I was listening to a debate with Dr. Ross and Dr. Shermer today and Dr. Ross kept repeating the claim that Christianity was the only religion that specifically mentions God having no beginning, no end, and was not created. He also said that the bible says that God can compress time (Psalm 95?).
Outside of the Abrahamic religions, I find it incredibly hard to believe that the Bible is the only book that claims that God has no beginning and no end-but I can’t think of another religion that does mention such things (granted I’m no expert).
Well, since you change the phrasing from “Christianity” to “the Abrahamic religions”, I imagine you already know that Judaism believes this to be true of G-d, and probably Islam as well.
I think the “Supreme Lord” is a reference to the concept of Atman, sort of the personification of all that is eternal and immortal in all of creation, or a universal soul. This has a relation to Brahman, the sum totality of creation, which is distinct (heh) from Brahma, creation god and one of the triad with Shiva and Vishnu. I guess if the claim is that only Christianity and its sister religions have a supreme deity wholly separate from its creation that is eternal, maybe he has something. Maybe.
Say He is God as Only (God the one and only God)
God the permanent (God the eternal, absolute)
He did not beget and is not begotten (He has no offspring and is uncreated)
And not one is equal to Him. (there is no other like Him)
Salaam. A
What you’ve called the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) all believe in a single, universal God who is eternal. (I’ll lump Mormonism as part of this tradition for the sake of the discussion.)
Other religions don’t necessarily follow monotheism, and so have many gods (like Hinduism) or no gods (like Buddhism). In either case, the notion of an Eternal God is irrelevant to non-monotheistic religions.
In short, I’m not sure what your debaters were actually claiming, but the idea that Christianity is the “only” religion that believes in an eternal god is nonsense. And the statement that the Abrahamic (monotheistic) religions believe in an eternal God is self-evident.
And, of course, just because God is eternal doesn’t mean the religion is. All three religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in historic order) describe the birth of their religion as a critical event in world history.
Although certainly Zoroasterism has been an influence, it does not pre-date Judaism.
However, let’s look at it this way- there’s the “big three” “Abrahamic religions”. they cover some 56% of the world.
Then there’s Buddhism, which is sometimes argued as more of a philosophy than a religion- but let’s not debate that, huh? 6%
Then Hinduism. 15%
So, if you deal in large generalities, there are really only two significant faiths outside the “Abrahamic religions”- because then we have:
Non-religious= 14%
That’s 91%
Then, still in at above 1% we have:
“Chinese traditional religion”= 4%. (Lumping together Confucianism, Taoism & non-scriptural Chinese folk religion)
And if you lump all the “primal-indigenous” in together (which is pretty wrong, but hey, somebody else crunched the number for me, so…) that’s 3%.
That’s it for religions that can claim above 1%- and since two categories are large “lumped togther” groupings- that really leaves us only (and very aguably) with the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism in the “above 1%” club. So, when they talk about “religions” in vague generalities as they did on the radio show, there’s only the 3 anyway.
For the sake of completeness that leaves:
Sikhism
Juche (State religion of N Korea)
Spiritism
Baha’i
Jainism
Shinto
Cao Dai (Vietnamese)
Tenrikyo
and Neo-Paganism
which can each claim above a Million adherants.
(Zoroastrianism: 150 thousand)
I have no doubt that some small faith or sect also makes the claim of " God having no beginning, no end, and was not created" (For all I know, one of those above does- I am not going to research what the “Church of Juche” claims). But they can’t have a large # of adherants- expressed as a %.
Exactly, although the actual debate was represented differently. Here’s the passage that I refer to in my OP:
Ross made a point to say that Christianity (and the Abrahamic religions) had the only God that was both eternal and able to move through time (although he presents it somewhat differently, hence my OP). On the actual recording it’s about five minutes from the end of the debate if anyone is interested. I’m sure I didn’t exactly describe Ross’s claims just as I’m sure that the author of the above website didn’t.
It is the nature of the Tao,
that even though used continuously,
it is replenished naturally,
never being emptied,
and never being over-filled,
as is a goblet
which spills its contents
upon the ground.
So the Dao (Tao) is eternal, naturakky reolenished and never empty.
Christianity is not eternal, there is both a start of the world and an end of the world mentioned in the Bible, God maybe eternal, but heaven was created by God and may be destroyed by God.
Perhaps nitpicky, but on point: There’s a difference between “eternal” and “forever” or “immortal”. A being which is forever exists for all time. A being which is eternal, however, exists outside of and independant of time. For an eternal being, past, present and future are all alike, and all of history is simultaneous. While Christianity (and I presume Judaism and Islam) certainly considers this to be an attribute of God, I can’t speak for any other religions.
Hard to say exactly; for one, Native American religious beliefs aren’t centered around a single doctrine like Christianity or Islam, as there are hundreds of separate and distinct Native American tribes, each with their own belief system. To the extent that they have any simlilarity to one another, they have a very broad tendancy towards animism, the belief that all objects animate and inanimate are inhabited by a spirit, as well as some sort of mythology, like trickster gods. They typically have some sort of creation myth like most all cultures do, but as far as referring to something as eternal and without an origin, I don’t know if a generalization can be made. A lot of Native American cultures don’t share our big picture of time as being a straight line and tend it to view it as more cyclical, so I’m not even sure the concept of “eternal” would directly translate to that world view.
