Do all religions come from the same source? Yes and no, depending on your perspective. From the framework of universal laws and physics, people are alike and difference of religion is a vocabulary problem. From the framework of individuals and different human cultures, religions are never the same. Despite this, their origins are more similar than their political- cultural presentations.
People are a part of nature and their concepts, values, ideal dimensions and institutions are also a part of nature. This is called ontological argument for religion, yet it brings more secular understanding of God, because if it’s a part of natural law, the individual differences are just nuances and the root may be more objective. Just like religions sharing similar discourse, the concept of god can signify a common reality.
Individuals have similar instincts and reflexes, even different animals can share similarities. It’s also present in all humans that we share the same linguistic capacity. We share the concept of “god” as well, common in all cultures whether it’s civilized or torn apart in the forests. All people have the idea of god as if it’s a natural occurrence. Most of these ideas have evolved to be religions, systematic culture on supernatural beings. Those religions differ in terms of vocabulary and tenets, though their similarity is exceptional as well.
Eastern religions are completely different from the Western ones, in the subset of religion. However, in the realm of everything in the scope of all existence, religions look alike. They’re the accumulation of values among people. It started primitively, than became the famous systematic religions and now we have modern myths and ideologies as a continuation of the same effort. Idealization, an avant-guard activity of leading people conceptually.
In this perspective, all religions and ideal efforts stem from the same source, to lead people in the ideal plane; however it’s more problematic than it seems. Ideal planes are realized through cultural elements and ideals are hard to export from a local culture. They’re not easily understood by a different culture. For example, you have to know how Arabs lived in the 7th century to be able to understand Quran, the holy book of Muslims. You also need to grasp the context of Marxists to understand what they mean through their concepts.
Religions and all value related cultures look alike when you broaden your perspective. The source is the same, our minds. What is the mind, we don’t know for the time being. However we can point out to the source. The source is not the same maybe, but it’s far away from our physical senses. And when two things are far away from us and close to each other, you seem like pointing out to the same thing.
A man came to Buddha and asked if he can tell him about afterlife, and what was God like.
Buddha told him he can’t. But he can ask a question if he wants. The man agreed.
Walking in a forest, If an arrow struck you in the chest out of nowhere, would you go to the village and patch it to save your life? Or would you try to find who did this and what is the arrow made of?
