Not too long ago I was chatting with a friend about religion. We were talking about the different religious traditions we had been studying and it struck us how similar they all seemed. How from the Abrahamic traditions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, to the beliefs of Hinduism and Buddism, to the traditions of Asia, and the spiritual beliefs originating in North America.

We like to focus on differences, people are like that. We like to be able to classify people as "us" and "them," with them often being the enemy, the alien, the other. There's probably some reason for that, probably something to do with early tribal lifestyles and whatnot. Myself, I like to look at the sameness, how at the end of the day we are all people. For me I try to catch myself whenever I'm looking at an "us and them" classification, because I don't believe that it is a valid way of looking at the world.

I don't care about what religion you practice; okay I actually really do but it's more of an academic interest. I don't see most people as other, I see them as a separate individual with their own unique and potentially interesting history, but still part of the same whole: humanity. If any sense of otherness is there it makes me fascinated more than scared, makes me want to understand the culture more, to know the language, to see things a new way.

Anyhow, while we were talking on the similarities between the religions, I was reminded of a poster I saw a while back that really cleared things up for me. It showed a central concept of about thirteen different religions, religions seen or portrayed as different as night and day, religions who have gone to war with each other over how irreconcilable they believe their differences to be. I looked at that poster and one thing struck me so very deeply: they are all the same.

Regardless of the location of origin, monotheistic, polytheistic, whatever. They all share enough similarities to make me wonder why. Why does this idea keep cropping up, in nearly every tradition that has survived to this point this idea keeps appearing? Similarly it gives me another question, another why. Why do we keep forgetting it?

With the situation with ISIS and the Taliban and such, it is so easy to forget this simple thing. It is so common to paint the issue as a religious one, when in reality the organizations have little to do with their religion.

Thinking of the whole of Islam as the same as the Taliban and ISIS, it would be like saying that the KKK and the Westboro Baptist Church represent Christianity. To say that it is inaccurate would be like saying the ocean is wet.

So yeah, we forget. We use religion to justify horrible things, but religion is but a tool. It can comfort, it can bring people together, and it can lead people through tough times. As far as I know, there is no religion of evil, and none that is truly innocent. They are all just human, with all the good and the bad that that implies.