Personal Beliefs: The Religious Conviction Of Religion

Religion refers to a particular system of spiritual beliefs, one’s faith, and how one worships. Religious convictions are personal beliefs that are inexorably linked to the individual’s self-identity. Those convictions influence a person’s perceptions and play a leading role in one’s personal and professional goals and choices.

How many religions are there? Most of us consider Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism to be the world’s “major” religions. The actual number is much larger. According to philosopher, Dr. Eric Dietrich, of the 190,000 years that Homo sapiens have been on the planet, there are between four and five dozen “major” religions that exist today while excluding those that no longer are practiced.

Dr. Dietrich

defines “major” as any religion that has at least 500,000 adherents. Each religion differs significantly from the others in its deities, doctrine, or how the practitioners perceive the supernatural. Some may be surprised to learn that as many as 60 major religions are currently practiced. That only accounts for the major religions, there are many more sub-religions or religious sects. Some sub-religions have very little in common with their group members making them appear to belong to a different major religion. Christianity alone is believed to have over 30,000 versions.

Dr. Dietrich says that being religious is a human evolutionary adaptation. There is a large number of religions because evolution produces a large variety within any given parameter. The theory of evolution predicts thousands of religions will emerge as long as religions provide something positive to the well-being of human psychology, and as long as the details of religion do not matter.

The religions on this list are widely accepted to be polytheistic or not having a creator deity as there is in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. However, there is evidence specific to each one that indicates it identifies a single or primary deity.