[octopoc]

Interesting! I agree that India’s colonial history is unique in that it wasn’t settled by Europeans like North America.

But Judaism isn’t a western religion, it’s a Middle Eastern religion with strong ethnic ties. Hence it hasn’t evolved and branched like all the major religions have. Christianity isn’t western religion either, but modern Protestantism and Roman Catholicism arguably are. Eastern Orthodox is actually a great example of the diversity of all major religions— they have national churches (Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox).

Islam is multi ethnic of course and so there are branches that are western (Albania is an example) but calling Islam as a whole “western” is mostly incorrect.

[anon291]

Then let's just break it down between Jewish descended (Abrahamic) and not

China adopted communism which is ultimately a philosophy whose patrimony is European and all that entails.

> Eastern Orthodox is actually a great example of the diversity of all major religions— they have national churches (Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox).

I mean... Sure and they still have common beliefs descended from Judaism and Christianity?

[octopoc]

I think we agree but let me just as some nuance to what you’re saying.

The Jews didn’t invent their beliefs out of whole cloth—this is true whether it’s Judaism or communism (Karl Marx, Lenin, and most Russian communists were Jewish though I think you know that already). They borrowed monotheism and a bunch of their religion from local religions at the time. Jewish communists learned a great deal from the French Revolution. They put a Jewish stamp on these beliefs so to speak, then handed off some of those beliefs to other people who, like the Jews before them, discarded what didn’t make sense to them and kept what did. China is barely communist now, by Russian standards, it’s more fascist to be honest.

Another good example is how in modern Protestantism they talk a lot of about “the biblical definition of marriage,” when what they really mean is one man and one woman—more of a northwest European definition. The biblical definition of marriage is one man and one or more wives. But you can’t get a modern Protestant to accept what the Bible says because everyone reads their own beliefs into these religions.

There is no discernible ultimate source to any religion—it’s more like a chain of beliefs, where people take their existing beliefs and project them onto their religion.

Having said that, Hinduism is is a chain of beliefs that has stayed within the same ethnic group for a very long time, which maybe is what you’re saying? And that is indeed something rare and very precious.