On Religion – Look To The Message, Not The Founder

Every religion in the world to date has started as one person (the founder), having insight into wisdom. This wisdom is such that it is helpful advice to live your life by for a more fulfilling experience and a deeper understanding of the universe, the world we live in, and our own humanity. The founder writes it down and shares it with others because they want to be helpful. A small number of ardent followers appear and exalt the founder in order to spread the wisdom further. At the heart of this wisdom is a central power (sometimes anthropomorphized and sometimes not) responsible for creating and maintaining everything in the universe. Ultimately, as the wisdom spreads, we as humans tend to place enormous significance on the founder, to the point of worship – in many instances, this worship of a human founder/author is diametrically opposed to the wisdom itself. We pray to the people who wrote it down as much as to the central power itself to protect us from life and our own stupidity; neither of which they can do. Then we argue, fight and kill over which book of wisdom and which founder is right when the reality is that they are all perspectives on the same truth and the same existence – each incomplete but offering some important larger ideas. So which is right? All of them. For me, the right answer is to study them all, and to take from each the larger ideas and wisdom that are at the heart of each, because the truth at the heart of them all is the same.