It is interesting to me how if you truly study comparative religions you will find that bottom line they all say the same thing and yet all the wars are fought over the specifics of each individual one. For example, "Obeying God" is talked a lot about in the Jewish tradition. In the Christian tradition it is called "Doing God's Will". In Eastern religions it's best described in Zen as "a flow in harmony with the Divine". In Islamic sects it is called "Surrendering to God".

It is all about the ego being put in it's proper place by daily seeking of guidance through meditation or prayer. Rational thought and logic is not all there is to us, there is also Intuitive Insight which when functioning properly (and this requires a lot of purification and insight) keeps us in synchronicity with Nature and Life.
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It is not religion or the practice of it that is bad it is the lack of understanding and the usurping of power by stupid unenlightened men that is the problem. If Israel and Palestine could really experience God (Divine) in their lives, they would see how much in common they had and come to a quick resolution of differences.

Even though we have all been weaned on Darwin's theory of evolution saying basically that humans began as a mineral, then emerged into plant life, after into an animal state and finally into being human, we don't really seem to grasp the full meaning of this. In Africa there appeared an animal that stood erect,used tools with care and began to speak. A new kind of species had evolved with a brain greater than any before it and a capacity for self-transformation. 

The Climate Crisis on earth now has made us realize this fact  again and suddenly we are jostled out of our delusional reality  that humans are a walking  machine-like brain, akin to God who can make human life comfortable by exploiting the earth and its resources.  Comfortable for only the few lucky ones who got rich. We stopped being aware of how we evolved and where we are headed, namely back to the beginning gestalt of creation. We stopped the self-transformative process. We ripped ourselves away from the evolving life process and disconnected our brains from our bodies. We suddenly thought we were the kings of the universe, the creators of life and we are still trying to prove that by manipulating our DNA to design the next generation according to our limited understanding. And working our bodies in the gyms to look like the Hulk so we live longer. Because the brain as it turns out is very limited in the way we have been utilizing it, namely in self service and competition with each other and the Universe. The body is in fact our doorway to our connection with Spirit, but we are not interested, preferring to remain on the treadmill of our present false security of existence.

Now that the demise of the earth is a possibility, we suddenly realize how much more connected to life animals are than us, how we have veered off course in our evolution somewhere along the line. So we turn to worshipping animals and plants. Caring for them is great and important but worshipping them by buying ballet tutus for your dogs, all the while that we ignore dying and hungry children in our world and other continents is not going to save us. 

We need to get back on the evolutionary train and restart our motors and think about what is the next possible step to take in our growth, what does Life require from us at this point? ​

We first ask ourselves these questions, then begin to realize we are not the end of the road for evolving no matter what brilliant technology we have invented to date. The next step in our evolution is to expand our brain sufficiently away from just information and data input to understanding our spiritual selves. I realize this is very inconvenient for Capitalism, but too bloody bad, that is where the evolution process is headed. So either you are on board developing compassion in this life or you are run over by the train.