(November 3, 2018 at 8:48 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:(November 3, 2018 at 8:25 am)Brian37 Wrote: It is an absolute myth that only the big three religions of Abraham have concepts of punishment in the afterlife.
Even Japan and China and Tibet have their histories of claiming punishment in the afterlife and underworlds.
Most humans worldwide, in antiquity had bad guesses as to magical punishment/reward motifs.
Humans mistook good and bad being regulated from a divine place, be it a god world or spirit world or reincarnation. It is our species false perception that morality is something super natural.
Probably a clue that all religions in the world did start from the same point, with each culture twisting the original faith according to its own culture. One example is how the "one Christianity" turned into 3, and the "one Islam" turned into 2, and so on.
That's why everybody has news of a hell after death for sinners.
I wouldn't say the "same point" but more like the same era within several hundred years. But concepts of super natural afterlife reward punishment existed even in the oral tradition prior to the written era.
Oral or written it still amounts to humans looking at prior and surrounding claims and creating new stories to compete.
But even without direct or indirect contact, humans completely independent of each other came up with the same bad guesses in antiquity. Fear of celestial bodies like comets, and seeing patterns in the stars were made in antiquity in places like Australia and South America and Africa and China.
Even building upwards to the sky was an idea of worship, that you can find worldwide.
The new Cosmos Series that came out a few years ago hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, brought this up in almost every one of the 13 episodes.
The reason motifs of god/s/dieties/ even just spirit worship of your ancestors all started worldwide in an age of ignorance. All those claims are merely a reflection of human qualities, desires, fears and narcissism.
