With a plethora of religions, which one do you believe in? Do you believe in any God or any religion at all? Where do you begin, or even begin to begin?

The world can be divided, mostly, into these major belief systems: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and secularism (or sometimes called humanism, or Secular Humanism). Only a small percentage of humanity falls outside these categories.
The many forms of this system share the common belief in a purely materialistic existence. To quote atheist Carl Sagan: “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” (How he could possibly know that is a question for another day, though it is as much a faith statement as a person can make.)

Besides secularism, if you are interested in a belief structure or religion focused not on a supreme being, but only on how to treat each other, then Buddhism or Confucianism might have some lure. These humanistic approaches to the cosmos don’t focus on the supernatural, or on life outside of time and space, at least as they appear to us. A similar humanistic philosophy is Taoism. The slight difference is that the reason you treat people well or poorly in Taoism is to keep a proper balance of energy, called the Tao, in the world.

The major alternatives to these humanistic philosophies are Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. These four believe in a supreme being, or beings, and tell of how humans should interact with each other and with the world. Each is grounded in a single text or in multiple texts.
In secularism, everything, from the creation of the universe to human morality, can be ultimately broken down into and explained by, at least in principle, the unconscious laws of chemistry and physics.

I spent years dabbling in Eastern religions and pouring over the scriptures of ancient religions. There are a lot of similarities in what you find. The Hindu and Buddhist writings have a lot of what I would now call “basic Christianity.” When I eventually discovered that of all the tombs of all the philosophers that ever lived there is only one that is empty, I then had to resolve for myself the reliability of the Bible. The Bible is actually 1/3rd prophecy requiring 100% accuracy as validation for it source. I discovered that this gave it a very solid and provable foundation upon which I could build my new faith. We have looked at some of the ancient prophecies and will look at a few more before we are finished, but for now we need to discuss, “How we Got the Bible,” and “Can I trust the Bible.” The old slogan that many use against the Bible is that it has been copied and copied down through the centuries (Millennia actually) and therefore inaccuracies and changes crept in overtime and the Bible we have today is not the Bible that was written way back yonder.

Fortunately, the evidence is clear that the Bible we have today is the same as the ancient manuscripts written by Moses, Isaiah or any of the Old or New Testament writers. I will over the next two weeks present the evidence for that very fact.