Contradictory Truths
The diversity of and conflict between religions demonstrates that they cannot all be true
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
– 1984, George Orwell
If religions were a reliable method for discerning objective truth about the world, one would expect them to converge on a consistent narrative of human origins, morality and purpose. Yet this is not what we find. Instead, the world’s major religions present us with a tangled web of mutually exclusive cosmologies, historical claims, and moral doctrines. These belief systems do not merely differ—they contradict one another on fundamental questions. And if they cannot all be true, this begs the question: are any of them? I personally have to think not.
To say that one religion has the largest number of adherents and therefore must be true is to fall prey to the Ad Populum fallacy. What religion is the most dominant has changed throughout history. Does that mean the structure of reality changed as well, depending on whoever is the current most popular God, dogma and mythology? Once again, I don’t think so.
Conflicting Accounts of Human Origins
Each religion claims divine revelation about humanity’s origins. Yet these “revelations” tell vastly different stories—stories that reflect the cultural, geographic, and philosophical contexts of the societies that produced them. The history of Islam, in particular, is instructive in how its doctrine evolved during Muhammad’s lifetime in order to meet shifting political needs.
The Abrahamic Traditions: Creation from Dust
The Bible opens with the claim that God created the Earth in six days, forming man from soil and breathing life into him:
“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
— Genesis 2:7
The Qur’an offers a similar, if somewhat more earthy view:
“We created mankind out of dried clay formed from fetid black mud.”
In both narratives, humanity is a deliberate and direct creation of God, not the product of natural processes. This view conflicts not only with the evidence from anthropology and genetics, but also with other religious traditions.
Hinduism: Creation Through Divine Essence and Cycles
Hindu cosmology offers a more abstract and cyclical vision. In the Rig Veda, creation is described in speculative, poetic terms:
“Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came.
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it — or perchance even He knows not.”
— Rig Veda 10.129
There is no single Adam or Eve, no six-day creation, and no fall from grace. The universe is eternal, cycling through ages (yugas), with humans emerging and dissolving over vast epochs. The current cycle, the Kali Yuga, is believed to last 432,000 years.
Norse Mythology: Emergence from the Body of a Giant
In Norse belief, the world is made from the body of a primordial frost giant:
“From Ymir’s flesh the Earth was created, and from his blood the sea, rocks from bones, trees from hair, and the sky from his skull.”
— The Prose Edda
Human beings are later created from driftwood found on the seashore—Ask and Embla, made by the gods Odin, Vili, and Vé.
Buddhism: No Creator at All
Buddhism, particularly in its early forms, rejects the idea of a creator god altogether. The Buddha discouraged speculation on origins:
“Conjecture about the origin of the world is an unconjecturable that is not to be conjectured about, that would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about it.”
— Acintita Sutta
Human existence is instead explained through karma and dependent origination. There is no fall, no paradise lost, and no divine plan for humanity.
These foundational texts tell mutually exclusive stories. A human being cannot simultaneously be made from dust or driftwood. The Earth cannot be 6,000 years old and also the product of endless cosmic cycles. Either one story is true and the others are false, or all are false. They cannot all be the divine truth.
Diverging Views on Human Purpose
Religions are not only cosmologies about the origins of the world; they are teleologies—they assert why we are here and what we are meant to do.
Christianity: Redemption from Sin
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God… the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
— Romans 3:23, 6:23
Human beings are born in sin, estranged from God, and require salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The Christian worldview is eschatological: life is a prelude to eternal reward or punishment.
Islam: Submission to God’s Will
“I did not create jinn and mankind except to worship Me.”
— Qur’an 51:56
Humanity’s purpose is obedience—Islam means submission. Paradise awaits the faithful, while the disobedient are condemned to Hell. Like Christianity, Islam is morally dualistic and eschatological.
Hinduism: Liberation Through Karma
“Those who see the Lord as the Supreme Soul, equally present everywhere in all living beings, they do not degrade themselves by their mind and thereby attain the supreme state.”
— Bhagavad Gita 13:29
The self is an illusion (maya), and life is an opportunity to fulfill one’s dharma and accumulate positive karma. The ultimate goal, however, is moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirth.
Buddhism: The End of Suffering
“…When desire fades away they’re freed. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence.’”
— Majjhima Nikāya 22:49
There is no divine plan or cosmic judgment—only the impersonal law of cause and effect. Human purpose is self-liberation from attachment.
Mormonism: Eternal Progression
“As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”
— The Life and Ministry of Lorenzo Snow, Chapter 5
Mormon theology, as refined by the 5th President of the Church, is explicitly anthropocentric: humans can become divine beings. God is not wholly other, but a perfected version of humanity.
These visions of human destiny are not simply diverse—they are mutually exclusive. We cannot be both unworthy sinners and potential gods. We cannot be both eternal souls and empty aggregates of matter. A religion that condemns unbelievers to Hell cannot coexist with one that denies Hell altogether.
Conflicting Historical Narratives
Religions also make historical claims about the lives of their founders, sacred revelations, and divine interventions. But these, too, are filled with contradictions.
Christianity teaches that Jesus was the divine Son of God, crucified and resurrected. However, Islam denies this explicitly:
“They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them.”
— Qur’an 4:157
Judaism denies that Jesus was the Messiah at all and awaits a future anointed one.
Hinduism accepts thousands of gods and incarnations, while Islam and Judaism denounce polytheism as idolatry.
Sikhism rejects caste and polytheism, while Hinduism institutionalizes both in its theology and social order.
The Bahá’í Faith claims all previous religions were true for their time, but only it represents the final revelation for the current era—a claim rejected by all other religions.
⠀These are not stylistic differences. They are doctrinal incompatibilities—and they undermine any notion of a unified religious truth.
Why the Contradictions Matter
Apologists sometimes argue that different religions are simply “different paths to the same God.” But this is intellectual evasion. The world’s religions are not multiple answers to the same question. They are different questions, posed in different languages, and answered with different and conflicting myths.
The contradictions are not trivial. They have led and continue to lead to sectarian violence, theological exclusion, and doctrinal absolutism. If religion were the universal language of truth, it would not fracture into a thousand dialects, each condemning the rest.
Instead, what we observe aligns far more with a cultural anthropological model: religions are regional responses to existential uncertainty, shaped by geography, politics, and historical circumstance—not eternal truths.