They are all a waste of time and effort. As soon as anyone interjects faith into the equation the battle is lost.

Good question. I think that the original self-help concepts in Buddhism have already been well separated out, as for example, with so-called "secular meditation" and the scientific studies around the practice. Plus an individual can adopt the Noble Truths or other precepts and follow them personally without ever darkening the door of a Buddhist tempe.

But Buddhism is a bit of a special case. Most religions didn't just add cruft to an essentially philsophical set of ideas, they started out with the premises of religious faith and their very foundation rests on notions such as that there's an invisible bearded man in the sky who cares what you eat for breakfast and where you put your tallywhacker, to the point that he will consign you to eternal perdition if you get it wrong. I don't see how you separate a fundamentally failed epistemology (theory of knowledge) out of that, and get anything useful. The problem with most religions, virtually all really as practiced, is not organizational, but epistemological. They are assertions without substantiation, that demand belief without question.

Hello, aren't they all supernatural?

Don't know if you can do that with Abrahamic religions easily. All fairy tales.

Yes. I think stinkeye has the right idea. If you compare world religions, a pattern emerges that isn’t easily seen by examining one religion alone.
I would add that the process isn’t so much throwing stuff out as interpreting it properly. A literal interpretation would require you to throw most of it out. A metaphorical reading turns gibberish into science-friendly insights. It’s really about finding peace while you’re alive.

It sounds great but a lot of parts of human nature suck so it probably wouldn't improve the world that much. I agree with sagan when he hopes we will make it throgh this technological adolescence. Hopefully we will make it through without the negatives of human nature destroying us.

I’m not sure it would be as straight-forward as it seems. If we took out the supernatural, we could distill the philosophies of those who wrote the holy books, which would mean… well… they think just like the rest of us. The ONLY thing the supernatural really does, is “justify” our actions/philosophy. And that’s where it gets complicated. The supernatural ‘does’ keep some from harming others, while giving some carte blanche to do whatever they want. So taking that away might backfire on us. That being said, it might not… which is why I’m not sure it’s as straight-forward as it seems.

Thomas Jefferson went a long way toward doing that with the New Testament.

[en.wikipedia.org]

We already do. It's called atheism.

Would it be beneficial to separate out the philosophies of religions from the supernatural aspects? Oh yes! And Buddhism is the perfect candidate for separation, with its variety of philosophical expressions and local supernatural "incarnations." I was introduced to separating the philosophies of Christianity from the supernatural by a college professor who gave me a copy of Bultmann's "Religion without Myth" when my foray into Christianity was failing. He then led me into my 40+ year study of Buddhism. Invaluable! I thank him to this day!

I do this with all religions, looking for the similarities.

They are all allegorical and removing aspects of their story lines would also remove the proper symbolism. The problem begins when these stories are taken at face value.

I doubt it will work.

Not really because then all you have is a mixed bag of life advice. Sure there's the golden rule in there , but Paul is also incredibly sexist. There's turn the other cheek, but there's also rules on the proper way to own slaves. You'd have to throw away so much of the source material that it's not worth it. We've grown so much morally as a society since bronze age goat herders wrote these books that I just don't see them as relevant or necessary.

I don't believe that can be done. If you want to find standards to live by, try reading in the psychology of interpersonal relationship, the issues of values and the self-system, and the existential philosophy.

Doesn't the philosophy of pretty well all religions boil down to the golden rule, if you take out the supernatural dogma - treat others as you would like to be treated?

I am an agnostic Christian in that, while seeing the existence of God as highly improbable, I try to lead a life modeled on that of Jesus. I see being a Christian as following Jesus teachings while doubting that he is divine. I have found that, for me, the model of life Jesus exemplified works best, and is the most satisfying.

Considering that this would be even the slightest bit realistic on a large scale? Or do you mean on an individual scale? You mean just take something like the Ten Commandments and use that and get rid of all the Jesus has risen stuff?

As an individual, it would be easy to do. You just have to decide for yourself what in the bible would be beneficial philosophies for you to live by. There are definitely some beneficial philosophies in the bible for every day general life.

On a larger scale, first we would have to decide which of them is actually helpful based on perception. That isn't going to be an easy thing to do with so many opinions. Then you would have to convince people that something like the Ten Commandments was even a valid beneficial philosophy by telling everyone who knows about all the violence and harm in the bible that something like the Ten Commandments should even be followed because of the bible's hypocritical nature. Then you would have to get the billions of people who believe all the hogwash in the bible/koran/etc. to agree to either edit it out of future bibles or not to believe it, and that would be impossible considering the thousands of years of indoctrination society has endured, including individual indoctrination through generations of families and their teachings. You also can't force people to not teach their kids what they know either. So it will continue.

I already think many non-fundamentalists already do this on an individual level though. They try to live their life by certain "lessons" in the bible while at the same time not believing in the more idiotic aspects of it.

Do you mean like the underlying differences that distinguish one religion from another?

What is the pull of religion? I see it time and time again, people bending over backwards to make any excuse to find some place in their life for religion. I don't get it. Are people just lazy?

If you had a thousand bowls of dog crap and one bowl of ingredients for a meal would you take the time to make the meal out of the ingredients of spend your life avoiding the small amout of work and trying to justify eating the dog crap?

Just forget the dog crap and put the effort in to make the meal.

Separating religions form supernatural aspects? Impossible for me. I do not believe in the supernatural because my religion claimed to be supernatural. Have I had any experiences? Yes. It means I cannot explain the phenomena properly. Many others cannot either. To do so it all has to be demonstrable. We cannot just pick and choose beliefs out of ignorance. It would be like playing basketball and picking for your team claiming you will take Spiderman but do not want the Easter Bunny.