Which is the best religion to follow?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

There are hundreds of different religions in the world. Leaving aside the case of people who do not wish to follow any religion, is there an objective way to measure which of them is better? If yes, which one is the best? For a debate about the existence of God, see Does God exist?

Limitations:

• This page only covers the top 4 religions in the world (Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam). There is no way it could cover all religions.
• The word "best" refers to the word "good", which arguably is ambiguous or vague. It is up to the arguments to interpret "good" and "best" in reference to some chosen standard/criterion of good.
• Even given a fixed standard of good, a demonstration that a particular religion is better than all other religions seems nearly impossible. Therefore, the debate will probably have to be constrained to identifying good and bad aspects of various religions, with respect to various standards of good.

Hinduism

Pro

• Pro Hinduism believes in unity in diversity. It never feels bad to welcome agnostics and atheists to practicing their own belief.
  • Objection Citation needed. This claim is challenged by some reports on discrimination or persecution of atheists in Hindu India.
• Pro Hinduism accepts change as fundamental nature of the universe. Thus, it goes well with changing societal norms.
• Pro God is omnipotent and supreme. He has infinite power beyond comprehension. He manifests himself in all beings, and all spirituality, every soul is connected to him. That is the reason every being is respected and worshipped. Not only does it follow the rules of spirituality, but basic humanity also to care for every being.
• Pro There are no strict rules. One should abide by Dharma or also called Righteousness (duty). God is everywhere and in every being.
• Pro The ancient texts provide information about the world, its formation, the multiverses, the advancement of technology, the geography of Earth and Solar System and even informed us with the followers of Muhammed (Islam).
  • Objection Making the absurd assumption that this is the case, that would not verify Hinduism in its entirety. For example, it is more reasonable that aliens for unknown reasons provided such information to humans than most Hindu beliefs being actually true.
  • Objection If that was the case it would have a major effect on science and technology such as causing the corresponding theories to arise and become established earlier but this isn't the case (not in India not other places with Hindus).
  • Objection They don't provide such information to any surprising extent and are today interpreted in the most positive way rather than reasonable ways of what has been actually meant which was written in very ambiguous and short undetailed ways.
• Pro It has multiple gods rather than only one as monotheistic religions like Christianity have which is a far more reasonable framework of belief.

Con

• Con It includes lots of absurd unfounded supernatural beliefs and superstititions such as the belief in afterlife, in gods, worship, sacrificial rites, sacredness of cows, and so on.

Christianity

Pro

• Pro Christianity is a complete and well-established system of belief.
  • Objection It has a bad culture.
  • Objection What makes a religion "complete"?
  • Objection All common religions are "well-established" by default.
• Pro Christianity encourages forgiveness and compassion.
• Pro Christianity encourages charity and helping those in need.
  • Objection That’s true but I would say some people not all are orthodox which is not good

Con

• Con According to some, There is not enough evidence to support the most important assertions of Christianity, since Christianity is often at odds with empirical science.
  • Objection This isn't unique to Christianity; many religions contain unscientific assertions
  • Objection While some Biblical literalists (e.g. young-earth creationists) often deny science, many modern Christians are engaged in scientific study, like those on the website BioLogos.
• Con The Bible clearly calls for violence against innocent people in many cases such as Exodus 22:18 or Leviticus 20:13.
  • Objection For a Christian, i.e. a believer in Christ, the word of Jesus, such as "love thy neighbor," trumps contradictions with the Old Testament. A lot of the teaching revolves around NOT blindly obeying the old texts, e.g. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
    • Objection The quoted saying does not say that. It's quite unclear and limited in its meaning, especially to most readers who don't read or think long about what it means and what it implies for other parts of the Bible.
    • Objection Even Christians who put Jesus' words above other things in the Bible do put great belief and interest into the old testament. The new testament and Jesus sayings do not directly address or rescind Bible verses such as these.
      • Objection A general statement (from Jesus) can address many specific statements (of the OT) without having to address them individually.
        • Objection If that was the case then one may wonder why these parts are still part of the Christian bible and whether it's reasonable to keep rescindments so unclear, for example because many Christians would not understand or interpret things regarding other Bible parts this way.

