Bhuddism is extinct by proxy, as Bhudda is dead and is the only person who can claim bhuddism. He did not start bhuddism, his followers did. and they cannot truly interpret or explain what went on in bhudda's mind.
I'll have to disagree with you here StonerShadowWolf. There have been Buddhas after the original, Sidhartha Guatama, and enlightened minds before him in Vedic and Bon centered cultures.
One famous Zen master who acieved enlightenment put it as such; "An enlightened individual is not a Buddhist, he is a Buddha. Buddhism is not the attainment of enlightenment, it is the raft that takes you away from the Island (the ego), across the river to enlightenment. Once the river has been crossed, the raft is abandoned."

Buddha's followers organized Buddhism, they helped spread it, but Buddha himself was the one who brought the teachings to us that we call "Buddhism". Any Buddhist with a fair amount of devotion and knowledge will tell you that they don't know enlightenment, cannot define it. This is taken for granted; is agreed upon as indefineable until you attain it yourself. And it's completely irrelevant as Buddhism does not purport to give you enlightenment, only teach you how to find it yourself.

If your fully-learned and knowledgeable biology teacher dies, the science of biology itself does not die with him. The students continue learning biology, despite their lack of a biologist.



Jedi are hyped up geeks.
Hundreds of thousands of people have actually joined Jediism, though I'd bet a lot of them aren't too serious about it. The ones who are serious about it, though, are merely excited about a "remarkable philosophy" that's really just an over-simplified and stripped down version of Buddhism, Taoism, and Shinto.

Jehova's witnesses are solicitors, not preachers or spiritual minded folk.
Careful with the critical thinking there SSW, questioning is the devils gate to hell.

Baptists are an offshoot of roman catholic, as are most christian sects, mormons being the only ones i can think of that arent jsut a byproduct of catholicism, but also a set of hallucenations, giving it, actually, the most credibility of all christians.
I'd say their hallucinatory hysteria-induced trances, that allow them to talk with God and angels of course, is the worst thing you can do in regards to actual awakening. It cheapens the religious experience, puts up false shortcuts to enlightenment, and convinces people that working yourself into a psychlogical frenzy with the concept of God in mind, will produce a genuine experience. Instead you get something more akin to schizophrenia.

protestants are protestants and again i know very little. work ethic is cool though i dont believe it is religiously important.
I learned a lot about the development of Christianity in history class, and back in that day I would have been fighting to promote protestantism too! Martin Luther started the whole movement to protest(ant) the catholic church's bastardization of the teachings of Jesus. One of his biggest problems was that under Catholic law you could buy off your sins by giving so much money to the church for such-and-such a crime. Their intense worship of idols, though still carried out to a lesser degree in protestantism, was another issue. And probably most importantly of all, he was against the church having authority above government.

Shamanism and paganism are, in my opinion, the only true spiritual "religion"s.
I wouldn't even call them religions; as a religion would indicate some spiritual practice that is uniformly interpreted and practiced within it's member base. But I agree, Shamanism IMO has the most genuinly spiritual aspects to it's practices. I actually consider Buddhism to be a very shamanistic practice, albeit not represented today in a very accurate portrayal of the original teachings. It's practices go back 9,000 years in the Bon religion of Tibet, where other Buddha's had awakened and come to fruition via Shamanistic practice and the theory taught by Buddhism. The only difference is that Buddhism itself arose in an area most unfamiliar with traditional shamanism, and thus lost a helpful tool, but not an absoltuly essential one.
Buddha's own mental journey, while lucid and of his own mind, was remarkably similar to an ayahuasca experience regarding his final confrontation with Mara before leaving his ego behind. The practices of Buddhism share a very common attitude with shamanism in that one must learn to release themselves from fear of ego death, remove the barriers that separate ones self from the rest of existence, and awaken to the true nature of reality.

naturally, i wouldnt know. i havent researched rastafarianism or 7'th day adventists. but so far, as far as i know, pagans and shamans havent started any wars.
Physically, no. Some Amazonian shamans have claimed to have taken intense mental journeys into nature, where they've come accross Beladonna Witch Shamans. The Beladonna berry is generally thought to be used only by shamans with wicked intent, and is considered detrimental to the mind. These confrontations often ended up with the two having a sort of struggle of a higher plane, resulting in one killing the other. The amazonian shamans themselves, who actually practice for enlightenment and not power, never start or seek out these confrontations, however.

As for Pagans, it really depends how far you extend the term. Greeks and Romans were certainly considered pagans by and large, along with Vikings, Germanic peoples, and many Native American tribes that slaughtered and pillaged weaker tribes.