Hinduism
Brahman is too transcendent to be the deity. Krishna is too immanent to be the deity, and behaves immorally. Shiva is likened to Brahman in transcendence, but like Krishna, has a biography, and also behaves immorally. Hindus can be permanently homeless, or householders all their life. Hindus can love this world, or they can seek to escape it. Hinduism is strongly associated with vegetarianism.1
Hinduism is too praxeologically and theologically diverse to be an easy and intuitive religion.
Zoroastrianism
This religion violates the tawhid requirement of Islam by positing two preexisting principles: Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Its plus side is its robust eschatology.
Judaism
Legally complex, with 613 mitzvoth, and with strong ethnic and tribalistic ties to the Jewish people, this religion cannot satisfy the needs of mankind universally.
Many episodes from the Hebrew Bible are also quite disturbing, for example: Genesis 22, the near-sacrifice of Isaac; Moses being denied entry into the Promised Land in Numbers 20:10–13; David’s affair with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11–12; and so on.
Some sects contain strange ideas, like the elevation of Cain’s status in Lurianic Kabbala.
In Hasidism, the zaddik attains quasi-divine status.
Buddhism
Theravada Buddhism
Too otherworldly, and in fact, no deity is posited at all, with the possible exception of nibbana itself, the samsara-transcending soteriological goal of all Theravada Buddhists.
Mahayana Buddhism
Although the otherworldly aspect of early Buddhism is abandoned through the bodhisattva vow, the tawhid requirement is violated by the pantheon of celestial Buddhas and bodhisattvas one can invoke through dharanis, mantras, and so on.
Vajrayana Buddhism
The blatant immorality of the Buddhist tantras, as well as its tendency to deify or venerate gurus and lamas, disqualify this as a universally-valid world religion.
Daoism
The Dao is too transcendent to be the deity. Like Hinduism, there is a linearness to its cosmology,2 and there are political aspects to the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi. I would argue that this does not qualify as a world religion, per se. There is an emphasis on escaping or transcending the world.3 The xian 仙 attain quasi-divine status.
Christianity
The divinity of the deity is sadly shared with the prophet Jesus. The tawhid requirement is violated through the Trinity or some other doctrine.
There are strong cultic aspects to Christianity, e.g., the Eucharist, substitutionary atonement, and so on. This culticness is difficult to reconcile with a loving and merciful deity.
The amenability of Christianity to monasticism also makes it a somewhat otherworldly religion.
Catholicism
The relationship with the deity is mediated through the Church, Pope, sacraments, saints, and so on.
Protestantism
The relationship with the deity is primarily mediated through Jesus, but the relationship is mediated nonetheless.
Islam
Shi‘ism
Twelver Shi‘ism
The fourteen “impeccable” ones, i.e., Muhammad, Fatima, and the twelve imams,4 attain quas-divine status, and their infallibility is overaccentuated.
Nusayrism
Ali, the imams, and other figures are erroneously deified as manifestations of the essence (ma‘na) of the divinity.
Isma‘ili Shi‘ism
Druzism
Hakim bi-Amr Allah is erroneously deified.
Nizari Isma‘ili Shi‘ism
The imams attain near-divine status as manifestations of the command (amr) or word (kalima) of the deity.
Sufism
The saints (awliya’) erroneously deify themselves.
Sunnism
Here, alone, is God alone worshiped. There is neither overemphasis on this life nor the next life,5 and the good of both are sought together.6 The relationship with the deity is unmediated, and the believer (mu‘min) raises their hands in supplication (dua).
Footnotes
- Wikipedia, s.v. “Diet in Hinduism,” last edited , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_in_Hinduism.
- Cf. Alf Hiltebeitel, Dharma: Its Early History in Law, Religion, and Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 245.
- Robert Ford Campany, “Adepts, Their Families, and the Imperium,” in Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), 186–215.
- Amy Bard, “Hearing Mo‘jizat in South Asian Shi‘ism,” in Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature, and Performance in North India, eds. Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield (Cambridge, UK: Open Book, 2015), 150; Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Spirituality of Shiʿi Islam: Beliefs and Practices (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 133.
- Cf. Craig Quentin Hinkson, “Kierkegaard’s Theology: Cross and Grace; The Lutheran and Idealist Traditions in His Thought” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1993), https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/fac_dis/27/, 46; George B. Connell, Kierkegaard and the Paradox of Religious Diversity, Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Erdmans, 2016), 63–64.
- Gerrit Steunebrink, “A Religion after Christianity? Hegel’s Interpretation of Islam between Judaism and Christianity,” in Hegel’s Philosophy of the Historical Religions, eds. Bart Labuschagne and Timo Slootweg, Critical Studies in German Idealism (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2012), 219.