Many religions claim that their scriptures have some special merit or perfection that goes beyond ordinary schools of thought. (I don't disagree that this is naive; it's nevertheless often a central claim).

But that’s exactly my point - as a reader/learner, you don’t need to be a literalist. You can choose to imbibe the useful aspects and move past dogma.

Sure, but if you don't believe the religion then why should you believe that you'll be able to dredge up enough good to outweigh the bad?

I don’t think you read my initial comment fully.

You don’t need to believe in any religion, though even theists are very selective followers. The point is to use philosophy from religions/etc to inform your own worldview and improve your life.

I don't know why you'd think that.

My point is, why believe that philosophy has merit, or that you'd be able to distinguish the good parts from the bad parts? (And if you are able to distinguish good from bad philosophy, why would you need an existing religion as a starting point?)

Could you point me to some perfect philosophical writings?

Obviously, the authors must be beyond reproach in their lives. And, do ensure that everything in their writings & speech are “good” before their time, during their time, during our time, and for all future times to come.

Your other point seems to be that it’s better to avoid all this, and start from scratch. It’s good for you that you are able to inform yourself of everything with no materials. The rest of us need something to go off of.

> Could you point me to some perfect philosophical writings? Obviously, the authors must be beyond reproach in their lives. And, do ensure that everything in their writings & speech are “good” before their time, during their time, during our time, and for all future times to come.

I have a lot more faith in an imperfect source that acknowledges itself as such than a source that purports to be perfect but isn't.

So all you need is a disclaimer somewhere? You can’t just assume one like a rational thinker should?

Something tells me you’re not arguing in good faith, so I’ll stop engaging.

I can't assume a disclaimer that contradicts what's explicitly in the main body of the work, no.

Religious philosophy is generally embedded in a paradigm where that religion is correct, and where scripture in particular is perfect and infallible. So it's not at all obvious to say that you can pull value from it outside that paradigm.

I don't know why this good advice is downvoted, and looks like mine will too.

I don't understand why people still consider literature written by human with nowadays language to must be either perfect or it's worthless.

Also how they see a form of government that declared they're adopting one religion teaching and using it as argument proof / point.

We will spiralling down to whataboutism soon like this. Cherry picks the good ones are fine, and people do that everyday. Just don't cherry pick a bad one to justify your agenda and your bad action.

It's like people want these things written down in no-holes legalese. While at the same time people will misinterpret what others are saying (see "straw man argument"; people are quick to jump to conclusions about people about what they say and don't say).

Here's a religious code people can live by: "Don't be a dick". I'm sure that summarizes all the good parts of organized religions and philosophies. It's also the most difficult one to adhere to for a lot of people.

One of the agreed-upon principles common to the largest Buddhist denominations is that our world was not created and is not ruled by an omnipresent, omniscient God.