So when I did the character count analysis of the New Testament and ranked the Top 40 Teachings of Jesus Christ based on the volume of text dedicated to each teaching — as a way to filter out what I call the “human factor,” described in more detail elsewhere — I got curious about other religions. I decided to run the exact same analysis on the Old Testament and the world’s other major religious traditions, simply out of curiosity.
As an agnostic, I’m constantly hearing the demonization of different religions — the rape, the genocide, and the pedophilia in the Bible, similar atrocities attributed to the Quran, and so on. But what would happen if I used the character count method to strip out that noise — the “human factor,” the errors, the politics, the cultural baggage — and just looked at what each tradition actually emphasizes most? Would anything overlap?
I was already paying for the AI service to run the in-depth analysis, so why not expand the experiment?
The results genuinely shocked me. I wasn’t expecting this at all.
I did expect some crossover. Christianity, for example, absorbed a significant number of rituals and symbols from pre-existing pagan traditions in order to ease the conversion of non-Christian peoples — Christmas trees come from Germanic solstice traditions, Easter eggs and the spring timing from fertility festivals tied to the Germanic goddess Eostre, December 25th from the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, halos in religious art from Roman and Greek sun-god iconography, and All Saints’ Day placed on November 1st to absorb the Celtic festival of Samhain. None of this is in the Biblical text. These were deliberate assimilation strategies by the early church, and they are well-documented historically. So yes, I expected some degree of borrowing and overlap at the edges.
But what I found was something completely different from borrowed ritual. Here is what the data actually showed.
(Click here for the data)
We All Believe the Same Things.
We’ve Just Been Told We Don’t.
A data-driven look at what 11 world traditions — including atheism — actually teach at their core
Here is something the news will never lead with, something no politician will say from a podium, and something no algorithm is designed to show you: the world’s major religions — and even secular humanism — agree on the fundamentals. Not approximately. Not poetically. Literally, measurably, and documentably.
The research behind this claim is not theological opinion. It is the result of a systematic, text-based analysis of 11 world traditions — the New Testament, the Old Testament, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, the Tanakh, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, and the Humanist Manifesto — using a signal-to-noise methodology that filters out centuries of human interpretation, institutional overlay, and cultural embellishment and asks one simple question: what do these texts most heavily emphasize, measured by character weight?
The answer is disarming in its simplicity.
The Signal Beneath the Noise
Every religious tradition carries two things: a signal and noise. The signal is the core teaching — what the original text, weighted by emphasis and repetition, actually says. The noise is everything humans have added since: the institutional rules, the tribal identifiers, the political alliances, the cultural customs, the interpretations built on interpretations built on interpretations.
Wars have been fought over the noise. People have been excluded, condemned, and killed over the noise. The noise is what fills cable news, what gets weaponized in elections, what divides families at dinner tables.
The signal, when you strip the noise away, looks like this:
The 11 Core Themes Present in Every Tradition Analyzed 11/11
- Care for the Poor and Generosity with Resources — from Islamic Zakat to Buddhist Dana to the gleaning laws of Leviticus to the Secular Humanist commitment to human welfare. Every tradition. No exceptions.
- Honesty, Truthfulness, and Integrity — the Quran’s first revelation was “Read.” Sikhism names truthfulness its highest virtue. Jesus said let your yes be yes. Confucius built an entire ethical system on rectifying names so language reflects reality.
- Compassion and Active Kindness Toward Others — the Quran opens every chapter with “In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.” The Tao Te Ching lists compassion first among its Three Treasures. The New Testament grounds it in the command to love your neighbor as yourself.
- Humility — Overcome Pride and Ego — Buddhist Anatta, Sikh Haumai, the Bhagavad Gita’s non-attachment, Jesus’s “blessed are the meek,” the Quran’s warning against walking in arrogance, Taoism’s water that seeks the low place. Different vocabularies. One direction.
