History is a kind of biased hindsight that can be used for a variety of purposes from a warning about our likely future to criticism of the present, or help make possible a utopia. History is also so much dross with very little gold if any. History can be very persuasive with its collection of selected facts, hearsay, and documents. But when we find the gold we toss the dross away. But sometimes not knowing what gold is we toss away the gold and keep the dross.
In religion we have done this, I suspect, many times. We have kept the words but not the spirit. It gets tossed out first. Too soon our teachers become, at best, well intentioned charlatans who are far away from wisdom and not even close to awakening to their true nature. The end of religion comes when the blind lead the blind.
In a world that is still infatuated with materialism the intrinsic worth of religion is not well appreciated, in fact, it is for the most part rejected. Unfortunately, the modern mind does not see much value in intuition which is at the heart of Buddhism and Indian religions like Vedanta. (Only through intuition is transcendence possible; short of this one stays within the confines of the great illusion, that is, samsara.)
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are still very much dependent on history. At the same time, their followers are open to the miraculous which only serves to suppress intuition which transcends the imagination. What is left is only hope in the great miracle to come which never comes.
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