I don’t know who’s right or wrong, or whether anyone is right at all, but isn’t it interesting that so many people believe in something? I mean, everyone’s sat down, at some point, and thought about this whole god thing, no matter what they believe. Everyone, from all over the world! Even when they were separated so far apart no one knew there were other cultures out there.
The Mesopotamians believed in several gods, the best known as king Gilgamesh. The Chinese believed in the Mandate of Heaven, and the Egyptians had several gods. Native Americans had a wide variety of gods themselves. Isn’t it strange that people who lived so far away, and couldn’t communicate with each other, could have beliefs so similar? They even shared the idea of polytheism, or believing in multiple gods.
As the timeline continues, we begin to see a shift from many gods to only one worldwide. Sure, communications increased, but the fact that everyone around the world’s beliefs began to shift to only one god is very impressive. We saw the emergence of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity (the youngest of the four), and Islam. But why? How did such an idea even get started? Granted, there may have been a few people getting sick of keeping track of all of these gods and goddesses, and the strange, but interesting love affairs they had (like Greek and Roman gods and goddesses), or maybe something spectacular was happening.
Granted, most the popularity in religion is the incredible spread of it to other countries. Conquests and conversions alone, we have the Crusades and the Inquisition to consider. All in the name of forcing people to believe as we do. It’s a shared idea really. Everyone wants to spread their religious ideas, albeit some more peacefully than others.
The need seems to come from this notion of a Hell and a Heaven, to put it simply. For Buddhists, the Heaven may be Nirvana (not the band), and for Hindus the Heaven may be being reborn to the elite class, but this notion of a paradise is the same.
The notion of a fiery place to keep evildoers is also pretty universal, the Greeks, the Egyptians, Christians, Muslim, and Jewish peoples all believe in some form of Hell. Once again, whose to say whether or not there is a Hell, or which one is the actual Hell (should it exist), but it is fascinating to me that so many different peoples could have the same sort of idea.
Where do these ideas come from? Well there are theories. One of course, is that it is all absolutely true and their deity, or deities, has spoken to them and they have seen these things with their own eyes. Another stems from a need for order in a society. The belief is deities were created by man to scare mankind into acting more civilized.
Religion does have an advantage there; most religions have principles that everyone following their religion must adhere to, which are often things like don’t steal or kill. These are good messages, but you don’t necessarily need religion to believe in them, although the fright that you may burn for an eternity does help.
However there is one idea that is probably religion’s biggest downfall. The idea is this: the people who do not believe in my God (or Gods) are evil and must be destroyed. Now that idea is extremely destructive to society. Not only that, it breaks most of their own principles.
That isn’t to say that everyone who believes in a god, or gods, feels this way, but every religion has people who share that belief. (Which is almost ironic isn’t it? The people they think are so evil and different share that belief.)
In the end, we’re not as different as we may think we are. Our cultures may be different, but humans all share some principle ideas.
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