- Justice — Protect the Vulnerable, Oppose Oppression — the Jewish prophets thunder it: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). The Baha’i text calls justice “the most beloved of all things in God’s sight.” Jesus quoted Isaiah: “to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
- Non-Violence and Restraint from Causing Harm — Hindu Ahimsa, Buddhist non-harm, the Quran’s prohibition on transgression and aggression, Taoism’s strategic preference for the soft over the hard, the New Testament’s “blessed are the peacemakers.”
- Self-Discipline and Control of Harmful Desires — the Buddhist Dhammapada devotes its longest chapter to this. The Quran mandates fasting. The Bhagavad Gita analyzes the three gunas. The Ten Commandments end with “do not covet.” All 11 traditions identify uncontrolled desire as the root of harm.
- Learning, Wisdom-Seeking, and Education — the Quran’s first revealed word was “Iqra” — Read. Confucianism opens its central text with a call to continuous learning. Jesus said “the truth will set you free.” The Baha’i tradition made girls’ education a religious obligation in the 19th century.
- The Golden Rule — Treat Others as You Would Be Treated — this may be the most universal ethical principle in human history. Confucius called it the single word that summarizes all practice. The Jewish sage Hillel said it was the entire Torah. Jesus said it summarized all the law and the prophets. Buddhist karma provides its most systematic philosophical grounding. All 11 traditions.
- Impermanence — Accept That Nothing in This World Lasts — Ecclesiastes says “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Buddhism’s Anicca. The Quran’s “this world is but play and amusement.” Taoism’s cycles of return. Secular Humanism’s grounding of moral seriousness in the finitude of life. Different conclusions, identical recognition.
- Inner Character Matters More Than Outward Ritual — this one is perhaps the most striking of all. Every single tradition — including the ones that prescribe extensive ritual — insists that inner transformation is what the ritual is for. “God desires mercy, not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). “God looks at your hearts and deeds, not your outward form” (Quran 49:13). “Train the mind — all suffering arises from the untrained mind” (Dhammapada 1-2). The Baha’i tradition abolished clergy entirely on this principle.
The Same God, Differently Described?
This is where the data becomes genuinely provocative. Consider what these traditions say about the ultimate force behind existence — call it God, Dharma, the Tao, the Way, the Uncarved Block, or simply the ground of being:
| Tradition | What the Ultimate Source Values Most |
|---|---|
| New Testament (Jesus) | Love. “God is love.” The entire law hangs on love of God and neighbor. |
| Islam (Quran) | The Quran opens every chapter: “Al-Rahman, Al-Rahim” — the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. God’s primary self-description is compassion. |
| Judaism (Tanakh) | Hesed — steadfast, loyal love beyond obligation. Micah 6:8: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly. |
| Hinduism (Bhagavad Gita) | Dharma — righteous duty. Act without ego, without attachment to outcome, in service of what is right. |
| Buddhism (Dhammapada) | The cessation of suffering through compassion, wisdom, and the release of craving. The Buddha is sometimes described as compassion itself. |
| Sikhism (Guru Granth Sahib) | Ik Onkar — One God, the creator of all. Sarbat da Bhala — may all beings be blessed. Universal, indiscriminate compassion. |
| Baha’i (Kitab-i-Aqdas) | Unity. The explicit teaching is that all religions describe the same God, and humanity’s next step is to recognize its own oneness. |
| Taoism (Tao Te Ching) | The Tao that cannot be named. But its three treasures are: compassion, frugality, and not placing yourself above others. |
| Confucianism (Analects) | Heaven (Tian) as the source of moral order. The virtue it demands: Ren — humaneness, active benevolence toward all. |
| Atheism/Humanism | No divine source — but the grounding value is identical: human dignity, compassion, justice, and the flourishing of all people. |
Compassion. Justice. Humility. Love. Kindness. Service.
Whether these values come from God, from the Tao, from Dharma, from human reason, or from the basic requirements of any functional society — they are the same values. Arrived at independently, across cultures separated by oceans and millennia, without coordination, without a shared language, without shared institutions.
That is not coincidence. That is signal.
What Jesus Said. What Muhammad Said. What They Both Said.
