God Is Not One

Stephen Prothero, “God Is Not One” (The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter), HarperCollins, 2010, 340 Pages
God Is Not One, by Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, strongly opposes those people involved in inter-religious dialogue that search for commonalities among faith traditions; particularly those that maintain that different faiths are simply different paths to the same God. He says this trend is not only incorrect, but even dangerous in today’s world because it glosses over differences that influence world affairs. This book provides a summary of the worlds leading religions giving the reader a modicum of religious literacy.

Prothero discusses the world’s faith traditions in what he sees as their order of impact on the world. Number One is Islam, not Christianity, which he says is losing followers in the world today, while Islam is growing rapidly. But Christianity is second, followed by Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoruba Religion (African), Judaism and Daoism. The book is sectioned, allowing approximately 30 to 35 pages describing each of the eight religions with an additional section on atheism. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world.

To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example:
–Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission
–Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation
–Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order
–Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening
–Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God

It is important when reading this book to remember that few people really know or care much about their own religion, much less anything about the other religions in the world. The differences and dangers occur among the fundamentalists in each.
My notes:

Pg. 24: One of the most common misconceptions about the world’s religions is that they plumb the same depths, ask the same questions. They do not. Only religions that see God as all good ask how a good God can allow millions to die in tsunamis. Only religions that believe in souls ask whether your soul exists before you are born and what happens to it after you die. And only religions that think we have one soul ask after ‘the soul’ in the singular. Every religion, however, asks after the human condition. Here we are in these human bodies. What now? What next? What are we to become?

Pg. 28: Over one billion people—roughly one-fifth of the world’s population—self-identify as Muslims, placing Islam second only to Christianity (2.2 billion) in terms of adherents. Like Christianity, Islam is typically classified as a Western religion.

Pg. 44: Consigning Jews and Christians to hell is one thing, but speeding their arrival is another. Some of the Quran’s so-called sword verses seem not only to justify but also to command making war on non-Muslims. Another controversial verse commands Muslims to ‘slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.’

Pg. 63: To presume that the conversation about the great religions starts with Christianity is to show your parochialism, and your age. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries may have belonged to Christianity. The twenty-first belongs to Islam.

Pg. 67: Christianity is now so elastic that it seems a stretch to use this term to cover the beliefs and behaviors of Pentecostals in Brazil, Mormons in Utah, Roman Catholics in Italy, and the Orthodox in Moscow.

Pg. 91: Today the overwhelming majority (63 percent) of Christians live in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. There are now more Catholics in the Philippines than in the homelands of the last two popes (Poland and Germany) combined.

Pg. 104: Confucian values: reverence for antiquity, respect for education, deference to elders, and filial piety. Job one in Confucian education is not learning a trade but learning to be human. Human beings are learners, and as we learn we become more ourselves.

Pg. 133: Hinduism may be the oldest of the great religions, but it is also the third largest (after Christianity and Islam), with roughly 900 million followers.

Pg. 175: Today roughly 445 million people are Buddhists, making Buddhism the world’s forth largest religion.

Pg. 245: Judaism is both the least and the greatest of the great religions. Strictly by the numbers, it is by far the smallest. There are only about 14 million Jews worldwide. Yet, both Christianity and Islam came out of Judaism. Judaism as we know it today developed between the time of the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E.

Pg. 317: A recent Gallup poll found that 9 percent of adults in Western Europe described themselves a ‘convinced atheists.’ That figure fell to 4 percent in Eastern and Central Europe, 3 percent in Latin America, 2 percent in the Middle East, and 1 percent in North American and Africa.

Pg. 318: Atheists take aim at organized religion, miracles, and groupthink. They defend reason over revelation, logic over faith, and scientific experimentation over magical thinking.

Pg. 324: What makes a religion a religion? According to one common formula, members of the family of religions typically exhibit Four Cs: creed, cultus, code, and community. In other words, they have statements of beliefs and values (creeds); ritual activities (cultus); standards for ethical conduct (codes); and institutions (communities).