What if all the major religions started out with the same story and it slowly diverged from there

reply to post by FreedomXisntXFree


Care to elaborate?

the common origin was not a single event or story...

way to much time elapses between the beginning of new religions...examples
Zoroaster
Buddha
Yahweh
Jesis
Mohammed


hundreds of years between each following


the common origin is in the human brain, as an attempt to explain the odd, weird, mystical, and to sate the need for live-after-death theme, including the otherworldly state produced by ethnogens

reply to post by QuestionsEverything


Religion is a lot like fashion in the sense it changes with the times. Over the eras the cloth has stayed the same but the colours and designs differ slightly. If you delve into the minuscule amount of the documented history of human civilizations. You will find that religion goes hand in hand with the ruling structure that many ancient civilization relied on to control there citizens/subjects. In ancient times Religion was a stronger form of control through the consequence of gods judgement rather than a mortal mans judgement they could derive more loyalty and through this a stronger and more obedient nation. It is hard to pin point the earliest religion with out extensive knowledge. With my limited Knowledge i know the Egyptians predate the Jews and i think the Mesopotamians predate them. The earliest dated i have found and been interested in and has similarities with a lot of known religions is Shintoism (shinto). Although this is more of a spirituality than a form of does and donts. Through out early history religions have been incorporated into others as to keep the transition of conquering powers more fluent. The Romans were the most apparent at doing this they adopted paganism in some aspects.
S&F op great thread

Indisputable

reply to post by FreedomXisntXFree


Don't you think it's odd that the majority of us our hardwired to seek meaning from chaos? And have been so since before recorded history even began. It just seems strange that if our origins could be chalked up to a lucky combination in the primordial soup that throughout known history we have always put forth these tales of gods and spirits and otherworldly beings. What drives us to seek a reason for being?

There's been research into the feelings of spiritual euphoria and how they are centered in the pineal gland within the brain. What would the evolutionary significance of these be, it would seem to me that having to answer for your actions would cause more harm then good when dealing with fight or flight situations. You wouldn't want to be constantly second guessing whether or not you should club a neighboring tribesmans head in when being invaded.

Not really trying to break new ground here as I'm not a biblical scholar trying to gain tenure, just a regular a** dude trying to gain some insight into where I came from and why different faith's have so much in common while also having enough disparities to justify killing each other for thousands of years.

reply to post by seraphnb


You brought up some excellent points here that I was unaware of such as Zoroastrianism and Hinduism having inverted views of the same events. More to ponder.