Which God Do You Believe In?

Is it okay if I believe (a little) in all of them?

While writing my recently released book on God, it was necessary for me to research many different conceptions of the Supreme Being (or Beings, as the case may be). I found the research to be fascinating.

But I also found it to be problematic, and for the same reason that atheists often invoke to try to disprove altogether the existence of God.

Four-Thousand Religions

The so-called contradictions-of-religion argument is a popular and famous argument against the existence of God, and understandably so. Alternatively known as the argument of inconsistent revelations or — a favorite description of mine — the avoiding-the-wrong-Hell problem, the “contradictions argument” points to the many conflicting variations of God and asks what sense it can make to choose any of them.

Atheists have a point here. There are, in fact, some 4,200 religions in the world,[1] and each has a different conception of the Supreme Being, although some of the differences are slight. Historian, philosopher, and atheist Stephen F. Roberts, when addressing a theist, was always fond of saying, “I contend we’re both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you.”[2] Author, intellectual, and atheist Christopher Hitchens was fond of repeating this, and I’ve heard other atheists use this argument, too, even comedian Ricky Gervais.

And why not? On the surface, it’s a solid argument, isn’t it? Most people are indeed atheists when it comes to the other guy’s god.

As I discovered in my research, there’s no denying that the Christian God is different from the Muslim God is different from the Hebrew God is different from the Hindu gods. Buddhists and Taoists, meanwhile, have a whole different take on the universe. And these are just the so-called major religions. Even within Christianity, there are different denominations. How many? Would you believe 45,000? I didn’t, either, but this is a number reported by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity,[3] and who am I to argue?

A lot of these denominations have beliefs that are in contradiction with each other, which, of course, is why they split off in the first place. Most Protestant religions, for instance, believe that church doctrine can be found only in the Bible, whereas Catholics believe that doctrine can also come from popes and bishops. Christian Scientists don’t believe in the Holy Trinity. Baptists don’t believe in infant baptism, maintaining that the sacrament is only for someone mature enough to make the decision to be baptized. Some Churches of Christ don’t believe in using musical instruments during worship services.

And believe me, there are some strange denominations out there. Two words: snake handling. There’s a slew of churches throughout the southern United States that practice this… um… unique ritual. Their definition of God has to be different from everybody else’s, right?

The Cornerstones

I struggled with all this conflicting stuff as I continued my research. I’m a Christian. But how do I know that the Christian God is the right one to follow? And which specific version?

Then I did even more research.

It turns out that the contradictions are what you discover when you first start learning about the different religions. But the deeper you go, the more you begin to uncover the similarities.

Like the concepts of love and compassion and mercy. As it happens, these are the cornerstones of all the religions. Especially compassion. Here’s how author and former Roman Catholic religious sister Karen Armstrong put it in her beautiful memoir, The Spiral Staircase:

“Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Mohammed, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tzu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads.”[4]

So maybe the religions, and their attendant gods, aren’t that different after all.

“I Am Large”

Here’s the problem I discovered with the contradictions-of-religion argument: it assumes we have to choose — that if we pick one, then we’re necessarily rejecting the rest. In that case, then obviously, we have to hope we’re choosing correctly. But what if God’s essence is something more along the lines of how Walt Whitman described himself in his classic poem “Song of Myself” where he asks, “Do I contradict myself?; Very well then I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Maybe God isn’t any one definition. Maybe God, to some degree, is all of them, each the natural result of humans flailing about in human language and in human ritual, reaching the upper limits of their imaginations, to try to describe this ineffable thing we refer to as “God.”

So rather than saying I do not believe in 4,199 gods, it just might be more accurate for me to say that, in some respects, I believe in all of them, all rolled into one.

We humans have spent thousands of years trying to interpret, as best we can, the nature of the world in which we find ourselves. Each religion, in its own way, is and has been a human means by which to make sense of this thing called existence. Yes, there are some wild inconsistencies, but isn’t it likely that these are merely the results of our varied interpretations of God’s nature?

And when one considers the common denominators, the cornerstones of every religion — isn’t it also likely that we’re describing essentially the same entity, notwithstanding the diverse descriptions?

Indeed, the deeper I went into my research, the more I began to appreciate the diversity. God, I discovered, is much too big to be defined by or pigeonholed into any one religion. And perhaps that’s the real beauty of the God question. It doesn’t have one answer: it has many.

God is large. God contains multitudes. And you don’t have to choose.

[1] “World Religions Religion Statistics Geography Church Statistics.” Archived from the original 22 Apr., 1999.

[2] Posted by Roberts on the alt.atheism newsgroup, 1995.

[3] https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity/research/quick-facts/.

[4] Armstrong, K., The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness, Anchor, 2004, p. 293.

I’m a writer, researcher, eternally curious ruminator, and author of the recently released So Who is God, Anyway?: An Unorthodox Theory for Doubters, Skeptics, and Recovering Fundamentalists (Five Boroughs, May, 2024). More than anything, I’m just glad to be here.