[I_Am]

Me myself was raised in a secular family in a secular society (swedish), although it has christian foundations.

Two things I would like to reflect upon:
1 (positive) - The different paradigms for describing the same thing often recides in all religious belief: From the fact that Judaism, Islam and Christianity share the same holy books (old testament = Torah = Koran) to the other fact that many religions explanies the world in a strikingly similar way, although based upon a different cultural platform.

2 (negative) - It is sad that the religion has been substituting peoples need for rites and rituals for so long. It is important for us as a social being to have our rites for birth, adolesence, matrimony, death etc - I think that it should be a very good thing if those really weren't based on religion, but in common human ground, so that we without the belief issue could include friends from all religions and belief systems to a much bigger extent.

3 (really negative)- Religion as an organised institution is there mainly to stop people in their pursue of the spiritual growth - "Let the priests handle that and don't you even dare to think that you, small creep, should become a prophet - in fact, we will ignore you, ridicule you or, if you are too good at it: burn you at the stake".

I think the above points counts for most of the worlds main religions.

One of our main task as "awaken" should be to build bridges between belief systems.

You should also show respect to other paradigms that your own: Do not demand to "prove" one belief/understanding system with your, that is, for instance: it is foolish to try to litteraly understand chinese medicine on a strict western medecine basis (how do you really understand "wind in the heart"?). Or when people are speaking of "energies" - it is an unfortunate pick of words that immediately makes engineers go: "Oh, yea? Why can't we measure it then?".
If you want to understand another system - it is really up to you to stretch into understand that, not for those of that system to come to your side.

As a parantesis example: Chinese medicine is far more than 3.000 years old and has been consequent and consistant for thousands of years. Our western dito stretches hardly more than 300 years, and is completely revised in every 10 years or so - maybe we should show some fundamental respect to other religions and understandings?