[myboynoah]

Originally Posted by Ma'ake

Well stated, and I agree, a dilemma - but then again, so much in life is a dilemma.

I believe in a higher power, but with my lousy spritual antennae I tend toward a Deist view of things. My take is there may be something to the spiritual witness people experience, but whatever communication might be sent to us is pretty general in nature, and human beings wrap anthropomorphic structure, ceremony, ideology, doctrine & interpretation around it all, much of which is simply untrue, at least in the literal sense human beings seem to gravitate to in assessing truth.

From my way of thinking, Buddha, Shiva (et al), Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, The Creator, and Joseph Smith all may have been exposed to similar "insights" on the devine, but the divergence in ideology & practice is due to their humanity, their spin on things. For example, did the Lord specify particular ordinances to the prophets of old, the Popes, the newer prophets, etc? To me there is too much detail & ritual, things that become the seeds of disillusionment as people come to view the specifics as being arbitrary & superficial.

The banality of religion is what prompts atheism (which I find to be equally "unprovable" to a base belief in a higher power, at least from a scientific standpoint).

In terms of religion's assertions, IMO we know far, far less than the structured ideologies and traditions suggest.

So, I take it you don't give Jesus a special status among his fellow receivers of God's inspiration. In other words, he was not The Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of mankind.