Buddhism

Pro

• Pro Buddhism is the only religion which holds that the ease of human suffering (war, hunger etc.) is its principle purpose.
  • Objection Its aim in achieving so is more by making people be okay with the suffering rather than actively mitigating it (see Con below).
  • Objection Is this necessarily a good thing? This is a fact, but whether it is a pro or a con is not explained here.
• Pro Buddhism focuses on expanding and improving one's own consciousness and being a good and healthy person all-round.
• Pro Zen belief supports positive, ethical behaviors.
  • Objection Zen often encourages detachment from politics and social matters in the pursuit of personal enlightenment. Such apathy harms the world.
• Pro In at least one survey that is possibly outdated, Buddhists had the highest support for the scientific well-established theory of biological evolution.

Con

• Con Buddhism promotes superstitious beliefs such as rebirth.
  • Objection Does not every religion promote "superstitious" beliefs on the afterlife?
    • Objection Even if that is the case, that is still a major issue with the religion which needs to be considered. The Con is simply currently missing at the other religions.
  • Objection It's a debate on religion.
  • Objection This isn't unique to Buddhism; many religions have superstitious-sounding beliefs
  • Objection No example belief was stated. Thus, the above does not expose itself to refutation, making merely an existential statement, which are known to be either irrefutable/non-falsifiable to rather hard to verify. (The argument is so far as to be perhaps worthy of removal, or else serve as a basic argumentation teaching aid.)
• Con Buddhist denominations or Buddhism in general encourages detachment from politics and social matters in the pursuit of personal enlightenment or alienation of real world matters and the active mitigation of sources of suffering overall. Such apathy harms the world.

Islam

Pro

• Pro Islamic epistemology marries the sources of knowledge to acquire truth, unlike other religions.
  • Objection Which sources does it "marry", specifically? What does it mean, specifically?
• Pro Islamic epistemology is logically consistent .
  • Objection The statement is not obvious and therefore needs some form of a proof. At a minimum, a link to a source arguing for consistency is to be provided
  • Objection Being logically consistent is no guarantee of goodness; rather, it would be a very basic prerequisite.
    • Objection Being logically consistent would be an argument for Islam, though not a complete and defining one, as certain other religions hold inconsistent beliefs. The concept of the Christian trinity seems to defy logic. In the Trinity, although the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons despite being "3 in 1" - the roles that each character plays differ and contradict one another (for example, the Father is all-knowing but the Son is not). In Hinduism, religion can be interpreted based on the individual - therefore, certain Hindus can believe in monotheism while other Hindus believe in polytheism. In Islam, the concept of one, all-powerful God & Muhammad being the last messenger has been well established in the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and the ijama [consensus] of the scholars. In fact, denying the creed of faith (shahada) takes one out of the fold of Islam & is not considered a Muslim.
      • Objection The statement of the form "X would be Y" is consistent with "X is not Y", and therefore, the above is no objection proper.
      • Objection Let us expound, then. Let us have a religion or an atheist philosophy that consistently aims at destruction of humankind (that, obviously, is not Islam). Such a religion or philosophy is consistent yet its aim is bad, and therefore, the religion or philosophy is bad. Therefore, consistency does not entail goodness.
        • Objection I agree with you that consistency does not entail goodness, but I'm saying that, compared to Christianity and Hinduism, is an advantage since we are able to reason & ponder over a message that is consistent and a religion that does not contain contradictions in its theology or practice. For example, this could be used as an argument against Christianity in favor of Islam ("worshipping 3 in 1 with contradictory features, making it seem paganistic" vs. "worshipping of one God and accepting Muhammad as his final messenger"). Therefore, Islam's logical consistency is easy to accept and its lack of inconsistency cannot be used as an argument against the religion.
• Pro Islam provides a logical and simple module to worship a higher entity: one All-Powerful, eternal God to which no entity can imitate.
  • Objection Well I would say that mostly all people know that god is one but all had interpreted to their own interest
    • Objection And most important all who people who are worshiped as god are not god but a messenger of god

Con

• Con Islam's prophet spread the religion with violence, which is all too likely to inspire his followers to continue the violent practice.
  • Objection This isn't unique to Islam; many religions have been spread through violence
  • Objection There is some instruction toward violence in Old Testament as well. It is not clear that Islam is really worse than Judaism in this respect.
• Con Islam believes that women are subordinate to men.
  • Objection Protection and acceptance of the biology of women is not subordination.

See also

• Real Good Religion
• Does religion do more harm than good?
• Do all religions and philosophies originate from one universal and timeless truth?
• Does God exist?
• Will we lose our consciousness after we die?

External links

• Wikipedia:Major religious groups
• What is the best religion to believe?, structured arguments tree on Kialo