Can there be New Ways of Understanding and Practicing Ancient Religious Teachings?

[Leonardo17]

Yes, they are all churches. It doesn’t matter if it is for muslims or jews or hindus.
Theists tend to create personalized words.
Other words are priests, cardinals, bishop, imam, rabi. They are all essentially the same thing.

A church is essentially a school to learn about the religion in question.
At the same time, the priest asks for money and might also talk about who the enemy is, which war is good, which president is good for the church.

So yes: This image is a scary image. I totally don’t like it. And it’s utterly stupid to believe that you can achieve any level of spiritual growth by terrorizing other people like this.
 

It is part of being in an abrahamic religion.
The followers of one of these religions tend to view themselves as absolutely correct and they view the other versions of the religion as being corrupt assholes that must be wiped because god hates them.

I think each sect realizes that calm discussions doesn’t work. They never succeed in converting the “others”.
There are some sects that seem to accept that they are the 10 or 20 that are going to be saved and the billions of others are going to hell. They accept it and they don’t try to convert others.

That type of Islam / Political Islam are not really a match for me.

Why are you into the Islam religion?

As I already said before: Everything you are describing: “Our way is the best / we got it right, everybody else is wrong” is an Ego based approach that belongs to the previous spiritual dark age. In our time this consciousness is gradually shifting to a more introspective, more inclusive and more practical type of spirituality.
 
But this change is happening slowly and gradually. So while some people (like myself) are asking more spiritual question with a more logical and realistic approach others are still under the spell of the previous spiritual dark-age.
 
That’s the stuff I’m working on these days: In the dark-age consciousness there is no room for spirituality because these people do not even have a perception other than the physical. When they die, they think they will go to a place of endless material pleasures, after having been tortured by (material) demons for their (material) sins.
 
I believe in a world of energy. Physics has proven that matter is actually nothing but energy. So that’s a whole new consciousness with a whole different approach toward scriptures and spirituality in general. So if the same adjective is being used to describe both of us there is nothing I can do about it. 
 
But as I said, the difference is on a subtle level. Most of these guys don’t believe in subtle issues either. In the past there has been religious wars because of this. In my country serious mystics where murdered (in the Middle Ages) for having ideas like this.  
 
One think that is new now is that they don’t have the upper-hand anymore. So they are also aware that things are gradually shifting.
 
And this doesn’t change the reality on the ground for now. So when atheist are critical about “Religion” I am still unable to deny the validity of their argument