Gonzalez 1

Alfredo Gonzalez

Suzanne Jacobs

RELS 2300

April 25, 2018

Position Comparison – Why all religions are ultimately the same.

For as long as humanity has walked the Earth, we have gazed up at the sky and pondered

the great enigmas of our existence; our origin, our purpose, our place amongst the stars. With

great intelligence and cognition comes self-awareness, and it is self-awareness that has eternally

bound us to the condition of being clever enough to ask questions we know we may never find

answers to; Advancements in science and technology have helped us better understand the

mechanical workings of the universe around us but they have done little to satisfy the

aforementioned queries. And so, in an attempt to explain the unknowable, we developed religion.

An institution whose sole purpose was to satisfy our need for answers by any means necessary in

the face of uncertainty. Interestingly, as our knowledge of the material world developed

exponentially over the millennia, religion, as a method to satisfy our need for faith and for

comfort, remained relatively unchanged. The kaleidoscopic nature of religion, especially when

looked at as a whole, has yielded the most exquisite and august of everything that has been done

in its name. And though the differences between each religion are clearly evident, even to the

most oafish among us, those differences are merely superficial. In the end, all religions are the

same.

The claim that all religions are the same is not the same as "all religions are right", a

belief that is gaining traction amongst younger generations who aim to consolidate the different

religious identities into one universal truth by telling each group that they are correct or that they
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each hold a portion of the truth; Religious movements such as Baha'I have even made this

philosophy a cornerstone of their faith by claiming for example, that God has sent teachers or

"Manifestation of God" in the likes of which are Jesus, Muhhamed, Siddhartha, Krishna, and

Zoroaster. They claim that each educator carried with him a message of truth from God. The

pursuit of a universal truth, love, and brotherhood is an undeniably noble pursuit, but it is

fundamentally flawed, because to accept the notion that everyone is correct is as equally valid as

accepting that everyone is wrong, or in that same sense, that everyone is wrong but me. On the

opposite end of the spectrum, there is the atheist group which ranges from Agnostic or moderate,

to fanatical. The more extreme individuals in this group are atheists that embrace the notion of

godlessness with such extreme fervor that it paradoxically becomes their faith. In other words,

they hold their atheism to such a high degree, and place all their certainty in the fact that there is

no God, that it inadvertently becomes their religion. In order to answer the question of whether

all religions are ultimately the same, it first requires of whomever is asking the question to reject

all forms of absolutism. The answer beseeches an individual's earnest sensibilities and

willingness to compromise; without these two things the answer to the question is as useless as

the time spent asking it.

On any given day, if a person were to search the definition of religion, say in a standard

dictionary, he or she might encounter something along the lines of "The belief and worship of a

higher power" (paraphrased from the Oxford dictionary). This definition is true yet highly

generalized, the average person knows that religion is so much more encompassing than that, it

is far more powerful and meaningful than could ever be encapsulated in a single sentence. If

then, hypothetically, that person, unsatisfied with the Oxford definition turned to an

encyclopedia, the prestigious encyclopedia Britannica for example, he or she would read of
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people and religion: "...relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual,

divine, or worthy of especial reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way

people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In many

traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or

attitude toward gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they are

expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community

or the natural world..." This latter definition may appease most but it poses a problem that

authors Mary Pat Fisher and Robert Rinehart address, they write about the many challenges of

trying to define religion. To illustrate, Fisher and Rinehart write in their book, 'Living Religions'

(Pearson; 10th edition), under section 1.1 'Attempts to Define Religion' that the different labels

used today to define different religious groups did not exist until the 19rth century. They go on to

add that said labels were assigned based on Christian models and western notions such as that a

person can only belong to one faith at a time, or that philosophies such as Confucianism do not

constitute a religion according to their partial standards. Because of all this, objectively defining

religion is incredibly difficult.

It comes to show that the definition of religion is merely a matter of semantics. At surface

level and by the most general definition, all religions are indeed different. Sunni's and Shia's,

Catholics and Protestants, Theravada and Mahayana, etc. these are all different because they

each carry with them their own history, tradition, rituals, beliefs, customs, etc. Each religion has

an idiosyncratic combination of these elements that is exclusive to that religion and that religion

alone; and while there is an area of overlap between some of them, they continue to hold on to

their unique identities by clearly delineating what sets them apart from others like them. In

addition to this, the tendency of most religions is to move away from a common core, much like
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a tree branch grows from a trunk and with each split, the religion normally sees less and less

followers. To illustrate this point let us use Christianity as an example, at its core is the belief in

one creator God; from that, came a long lineage of prophets leading up to Jesus of Nazareth;

Jesus then establishes a gospel and ministry which the late apostles helped proliferate after the

death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ (as per Christian belief); as this movement gains

momentum and is unified during the first council of Nicaea, we begin to see the multiplying and

telescoping nature of each deviation; the teachings of Jesus morph into Roman Catholicism, then

Protestants, Anglicans, Methodists, and so on; eventually the line between religion and cult is

blurred and we end up with organizations such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter Day Saints, a 20th century offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

One could similarly follow that same pattern for any religion and in any direction; for Buddhism

one might begin with the teachings of Sidhartha Gautama, then follow a line through Mahayana,

Pure Land, Jodu Shinsho, Humanistic Buddhism, and so on. This can be done for any religion.

Despite all the above and despite the existence of several thousand separate religious groups, the

great majority of those groups each independently arrived to similar conclusions when it comes

to a moral and ethical framework. Mind you that the question isn't if all religions are the same,

we now know the answer to that is a resounding no, but the question asks if all religions are

ultimately the same; and to that the answer is yes.

The ultimate goal of the overwhelming majority of religions is to improve the human

condition. It does so by promoting messages of love, peace, respect, charity, and many other

values that can easily and universally be regarded as positive. Innately, religion is a force of

good, it advocates exemplary righteousness by upholding moral standards that are ubiquitous and

self-evident in any environment. One might be inclined to ask, if these principles are self-evident
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then how it is that religion has been responsible for the deaths of thousands if not millions

throughout history? The answer to that is that the people waging wars against their fellowman,

be it physical or any other in the name of religion, are acting in diametric opposition to the

fundamental values of their faith, and as such are dissentient religious defectors, or quite simply,

heretics. Dr John Ankerberg, renowned author, minister, and strong proponent of Christian

Evangelism argues that all religions are fundamentally different and that the only similarities are,

at best, some of the ethical imperatives they share. This argument is valid but is limited by the

degree of scope, as one steps back in order to look at the bigger picture the similarities between

each religion, its teachings, its purpose, and its goals all become one and the same. Ph.D. and

scholar of religion Reza Aslan made an interesting distinction during a 2014 interview, he argued

that there is in fact a difference between faith and religion, he argued, "faith is indescribable, its

ineffable, its deeply personal, and individualistic. Religion is nothing more than a language

made up symbols and metaphors to help us express faith to ourselves and to other people. " He

goes on to explain that the faith held be people around the world is "deeply held in common" and

that religion is what as language of faith is what is different, and in this sense, all religions are

ultimately the same.