Overview
An overview of religions indicate that there are about 4300 religions in the world. Bodie Hodge & Roger Patterson cover about 38 of them in their two volume “World Religions and Cults”
They Categorize them in several different ways. One way is:
- Polytheistic, monotheistic, pantheistic, and atheistic
- Personal god(s), impersonal god(s), or no god(s)
- Based upon various alleged holy books
- Spiritual, dualistic, or materialistic
- Counterfeits of Christianity, mystical religions and moralistic
- Objective religion and subjective religion
- Etc.
We are only going to consider the most common religions and post media that gives us a proper perspective of those religions. They include Apostolic Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, Secular Humanism, New Age and Islam. You may disagree that Secular humanism is a religion. However, multiple sources including the dictionary, a US Supreme Court ruling and what the humanists claimed for more than 100 years testify to the fact that they are a religion.
The other five are based upon a belief in some type of god or deity. The three non-Christian religions are all in diametric opposition to Biblical Christianity in some fashion. Secular Humanism denies the existence of God. New Age looks to the earth as a god rather than a personal God. The Islamic god will be shown to have diametrically opposite characteristics to the biblical God. Protestant and Catholic Christianity will be contrasted against Apostolic (biblical) Christianity