Why are there differences between religions?

Answer 1

Everybody has a different idea about religion.

In the beginning, they were probably either dreamed up or based on events. Then when others and descendants followed the religions they became even more extreme and different.

We human beings are imperfect creatures with imperfect knowledge, and we sometimes struggle for the truth but do not find it, or we make errors, or we do not recognize the truth when it is presented to us. We all like to come up with our own opinions about things, and not surprisingly, it turns out that different people tend to have different opinions.

Religion is subject to much more disagreement than most subjects, because it is about things that are difficult to directly perceive or to logically prove. We are usually expected to accept religion on faith, since we do not have more a more concrete basis for belief, yet, once we accept things on faith, we are potentially going to be in conflict with other people who have accepted something else on faith, that is different than what we accepted on faith, and there is no objective test by which we can determine which of these differing beliefs is correct, since they both have exactly the same basis, which is faith.

Mathematics is not like religion. Mathematical proofs can be very complicated, but for those who have the intelligence and mental discipline to follow them, they are quite clear and persuasive. As a result, mathematicians tend to be in excellent agreement about mathematics. There are no differing schools of mathematics trying to defeat opposing schools and to brand those who disagree as heretics. Science, like mathematics, advances harmoniously, with all scientists working together and generally in agreement about what science has taught us.

We have also been able to observe that mathematics and science are very functional in the real world; our mathematical and scientific solutions do enable us to solve real problems. With religion, it is much harder to say what is actually being accomplished. People constantly pray, and sometimes believe that their prayers are answered, and sometimes their prayers do not seem to be answered, and this can happen in many different religions. No one religion has distinguished itself as being more reliable than others in terms of the likelihood that your prayers will be answered. Many people still die of cancer, for example, even though there is always someone praying for them, and this happens no matter which religion they believe. Religion, on other words, has not presented us with unequivocal evidence. Even Mother Teresa expressed doubts in her diary (which she did not intend to be published, but which was published anyway, posthumously).

Religion is tricky. It is often claimed that God is superior to human beings and is therefore beyond the comprehension of human beings, but if that is the case, we may have no way of knowing what we should believe, since we are being asked to believe something that we cannot comprehend. And if we do not know what we should believe, then it is not surprising that different people arrive at different beliefs.

We are presented with many different claims about the afterlife, yet, the living have not seen the afterlife, only the dead have (possibly) seen it, and they do not return to tell us what they have seen. Or if they do return (since many religions do believe in reincarnation) they seem to do so with a terrible case of amnesia, and still cannot tell us what they have seen. Or we have spiritualists who claim to communicate with the dead, yet are charlatans who engage in obvious trickery for their own enrichment. No clear evidence emerges, to tell us what to think about life after death.

Historically, different religions originated in different geographical areas and in different tribal groups. Religion is then accepted primarily because it is traditional, but different people have different traditions. If your loyalty is to tradition rather than to objective truth, don't be surprised if someone else winds up with different traditional beliefs than yours, and does not agree with you about religion.

Perhaps I should add that every religious person will give you quite a different explanation than the one I have offered. They will tell you that their own religion is obviously true and is completely proved and confirmed beyond any possible doubt, but there exist people in the world who have been misled, or who are ignorant, and have not had the benefit of a good religious education, or (perhaps) have fallen victim to evil people or to Satan (etc.) and therefore they have failed to perceive the truth. The main problem with that kind of assertion is that every religion can make that claim. And yet, logically, there can be (at most) only one true religion. Every religion could be at least partially true, but only one can be completely true. So with every religion claiming to be obviously true, and claiming that they have clear and irrefutable evidence of their truth, we also know that most of them (if not all of them) are lying. So it's not that simple. Religion, when you examine it closely, turns out to be very complicated in its philosophical implications. And most people are really not prepared to deal with that complexity. It is much easier to just believe what their parents, and teachers, and clergymen have told them to believe every since they were born. And that is why there is disagreement about religion.

Answer 2

Differences between religions can be attributed to various factors, including cultural influences, historical development, interpretation of sacred texts, and differing beliefs about the nature of the divine. These differences reflect the diversity of human experiences and worldviews, leading to a rich tapestry of religious traditions.