Why do different religions share many similarities?

[Genivaria]

No, I don't believe religions are the same because Jesus and Muhammed were born in different places and Hinduism has more than a million gods.

I said in a way... for example I don’t agree with every single practice of every single religion, but I agree with some ideas. For example, Buddhism I agree with the idea that if I do good things, good things will happen to me in return. I could go on and on.


It’s not that I agree with everything and believing that every religion is right at the same time , it’s instead recognizing that we have more similarities than we may think.

Except that's not all that you're claiming, you were trying to claim some innate similarities between world religions as evidence of them pointing to the same divine source.

[Genivaria]

I think I should really change what I am asking. The title and poll are kind of misleading. I really mean to ask why different religions have such eerie similarities, rather than offering a solution and asking whether people agree with that solution.

You've already had this question answered multiple times.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Well at least in the case of Indo European paganism, the similarities are probably due to them all evolving from the religion of the proto-Indo Europeans.

[Dakini]

This topic reminded me of cargo cults. These arose on a number of Pacific islands mostly following the second world war. The islanders witnessed airplanes landing and bringing supplies during the war, so after the war they continued on with the rituals they saw people engage in when the cargo planes arrived (or just generally the rituals of the soldiers on the island), hoping that this would prompt the airplanes to return with more goods.


So basically, industrialised societies moving goods into the area by airplane caused the pre-industrial cultures already in the area to form a new religion which absolutely has nothing at all to do with the divine.

[Postauthoritarian America]

Because there is a set of moral and ethical principles that are common to all moral, ethical and religious systems, including nontheistic ones. All religions that contribute to human survival share these principles, QED.

[The Islands of Versilia]

It does not take much knowledge of Middle Eastern religious history to answer your question. The pre-Islamic beliefs of the Persian people were hugely influential across the entirety of the ancient Near East, especially so with Judaism during the Jews’ liberation from the Assyrians by Cyrus the Great, and Judaic and Mazaian beliefs were founding traditions and beliefs of Christianity, which then became Greco-Romanised as the early Christians tried to legitimise themselves in the eyes of Romans (for example they deliberately depicted Jesus in styles that were familiar to Romans, like as a philosopher or akin to Jupiter/Zeus), and later Islam, which was also influenced by Christianity.

As you now know, all these faiths were hugely influenced by other religions of their times, they weren’t cooked up on their own like some folks tend to misunderstand. Islam was all made up on the spot by Muhammad, it was directly influenced in its creation by Muhammad’s understanding of Christian and Jewish beliefs.

Judaism didn’t even have a devil AFAIK until the Jews returned from Babylon and from there we see its increasing frequency of appearance after their encounter with Zoroastrianism.

[The Islands of Versilia]

Well at least in the case of Indo European paganism, the similarities are probably due to them all evolving from the religion of the proto-Indo Europeans.

There’s a lot of similarities between what we know of pre-Christian European beliefs and Hinduism because of the common PIE beliefs. Germanic, Greek, Slavic and Dharmic mythology AFAIK share common features, such as a patriarchal sky god and serpent/dragon slaying, divine horse twins, etc.

[Suriyanakhon]

Different religions tend to be similar because their ideas derive from common sources. The Abrahamic religions were all heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism's concept of a battle between good and evil, the appearance of a messianic figure who will redeem the world, and humanity's ability to choose which side that they will be on. But they also have irreconcilable differences which wouldn't exist if they were all right in some way. Zoroastrianism is polytheistic instead of monotheistic, Christianity believes in three manifestations of one God, Hinduism believes in several manifestations, and Buddhism rejects the notion of an all-powerful creator god.

[Czechostan]

Well at least in the case of Indo European paganism, the similarities are probably due to them all evolving from the religion of the proto-Indo Europeans.

^ That's exactly what I was going to say.

The chief Indo European god was *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr, whose name would evolve into Zeus Patēr for the Greeks and *Djous patēr (Jupiter) for the Romans. And later religions like Christianity incorporated many of these pagan traditions. So the cause of religions having similarities has less to do with them pointing to some universal truths and more to do with their shared evolutions/interactions with each other.

[Neutraligon]

Well at least in the case of Indo European paganism, the similarities are probably due to them all evolving from the religion of the proto-Indo Europeans.

^ That's exactly what I was going to say.

The chief Indo European god was *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr, whose name would evolve into Zeus Patēr for the Greeks and *Djous patēr (Jupiter) for the Romans. And later religions like Christianity incorporated many of these pagan traditions. So the cause of religions having similarities has less to do with them pointing to some universal truths and more to do with their shared evolutions/interactions with each other.

We can also add that as a social species some intra-group interactions would simply be consistent across the species.

