"We want to feel truly alive.."

" ...and to fulfill the potential of out humanity, living in such a way that we are in tune with the deeper currents of existence...This search for the superabundant life-symbolized by the potent, immortal gods-has informed all great religions: people wanted to get beyond the triviality of mundane experience to find a reality that would compliment their human nature" (Armstrong 9).
Is that what religion is? An answer to the question of why we, as humans, are on this planet? Because to me, thats what this quote means...humans came up with a way to answer some questions otherwise unanswered. Ms. Armstrong went on to state that in the ancient world, men and women "felt that without the possibility of living in contact with this divine element, life was unsupportable" (armstrong 9). In class, we discussed the idea of sacred space a little bit, and Ms. Armstrong bring this idea up as well stating that people like to feel closer to their gods, so they journeyed to these spaces in hopes of being closer to something bigger then themselves. And is that such a wrong thing to do? The only bad i can see that would come of it is that if diverse groups of people come to claim one patch of land (such as Jerusalem), then who has the right to it? and if one group does claim rights, then what happens to the denied groups? War. Battle. Its happened for centuries...but Im getting off topic. Later on in the book, Armstrong goes into the history of the land of Jerusalem, stating both the Biblical history and the archaeological, which I appreciate. I appreciate the Bible and its connotations, but for this book to even be somewhat objective, it is necessary to give all points of view. She also goes into the Islamic belief and that was something I had never heard before....prior to this reading, I had only ever heard the Christian and maybe the Jewish point of view about what Jerusalem meant to people. I guess not being around Islam at all, I never had the opportunity to hear the other side of "story". Later on, she describes the fanatic Josiah who desecrated cemeteries and holy spaces by digging up bodies and killing priests and then burning their bones upon their own alters. This story to me, signifies the begining of the violence in the region...again, I dont know a whole lot about the history of Jerusalem, but from what I do know, the people of the region got along fairly well before this, living in relative peace with each other. Unfortunately, that is not the case today.
So I leave off with a question: Is there any hope for people of different believes and ideas to compromise to a point where they are both willing to give up a piece of themselves in return for peace? Even if it is a part of themselves so deeply ingrained in their souls that people have been killed for it?