Our Top 40 Teachings of Jesus — ranked by character weight across all four Gospels — maps perfectly onto the 11 universal themes identified in this cross-religion analysis. This is not cherry-picking. This is what the texts, measured objectively, most heavily emphasize.
Teaching #1 in the New Testament: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The definition of neighbor, Jesus said, is anyone in need — regardless of their identity. This is present, nearly verbatim, in every tradition analyzed.
Teaching #9 in the New Testament: the Golden Rule. Present in all 11 traditions. The Quran puts it as: “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” Confucius, five centuries before Jesus, said: “Do not do to others what you would not wish done to yourself” — and called it the single word that summarizes all practice. Hillel, the Jewish sage, said it was the entire Torah. Buddha’s teaching of karma provides its philosophical foundation.
The same teaching. Four traditions. Spanning a thousand years of independent development.
This is not religion. This is not politics. This is not ideology. This is data.
Why Does It Feel Like We’re So Different?
Because the noise is louder than the signal. Always. The signal is quiet, consistent, and requires nothing of us except the willingness to actually look at it. The noise is dramatic, tribal, emotionally activating, and algorithmically optimized for maximum engagement.
The noise tells you: Christians hate gay people. Muslims want to impose sharia law. Hindus are idol worshippers. Atheists have no morality. Jews are clannish. The noise says these groups are fundamentally incompatible, that their differences are irreconcilable, that the goal of the other side is your destruction.
The signal says: care for the poor. Be honest. Be kind. Be humble. Be just. Don’t hurt people. Keep learning. Treat others as you want to be treated. Nothing lasts forever. Who you are inside matters more than what you perform outside.
Every tradition. Every one. Without exception.
The noise is generated by institutions, by politicians, by media, by history, by fear, by power. The signal was written down, independently, by people who had never met each other, who shared no language or culture, who lived centuries apart — and somehow arrived at the same answer.
The Most Radical Conclusion
The Baha’i tradition — founded in 19th-century Persia, the newest of the major world religions — makes this claim explicitly: all religions describe the same God, and the differences between them are the accumulated layers of human cultural transmission over the immutable core. This is not a marginal or fringe theological position. It is the central teaching of a tradition with several million adherents worldwide.
You do not have to accept that conclusion theologically to find the data compelling. Whether the universal convergence of these values reflects a single divine source, or simply reflects the universal requirements of human beings living together — the practical result is identical. We share the most important things.
A Muslim who practices Zakat, justice, and compassion is living the core of the New Testament. A Christian who feeds the hungry, forgives freely, and serves the poor is living the core of the Quran, the Torah, and the Dhammapada simultaneously. An atheist who operates by the Golden Rule, pursues justice, and acts with genuine humility is fulfilling the central teaching of every religious tradition analyzed — without believing in any of them.
This is not a claim about theology. It is a claim about behavior. And the data is unambiguous.
What To Do With This
The next time someone tells you that your religion is incompatible with another person’s religion — or that religious people and secular people have nothing in common — ask them to show you the texts. Not the political commentary on the texts. Not the institutional history of the texts. The texts themselves, weighted by emphasis.
Because when you do that work — and this project has done it across 11 traditions, publicly, with full methodology documented for independent verification — what you find is not a world of irreconcilable differences.
What you find is a world of people who have been told they are enemies, who have been separated by noise, who are — at the level of their most deeply held values — saying the same thing.
We are more alike than we have been told. We always were.
About This Research
The data cited in this article is drawn from the Cross-Religion Overlap Analysis: All 11 Traditions, a Phase 2 output of the multi-religion research project at mr-independent.org. The full methodology — including how teachings were identified, how overlaps were mapped, and how the signal-to-noise threshold was applied — is publicly documented and available for independent verification. All source texts are public domain editions cited by chapter and verse. A second AI audit and public correction system are in place before final publication. The full analysis document is available to read and download on this site. The 40 core teachings of Jesus referenced in this article are documented in full on our Top 40 Teachings of Jesus page.
Version 1.0 · March 2026 · mr-independent.org / jesus-is-woke.com