Why are there irreconcilable differences between various religions?

From Shivanga Pr:

eg. Deity worship and cow protection are glorified in the Vedic tradition and condemned in Islam

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Why are there irreconcilable differences between different religions such as in the Vedic tradition the cow is worshipped whereas in the Islamic tradition the cow is slaughtered, sacrificed or where deity worship is recommended in the Vedic tradition whereas deity worship is condemned in some other religions. So, seeing such irreconcilable differences, can we still say that the founders of the other religions were also messengers of God, were also authentic spiritual teachers? Answer, ultimately the present status of every religion is determined by the maturity of its practitioners and as far as the original revelation goes that is inevitably interpreted and misinterpreted according to the level of the people who are practicing it presently.
So, the original revelation comes according to time, place, circumstances and when those time, place, circumstances are not taken into consideration but that original revelation is declared as universal and absolute then that leads to serious problems. So, the differences between the various religions are irreconcilable only when contextual things are considered absolute. So, for example, let’s consider deity worship.
I have talked about this elaborately in my book on idol worship or ideal worship. Because the Abrahamic religion that is Christianity, Judaism, Islam don’t talk anything positive about the form of God, what God looks like, what are the features of his form. So, with that level of limited revelation about God, any form that would be made would be imaginary and at the time when those religions were revealed, there were a lot of imaginary forms being worshipped.
In fact, one of the defining incidents in the history of the Abrahamic religions is when Moses went up the mount to get the Ten Commandments and below all his followers, they took all the gold with them and melted it and made it into the shape of animal, a golden calf and started worshipping that as if it were almost like God. So, Moses came down and he was so enraged that he just destroyed the calf over there and he even told that those who were worshipping it should be punished. So, that was a clear example of the human tendency to imagine forms and start worshipping them.
So, that is what is condemned. But even within Islam, there are some indications that not all forms are to be condemned. For example, when Mohammed conquered Mecca, at that time in the Kaaba, there were a lot of idols that were being worshipped and he destroyed all the idols but then there were some images of Jesus and Mary and he told that they should not be destroyed.
So, that indicates that not all depictions are profane. So, now because of the limitedness of that revelation and the consequence that most forms of the divine would be imaginations, that’s why that sort of desecration is fine. Today, people make images of cricketers and sports stars and politicians and start worshipping them and then destroying those images and stopping that kind of worship is not at all wrong.
But where that contextual revelation is made absolute and it is assumed that all forms of worship of God through images is wrong, then that is an unvalid extrapolation of a valid fact, of a valid truth. So, it is this kind of things that lead to conflict. Now, regarding the killing of cows also, the basic principle is not that if we look at the history of Islam, it is killing cows is not an essential principle.
There are so many Muslims in so many parts of the world, like say the Islam Middle East countries, where cows are not available only for killing. So, is it that those Muslims who don’t kill cows are any lesser Muslims just because they don’t kill cows and sacrifice? So, no. So, actually speaking, there are certain historical political factors which led to the sort of assigning of a central role to cow sacrifice, cow killing, cow sacrifice in Islam as it is practiced in India and a few other places.
So, yes, there are books written about vegetarianism in Islam also. There are not many references, but in general, the references do indicate that there should be a preference for nonviolent food as much as possible. This comes in the Old Testament, New Testament as well as in the Quran.
Now, there is not an existence because they were living in a desert where vegetation, vegetables are not very easy to grow. So, there is not an insistence, but still there is a recommendation. Actually, historically speaking, much of the insistence on cow sacrifice and its integral right of Muslims has come more as a reaction to divisive political forces than rather as a central tenet of Islam.
So, if you look at the history, many of the irreconcilable differences are about the peripheries of various religions. They are not about the center. And the peripheries always change according to the time, place, circumstance.
And those who are mature and intelligent practitioners of religion, they recognize the difference between the center and the periphery. So, now no spiritual teacher can give a revelation without considering the periphery because that revelation will not be relevant to the people. But then it is for the followers to be mature enough to understand what is the center and what is the periphery and accordingly adapt.
So, those who do not adapt, they either become irrelevant where they do not care for all of society or they become malevolent where they become aggressive towards the rest of society. So, that is what has caused the major differences between religions. It is the two factors, the absolutization of contextual teachings and the inability to differentiate between the