That much is obvious and doesn't need explanation.
But the end, itself, is believed in by virtue of the tool. Experience is great and all, but out of religious context, it's nothing more than an experience.

Spiritual experience has been around far longer than organized religion. But prior to religion, it never had a face. Never had a name.
Religion, in my opinion, merely serves as that face, that name. It fits each and every spiritual person personally and when it doesn't, they whittle and carve away at it until it does.
To me, something that malleable could never be taken seriously.
If it ultimately ends up all being for my own personal benefit, then what difference does it make whether I worship Jesus or the BattleToads?

because it's not just about your personal benefit, it's about you as a social being and as a spiritual being, both of which are about considering yourself as part of a greater whole rather than as a self-enclosed island. for the moment Jesus is a more effective idol to organize people around than the BattleToads, but ultimately the proliferation of images will lower them all to the same status. i don't really have a point to prove here, except maybe that you seem to be missing the point.

If it's not about personal benefit, then heaven and hell would not need to exist...
Theologically, of course.

I understand what you're saying, but if Christians are merely using Jesus as an effective morality teacher, then how can Christians lend credibility to divinity?
What is that, a consolation prize?

They do tend to be mutually exclusive, but its not always the case. I tend to lean on the former, but I can't speak for the other who-knows-how-many christians in the world. Forgive me if I display a sort of arrogance, but I believe I understand Christ's true nature and intentions whereas I believe the majority of self-professed christians do not, Hence I do not call myself a christian since I do not relate to or necessarily practice conventional christianity.
Not to keep spouting off bible verse, but Mattew 6:33 - "seek ye' first the kingdom of heaven, and all these thing shall be added unto you" has always been important to me as it reminds me that above all else the pursuit of a relationship w/ the divine is most important and anything that follows as a result of that will be subordinate. In other words I follow a moral code as a result of my relationship w/ the divine and not as an attempt to put myself in good standing with "the big man who lives in the sky".
Christianity is not a bad religion per se, its just that whenever a you have a corporate belief system it often represents itself at its lowest possible level of consciousness. As the Tao te Ching roughly states "Those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know".

That was as eloquent as it could possibly be said.
But I ask you, you obviously believe in a sentient creator as described in the bible, right?
Just curious.

No, I don't. I believe that what we refer to as God is, in a nutshell, pure consciousness, as Kahlil Gibran Put it "Life yearning for itself". I am pantheistic, which essentially means that God is literally in everything, or is the universe. I also believe that we all are a part of a collective divinity and that we can aspire to the same divine potential that Jesus attained.

it was disorganized but religion was there well before any of the Abrahamic or monotheistic religions. it seems that religion has doggedly pursued mankind throughout its history, no matter the culture or peoples.

i think most religion stems from humans' natural incapacity to grasp the sheer scale of the universe without resorting to explanation and myth. even today, modern science has sought to create a 'timeline' for the existence of the universe (which is in the greater sense a contradiction of scientific belief). it's much easier to say "THIS is how it all began" rather than probing the definitions of a beginning for which there can be no physical ascription ('in the absence of time').

i'd go so far to say that the big bang theory is no less just another extension of religion, a way to placate our own limitations for understanding of the universe as humans.

and if everyone understood the pure absurdity in that there would be no more conflict

the absurdity of the beliefs that I asserted were my own or the absurdity of the anthropomorphic God of the bible?

I'll leave it to the illustrious Alan Watts to put things into perspective.
These should keep everyone occupied for a while