My own personal spiritual path is between myself and God, not anyone else. I am not in a position to say that all religions or path's are equal or not equal. Any path that leads to God is Godly. Paths that don't lead to God are unGodly. I am not defending any particular religion, nor attacking any particular religion. I differentiate between what is Godly and unGodly. Godly promotes humility and love of God and people practicing the golden rule, nonGodly promotes human ego and love for worldly things as well as practicing the opposite of the golden rule. My criticism always goes to the human beings and their own promotions, never to God. God is faultless, fault filled is man.
That would make you one of the relatively few exceptions to the rule. I was referring to just about everyone else in my earlier post, since most True Believers seem compelled to share their "light" in one way or another with the rest of the world (and preferably with legislation), whether the rest of the world likes it or not.
I do understand the ways in which man has perverted religion to his own agenda. Like you I agree that people should be living in their own lives, and as long as they are not harming others...what they think, or believe, or practice in private, or in an assembly that is private. It is when people abuse religion, and seize upon it and the followers of religion for political purposes that you and I are in agreement. However, I don't see religion as causal. I see leaders who lust for power and control over others. So they use religion to accomplish that goal. They can use any strong belief system to accomplish that goal. You take a power hungry leader, and they find a way to rally their troops to increase that power over others...and that is what we have seen in all the political movement from the Crusades, to Nazi Germany blaming the Jews for their ills, to the US's attack on communism, to communism's attack on capitalism, etc. I have no problem with anyone wanting to share their belief system with me. They can come to my door with great earnestness and hand out flyers for PETA, or GreenPeace, or the Watchtower, or anti gay rights, etc. These soldiers are just idealists of a sort, who are on a mission. I have no problem with them, as long as once they have offered their pitch, when I decline they freely give up and move along. America gets involved with wars and conflicts all the time, primarily for economic and imperialistic motives. They are not religions wars, unless you see the US's worshiping of capitalism as a religion...