I understand that you are a secularist, Guest. I was a secularist for sort of the first half of my (present) life...then I expanded my views a bit. I am not suggesting that Buddhism is necessarily superior to Christianity, I am suggesting that it is another way of looking at things, and well worth considering...as is Christianity also.

The common assertion that religions are responsible for "most of the past sufferings" of humanity are simply an indication that the speaker has an emotional problem with the whole concept OF religion. It is as easy to find evidence of religion uniting people as dividing them...helping people as harming them...just depends on what you have decided to focus your attention on, that's all. If your pet hate is religion, then you will only focus on the abuses committed in the name of religion...and you'll never run out of evidence to support that bias. :-)

Now, if you were instead hung up on the idea that power-seeking is the problem...or that money is the problem...or that men are the problem...

See where I'm going with this?

Your statements don't indicate as much of anything about religion as they do about you. You've got a hostility problem where the subject of religion is concerned.

I have a hostility problem where the subject of greed for money is concerned, so that's more where I tend to look when explaining the ills of the World, past and present.

I used to have a much bigger hostility problem around religion when younger, but have moderated it considerably, though I'm still not a big fan of organized religion, in a general sense. I prefer individual spiritual investigation to organized religion.

Buddhism is not about an exterior divine authority, it's about disciplining your own mind, so as to attain inner harmony and detachment. How does that offend you? And why would it? Most people are almost incapable of quieting or disciplining their mind...they don't control it, it controls them. The Eastern disciplines are almost all aimed at mastering, quieting, and controlling the mind, which results in controlling outer actions. The more subtle forms of contemplative Christianity (as practiced by a number of notable saints and adepts) were aimed at the same thing.

As for the normal, social, secular morality that you and I both subscribe to...such as not stealing, not lying, not murdering, being honest, paying debts, being kind, and so on....they ALL orgininated in ancient religious teachings. Every last one of them. All of our most basic common civil law started as religious rules of conduct.

So, my friend, where would we be now without religion? Living by the law of tooth and claw, that's where.

You have chosen only to see the historical abuses of organized religion, and in doing so you have thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, as the saying goes. It was an arbitrary decision on your part. You might just as well have decided that MEN were to blame for the World's ills or that POLITICS is to blame or that COMMUNISM is to blame. And that would be the mythology which you would use to explain reality and to determine who the "enemy" was. And it IS mythology. You chose it, you see the World through it, and it becomes real to you...but it isn't real. It's simply a small part of what is real...a half-truth...a mental construction based upon prior prejudice.

Religion is both good and bad, helpful and harmful, uniting and dividing...just like money...depending on WHO puts it to use and HOW they put it to use. It's not all black, it's not all white, it's every shade of gray.