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Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey
I don't want to step on toes regarding religion here, I'm really not trying to be disrespectful; it just seems that most major organized religions believe in fundamentally the same thing if you look at the big picture. There are a ton of specific smaller differences, but from what I know of them (admittedly not a whole lot, I'm no expert) they all believe in one omnipotent, omniscient God who created everything, and an afterlife with the division of heaven/hell. That makes them all sound pretty similar to me, especially when compared with an eastern belief like Taoism, which seems more like semi-organized agnosticism with no "The One God" and no concrete "reward/punishment" system at the end of life.
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Meh, even those are just details. The fundamental of all popular religions are exactly the same: "Love one another as you wish to be loved." It's not called the golden rule for nothing.
Things like whether or not Christ is actually the Son of God, or whether or not Mohammad is the true profit, or whether or not Moses really led the Jews through the desert, or even wheter or not there's heaven and hell, or God him/herself etc, etc, etc, don't change the fundamental teachings of these religions that you can live a better, happier life if you live with moderation and treat others as you want to be treated.
Those fundamentals are in fact the basis for every belief system... you don't even have to believe in God to see that the shared elements of religions are right. Yet, it's the details: abortion, birth control, who lived in which desert 1st, etc, that cause huge issues and wars.
Look at Protestants and Catholics... the two couldn't be more similar w/o being the same... and then look at Belfast.
Or look at Jews and Muslims... they're the same people, from the same place, with the same God... killing each other because one group says they've got a more recent profit.
Religion is actually something where there can be more than one right answer. Isn't it reasonable that God would make himself available to all people in the way that they can best identify with? Why do so many insist that their way of living is the only way that God approves of?