[The Reformed American Republic]

[Krezenel]

I think it

Idk but I fail to see how satanism would be right in a way

Theistic Satanism usually equates Satan with the serpent in the Garden and view him as a largely heroic figure representing freedom, intelligence and independence. Not bad things in and of themselves.

well, as a former Satanist myself, thats kinda true

i cant speak much on the topic, but from the minimal amount of research i've done, Satanism (specifically LaVeyan Satanism) views Satan as an entity of (as you said) good and intelligence. however, i believe this is not the same entity most Christians call Satan.

but thats just my two cents. i can talk much more about wicca lol

[Forsher]

There are limits to the human imagination.

Let's put it this way... how many of you have had dreams where you're:

• chased by some kind of monster (e.g. dinosaurs, big cats)
• able to fly
• some kind of WWII type war officer who's pretending to be an officer of a higher rank, who's probably a POW and was raised in a submarine and is theoretically under the command of an actual naval officer for some reason and is currently having a conversation with a childhood friend who's now a cardio-thoracic surgeon

the answer is probably yes to all three, right?

The point is that the human brain thinks in tropes and it can't avoid doing that. Sure, sometimes there are relatively more inventive (or just weirder) combinations of tropes (e.g. that third option above... n.b. a friend of mine really is actually a cardio-thoracic surgeon*) but they're either going to get filtered out by the mechanics of religion (i.e. a need to use tropes that resonate with other people) or just aren't going to be relevant since they're less common to start with.

There is no difference between asking "why do different religions share many similarities?" and asking "why are there only seven basic stories?" is what I'm saying.

*I was watching this video before I went to bed last night. One of the segments (at least, I only watched the first 46 or so minutes) is about a dude who died of a heart attack. That would seem to explain the cardio thoracic surgeon element to the dream. The rest of it? Um, pass?

[Rusozak]

Religions started out as attempts to answer existential questions of the human condition. What are we? How did we get here? Why are we here? What happens when we die? It's only natural just about every faith out there has some kind of creation story and tries to explain the world around us. And in people using religion to seek comfort, most also have some concept of afterlife. The answers may be different, but the questions are the same, so a recurring theme among isolated religions that had no influence over each other isn't that hard to explain.

[Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum]

There's a chance that they're all right or wrong, but the only truth I know is that I don't know anything.

[Krezenel]

I mean, without religion, the world would not function, as it is the reason (at least for many people) to do things. If there is no life after death, what is the point of doing something or creating a legacy you can't see flourish or go on?

While the world needs religion to function, I don't think that justifies some of the things that have been a result of religion.

[Insaanistan]

Here’s the Muslim view: Islam is and has long been the one true religion. Not necessarily “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his final messenger,” and fulfill the five pillars: Islam means “peaceful submission to God”, and Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Jacob, Jonas, Noah etc etc (peace be upon them all) all preached a religion that came from God to mankind, with the morals worship God and be good.

We also believe every nation in history at one point had some prophet sent to them. So, why is Islam true? Well, we believe over time these nations partially corrupted their religion on purpose or on accident somehow.

For example, Muslims pray similarly to Jews and Orthodox Christians and have many of the same stories as in the Bible.
“Couldn’t Muhammad have just copied the Bible?”
Well, 1. He couldn’t read, and 2. The Bible hadn’t been translated to Arabic yet.

Additionally, the Qur’ân has a lot of the same wording as the Vedas. Are you telling me Muhammad (pbuh) was somehow a Vedic Scholar, too?

That’s our view as to why so many religions have the same theology: all these religions were at one point the one true faith. However, over time, they got corrupted. All except for one: the one most commonly referred to as Islam today.

[Washington Resistance Army]

For example, Muslims pray similarly to Jews and Orthodox Christians and have many of the same stories as in the Bible.
“Couldn’t Muhammad have just copied the Bible?”
Well, 1. He couldn’t read, and 2. The Bible hadn’t been translated to Arabic yet.

Additionally, the Qur’ân has a lot of the same wording as the Vedas. Are you telling me Muhammad (pbuh) was somehow a Vedic Scholar, too?

The problem with this view is that we know Indian religions had at least some influence in the Middle East (likely via traders and general cultural osmosis) as far back as the Bronze Age and cities on the western coast of Arabia would have had easy access to Christian traders with which to learn stories and such things.

[Insaanistan]

For example, Muslims pray similarly to Jews and Orthodox Christians and have many of the same stories as in the Bible.
“Couldn’t Muhammad have just copied the Bible?”
Well, 1. He couldn’t read, and 2. The Bible hadn’t been translated to Arabic yet.

Additionally, the Qur’ân has a lot of the same wording as the Vedas. Are you telling me Muhammad (pbuh) was somehow a Vedic Scholar, too?

The problem with this view is that we know Indian religions had at least some influence in the Middle East (likely via traders and general cultural osmosis) as far back as the Bronze Age and cities on the western coast of Arabia would have had easy access to Christian traders with which to learn stories and such things.

If that were the reasoning, the Qur’ân if made up likely would have included actual Hindu stories in them just with changed characters.

Regardless, the vast majority of people in Arabia were polytheists who had never met a Christian, and Muhammad (pbuh) would not have been able to reproduce Bible stories in rhymes over the course of over 23 from simple memory when there were no real Christians around.

