Why is religion so similar and so different?

I believe that God has revealed himself to countless individuals over the millenia.

I personally theorize, that it is highly likely that God has enlightened people in nearly every century and every culture throughout the antiquity of the human race. There is a pattern that can be observed. When God enlightens an individual, the individual often attempts to share what He or she has learned about God with others. (I am sure that they make some or many mistakes in their attempted explanations of their near-to indescribable experiences). Then people hear the words of the enlightened individuals and often misunderstand aspects of what was taught. The teaching becomes a bit twisted almost immediately. After a hundred years or so, it is VERY twisted and by the time 300 years pass, it is so messed up and confused that it is sometimes hardly recognizable to what the original enlightened person meant. This pattern has a name: Apostasy (a general falling away from the truth).
It is conceivable to me that the original words of people like Zoroaster and Siddhartha (Buddha) and other founders of MANY other religious movements, very well may have been enlightened individuals, but over time, their original message was distorted and ultimately lost in a maze of confusion and changes. Could it be possible that people have been learning about the future life of Jesus Christ thousands of years ago but only shreds of the original story remain intact a midst a plethora of additions and changes to what was originally conveyed in an ancient culture with a lost language?

The primary message of the restored Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ is that Jesus Christ is the actual Son of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge. The many other descriptions and other things described to many of the figures above are perhaps just all different misconceptions or altered ways of explaining the same person ("originally" the same person, now apostatized in description.)

Perhaps the things that you have learned about him are slightly different from those around you and this disturbs you. It is highly likely that the beliefs that you have are more similar to those around you than they were to the beliefs of Moses or even the Apostle Peter (based on some studying from the Nag Hammadi and the Dead sea scrolls).

As one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Lord of heaven and Earth and probably the same person as was attempted to be described in the many pictures shown above, I believe that He is an unchangeable Being (though there are many have different ideas about who He is). I believe that we all can become enlightened by Him as we seek Him directly. This enlightenment from God does not result in immediately knowing everything-- but it does result in knowing something: That God is real, He forgives, that He wants us to do our best to do good to all mankind, and that He is love. I believe that God organized His church on the earth for many reasons, and among them is to help people have a clearer idea of how to attain this Enlightenment for ourselves so that we can come to know God face to face, as did Moses and Adam and so we can worship Him in Spirit and in truth.