Are all religions man-made?

So how did we get to such a state in the West?

Jeffrey Lang, (from his book, "Struggling to Surrender") states that:
"Religion (in the West) today is a product, a creation of man, of the state that chooses to compartmentalize spiritual from material, sacred from profane."

Maneh Al-Johani (from his article, "The Truth About Jesus (pbuh)") explains that:
"…distortion and misunderstanding in the history of Christianity drove people away not only from Christianity, but from other religions, including Islam, which is not affected by these problems. This is due to the fact that many people think that because Islam is a religion (the meaning of the very word is limited in Western languages) it must be similar to Christianity. Very few people will have the interest and the ability to discover the falsehood of this assumption."

Mrs. Zahra Aziz (an English Muslim convert) offers her hypothesis of the man-made origins of Christian doctrine:
"Christianity became built around the personality of Jesus himself. By laying more and more stress upon the magnetic and wonderful personality of Jesus and unable and unwilling to describe the Prophet's effects upon all who came to him in everyday terms – more and more attributes are added to his reputation – a man who could perform miracles, bring back the dead to life, heal the leper, cure the blind – all by God's Will, is indeed a wonderful man – blessed by God – born by God's will to do His service. But after his death, the 'magical' personality must be kept alive and 'Son of God' appears to suitably qualify all his actions. Living in a society, strongly favored by the Greco-Roman gods, all 'super human,' the educated early Christians must surely also have been influenced in thought by their surroundings. Paul himself, one of the great teachers of Christianity, was a Hellenized Jew, who never saw or met Jesus in his lifetime. Yet, many of his reported sayings show the influence of the times in which he lived. "The Living Lord" was very real to him."

In his article, Mr. Al-Johani reports that Dr. Robert Alley, a former University of Richmond Professor, lost his post as chairman of the Department of Religion because he holds the view that Jesus never claimed to be the son of God. Al-Johani quotes Dr. Alley as saying, "The (Bible) passages where Jesus talks about the Son of God are later additions… what the church said about him. Such a claim of deity for himself would not have been consistent with his entire lifestyle as we can construct. For the first three decades after Jesus' death Christianity continued as a sect within Judaism. The first three decades of its existence of the church were within the synagogue. That would have been beyond belief if they (the followers) had boldly proclaimed the deity of Jesus."

According to the findings of the gospel scholars making up the Jesus Seminar, eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the four canonical gospels were not actually spoken by him. To further state the findings of the book, "The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus", published in 1993, "…the church appears to smother the historical Jesus by superimposing this heavenly figure on him in the.…so-called Apostles' Creed…."

Posted in: Islamic Lecture