Who is God?

It is believed by many people that God is the perfect spiritual being who has always existed and who created everything. (Although having no physical form and therefore no gender, God is usually referred to as a male.) Believers feel that God made the universe and all that is in it. God is thought by many to be all-knowing and allpowerful. In many religions, it is thought that the souls of people who have led good lives on Earth join God after they die.

While many of the world’s most widely practiced religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism—teach of the existence of a single supreme being (called God in Judeo- Christian religions and Allah in Islam), some religions teach that there are many gods. Hinduism (practiced by many people in India and elsewhere) teaches that there are many gods, but all are part of one divine being, called Brahman. Some people feel that God is everywhere and part of everything—the universe itself, and all life, and all natural occurrences, are divine. Others, called atheists, do not believe a supreme being exists in any form.