Because if he's not real than we probably don't have much to fear from the other gods and spirits who won't change our eternal destiny, but if he is real than we have a lot to lose by not following him. Abrahamic monotheism has been wiping out polytheism in its long march to global domination, and this seems to suggest the biblical God is at least powerful enough to overcome every other god people have worshiped. We might as well join the winning side. The biblical God also seems extraordinarily clever. No one seems able to disprove his existence, and the terms he's laid out for humans seem calculated to be unrejectable. He's made it infinitely beneficial to join him and infinitely disastrous not to join him. He's left us with no sideline option.
What about Buddhism? The problem with Buddhism is that it's build on the assumptions of Hinduism. It takes the Hindu worldview as an accurate representation of reality before advocating its theory of suffering and release. If the God of the Bible is real then Buddhism has started with the wrong first principles, and its whole infrastructure has been corrupted by the results of that. Buddhism is too intimately tied with polytheistic Hinduism for much of its philosophy to be salvaged.
One question still remains. Can we distinguish between the Abrahamic religions? Judaism is the least relevant of the three to most of us. Judaism is an ethnic religion that never applied to non-Hebrew races. Gentiles were only required to keep the postdiluvian Noahic covenant in order to attain holiness, so there's little reason to become a Jew if you weren't born one.
Islam is unlikely to be true for a number of reasons. Firstly, Islam was founded by a "prophet" who performed no miracles or signs. Every new covenant from God has been accompanied by proofs, but Mohamed never gave any. Secondly, Islamic revelation is internally inconsistent. It discredits itself. The Koran repeatedly states that the Old Testament and Gospels were inspired, but then it reveals alleged accounts of Bible events with vastly contradictory details including the fusing of different Bible stories separated by centuries. Islam deconstructs itself.
CONCLUSION
If Judaism is correct then Christians are righteous because they already inadvertently keep the Noahic covenant. If polytheism is correct than Christians serve the most powerful God in the pantheon. If atheism is correct than Christians are good moral people who die meaningless deaths just like everyone else. If Christianity is right than everyone else is going to hell and Christians win an eternal reward in heaven. Christianity, then, is the only relevant religion. We may be incapable of "knowing" with human reason what the true religion is, but we can can at least estimate the most relevant and prescient religion.
Christianity was founded by a prophet who's miracles and resurrection from the dead were witnessed by thousands of people. His twelve apostles were all martyred, save one, in affirmation of his claim to be the Son of God. Historians now admit that Jesus' resurrection from the dead is perhaps the most well attested single event in ancient history. Not even Julius Ceaser's existence is so well supported.
Christianity is headed for world domination. The only question is whether we'll join it. There's been so much talk recently about being on the right side of history. Christians believe history is headed in a predetermined direction, and that direction is the kingship of Christ and glorification of those who've aligned themselves with the true religion.
Related: Truth We Are Capable Of: Pascal's Wager & Reality