Sage Sankara says: ~ Karma is not competent to remove ignorance.+

If people have believed in religious propagated myths for many generations, the length of time does not prove it true.

Bhagavan Buddha: ~ Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

The path of truth is the path of verification. Nothing has to be accepted as truth without verification.

Religious Scholars or pundits believed it is enough to read, to accumulate knowledge from books. They think they have mastered Vedas and Upanishads and the other scriptures, and they looked upon other people as ignorant, as illiterate people who are not studied Vedas and Upanishads.  

In one sense, you can say   Gnani is illiterate because his Gnana is nothing to do with the scriptural mastery. If you consider a scholar as literate, as a well-educated man, then a Gnani is definitely illiterate.

 But of what value is the scholar’s accumulated knowledge? A scholar will go on and on about the immortality of the Soul but when death approaches you will find him trembling and weeping and wailing. All this talk of immortality will crumble into nothingness because he has not known it.

Sage Sankara says: ~ From the point of any of these four uses karma is of no use for attaining liberation. Remaining in the Soul, the Self’s own true form is released. It consists in realizing the true nature of the Self which is ever-existent and eternal. Moksha, therefore, is not something to be produced, for it is eternal (nityatvat). It is not something to be purified, for it is bereft of all qualities and impurities (nirgunatvat, nirdoshatvat cha). There is also another reason here. It cannot be purified since it is not a means (asadhanadravyatmakatvat). Only a thing that serves as a means can be purified, as the sacrificial vessel or clarified butter by a sprinkling of water and so on. (commentary on Bhr, Upanishads 3-3-1)

Sage Sankara says: ~ Karma is not competent to remove ignorance, for it is not opposed to it. It does not matter in what way we characterize ignorance, whether as the absence of knowledge or as doubt or as erroneous knowledge. It is always removable by knowledge, but not by action in any of its forms, for there is no contradiction between ignorance and karma. (Commentary on   Brah.3-3-1 )

Taittiriya Vartika, verse-24: ~ There is also another reason for rejecting this view. Karma involves duality in the form of means and end, doer and deed. The perception of duality is ignorance. Further, it is only a person who has the desire to perform karma. Since he is ignorant of the non-dual Self, he thinks that there are objects other than the Self which he should strive for and that there are persons for whom he should suffer in his body. "He struggles desiring something for himself, something else for his son, the third thing for his wife and so on and gets involved in the cycle of births and deaths." (Brh. Up. Sankara's Commentary, 4-4-12)

In short, karma presupposes desire, involves duality, and is, therefore, a product of avidya. If so, how can it destroy avidya, the root cause of bondage, and thereby cause liberation?

Mundaka Upanishad: ~ “These performers of karma do not know the Truth owing to their attachment, they fall from heaven, misery-stricken, when the fruit of their work is exhausted.

Arguing with religious believers is fruitless. Belief in tradition and the scripture as if they were true or factual quite clearly is a delusion, but the payoff for holding such delusions is, for those who hold them, extremely compelling ~ the avoidance of the "wrath of God," the hope of heaven or salvation, or the imagined "end of suffering."

First Mundaka - Chapter 2 (10) - Ignorant fools, regarding sacrifices and humanitarian works as the highest, do not know any higher good. Having enjoyed their reward on the heights of heaven, gained by good works, they enter again this world or a lower one.

Religious orthodox think that through their good karma and performing rituals they get moksha. Religious moksha is based on the birth entity whereas spiritual moksha is based on the birthless Soul, the ‘Self’.

First Mundaka - Chapter 2 (9) - Children, immersed in ignorance in various ways, flatter themselves, saying: We have accomplished life's purpose. Because these performers of karma do not know the Truth owing to their attachment, they fall from heaven, misery-stricken, when the fruit of their work is exhausted.

Sage Sri, Goudapada says:~ The merciful Veda teaches karma and Upasana to people of lower and middling intellect, while Jnana is taught to those of higher intellect. The karma based on the false self is not a qualification to Self-Realization.

Thus, it proves that the Advaitic wisdom is kept away from religious people who are of lower and middling intellect and made them indulge in karma and Upaasana. Thus all the religious prescription is not meant to Self-Realization.:~Santthosh Kumaar