I find your analogy to be flawed.
Holy writ contains binding covenants upon certain individual's posterity. These terms don't go away just because we want them to.
You need to look at your lifetime here in the flesh as an experience only made possible by the vehicle we drive here, which is our physical body. We made the choice as to which car we drive, so to speak, prior to coming here in the flesh. If you have in you the blood of Abraham then it is your responsibility to pay attention to the instruction manual. If you don't, then this you do at your own peril because all of the terms and conditions outlined in the instruction manual are binding, regardless of how simplistic and primitive you think they are.
That doesn't address my point.
That would be the case if one is a syncretist who takes religious texts as literal, Penumbra. I, however, am not one of these.
Pretty much to even be a syncretist, one has to take much of the texts as non-literal. I haven't yet met a syncretist that takes all of those texts thoroughly literally.
Therefore, this was specifically written with non-literal syncretists in mind. Saying "he meant this" even though he said this in the text, which is completely opposite, in order to fit it with another belief, doesn't hold under reasonable scrutiny. Some messages have to be more or less accurate than others. Various religions have died out. Various religions have sprouted. Even if there exists a true religion that pulls elements from a few existent or extinct religions, then aspects that were not pulled are incorrect.
People come up with ideas every day. Some of them are practical, and some of them are impractical. Some of them are locally useful, some of them are broadly applicable, and some are just plain unhelpful. Some are accurate descriptions of reality, and some are not.
If one religion states that people live once, and are judged, and need salvation by an external deity, then it's drastically different from a religion that says we live in the cycle of samsara, and that ultimately gods are irrelevant and we must self-liberate. One or both claims are largely incorrect or drastically, drastically incomplete.
I see you point. But i don not agree that any particular message is inherently flawed. I can see how perspective can make someone see it that way. There are many thing that I have listened to here on RF about this religion or that. Take a basic belief, practice or scripture and give an opinion that it makes no sense , the favorite term is illogical. I certainly can see where they could draw that conclusion if they stand still, firm in their position. I can see another side as well.
If people are willing to put forth justification for why a given system, which has been explained to be illogical by someone else, is indeed logical, then this is the forum for that.
Some people, however, ignore the well-constructed arguments for given claim's irrationality, and instead simply continue to assert that it's logical. Claims should be well-defended.
I am going through what I go through all the time. I keep coming back to this no matter how hard I try to just go with the flow.
I wouldn't say you could call me a religious syncretist, because wouldn't that necessarily reject science? I don't. But I do have some nagging issue with connectivness. I just imagine that everything somehow fits, or maybe I can't imagine that everything doesn't somehow fit.
Religious syncretists do not necessarily reject science. Far from it, usually. Syncretists are individuals, so I'm speaking generally here, but a lot of them tend to utilize pseudoscience or misunderstandings of real science. There's a lot of literature, for example, with syncretists trying to use quantum mechanics to justify their beliefs, and saying it proves them to be true, when really, most of them do not understand quantum mechanics or have the appropriate education, and are making erroneous claims that can be pointed out by someone who is truly knowledgeable on the subject.
