A few major religions are Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Mormonism. Each one has its own unique characteristics and beliefs, which are discussed in the following pages.
Hinduism.
Hinduism was founded sometime between 1500 and 500 CE in the area of the Indus valley civilization. There is no individual founder and no names given to say who developed it. There are many gods in the religion of Hinduism. One in six people in the world are a Hindu. Hinduism can be described as a monotheistic or a polytheistic religion depending on the point of view but Hindu people describe themselves as henotheistic, which is the belief in one god without denying the existence of others (DiZerega, 2001).
Hindus believe that the soul is immortal and re-enters a body of flesh and blood to resolve experiences and learn all the lessons that the material life has to offer. Hindus also believe in karma. They believe that karma is one of the natural laws of the universe. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do negative things, negative things will happen to you. Hindus also believe that the cow is sacred. The cow represents their life and all other animals. They also regard the cow as sacred because it gives and gives but only takes grass and grain. Not all of the Hindu people are vegetarian; they are given the freedom to make their own decisions.
Hinduism claims over 793,076,000 people, which is 13.7% of the world's population. Most of the Hindus are concentrated mainly in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
The Hindu purpose is basically to learn all that they can from this life so that they can pass their knowledge to the spiritual world.
Judaism.
The beginnings of Judaism begin around 2000 BCE. God made a covenant with Abraham and made him the patriarch of many nations. There are four other religions that have roots in Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and he Baha'i World Faith.
