Sean McDowell answers the question: Can all religions be true? In a relativistic worldview, many people, even Christians, believe all religions are just different ways of getting to the same place. In other words, all roads lead to the same place. This is very easily shown to be false and Sean does a great job of showing why they cannot all be true at the same time.
Can All Religions Be True? No Way! | Sean McDowell
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Haden Clark 
Perhaps subjective beings shouldn’t try to know objective truth. “The Truth,” whatever it may be, is surely more complicated than we can imagine. We are all Horatio.
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In the first place its only a small leap of faith in assuming that “Jesus Christ” and “Krishna” (of Hinduism) are the same guy. Its just that Hinduism is more than four thousand years old and so the religion appears polytheistic from a western standpoint because its had more than 2000 years to develop its Angels and Saints; which have been ascribed a level of “divinity” of they’re own. Hinduism also has its own trinity (“Hindu triumvirate”/”trimurti” consisting of the spirit forms; Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva) In fact I could easily make the case that Hinduism and Christianity are the same religion because in evolutionary biology we would call this symmetry “convergent evolution” which describes organisms not closely related who independently develop similar physical traits. Catholics are equally guilty of “Saint worship” so there is little difference.
Secondly Buddhism is not Atheistic rather it places emphasis on ones the awareness of ones personal behavior and spiritual path over the worship of a deity. The eastern spiritual philosophies are coming from a civilization much older than our western ones and so it makes certain underlying assumptions that we as westerners are still learning to appreciate. The point is; what does it matter if one worships the “correct G-d” if one is a terrible person who works evil against those around him? Indeed “Faith” and “belief in G-d” both count for nothing if you are a evil person.
The fact is there are #number patterns included in the Bible that unify all religions and any attempt to further separate them will be in vain. Its all been clearly laid out in J. R. R. Tolkien’s the Lord Of The Rings which is an expanded version of the Revelation. As proof of this I cite: ” And he said to me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues and kings.” -Revelation 10:11 The lesson being meant to show that even a fictional “fairy tail” like Lord of the Rings can hold the same spiritual quality and moral validity that we revere in religious texts. Its just a different means of expressing it. As believers we are entitled to properly learn about all spiritual systems and I am grateful for each of them.
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If all religions are equal, then they are all equally meaningless. It would logically follow that philosophical forms of Satanism and Christian theology are then identical in practice and philosophy. Such an idea is preposterous and not supported by the Gospel.
Hinduism though inclusive and seductive, is not equal to Christianity. Christ and Krishna are fundamentally not the same. The Bhagavad-Gita is a philosophical work expounding the key tenants of Vaishnavaism and Vedanta, some of the same ideas and phrases can be found in the Upanishads. It may be “revelatory” in the sense that Krishna, in the form of Vishvarupa, reveals these ideas to Arjuna, but the reality is that these concepts were already circulating among the Upanishadic and Sankyha philosophical schools. The Gospels are unique in that they are not philosophical, as in promoting a known philosophical school (such as Stoicism, Cynicism or Platonism). The Gospels are apocalyptic, revealing that that the Kingdom of God is upon us and a Day of Judgment and Resurrection will occur in the future.
Krishna says unequivocally that he is indeed God himself, and avatar of Maha-Vishnu. Who is the Saguna Brahman Jesus Christ does not ever claim that he is in fact God, but rather the Son of God and the Son of Man. It is only through the full comprehension of the Gospels, that the mystery of Jesus’s relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit become apparent. Jesus is a member and expression of a triune, co-equal in substance, representation of a single transcendent God.
Vishnu nor Shiva, revealed themselves to Abraham or Moses to expound upon the secrets of Vedanta to them. Neither the Torah or the Gospels teach us about the Day and Night of Brahma, Jnana Yoga, the cyclical nature of Samsara for the Atman, or the cyclical nature of the Yugas as are taught in the Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita.
It wasn’t the Vedic Vishnu who revealed himself to Moses, to set the Hebrews apart from the nations. It was not Mahadeva who gave his specific Laws to Hebrews to be followed. Further, Jesus refers only to the Hebrew scriptures and prophets as reference for his Parables and stories, he never refers to any other source. There is no trace of Vedanta in his message.
So how can we equate Krishna with Jesus? Shiva and Vishnu with YHWH? On a very practical level they are not the same in action and narrative. Such a generalized equivocation blurs the specific character of each of the entities. To say that they are each an individual expression or fragment of an entirely ineffable deity that absorbs all religions into one becomes a severe form of relativism. Nihilism is just around the corner as all meaning and purpose melt into a vortex without any attributes.
As a Christian, I take it as an obligation to differentiate my God and my faith from the many deities and philosophies that would attempt to subsume and drown out the uniqueness Christ and his Gospel.
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Love the discussion! I have a Buddhist co-worker who doesn’t believe in God at all. Following Christ is about a relationship with someone still living. His body is not in the grave somewhere as in other religions that follow someone they revere.
My 2 cents. Have a great day!
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MOST religions claim that they teach the truth about God. But that is not possible, because religions teach very different things about who God is and how we should worship him. So, the question remains, How can we know the right way to worship God? Jehovah is the only one who can tell us how we should worship him.
Jehovah has given us the Bible to teach us which can lend to our very own happiness. Isaiah 48:17
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