The main source of our disagreement seems to be the assumption that the things people say they believe, the actions they take on a conscious level, indicate the way they believe, that what a person believes is controlled by the person in some way.

I realize this is a somewhat unfalsifiable position, but I believe that the majority of people aren't really aware of how they feel, of who they are. Look at the actions in the west, you pointed it out, it's hypocrites all the way down.

Jesus, the savior of the world, the patron of sacrifice and humility is used in massive churches with great luxury. Broadcasted on TV to people in large homes while some sit starving in nations where mud is the most water they can find.

Eastern values of suffering through desire are twisted into consumerism, made out to be sold and packaged into nice little booklets for a person to buy for a few dollars. They are used to create a culture of desire, to have a new statue of Budda, to buy into tapes, videos, and so on.

However, I think that if you look with any dept at these cultures, they represent that disconnect between who we are, and who we think we are. We want to believe, and are taught to believe, that we are nice, humble, caring, considerate. We want to believe that we are in a group that supports us, that we are important, special, part of something larger, something greater.

Sometimes we want to be different, we want to dismiss societies values and challenge our ideals, we want to learn, to expand our mind.

That's what these "hypocritical" religions are doing, They do not give people what they say they do, and the people who go to the churches do not go there for the reasons they think they do. They satisfy our desires, ironically enough, even if they are claiming to be attempting to get rid of them at the same time.

I really do believe that if these people were hypocrites, they would change. Not only would they change, they would do so in such a fast way that you wouldn't believe it. In reality, they aren't hypocrites, they just haven't taken the time to know themselves as they should. If they did, they probably would be guilt ridden, as they have told themselves for their entire lives that "this is what I want". So they don't.

Look at how people act around meat for a shining example of this. We are cruel, heartless bastards when it comes to treating animals well, but we don't like to be those things, as we are taught that they are inherently bad traits. So we cover it up. We buy "free range" eggs, we try to convince ourselves as much as possible that the animal's aren't actually suffering, or we try to say we made up for the fact we just killed a living being for a nice treat by giving it a nice walk before we do kill it.

Our actions indicate that we do not believe animals are moral. Our words, our conscious idea of who we are say we do. This does not mean we are hypocrites, just that we are ignorant of our nature. Not even that, we are terrified of it.

Consider when we abandoned slavery, or when the west did. Not when we learned of freedom and liberalism, but after the industrial revolution where we became a society of workers who needed freedom, who needed to be able to work in a factory, and to be trusted in doing so.

But the story isn't one of slaves being made obsolete by technology, it is of humanity suddenly realizing that we did for thousands and thousands of years is one of the most horrible acts possible.

In reality, slavery just went out of date. It wasn't driven out of existence by argument, but by an assembly plant. The south fighting the north was like a war between muskets vs bow and arrows. Just as the war between the US and the Soviets was one between liberty and order. The old vs the new, slavery vs industrialization. Industrialization won. Morality did not. If slavery was still more efficient, we would convince ourselves it is an OK act, as we do so today with sweatshops, and meat factories.

This is the reality that we fear. This is why you see so many hypocrites.

consumerism does not produce happiness and that it is, in it's current form, fueling the destruction of our society in both environmental and political ways.

If your goal is for people to live happy, content, emotionally fulfilling lives, than I agree that modern consumerism, capitalism, and so on, are not the best or greatest ways of running society.

However, society is not something that exists for people to merely be happy in. People are not driven by a desire to merely be happy, to be content. We are driven to tinker, to control, to destroy, to abuse, to create, and so on. Society, the foundations upon which it was built, do not rely on everyone within it being happy, but instead rely on the societies ability to grow, to accomplish more, to provide benefit to those who live within it.

A content life of philosophical study in the woods is great, but it does not build circuits, unlock the potential to feed thousands on land that could previously feed hundreds. It does not build missiles that can annihilate cities in an instant, it does not give us the inspiration and greed required to look to the stars and say "mine".

We are a weed, a parasite, an invasive species. We cannot go through life without killing other creatures, be it by stepping on a bug, or eating hundreds of other things with feelings much like our own. Our very bodies are built on the sacrifice of thousands of individual cells, destroying themselves prematurely for the greater good. What is cancer but a free-spirited cell that takes life into it's own hands, freeing itself from the oppressive restraints of the body?

We take, we consume, and we twist the world around us until it suits us more than it did before, and we will continue doing so until it is impossible to do more. We are not nice, we are not peaceful, we are not happy. Mankind is not suited to a life of peace, nor one of war.

I do not believe we are evil by nature, as we can care for one another, we cry, we nurture, we farm, we domesticate, we build great and peaceful cities, we form peace where only war existed. We have empathy, we protect species all over the world from death, we catalogue and preserve things which are in danger by our own destruction. We do all we can to look away from the reality of how horrible this world really can be, and from what we have to do, and endure, because of that fact.

We are complex, our lives are complex, our nature is complex. To consign mankind into a restrictive box as most religions do, to say we must be content, happy, at peace, is to restrict who we are. This is the source of the hypocrisy you see. In order to build something, you must destroy something else. Mankind is an expert at both, and society is the greater sum of all our actions.