Thoughts on Religions

"Religions only look different if you get 'em from a retailer. If you go to a wholesaler, you'll find they get it from the same distributor."
--Stephen Gaskin

Could all religions be, at root, the same?

I was raised kind of half-assed Catholic: baptized (twice, actually), Sunday school for a short while, First Communion and so on, but almost no regular church attendance. Even as a kid, church seemed to me to be more about social standing than Anyone or Anything that might be worshipped therein.
Besides, who can deny that churches are uncomfortable places, especially for children? The pews are rock-hard, the sermons drone on and on, and every so often they're punctuated--depending on the church you're in, of course--by threats of hellfire and damnation, as if to say you think this is bad? Just you wait.

I went through a period of very strong atheism back in my teens, reciting the athiest creeds every bit as unthinkingly as I had once recited Ave Marias and Paternosters. Some time in my early twenties, I became uncomfortable with where this was leading me: I was venturing into what would now be called Dawkins and Hitchens territory. The intellectual contempt those two show for religion even in its mildest form is every bit as corrosive as the pity of the "saved" for the "lost".
So I rebounded back into Christianity for a time--this time determined to know and understand just What I was worshipping. I read the Bible. The whole thing. (Okay, okay, some relic of Catholicism just poked its head up and urged me to confess: that's a lie. I skipped more than a few "begats".)

If you want to stay religious, don't read the freakin' Bible.

Oh, by all means read the parts your pastor's already pre-picked through. Most of the New Testament's okay, though you shouldn't read all four Gospels back to back if you want to retain some honest belief in the literal truth of what you're reading. And for God's sake (ha-ha) don't have a concordance handy. Thou shalt not do any research into what you're reading, lest you come to the conclusion that the Bible, like everything else, is stuffed to the brim with politics and agendas. The Old Testament's a fascinating read: there's more violence in there than most people know about, and the God in Whose Name most of this violence is committed (indeed, He gets right down there in the muck and does a lot of shedding blood Himself) comes across strikingly human and not so much of a nice guy. Pastors I've talked to almost always say the Old Testment's left in there just to show us what Jesus saved us from. Wow. If I was the Son of that God, I think I'd bugger off to some other universe and change my name.

Having read all this and become increasingly distressed at the religious turmoil that wracks the world in small and large ways, I embarked on a quick tour of other faiths. It was kind of weird what happened next. Maybe because I was determined not to devote myself to any one faith entirely, I found myself considering each faith not from an "either/or" perspective but rather a "both/and". Strip away the dogmas of each faith, I found, and you get a core of strikingly similar teachings.

It's amazing, the capacity of humans to simplify things and twist them around to fit preconceived conclusions. Take this site, for instance. It just happens to be a Christian site, urging people towards Christianity. The question up for discussion here is "Aren't all religions the same"?
In what purports to be an evenhanded description of world faiths, the site's author examines each faith's concept of God or Gods:

"Hindus acknowledge multitudes of gods and goddesses.
Buddhists say there is no deity.
New Age followers believe they are God.
Muslims believe in a powerful but unknowable God.
Christians believe in a God who is loving and approachable."

Hmmm. Each statement is technically true, I suppose, but there's a whole lot left out here.
Hindus, for example, believe in atman, the soul, which is either at one with or at most partially separated from Brahman--the all-encompassing soul of the universe and the animator of all life. Doctrines vary, but this Brahman sounds suspiciously like something one might call a God among gods.
Buddhism is almost unique among religions in that it doesn't worship a God; it only seeks to attain "enlightenment". Depressingly, there are schisms galore even in this most pacifist of faiths as to just how this might be done. Interestingly, though, the enlightened state seems very much like being "at one with the all encompassing soul of the universe".
New Age adherents believe they are God. True. They also believe that everyone and everything else is God as well. That's crucial. To a Christian perspective, the elevation of oneself to Godhood is the ultimate blasphemy--which is kind of odd, since Jesus often referred to the "Body of Christ" and called us all "Sons of God"--but the thing is, followers of the New Age seek never to "elevate" themselves above anyone or anything else. God is within all--you might say it's the "all-encompassing soul of the universe"--so being higher (or lower) than God is impossible. Anything that appears to separate us from God or each other is an illusion. Which means, in New-Age-speak, ultimately love is all there is.
Islam--well, the Christian website's got at least one thing wrong here: Allah may be powerful, but He's certainly not unknowable. Muslims communicate with God five times a day through prayer; they also know Allah through the teachings of the Qu'ran. (Actually, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of an "unknowable" God--what would be the point?)
Anyway, Islam, more specifically Sufism, looks awfully familiar: the goal here is wahdat, translated as "unity with Allah (God)."

"Two main Sufi philosophies prevail on this controversial topic. Wahdat-ul-Wujood (Unity of Being) essentially states that in God lies everything and God lies in everything. Wahdat-ul-Shuhud (Apparentism, or Unity of Witness), on the other hand, holds that God and his creation are entirely separate. Some Islamic reformers have claimed that the difference between the two philosophies differ only in semantics and that the entire debate is merely a collection of "verbal controversies" which have come about because of ambiguous language."

Illusion, perhaps?

Christianity seems the odd man out here until one starts looking into Gnosticism. (For a modern view, see Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). Atheists be warned: here's a God you might actually like.

Atonement for past sins is a fundamental concept in Christianity. Funny word, that. Hyphenate it: "at-one-ment". The goal of all Christians is to be at one with Jesus Christ, Who is God, in one of His Aspects. Might not a common sin be to imagine ourselves separate from God and each other? If we are separate, then various corrupting influences creep in. We begin to imagine we're in competition for God's favour (and each other's). We justify attacks on each other; we pit ourselves and our God against you and yours. Before long, we have the world we see on the news each night.

Words are obviously limiting, and yet people cling to them like life preservers, insisting on their own phrases to describe a religious point of view and decrying everyone else's. Every petty difference is held up as a defining characteristic of one's faith, and worse, the proof that other faiths are inferior. Any time you hear something religious that you just can't stand, wrack your brain for another way of expressing the same concept. Odds are you'll find one more palatable, to you if not to the person spaking Religion at you.

"I think there is only one church, and your membership button in it is your belly button."
--Stephen Gaskin