It seems to me, as a student of comparative religion, that there are "universal spiritual principles" that are common to all (or most) religions.

Here are two examples:

a) the concept that self-will should be made secondary to the seeking of "God's will" (let's see, different ways to say that would be, that the proper status of a human being is as a "Child of God"), and

b) there are "sins" that will negatively affect the human spirit (examples of that would be the "seven deadly sins" in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the "afflictions" in Bhuddism)

It seems to me, that these elements of "commonality" in the spiritual aspect of religion can be easily destroyed by "dogma", and also by unrelated beliefs that serve mainly to complicate the underlying spiritual principles.

My political observation would be, that it is the latter (the "unrelated beliefs") that cause all the political conflicts, between the various religions in the world.

The primary example of that, would be the various claims to "exclusivity" - as if any given religion has a monopoly on the truth.

Thoughts?

I see it as societies way of controlling large groups of people. Get people to join groups and through status and rewards these people do what they are told. Control the people at the top and everyone else is under your control.

I think "organised religion" is the biggest threat to religion there is. Better to worship at home alone than to join anything. The Catholics seem to be infested by pedophiles. The Saudis have perverted Islam into some radical suicidal jihad religion. The Zionists have turned the Jewish faith into some kind of Globalist NWO garbage. The Protestants are some kind of Bible thumping Armangeddon nut brigade.

The "individual" is the biggest threat to society. Free thinkers are hard to control. From the very tops of governments, religion all the way down to street gangs people all their lives are encouraged to join some group. It's the common "Amway" pyramid scam on a huge scale. It's much easier for lazy people to be told what to think and do than to do it for themselves.

I've been tooting a similar horn for a while in the Religion forum.
Universalism is pretty much my spiritual path of choice.
The way I typically word it is that God is strongest in the bonds between people and when religion damages those bonds it becomes counterproductive.
This coincides with one of the Buddhist ideas I've heard that a Buddha must come every so often because the religions become corrupt. It seems true over history that every religion eventually becomes one of the old pagan religions- void of spirit, filled with dogma, exclusive and not useful for the time. Without fail someone comes along to fix it.
I think this happens often, more often than people think. We just don't always see the reformers as buddhas or prophets or mahatmas, just free-thinkers and interesting people. I think esoteric arts and mystic spiritualism are becoming more accessible to the people. The result will be good... if we don't all kill each other in the process.

You should post in the Religion forum some time. There are some interesting conversations there.

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