By Citizen Agba Jalingo.
If you don’t like the Isms, like many people don’t, you may find this very boring. But it is important to break this down for clarity sake.
1. Monotheism: Is the belief in one single God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are all monotheistic religions which follow one transcendent Creator of all things and deny the existence of another.
2. Polytheism: Is the belief in or worship of more than one god. Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, some tribal religions in Africa and the Americas, share aspects of polytheism.
3. Atheism: Is the belief that there is nothing like god or gods. Those who hold this belief claim it is false to say God exists.
4. Monism: Is the belief in an ultimate reality that is single and unique, like God, but not personified. Monism is not much of a theological belief about the nature of the divine but a metaphysical debate about the nature of reality as a unified oneness which is sometimes called God, the universe, nature, or something similar.
5. Deism: Is the belief in the existence of a supreme being, a creator who does not intervene in the universe. All Deists believe that God exists and created the world, but has no active engagement in the world except the creation of reason, which sustains existence.
6. Theism: Is also the belief that there is one supreme God. But unlike Deists, Theists, believe that God is still actively engaged with the universe and directs the affairs of the universe. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are theistic religions.
7. Agnosticism: Is the belief that it’s not possible to know for sure that god exists. It’s possible to be both. Agnostics hold the view that any ultimate reality, such as God is unknown and probably unknowable.
Amongst all of these groups, only the Atheist absolutely believes that there is no God. All others believe in God, one way or the other. It is their perception of that God or that reality that is divergent. And out of the over eight billion people in the world, Atheists are said to be less than one billion. Meaning, there are at least, seven billion people in the world who believe in the existence of God.
This number is overwhelming. It is a landslide advantage for those who believe in God. If these seven billion people who believe in God already, can quit bickering over whose method is more superior and push towards making the world a better place, the will of God will be done faster.
What is required urgently now is not to grab more people to believe in your own God, but for the seven billion who already believe in God to manifest the true nature of God on Earth.
It is time to escape from that toxic belly of religiocentrism, leave all the ‘ism’ behind and manifest the God in us to make the world better.
