Are there any religions that people widely agree are "false"?

Question

I see the term "false religion" slung around quite a bit on R&S, but have never seen a description as to what religion would be false, and what would not.

If even one person believes that a religion is truth, would that make it a valid belief?

Answer 1

All religions have as much credibility as the other, as soon as people realize this, the better the world will be.

Answer 2

I think that ALL religions are regarded as false quite widely.

Example (Not real figures):

if 25% of people are Christian
and 25% of people are Islamic
and 25% of people are Hindu
and 25% of people are Atheist

And all of them believe (or don't, conversely) solidly in their belief (or lack thereof), then at any one time 75% of the population feel that the other religion is false.

Now to use real figures (Source:wikipedia). These are not in percentages, and I will include the note from wikipedia about the numbers.

"These figures are necessarily approximate: note that the figures in the following table total nearly 7 billion people, yet the world population was only 6.4 billion (2005),and a person can claim adherency to more than one religion."

1. Christianity 2.1 billion
2. Islam 1.3 billion
3. Non-Adherent (Secular/Atheist/Irreligious/Agnostic/Nontheist) 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism 900 million
5. Chinese folk religion 394 million
6. Buddhism 376 million
7. Primal indigenous ("Pagan") 300 million
8. African traditional and diasporic 100 million
9. Sikhism 23 million
10. Juche 19 million
11. Spiritism 15 million
12. Judaism 14 million
13. Bahá'í Faith 7 million
14. Jehovah's Witnesses 6.5 million
15. Jainism 4.2 million
16. Shinto 4 million
17. Cao Dai 4 million
18. Zoroastrianism 2.6 million
19. Tenrikyo 2 million
20. Neo-Paganism 1 million
21. Unitarian Universalism 800,000
22. Rastafari movement 600,000

If we use Christianity as an example, if you take the 2.1 billion people from the worlds population (we'll take this as 7 million to save confusion) that leaves 4.9 billion people in agreement that Christianity is false. Pretty wide, eh?

Although some of the above listed are different groups within Christianity, I have left them separate.

So... lots of relgions and belief systems are widely considered false.

Edit note: I am trying to look at this objectively. I am an Atheist/agnostic, but I am open to the concept of religion. As Wikipedia would put it, I am NPOV.

Answer 3

Since all religion is completely "made up," and deals in purely imaginary qualities, the "truth" or "falsity" of any given religion is entirely a matter of opinion. So if a certain religion is widely regarded as "false," it's only because it's in the minority. At the end of the day, its claims are just as valid - because just as invalid - as those of any other.

A good example of this is the Christian attitude towards Scientology, viz. that it's a "crazy cult." This from people who believe that they're "saved" by virtue of the blood of a 2,000-years-dead magical carpenter. There's not much to choose between varieties of insanity.

Answer 4

I say it's false when a religion further preaches its ignorance other than ignorantly practicing it. When a mistake is made it's called a sin. But when a mistake is mistakenly propagated as truth and further it's cause then it's Anti-Christ. That false religion practices Anti-Christ.

Answer 5

False religions, per Christianity (this is not an exhaustive list):

Mormonism
Hinduism
Buddhism
Word of Faith
Moonies
Scientology
Jehovah's Witnesses

Any 'religion' is false if it does ANY of the following:

1. Denies God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the Triune Godhead

2. Denies that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, part of the Trinity, and came to earth thru virgin birth, died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day, then ascended to heaven.

3. Worship Idols and false gods

4. Deny that salvation through Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to get to heaven.

I'm probably missing something, but that woudn't be the first time.

Answer 6

Well, as an atheist, I believe they are all false, but I know what you mean as people throwing out the term false religion. I love it when they ask things like "Why do you worship idols?", "why do you follow false gods?" etc. Like anyone would say "My religion is false and I like it that way".

Answer 7

I've seen a pretty good consensus among rational people that Christianity is false.

I also see a lot of people claiming it is true, but they also believe in a magical guy in the sky who has a list of things he doesn't want you to do, and if you do those things, then you will go to hell where you will burn for eternity screaming and writhing in agony.

But he loves you!

Answer 8

A 'false' religion is any religion that teaches and supports the non-biblical ideas of hell-fire, trinity, immortal soul and that the 'good' go to heaven.

Answer 9

Name any religion and there are probably a million humans who think it is false, so that makes them all false, doesn't it?

Answer 10

I think faith, by definition alone, means that accepting one belief system as truth would make all other systems invalid.

There are some belief systems, though, that do see validity in other paths. If only they could all be like that.

Answer 11

If one defines a false religion as one that the majority of people on the planet think is false then every religion is false.

Now if we could just let everyone know that their religion is false we'd have a much better planet.