I know someone will shout “what about his cousin-in-law, Waraqa?” and well, here’s the thing: Waraqa died shortly after the first revelation.

What’s more, the last thing he ever told Muhammad (pbuh) was that he was 100% certain Muhammad (pbuh) was going to get severely persecuted and kicked out of Makkah and made no mention whatsoever of the chance of him not being killed in the process and seeing success instead, so if Muhammad (pbuh) was just making this up he easily could of stopped right then as very few people had heard that he had received the revelation.

If the guy literally nicknamed by the other Arabs before he even became a Prophet as al-Amin (“the Honest One”) was so good at lying he could easily make up some story to explain to the people who saw the horrified man run down the mountain to his house why he did so.

Better yet, why didn’t he convert to Judaism and wait a few years before pretending to get a revelation, as doing so would make all the Jews of Arabia much more receptive to him.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Do you want to join our Religion of window cult?We think of the world as a virtual world created by someone who is watching us through a window

[Page]

Universal human tendencies displayed in religion:

1) The just world fallacy. The idea that good must be rewarded and evil must be punished, which causes humans to either conceive of a God which issues ultimate judgment and designates an eternal destination, or a cosmic system like karma. Humans are bad at accepting that there is no justice except that which we make.

2) Personification. Humans are extremely susceptible to projecting humanity onto animals and even objects. There are experiments where one literally has to do nothing more than give an inanimate object like a pencil a name or draw a smiley face on it and then break it and it causes visceral discomfort. It stands to reason that humans likewise personify the universe as a whole in the form of God.

3) Explaining the world through stories. We come up with narratives for how things came to be; every culture has a mythology of some kind, in almost every case a creation myth. This tendency combines with the above mentioned tendency of personification to cause us to think things come about as the result of agency.

4) Magical thinking. Experiments show that birds that are given food at random intervals no matter what they do will come to believe that the most recent thing they did caused the food to appear, and they will repeat that action in hopes of conjuring more food. This tendency is certainly a feature of the human mind as well.

5) Patriarchal or matriarchal society. Humans instinctively desire a family unit and hierarchy. The parent figure takes care of its children and its children obey it because they believe the parent figure knows what is best. God is a natural creation of such thinking.

[Cetacea]

The problem with this view is that we know Indian religions had at least some influence in the Middle East (likely via traders and general cultural osmosis) as far back as the Bronze Age and cities on the western coast of Arabia would have had easy access to Christian traders with which to learn stories and such things.

If that were the reasoning, the Qur’ân if made up likely would have included actual Hindu stories in them just with changed characters.

Regardless, the vast majority of people in Arabia were polytheists who had never met a Christian, and Muhammad (pbuh) would not have been able to reproduce Bible stories in rhymes over the course of over 23 from simple memory when there were no real Christians around.

There were Abrahamic monotheist, as well as Christians and Jews in Arabia in the 4th Century, particularly associated with Yemeni tribes. They lived alongside the Polytheist and animist and often traded with each other and with the sorrounding cultures from the Indian ocean to the Mediterranean sea.

It is likely that a boy and young man of the Qurayshi tribe would have heard many stories which influenced his thinking. We know the Prophet travelled as a merchant and spent time with a Christian monk who prophesied over him too. I a certain that even if he couldnt read, as a merchant he was able to use numbers and record his transactions, so he was clever enough to remember the stories and conversations he got over his life.

I am no expert but I do not think that detracts from the miracle of Allah giving revelation to His Prophet.

[Vorausen]

Is there any Hindu people out there that can tell me if this is true.

So I was reading about religions with Jesus like figures and one that struck me was Vishnu.

He was born into a human , with god inside of him. His mother was a virgin (just like Mary), did deeds just like Jesus (healing the sick, casting out demons, etc), was killed, and then after three days rose again


The crazy part was the story of Vishnu was way before the whole story of Jesus was et to take place by almost 900 years!

[Genivaria]

Is there any Hindu people out there that can tell me if this is true.

So I was reading about religions with Jesus like figures and one that struck me was Vishnu.

He was born into a human , with god inside of him. His mother was a virgin (just like Mary), did deeds just like Jesus (healing the sick, casting out demons, etc), was killed, and then after three days rose again


The crazy part was the story of Vishnu was way before the whole story of Jesus was et to take place by almost 900 years!

Why is that crazy? Sickness and injury are pretty universal and holy figures being born from virgins is quite common in mythology.

[Insaanistan]

Is there any Hindu people out there that can tell me if this is true.

So I was reading about religions with Jesus like figures and one that struck me was Vishnu.

He was born into a human , with god inside of him. His mother was a virgin (just like Mary), did deeds just like Jesus (healing the sick, casting out demons, etc), was killed, and then after three days rose again


The crazy part was the story of Vishnu was way before the whole story of Jesus was et to take place by almost 900 years!

I’m not Hindu, but oh yeah, 100%.

Hinduism (when viewed as one religion which is a bit ignorant) also has a Trinity.