Do all religions and philosophies originate from one universal and timeless truth?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

Subject classification: this is a philosophy resource.

Subject classification: this is a religious resource.

There are various beliefs and philosophies that claim all knowledge and wisdom originate from an eternal truth. Among them are perennialism, traditionalism, omnism, theosophy, Western Sufism and the Bahá'í Faith. All these movements believe in the existence of a universal truth that underlies all religions and spiritual traditions. They acknowledge that all religions fundamentally contain the same wisdom and truths, despite their different forms and rituals. They also view the spiritual development of humanity as a process guided by various religions and spiritual teachings.

All teachings originated from one universal and timeless truth

Pro

• Pro Mystics from various religious traditions often report similar experiences and insights. These experiences include unity with the divine, transcendence of time and space, and a direct, intuitive knowledge of an ultimate reality.
  • Objection That is because of the human brain, mainly. Such can caused through neurological changes induced from certain classes of drugs or otherwise.
• Pro Religious traditions share many core values and ethical principles, such as compassion, justice, love and humility. This suggests a common source of moral and spiritual wisdom.
  • Objection Because as humans we naturally need those things. Really, I do agree that all religions come from the truth, but have deviated from it. The truth is obviously Islam to any rational person.
  • Objection That is because of other reasons such as that such morals are attractive, sound good on paper, are good for societal cohesion, follow from biology, support the status quo or state, and so on.

Con

• Con There are many differences between religions, even among monotheistic religions. For example, Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God, Jews do not recognize Jesus as a divine being, and Muslims say that Jesus was a prophet.
  • Objection Why must we grandly brand these aforementioned relations as some fixed information that is true to one religion only? The definitions of "messiah" for the Jewish differ from the "messiah" of the Christians--and same with Muslims--but in the end, people's recognition if one was the messiah does not make the universal and timeless truth any different amongst religions.
  • Objection These are just details. You need to look at what the similarities are between these religions. For example, it could be that Jesus received a message from an inexplicable entity, but the question is from where.
    • Objection Major religions do not only differ in details. For example, Hinduism differs from Abrahamic religions in that there are many gods, not one.
      • Objection For Hindus, Brahman is the Ultimate Reality and the supreme God. Brahman can manifest in many forms, including deities, which are representations of the divine. So, all gods are part of Brahman. The Trinity in Christianity also ultimately concerns the unity of God. So, the similarity between Abrahamic religions and Hinduism is that God is a single all-encompassing entity.
• Con There is not one universal or timeless truth. There is only what exists, and calling it "true" would be incorrect because truth is ever-changing, depending on the perspective, which is not the case for what static universe we have today.

See also

• Which is the best religion to follow?
• Does religion do more harm than good?