If the evidence points to there being an Supreme, eternal, personal, uncreated Creator God, the question remains as to what sort of God He is. What is His character? What are His attributes?
The ethos I was brought up in views God as a personal, all powerful Creator who interacts with His creation and sustains it. This is the view of God which is revealed in the Bible and is affirmed by Christianity, Judaism, Islam and some other faiths.
My subsequent investigations have confirmed this view for me. However I am aware that if I had been brought up in a different culture, I might have had very different beliefs and that there were other faiths which had very different, ways of viewing God, or gods, and the Universe and so I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just being blinkered by the culture I grew up in.
Religions in the world
There are many different religions and belief systems in the world, but the vast majority of people identify with the ones which are shown in the table. [1]
Religion
Number of followers
Christianity
2.38G
Islam
1.9G
Secular
1.19G
Hinduism
1.16G
Buddhism
506M
Shinto
104M
Sikhism
25M
Judaism
14M
Of these, the ones who affirm one Supreme, eternal, personal, uncreated Creator God are Christianity, Islam, Judaism and some forms of Hinduism and Sikhism.
Secularism and Buddhism do not affirm a supreme being at all but, unlike secularism, Buddhism attributes a spiritual, but impersonal, dimension to the Universe and provides a philosophy of life based upon it.
Most forms of Hinduism see god (Brahman) as identical with the universe and impersonal. Other forms, such as Kashmir Shaivism, see Brahman as having both impersonal and personal aspects. ie. The Universe plus a transcendental part. These views are called Pantheism and Panentheism respectively.
It is interesting to note that Shaivism is not popular and was often suppressed in favour of the impersonal non-dualism (Advaita). This has parallels with the popularity of physicalism in the West and the associated deprecation of Theism.
Shinto in Japan, together with some versions of neo-paganism in the West and ancient faiths such as Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, believe in many gods, polytheism. The gods are typically believed to have arisen from primordial chaos or cosmic sources, representing natural forces or principles. The gods are generally viewed as conscious beings with intentions and personalities. They interact with humans and the world, influencing events and responding to worship.
At the same time, these gods often personify natural forces and principles, allowing for a symbolic understanding of their roles and attributes. This blend of personal and symbolic dimensions gives these deities a unique place in the religious and mythological landscape, where they are both powerful beings and embodiments of the natural and cosmic order. These faiths do not have any view on how the primordial chaos originated but take this as a given and that the gods emerged from that.
The following video gives a swift run through of the various beliefs which most people in the world hold. Bear in mind that most faiths have many variants so these descriptions are not always complete.
From what I have seen, read and experienced, the evidence, both subjective and objective, points to Christianity having the greatest amount of truth and light of the available options. Some of my reasons for this belief are given in the next page.