Buddhism creates a system without any explanation of why it exists. They posit a reality in which we can reach a cessation of desire, and this is what we must strive for. It is agnostic in regards to God. This suffers the same fate as many philosophic traditions- the system is logically possible, but there is no explanation why it it so. Why are we here in the first place? To reach nirvana? Nirvana is essentially the same as nonexistence, so why would we be created to return to a state of non-existence? What is the point behind all of this? How did it come into being?
Hinduism denies the law of non-contradiction, which renders ideas and language meaningless. If Hinduism is true, then we can’t really speak of one religion being true and another false. If that is the case, I see no reason to believe any particular religion, or anything else for that matter. If God can both exist and not exist, Hinduism be both true and false, Catholicism be both true and false, etc, then ideas and philosophy lose their meaning. Even the idea that the law of non-contradicition does not hold becomes both true and false, which reduces everything to nonsense.
I’m not very familiar with confucism, but I’ve always heard its a political philosophy rather than a religion. I’ll get back to you about shintoism and taoism, but I suspect the suffer the same fate at paganism as explained below.
Islam teaches that both good and evil proceed from the will of God. Not only does this make God somewhat evil, or evil somewhat good, it brings the nature of God into question. God by nature must have perfection, lack nothing. If God causes evil, then evil must be part of his nature. If evil is part of his nature, then God cannot be all-good. If he is not all good, God’s motives for creating the world come into question. Catholics teach that God created the world out of pure selflessness, but if God is not entirely selfless, then perhaps God created the world for evil purposes. Even if God says he did not, perhaps he is lying to us.
Some teach that you can do whatever you want and go to heaven, as long as you believe. I find this hard to accept.
Also, the protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (scripture alone) is somewhat improbable. They teach that God gave us a book to be everyone’s sole guide to truth, even though for thousands of years most people were illiterate or could not afford to buy a handwritten Bible. Even if a person had a Bible, there are a million different ways to interpret a passage. Thus, a person can essentially create his own religion based on what he wants to read (right now there are about 30,000). This is simply not a well-working system for a wise God to devise. Conpare this to Catholicism, which teaches that God appointed men to guide and direct the church, and formed a visible authority out of them. He promises to guide that church, and to keep it from doctrinal error. He gives it the authority to interpret scipture, so that no confusion will result.
Paganism (in the sense of the ancient world) posits numerous gods who are like immortal people. Classical theology has demonstrated (read “Attributes of God” on
newadvent.org) that God must have certain attributes. He must be one, uncaused, lack nothing, unchangeble. This is at odds with the pagan idea of many gods that come from parent gods, changing their minds all the time and doing many questionable things like eloping with humans or cheating on their spouses.
Paganism in the sense of druidism and new age religions suffers the same problem as Buddhism- why is the system in place? Where did it come from?
