Hi smiddy3
Whether those religious leaders said fully what God wanted them to do or not, or whether they had everything in common matters not because each of them was also offspring of the time in which they lived. The principle on which they based themselves was like knowledge of medical science as a whole; yet what each of them taught was like prescription Doctors write for their specific patients (which would often vary from case to case). What matters is whether patient is cured or not. Similarly, what matters is whether those religious leaders helped people to become spiritual or better humans or not which we know they did. In essence, they were all highlighting the need for humans to be humane which can be accomplished either with the help of the concept of God (for some) or without the concept of God (for others). That is why Jesus said: ‘Love God and your neighbor,’ and Mohammed said ‘love God and desire for others what you desire for yourself’, and Buddha taught the four noble truths and the eight-fold path that can be practiced without reference to the concept of God whose existence or non existence was irrelevant to him.
Problem arises because of later additions by commercially minded people. But this is not a problem for me. When I read scriptures I do with alertness like a musician who can easily know notes in the wrong places in the songs sung by others. Take the example of Genesis account. It is said that God created mankind as two group—male and female (Gen 1:26) and told them to eat of all the trees. Then when it says God created a couple and prohibited them eating from a particular tree, I take this as something symbolic—something that humanity as a whole did is depicted through a couple for simplicity sake. It shows through one couple how mankind experienced a fall from expanded view of being a world-wide family into contraction of thinking in terms of ‘me and mine’—a concept that is highlighted through the reference of ‘a tree of good and bad’ because in egoistic disposition we tend view things as good and bad depending upon our convenience. Rain is neither good nor bad; yet we sometimes say rain is good and other time we say it is bad. So Adam and Eve story highlights how mankind fell into a new awareness, of egoism. The way God dealt with them show that there is no forgiveness in the dictionary of God because every action must be responded to which is the Law of Nature; and so must be ego. Ego creates hell for the one who adopts it. (Habakkuk 2:5) Egolessness creates heaven for the one who adopts it (Luke 17:21). Hence anything I read in the scriptures that hints at the idea that sin can be atoned or forgiven I rate it as imagination of later writers—not of religious leaders.