Religions: Are They the Same?

This is a response to a question addressed to me in my Duke TIP class. Read all about it.

Are religions the same?

There are so many aspects of religions that you can't really say that they are the same accurately. Obviously, no religion is the same as the other, because then they would not be two different religions. There are, however, aspects of each religion that resembles aspects of others.

Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are all alike in their after death circumstances. Only after achieving a certain degree of works (and obviously having died) can you enter the place or state that is your reward. While all religions see the main problem in this world differently, they all reward similarly. Of course, some religions don't address the question of what happens after death. Confucianism, for instance, completely avoids the subject pardoning a few mentions of heaven. But with all of the wars and gruesome disputes that erupt from religion-based conflicts, who can honestly say that religions are all the same?

One thing that does relate all religions is faith. No religion can be followed the way it was intended without faith. Of course, there is faith in everything, so this point is moot. However, apart from the questions of what is humanity’s greatest issue and how we solve them, religions are different also in their rituals and how everything they tell us is written. Islam tells us blatantly how to live our lives. Christianity also tells us how to live our lives, but what it tells us can even contradict what is in Islam. Nowhere in Baptist writings will we find a passage that tells us to kill the non-believers. Many religions speak in metaphors and use figurative language so much that sometimes we don’t understand exactly what they are trying to tell us. That’s where religions face their downfall, where ideals are left to the reader to interpret and even abuse. Consider Nazi theology and how they used passages of the Bible to corrupt Christians. Religions are not the same except when stripped of all their details and rituals.