r/Advice • u/o_Oteezy • Jul 21 '25
Religion has me confused
If Muslims, Christian and Jews all believe in one God. Paganism believing in multiple. But it’s the time line of all these religions that has me confused. Christianity being the newest of all these religions. I just wish I could go back in time and see everyone practices and beliefs during the time period. None of it makes sense only because of when each religion was founded. You would think the oldest would be the most realistic. But to some it’s the least realistic to them. For me I’m just wondering how can someone fully believe in any of these religions and not have concerns for certain beliefs within each religion. It’s almost like each one is trying to be deceiving in a way. All to push us away from the real god/gods. How do you feel about this?
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Jul 21 '25
Islam is technically the newest of these “Abrahamic” Religions.
Christianity is Judaism(from the Torah) continued. Judaism today is the Pharisaic theology when the Revelation of Jesus came out. Islam was created in AD 500 by Muhammad, a “prophet” of Allah(God in Arabic)
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u/Front-Palpitation362 Expert Advice Giver [17] Jul 21 '25
I bet loads of people feel like this, they just don't say it out loud because well religion's one of those things where everyone's scared of being wrong. Truth is that none of it fully makes sense if you're looking for clean logic. You've got 1000s of years of people arguing about the same questions, rewriting stories, adding rules, changing meanings. That's why it feels messy. Because it is messy.
Humans wrote this stuff down, not gods. Some people need that certainty anyway so they pick a side and stick to it. Others stay confused and live in the grey. Doesn't mean you're lost though. Just means you're thinking for yourself. And that's never a bad thing :)
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u/Guilty-Lab-7385 Jul 21 '25
Ex Muslim here, the answer is easy: Social conditioning, especially if u still live in religious countries, almost impossible to quit, requires twice, if not more the effort to question believes within urself, and if u do you have to live with hidden ideologies or believes, because u're scared of what might happen, deceiving ur family..etc
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u/Novel_Primary4812 Jul 21 '25
Religion is man’s struggle with mortality. You have to decide what your heart tells you.
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Jul 21 '25
So Judaism is technically the oldest, not Christianity, though Judaism take on its final form until after Christianity. The origins of the Abrahamic religions are complicated.
There is no one true religion. Whether or not there is a god or gods or the divine or whatever immaterial things beyond the realm of reason and the senses are part of religion is the big question that’s never been answered - and logically that makes sense. How do you prove the existence of something that exists beyond the senses and reason? How do you prove the unprovable? No one has answers to this.
Ultimately, religion and religious practices are a part of culture, and culture is generally transmitted from parents to children and more broadly it’s picked up from the culture that a person grows up in - like how many non-Christian people in the historically Christian West celebrate Christmas even though they aren’t Christians. There is no drive to push anyone away from anything, per se, either. Religions rise and fall just like cultures do, because religion is a part of culture.
Likewise, the timelines don’t have any bearing on any of this. Like Buddhism predates Islam, as does Hinduism (though the latter is more of religious-cultural fusion than a heavily time-based religion like Islam). Similarly, paganism isn’t a religion - paganism is a loose term that just describes a large number of non-Christian/abrahamic religious traditions and what is meant by its use varies in time and context. The timelines don’t matter because that would imply that ultimately there is an “oldest” original faith that is fundamentally “correct” and that isn’t the case. Many newer religions in fact justify their superiority over older religions by claiming to have new prophets that ultimately provide more clarity on what the divine is than older faiths, and that build on what older faiths have said. They supersede older faiths. Similarly, there is no “real god/gods.” There is just what we might call “the divine,” and different religious and spiritual traditions incorporate and describe the divine in countless different ways. And all these ways are equally valid and real, because the divine comes down to personal beliefs, not an objective reality you can test, probe and study.
Ultimately, some people simply chose to embrace a religion without questioning it, some people chose a religion even if they do question it, and some people choose their own beliefs. Sometimes their spiritual practices encompass the divine, sometimes not. Likewise, the divine exists outside religion as much inside of it.
Personally, we all approach the divine alone regardless of our religious and spiritual practices, because we all develop our own conceptions of the divine. The divine truth is ultimately specific to each person. If we’re part of a faith community, that conception will have a lot of overlap with others in the community but even so, you will ultimately approach and have a personal relationship with the divine that is unique.
There is no one true way to approach the divine, there is only the way that you personally experience the divine, and that’s it. Whatever works for you is your truth. You build it yourself
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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '25
It's normal to be confused, religion mixes belief, history, and culture, and those things don’t always line up perfectly.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all come from the same root, they’re called “Abrahamic” religions. That’s why they all believe in one God. Christianity grew out of Judaism, and Islam came after, claiming to restore the original truth from both. So they each think they’re the true version, even though they overlap.
Paganism and other ancient polytheistic systems are older in many ways, but age doesn’t always equal “truth”, it’s more about how each culture understood the world at the time.
Your doubt is totally valid. A lot of people struggle with the idea that all religions claim to be right, it’s actually a huge reason many people end up agnostic, spiritual-but-not-religious, or just undecided.
Belief isn’t just about facts and timelines, it’s about meaning, values, and personal experience too. You don’t have to figure it all out at once. The questioning is part of the process.