Originally posted by: Narmer
Originally posted by: StormRider
Did the Egyptian religions also have the same influence on the Eastern religions/philosophies from Asian?
They are all the same. If you take out the entire Middle East, Africa, and Europe, you can easily see that the vast majority of Eastern religion was derived from Hinduism, including Buddhism. The fact that Hinduism and the Egyptian Rituals are extremely similar is beyond argument. In fact, you can see the same savior in all these religions in the form of Osiris/Christ/Chrisna/Buddah, they are all the same. The other strange underlying fact is that they are all avatars of Om, the supreme god. In other words, there is only one God. That is why the prefix Om (am or um) can be found in virtually every language known to man. From Ameda in Japanese to amir in Hebrew to Amen (Ammon) to amore to omnipresent and ambrosia. Wherever you see that prefix, it has a positive meaning.
That's cool. I'm agnostic but have positive feelings about religion. For me, I hope there is a God and that there are many paths to him and that the different religions are just different paths (or different views) to this God.
In Babylon 5, I think there was this group that studied all religions and tried to find the things that are common to all of them.
I personally think that religion evolves over time. When society was barbaric, we felt the need for a strong stern God who would punish wrongdoers. As society progresses and we create laws and institutions to protect ourselves (we don't concern ourselves with the very act of survival 100% of the time these days) we feel the need for a more forgiving God.
In essence, we are creating what we think this God should be like and we are attempting to create a world according to what we think are his wishes.
In a science fiction standpoint, sometimes I wonder if our collective consciousness will give rise to a greater consciousness -- maybe it will become this God. Just like our neurons (which can be thought of as primitive processing units) construct our consciousness, each individual person (which can be thought of as a more advanced processing unit) will eventually construct the consciousness of God.
If we do create God then this God will have the form of what we think or wish it will be. That's why I hope for a God that will allows for many different paths to him and that most religions will just be a different representation of him (sort of how light can be viewed as either a particle or wave).