God

Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, supplication, or repentance. It forms a basis for establishing a relationship with God or the divine.

Technically speaking, liturgy forms a subset of ritual. The word liturgy, sometimes equated in English as "service", refers to a formal ritual enacted by those who understand themselves to be participating in an action with the divine.

Ideocracy (a portmanteau word combining "ideology" and kratos, Greek for "power") is "governance of a state according to the principles of a particular (political) ideology; a state or country governed in this way". It is government based on a monistic ideology—as distinct from an authoritarian state, which is characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms. An ideocratic state can either be totalitarian—citizens being forced to follow an ideology—or populist (citizens voluntarily following an ideology).

Every government has ideological bases from which assumptions and policies are drawn; ideocracies are governments wherein one dominant ideology has become deeply ingrained into politics and generally politics has become deeply ingrained into all or most aspects of society. The ideology of an ideocracy presents itself as an absolute, universal, and supreme system for understanding social life, much as a god in a monotheistic belief system.

A creator deity or creator god is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatristic traditions separate a secondary creator from a primary transcendent being, identified as a primary creator.

Blasphemy refers to an insult that shows contempt, disrespect or lack of reverence concerning a deity, an object considered sacred, or something that is considered inviolable. Some religions, especially Abrahamic ones, regard blasphemy as a crime, including insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, speaking the sacred name in Judaism, and blasphemy of God's Holy Spirit is an eternal sin in Christianity. It was also a crime under English common law, and it is still a crime under Italian law (Art. 724 del Codice Penale).

In the early history of the Church, blasphemy "was considered to show active disrespect to God and to involve the use of profane cursing or mockery of his powers". In the medieval world, those who committed blasphemy were seen as needing discipline. By the 17th century, several historically Christian countries had legislation against blasphemy. Blasphemy was proscribed speech in the U.S. until well into the 20th century. Blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales in 2008, and in Ireland in 2020. Scotland repealed its blasphemy laws in 2021. Many other countries have abolished blasphemy laws including Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway and New Zealand. As of 2019, 40 percent of the world's countries have blasphemy laws on the books, including 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, or 90% of countries in that region.

A tariqa (Arabic: طريقة, romanized: ṭarīqa) is a religious order of Sufism, or specifically a concept for the mystical teaching and spiritual practices of such an order with the aim of seeking haqiqa, which translates as "ultimate truth".

A tariqa has a murshid (guide) who plays the role of leader or spiritual director. The members or followers of a tariqa are known as muridin (singular murid), meaning "desirous", viz. "desiring the knowledge of God and loving God" (also called a faqir).The murshid of the tariqa is also believed to be the same as the tzadik of Judaism, meaning the "rightly guided one".

Allah (/ˈælə, ˈɑːlə, əˈlɑː/ A(H)L-ə, ə-LAH; Arabic: الله, IPA: [ɑɫˈɫɑːh] ) is the Arabic language term for God, specifically the monotheistic God of Abraham. Outside of Arabic languages, it is principally associated with Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), although the term was used in pre-Islamic Arabia and continues to be used today by Arabic-speaking adherents of any of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism and Christianity. It is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh (الاله, lit. 'the god') and is linguistically related to other semitic God names, such as Aramaic (ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ ʼAlāhā) and Hebrew (אֱלוֹהַּ ʾĔlōah).

The word "Allah" now conveys the superiority or sole existence of one God, but among the pre-Islamic Arabs, Allah was a supreme deity and was worshipped alongside lesser deities in a pantheon. Many Jews, Christians, and early Muslims used "Allah" and "al-ilah" synonymously in Classical Arabic. The word is also frequently, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian Christians, Maltese Christians, and Sephardic Jews, as well as by the Gagauz people.

The Shahada (Arabic: الشَّهَادَةُ aš-šahādatu; Arabic pronunciation: [aʃʃahaːdatʊ], 'the testimony'), also transliterated as Shahadah, is an Islamic oath and creed, and one of the Five Pillars of Islam and part of the Adhan. It reads: "I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God."The Shahada declares belief in the oneness (tawhid) of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as God's messenger. Some Shia Muslims also include a statement of belief in the wilayat of Ali, but they do not consider it as an obligatory part for converting to Islam. A single honest recitation of the Shahada is all that is required for a person to become a Muslim according to most traditional schools.

In many Gnostic belief systems, there exist various emanations of God, who is known by such names as One, Monad, Aion teleos (αἰών τέλεος "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos (βυθός, "depth" or "profundity"), Arkhe (ἀρχή, "the beginning"). In Gnosticism these emanations of God are named as Proarkhe (προαρχή, "before the beginning") and as Aeons (which are also often named and may be paired or grouped). In different systems these emanations are differently named, classified, and described (but emanation is common to all forms of 'Gnosticism'). In Basilidian Gnosis they are called sonships (υἱότητες huiotetes; sing.: υἱότης huiotes); according to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called syzygies (συζυγίαι, from σύζυγοι syzygoi: lit. "yokings together").

This source of all being is an Aeon, in which an inner being dwells, known as Ennoea (ἔννοια, "thought, intent"), Charis (χάρις, "grace") or Sige (σιγή, "silence"). The split perfect being conceives the second Aeon, Nous (Νους, "mind"), within itself. Complex hierarchies of Aeons are thus produced, sometimes to the number of thirty. These Aeons belong to a purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas. Together with the source from which they emanate, they form Pleroma (πλήρωμα, "fullness"). The lowest regions of Pleroma are closest to darkness; that is, the physical world.

Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and non-religious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of gods and differs from atheism, or active disbelief in any gods. It has been used as an umbrella term for summarizing various distinct and even mutually exclusive positions, such as atheism, agnosticism, apatheism, egotheism, ignosticism, ietsism, pantheism, pandeism, skepticism, and transtheism. It is in use in the fields of Christian apologetics and general liberal theology.

An early usage of the hyphenated term non-theism is attributed to George Holyoake in 1852. Within the scope of nontheistic agnosticism, philosopher Anthony Kenny distinguishes between agnostics who find the claim "God exists" uncertain and theological noncognitivists who consider all discussion of God to be meaningless. Some agnostics, however, are not nontheists but rather agnostic theists. Other related philosophical opinions about the existence of deities are ignosticism and skepticism. Because of the various definitions of the term God, a person could be an atheist in terms of certain conceptions of gods, while remaining agnostic in terms of others.

According to Jain doctrine, the universe and its constituents—soul, matter, space, time, and principles of motion—have always existed. Jainism does not support belief in a creator deity. All the constituents and actions are governed by universal natural laws. It is not possible to create matter out of nothing and hence the sum total of matter in the universe remains the same (similar to law of conservation of mass). Jain texts claim that the universe consists of jiva (life force or souls) and ajiva (lifeless objects). The soul of each living being is unique and uncreated and has existed during beginningless time.

The Jain theory of causation holds that a cause and its effect are always identical in nature and hence a conscious and immaterial entity like God cannot create a material entity like the universe. Furthermore, according to the Jain concept of divinity, any soul who destroys its karmas and desires achieves liberation (nirvana). A soul who destroys all its passions and desires has no desire to interfere in the working of the universe. Moral rewards and sufferings are not the work of a divine being, but a result of an innate moral order in the cosmos: a self-regulating mechanism whereby the individual reaps the fruits of their own actions through the workings of the karmas.