The purpose of this post is to offer a global knowledge of all the beliefs and religions that exist in the world, in order that the reader has an open view, not dangerously closed to a single idea, belief or religion.
I believe that the different religions and beliefs should be known and studied minimally; they should expose themselves, comment, share their evidence and discuss their reasons without stirring up their dogmatisms.
We have the dual duty of transmitting and teaching all our fellow citizens the existence of all the beliefs and religions that have developed in our civilization. Only that knowledge will make us more sensitive and respectful to others. Since a unique and absolute belief, without a vision of other beliefs makes us be arrogant and disparaging towards other ideas.
This is the Sixth of a post series where I will compile in a brief and simple way the different beliefs and religions that exist in the world.
Sinai
Sinai is the mountain from which Moses descended with the tablets of the law, and which the Hebrew Bible calls Horeb. The set of mountains in which the Hebrews camped in their Exodus can be located with enough accuracy.
Starting from Suez you must travel 132 kilometers to Abu Zenima, a small port on the Gulf of Suez. From there another 72 kilometers to the Feran oasis, another 54 kilometers to the convent of Santa Catalina, a building founded by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century that is 1,600 meters above sea level and has a library with 3,500 manuscripts.
To the south of this convent rises a set of mountains designated with the word Sinai, among them the one called Gebel Mousa, of 2.283 meters high. Today the same monks of the convent of Santa Catalina organize excursions to climb to the top of this mountain where Moses had a unique experience and developed a fundamental chapter of the history of Christianity.
Taj Mahal
Built-in Agra, India in the seventeenth century, it is one of the most important Islamic monuments for its architecture, having been recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
It is a mausoleum, as the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built it for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. This mausoleum has a great religious symbolism related to Sufism.
Teresa of Calcutta
One of the most popular mystics, missionary and religious of the twentieth century, she was born in Macedonia in 1910 and in 1928 she joined the Sisters of Loreto in a convent in Calcutta. Since then he has been dedicated to helping the less fortunate of the suburbs of Calcutta.
His work to help the sick, leprous and dispossessed in a country where resources are scarce to serve so many people made him be awarded the John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971, and eight years later with the Nobel Prize in Peace; she died in 1997.
Voodoo
Cult of possession of African origin that spread in Haiti. The entities that provoke the trance are called loa, and in some cases, they are assimilated to the Catholic saints. There are many loas, some more popular than others.
This religious form defends the existence of a single God creator of the entire universe and practices secret rituals to the rhythm of drums, frantic dances and others that include the power to bring the dead back to life (zombies), make spells through dolls, animal sacrifice, and ingestion of alcoholic beverages.
Final judgment
The idea of a final judgment or of the dead is an extended belief in many religions and that dates from very old times. Among the Egyptians, the deceased was to appear before Osiris and his heavy soul on a scale. If the deceased was declared fair, he would become part of the Osirian world but if the deceased was declared unjust he was eaten by the devourer of the dead.
In Israel of the 2nd century BC, the idea of judgment also appears, where the people of Israel will be acquitted and the Gentile nations punished. In Christianity, we see that judgment through the words of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew and also in the Apocalypse of John.
In Islam, there is also a final judgment performed by Allah at the end of time, and it is recorded in many verses of the Koran.
Darwinism
Scientific theory exposed by Charles Darwin in which he proposed that the world and its living species have evolved over millions of years. Therefore the world, according to Darwin, is not a static creation of God but a place that is constantly changing.
Darwin's theory was expounded in "The Origin of Species" (1859). Many theologians saw this idea as a contradiction with the Bible, a heretical theory, which produced great confrontations, of which the response of T. H. Huxley, defending Darwin's theory, against the attacks of the Anglican bishop Samuel Wilberforce, stands out as anecdotal; "I would not be ashamed to have a monkey as an ancestor, but I would be ashamed to be related to a man who uses great gifts to hide the truth."
Over time the theory of evolution became the main basis of modern paleontology, not without undergoing some modifications and new trends such as neo-Darwinism.
See you in the next post. Thank you for reading.
