The Origins of Religions

How can there be a religion (e.g. Hinduism) without a founder?

We can compare this to language. We can't point to the "founder" (inventor) of most languages: who invented English?...

Just as language develops over a long period of history, so too do religions. Even religions that do have an identifiable "founder" (Buddha for Buddhism, Muhammad for Islam, etc...) those religions that are hundreds and thousands of years old, have developed over time, well beyond what the "founder" even imagined and likely ever intended. Every generation adds something, changes something. Many aspects of a language are drawn from multiple pre-existing languages (English has many words with roots, prefixes and suffixes coming from Latin and Greek and countless other older languages). So too, most if not all religions also draw on ideas already present in pre-existing religions while rejecting other aspects of those older religions. Christianity drew from Judaism, but also from Greek philosophy and mythology and Roman mythology and culture to become what it is today. And every generation of theologians and preachers adds something new and original to the mix. I venture to say that Jesus and Buddha would hardly recognize today's Christianity or Buddhism as something they "founded".

Religions, like languages, are constructs of many aspects of culture and not frozen in time.

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