Are all religions the same?

1 • A troublesome word…

The concept of “different” in our times creates discomfort.

It causes discomfort to some who believe it is synonymous with “threatening,” “hostile,” or “adversary.”

It causes discomfort to others who believe that using this adjective makes them “intolerant,” “unjust,” or “xenophobic.”

In the first case, diversity is seen negatively (more or less explicitly).

In the second case, the adjective “different” is viewed with disapproval (because it would be “a violent word” not to be used).

As usual, “extremes meet”…

2 • Does “different” mean “hostile”?

(It seems a bit redundant to say, but oh well…) Diversity, throughout history, has been a cause of conflicts among people.

At times, it has been disputes between neighbors who were different.

Occasionally, conflicts arose between neighboring fiefs.

Other times, there were conflicts between nations.

In some cases, it involved distant glares exchanged between kings…

In short, century after century, we’ve had our fair share of disagreements.

Whether it was:

• trivial quarrels;
• wars to conquer lands that were “once ours”;
• clashes to defend ourselves from the “invader”;
• perishing by the sword to earn a place in Valhalla;
• achieving everlasting glory beneath the walls of Troy (“Helen is ours, damn you!”);
• and so on…

…the only thing I wanted to emphasize, as I’ve already stated, is the obvious: diversity has caused conflicts.

3 • Is “different” a bad word?

Given that diversity has caused conflicts, at some point in the past, a “rather unique” stratagem was implemented to prevent disputes from recurring: removing the word “different” from the vocabulary.

Just for the record, “different” is not the only adjective that has undergone this treatment.

The same censorship has been applied to other terms, which are slowly disappearing from our lexicon, replaced by rather strange alternatives:

What can I say? I believe that this kind of “neolanguage of the third millennium” (as in, “George Orwell, make way!”) is slipping a bit out of our control…

4 • “Different” is not a curse word; it is the opposite of “same”

At the risk of appearing unpopular, I believe that this way of expressing oneself — especially in certain contexts — is becoming somewhat carnival-esque (to avoid using other adjectives…).

I don’t think lexical censorship is helpful in the dialogue between “different” individuals.

If someone has a problem with one eye, the first thing an eye doctor thinks of is to try to heal it, not to remove the eye…

Metaphor aside: before “throwing away” a word, I would like to try to reclaim it in a healthy (and non-ideological) way.

In other words, the problem is not the words but how they are used.

In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “different” means:

5 • Are all religions the same?

Having made this introduction about the term “different,” let’s get to the heart of the article: are all religions the same?

Let’s try to answer this question, aiming to “stay balanced” on the subtle thread of common sense, without falling into either extreme:

6 • In search of an answer…

Let’s be clear: surely, religions have something in common.

To begin with, they all talk (more or less explicitly) about God.

In every religion, we find – more or less – priestly figures.

In many of them, the ethical dimension holds great importance.

There are many signs in the rituals that have a similar meaning: water, fire, incense, blood, oil…

…However, there’s a long way from here to the blanket statement of “they are all the same”!

Just to mention:

In short, when I discovered a few years ago that, in addition to my own religion, there was a considerable number of others…

• …I didn’t think they were “the bad guys”;
• …but I didn’t participate in the “watering down” game of “they are all the same.”

Instead, trying to maintain a balance between the two extremes, many questions popped into my head:

• How many religions are there?
• What’s the difference between mine and another?
• And between Islam and Buddhism? And between Jainism and Hinduism?
• What about atheists? And agnostics?
• …etc…

7 • Religions are different!

In 1908, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (British writer and journalist) wrote:

Okay, perhaps a bit grandiloquent and somewhat biased (when Chesterton wrote these lines in 1908, he was Anglican).

Despite this, I still believe that the essence of the statement is very interesting.

Christianity and Buddhism (to stick with the example, although the discussion could be extended to many other pairs of religions) are different.

They have distinct conceptions on various aspects, including:

• God (for Christians, God is a personal being, a “Thou” to engage with; for Buddhism, the matter is complex, and some historians of religion wonder whether, in certain Buddhist schools, one could even speak of “atheism.”);
• time (linear in one case, cyclical in the other);
• the outcome of life (Christian paradise and Buddhist nirvāṇa are opposite);
• the concept of suffering (n your spare time, read about the “Four Noble Truths” of Buddhism);
• the holiness of life…
• etc.

To deny these differences, taking refuge in an unrealistic irenicism, I believe, is foolish.

8 • And so on…

This discussion, of course, applies to other religions as well.

Islam is very different from Hinduism.

Judaism from Jainism.

Confucianism from the traditional cults of the Australian aborigines.

In each of these religions, significant differences can be observed in various aspects such as:

• Theology (the idea that religion has about God and His relationship with humans);
• Eschatology (i.e., “what happens after death”);
• The concept of sin (a topic mentioned earlier);
• The concept of freedom (Is man truly free? Does karma exist? What is the relationship between human freedom and the omnipotence of God?);
• etc.

It is enough to open a book on the history of religions to be convinced of this (or Wikipedia, if you’re feeling lazy…).

Conclusion

To avoid quarrels, I don’t believe it is necessary to “pretend to be the same”… it’s enough to engage in a more fruitful dialogue.

The “solution” is not to water down but to understand each other (and, why not? respect each other).

Even in differences, I believe that inter-religious dialogue is possible where dissent can be expressed without quarreling (*).

(*) (I also believe that such dialogue is more fruitful than when, for the sake of political correctness, one “strives” to sweep differences under the rug…)

Chesterton wrote further:

Well…

…now that it’s established that religions are different, Chesterton’s statement leads me to ask the real question…

…because, at the end of the scroll, I can confess that the question of whether “all religions are the same” was a partial excuse to ask the real question:

“Are all religions true?”

In this other page, I attempt to give a tentative answer…

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(Winter 2019-2020)