why are there so many?

Man creates God in his own image, then turns it into a business. When it comes to the nitty gritty it is mostly the worship of the almighty dollar. If you want to get in touch with the one and only real God, seek a personal relationship with Him. He will be there and you will discover that He has always been there waiting for you. All religious heroes sought Him for themselves and didn't rely on another man to lead them to Him.

As with so many religions, the reason is there are so many different people. Catholics along with many other religions believe there is only one God. God gave the human race the freedom to choose and so these were created to accomodate those different people. I believe God is in everything, even the wars. After all, who do you think watches over our boys in battle. God has seen all the difficulties and sins man has committed. He knows that man cannot live without conflict, after all He made us human. He would have preferred it otherwise, but nevertheless he loves us and believes in our basic humanity. Satan is behind war, hatred, malice, all the sins God warned Adam & Eve about. Without God to believe in....what would you believe?

As many of those who have replied shows, we were all created in the likeness of one GOD, hence the most fundamental of religious beliefs... free will. The things happening all around us are made by man in his greed to become GOD. Take a look at all the so-called religions all around the world, they all have one in common, they have one supreme being at the center of their beleifs. I am a Catholic and am proud of it. The Catholic church has had their fill of mistakes and misconceptions but hey who hasn't. People before saying this and that religion is bad or a complete turnoff just remember one thing. "TO ERR IS TO BE HUMAN." And we truly are humans. Don't go around blaming and pointing to everyone else without looking at yourself beforehand. You might find that there are four fingers pointed back at ya. "Do your Ordinary duties Extra-ordinarily Well" And try to do a good deed at least once a day, It does make a difference.

Thank god we do not have one religion for one person.

Its because most people have different beliefs. So those with smilar beliefs came together to for a "group of common ideas".

Probably, we the peoples of the world are giving too much attention to the religion, as a result, religion has gained too much importance. You try to ignore religion, then slowly the number comes down.

Every race have thier religion, believing...in fact for the origin from long long time ago all those difference god for difference religion meant so much to their respective region and their intention were on the good side......only by religion people been united, been good and most importantly can have their peace of mind........in today's world we can that the religion had been used by widely by those politician as a tools to archived what they want.....for all the religion itself it didn't encourage for killing but those leader with thier own intention make use of the name of religion and start thier war..

What you need to understand is that religion is man's way of getting to God, implying that there is only one God. I am a Christian. Let me tell you something. The Bible says that For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Many religions today base their doctrines on conventional principles which the Blble describes as laws. These laws were given to the Israelites by God to guide them. Then God sent His Son Jesus to come and die for the world and redeem it of its sinful nature. So today we do not live under the law, but through the grace of God which is eternal life. That is all.

People wants to be comfortable by all means. And people wants power in order to live and by so doing, they believe in religions in order to be comfortable and have power spiritually. Because people believe the spiritual is more and powerful than the physical.

We have only one God, only we call it with different name/s. God is love and all the beautiful things. He wants all the best for us esp the peace. What makes it different is the understanding and interpretation of the holy scriptures. Sometimes we give wrong impression that lead to serious problem like misundertanding.

Simply put, there are so many religions because there are so many people. People have developed in different parts of the world differently. A Tibetan monk (whose name escapes me...sorry) said, "God is a black, a white, a chrysanthemum. It is because you do not understand that that you discriminate." God is not religion. Religion is rarely God. If religion gives some comfort, then it is a good thing, but the two should not be confused.

This world that we live on is a complicated and confusing one, so many beliefs and so many religion, but when it comes down to it, we all believe the one and the same god, some with names others refered to as "God". What you need to do is think for yourself and consider the best choice for you.

This is the correct reason why there is so much differentiation in this world. We just have to spread humanity and nothing else.

In one of the Gospels in the Bible, Jesus tells his deciples, "In my Father's house there are many mansions." Therefore, I believe there is only one God, known by many different names, and the journey back to our one God and Creator takes many paths. We, as children of that one God, need to pray for the wisdom, and the grace, to see one another as children of God, created out of God's perfect and infinite love for us all. Once we're able to do that, there will be acceptance and tolerance of one another, and the peace that our one God created us for. Grammy2Ten

i m quite sure we are going a wrong way behind the God's mind if you believe the harmonic of the world as well as the Universe all created by him/her? So, i think God had already set the rule, if we follow then lives continue otherwise..........dont blame!

hello dear one. i m no great sage to know the perfect answers to your question, though i do have a take on them, which i wud like to share with u.i think,way back when v(humans)were in our earl stage of evolvement,one of our primary needs was to belong.hence v made groups.slowly these groups must have grown,new people being added to them.then once these groups became big,another natural trait of herding these groups on the basis of some authority must have kicked in. thats when v must have started following a leader.before v gave birth to this one leader,v must have all believed in only one superpower above us.we did'nt see him,but felt him.these leaders who also craved for power,claimed to know more of this higher being than the rest of us.so,when each leader of each group,claimed to know this Higher power better than us,he gave this power a name.A name that differs from group to group.slowly,these leaders started becoming dogmatic about there interpretation of the higher being's teachings.they started wording His teachings the way they felt was appropriate.Conflict must have risen dew to different beliefs of different groups.These beliefs their leaders told them to fight for.And slowly...God,who only spreads the word of Peace...started beoming the cause of war.Now,only apply this to our current situation around the world.Do u think it Fits?! Finally...believe in God! Pray to the higher being.God! Don't give him a name,u don't need to.He will listen to u no matter what...:-)

Your argument is the exact reason why the goverments of this world including most people... are coming to the conclusion that having religions only causes problems. They will try to unite things in such a way that their is no religion barrier between people... Sounds like the perfect peace... eveyone agreeing. God predicts this in the bible too. But the peace is not what it seems

Ask God to show you His presence and to guide you. If you really want to know Him He will answer, but He is a gentleman and will not force Himself upon you. Call out to Him. Knock and the door will be opened to you.