What would you follow?

[Muffled]

I guess if I follewed the teaching of someone and they came back and said that that was not what they were teaching, I would have to believe him. No one knows better than what he taught than himself. I don't know that I would follow the religion he pointed to but I would stop with the one he claimed was right. More than likely I would switch since he actually cam back from the dead though.

I think this brings up the very real problem of the integrity of the religious teacher. If he returns treaching something anti-thetical, his teaching in either case would become suspect. However if Mohammed came back and said I have seen the light, that Jesus is the only savior I would not construe that as anti-thetical to his previous teaching, but then I am a Christian and have a different perspective on Islam from most Muslims.

 

[Zadok]

This is aimed to all the religious people here.


If the founder of your religion were brought back from the dead, and pointed to another religion contrary to your and said "The religion you follow at the moment based on my teachings is not what I taught, (insert other religion here) is identical identical to what I taught."--would you join that religion?

Ignore what religion came first, the locations of the religions, and so on for this discussion. This is if they were brought back today.


Some random examples of what I'm talking about:

Jesus appears, and says Buddhism is identical to his teachings, so his followers should follow that religion.
Muhammad says the same with Mormonism
Joseph Smith with Sikhism
The Sikh gurus with Judaism
Buddha with Ásatrú
Moses with Spiritism (I'm running out of ideas, hush. )

...and so on.



Would you drop your current religion and go to that one, or would you stay in the religion you are in at the moment, even though the founder/s pointed out another religion?


What would you do?

If Newton came back from the dead and said that gravity is not real but an illusion – would you believe him and consider the possibility or what? Would you be converted or would you check out anything?

I believe the question of this thread displays a very awkward and confused view of both religion and reality.

Zadok

 

[Breathe]

I believe the question of this thread displays a very awkward and confused view of both religion and reality.

Not at all.

Newton coming back and saying gravity is an illusion wouldn't alter my perception of gravity, because gravity is something testable, for one thing.

The same cannot be said for religion: it is not testable, it is tradition and lore passed down, as well as scriptural based.

The question is simply, would people follow the religion based upon the teachings of their founder even if they knew these weren't the teachings that they were given, or would they follow their prophet/guru/messiah, even into a new religion? Would they go from the familiar to the old?


If you can't answer the question then by all means don't answer it, there is no compulsion for you to do so, but don't try to psychoanalyse me or think you understand how I view religion and reality, because you really have absolutely no clue.

 

[Zardoz]

Difficult to answer this thought experiment, as a Jew, as Judaism doesn't have one 'founder'. Moses is often pointed to as our founder, but that isn't really the case. Moses was more of a middleman who relayed G-d's instructions to the People after they asked him to do this because they could not stand the force of G-d speaking directly to them.

Then again, my Messianic Judaism could be considered a syncretism, which could be one response to the OP scenario, even if it's not one of the choices in the poll.