On Faith - A new leaf?

I've noticed a few trends in myself. 1. I'm in a rut. 2. I don't write about faith. 3. I focus on things that don't matter in the long run. 4. Writing helps.

So I'm going to write things on this blog. No promises. No delusions of grandeur, but I hope it helps me and others.
Here's my thought of the moment, which began as a joke:

Those who pray to God and those who pray to Allah are trying to connect with the same entity. They just think He has a different e-mail address. Other faiths try to connect with entirely different protocols, but I think the body of their message is very similar.

America is religiously tolerant

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/24religion.html?ex=1371960000&en=8eb65184ecce8ef8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Great study by Pew. It looks like Bill Maher and Ben Stein may be wasting their time trying to uncover our conflicts. Americans don't want to fight each other over religion, much less condemn one another.
I say we are destroying destructive religion, one step at a time. One in five atheists believes in God. That's positive. 70% of people who have a denomination believe that theirs is not the only path to salvation. Most everybody wants everyone else to be saved. Doesn't that make them better people? American values are independent of our religions, deeper, and, I would say, better.

Separation of church and state and the unavoidable adherence of law to religion

Church-state separation is entirely possible and healthy. State-religion separation is definitively impossible and utterly unthinkable. Your laws are going to have to come from some belief system(s) and or philosophy. The laws in this country came from progressive Christians in the 18th century.
The laws today come from a number of faiths and philosophies that have asserted themselves into our laws over the years. Atheism is a religious philosophy, even if it is is not a religion per se. A number of culturally commonplace principles now shape our laws.
If the law favored no religion, as it definitely favored progressive Christian religions in the beginning, it would have an even smaller domain. the law must say something is wrong and something is right. Religions, if you try to include all of them, will disagree on virtually every topic. (This includes faiths within "world" religions" like Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.)
If you want laws at all, you have to choose. There are some general things, like the violent and sexual crime, where virtually all religions agree in spirit. If you want to include all philosophies, you can at least have those laws. Beyond that, laws addressing worship and prayer will quickly offend someone. That's not including the possibility that someone will simply offend another by practicing a different faith.
Now which religion or philosophy should you favor or choose? That answer is hard to find, because the 11,000 religions of the world each claim to be THE ONE. How many are right? All, most, just one, or none? That belief is a meta-religion itself. And after you answer that question, do the ones you define as wrong or questionable deserve the right to believe anyway? Maybe they do, so long as they don't harm or offend anyone else.
The harm principle and the principle of offending others. That's contemporary social problems in a nutshell. Then you add in the further complications of who is a person who can be harmed, how they can be harmed and how to protect them from harm. Hence, America. The United States of America, since those in South and Central America are also Americans and may be offended that we claim to be the only nationality of the continents.

How I think supernatural creatures gained identities

I think it was through writing, developed in Mesopotamia, that angels and demons, gods and goddesses became something. The animistic and shamanistic spirits were in many belief systems. It was through language that the identities of these spirits developed into tangible individuals. It was also through reading and writing that Persian angels and demons became Judeo-Christian angels and demons. Persian, or Zoroastrian, spirits probably had their roots in shamanistic or animistic cultures.
These cultures may have conceived such spirits, and their influence over man, to explain things and give them more control over their world. A world that was inexplicable without science, and people inexplicable without psychology.
Once, shamans or animists passed on their knowledge of the spirit world. With writing, shamans became prophets. It is indeed amazing that the Old and New Testament hang together as well as they do, being written by so many prophets and priests over so many centuries.

The origin, and fate, of demons

Did the angels and demons of Zoroastrianism, Persian religious magic, become our more modern concepts of such? Why does it seem Zoroastrianism is demonology light, Judeo-Christianity is demonology darker, and Satanism is demonology black? It's like Judeo-Christians worked so hard to personify evil, in its king the devil and in its finites applications through his minions, that old Zoroastrian eschatology became perverted, in effect creating Satanism.
I am also struck with the fact that my worldview is somewhat similar to Zoroastrianism, though I am nominally a Christian. Is it because of my background in comparative religion, and Zoroastrianism is a religion which can encompass all deities? Is it my holistic explanation for things, allowing polytheism (the myriad demons and angels and/or all your pagan gods) and monotheism (the one uncreated Ahura Mazda) at the same time?
Personally, I wish Christianity hadn't invented Satanism, as it often seems it did. Then again, atrocity is nothing new; the Christians did not invent that. Thankfully, most of the evil blood rites of previous religions have faded from memory. There are no Celts burning the bodies of their enemies, and no Mayans sacrificing prisoners to dark gods, I think. Satanists are just the kind of people who want that sort of control, objectifying other human beings. They are not a whole lot different from racial supremacists, slavers, chauvinists, and those who fund prostitution/pornography. These are all people who reduce others' humanity for their own pleasure and/or gain. Yes, these are the vampires who walk among us. They feed on the blood of others, be it physical or spiritual.
And yes Dan, religious zealots are vampires too. They want to consider some other people less than human based upon religion. Yes, they may not be doing so to fulfill their own selfish desires. I do not believe that evil has limits. Lawful evil? Please. Someone who is willing to brand millions of people Muslims, to justify taking their oil, or Jews, to justify taking their wealth, seems to have ulterior motives.
Well, I've come full circle. I used to believe religion was false, and now I'm beginning to again. I still believe that Jesus Christ offers us the best hope for a peaceful future, provided that people quit taking things out of context, stop planning for the Apocalypse, stop religious violence, and start treating each other like their sins are forgiven.
We must all personify God's love and desire to save each one of us. Each human being is valuable to God, and should be to each of us as well.
We're brought once again, through the above musings and through today's news of a woman found guilty of dismembering a lover with a chain saw, to the question: Why is is evil in the world? Who is responsible? If humans can't fix it, stop it, or remedy it, who do we turn to? The religions of the world seem to agree: evil is in the world because a higher power wants it to be here. They also agree that people are responsible, until they repent or are exorcised or perform the appropriate ritual, for the evil they commit. There seems to be agreement that the powers of evil are strong, but man has free will, and the powers of good are stronger. In that, there is hope. If your religion is an eschatological one, you can believe than one day evil will be finished. Until then, we must live here and do what we can to create a preview of that perfect world.

Which religion began the myth they all refer to?

Separating a solution into two problems: I combine the idea of Leviathan, beast of the Deep in Judaism; Tiamat, giant serpent whose body became the sea and sky in Sumerian myth; Elder Gods forecast to return and end humanity in Cthulhu; the endless cycle between Shiva and Vishnu in Hinduism; and the Midgaard Serpent forecast to return for Ragnarok in Norse myth into one comparative religious idea. I feel very gnostic when I say that deep down all of these are ways of expressing that people know what the Big Bang is, and that the resulting expansion of the universe is ultimately finite. Perhaps I just exemplified the failing point of comparative religion in believing that my Hindu science theory of calpas is the correct one, and all others just copies. I think these are also ways of remembering that life has ups and downs, bright days and dark days. I think it says, in my agnostic thinking, that what makes or breaks your day is often beyond your awareness or even comprehension.
Listening to heavy metal and reading mythology after taking Ginkgo Biloba is a mind-expanding experience.