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Why would every mainstream religion we still have some knowledge of on earth be based on the same basic stories retold.

What if the gods are just that advanced civilisation, who built humanity and then left, millions of years ago. and somehow our global consciousness has been able to recall our origins still to these days.

Maybe everyone just makes same kinda stuff up to justify existance, I dunno. Seems weird cultures can vary so much on everything, and yet religion and spirituality have so much commonalities on the foundations

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> Why would every mainstream religion we still have some knowledge of on earth be based on the same basic stories retold.

Most of the world was explored by Christian missionaries like Jesuits, who also educated the informants who in turn told them about foreign cultures. You'd be surprised how many Noah's-ark-like myths the informants told the Jesuits only after the Jesuits told them about Noah's ark. Or, to use another example, a number of books on Greek myth and tragedy retell an Inca story about the emperor opening a box and unleashing smallpox on the Incas, as an independent parallel to the story of Pandora's jar: but the source of the Inca smallpox story was himself a Jesuit-educated native informant who had learned the story of Pandora from the Jesuits before inventing the story of the Inca emperor. The contact between two cultures is a two-way street: the informants who report stories may contaminate them with the stories learned from those they are informing.

Still, Noah‘s ark being a collective memory of the journey from another star to earth sounds like a great science fiction story!

Uhm... Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...

That ship carried our real ancestors. And the first thing they did was declare leaves to be money and then burn down forests to make it more valuable. -- https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309207-thank-you-since-we-d...

Yeah, I love that series. It’s never actually drawing that religious connection to the bible though, as far as I can remember. Also, I’m yearning for some good, more serious, well-written science fiction…

They share the same root, and have simply been adapted to allow for more effective exploitation in specific events or regions.

Difficult merchant guilds want a special god of their own? Invent the concept of saints and name a celebrated dead guild member the saint of commerce and prosperity.

Backwards locals won't stop celebrating their fake goddess Ēostre? Create fake story about "Easter" to push instead.

"yet religion and spirituality have so much commonalities on the foundations"

My explanation would be, that religion was mostly used as a political power tool and power logic is the same and universal. If people believe, they are low and the emperor is a god - they won't rebell so easily.

But apart from that, they are very different, so of what foundations are you talking about, exactly?

It seems to me that religion, or spirituality if I may call it that, predates emperors. If you are truly talking about organized religion, then perhaps I might be more generous in agreeing with you. But when I think religion I think of small tribes bringing about paranormal explanations for mundane phenomenons and for their own existence.

If by mainstream you mean abrahamic they all originated in the same spot. Not weird that they all find the same sites holy?

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology

This is just ancient aliens with extra steps.

Right.

one possibility is that these religions literally originated from the same story. it doesn't necessitate that the story is true to have translations of a story in many places.

Which religions do you have in mind and what are those same stories?

I can think of the simple structure he's talking about, it's best documented in Zoroastrianism aka the struggle between good and evil. The conquerors were good and the defeated savages were evil, and the conquerors often faced unsurmountable odds. Origin stories of civilization and religion follow this structure quite often.

You named one religion and no civilizations and no stories.

Alexander the great, china, Rome, all abrahamic religions.

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