Does Buddhism apply to this formula for Christianity? In a discussion about suffering with my brother that got heated he said,
&quot;Buddhism can't end suffering any more than Christianity or Islam, it's a great sales pitch though. Formula to religion: life is bad, but we can end suffering in some distant end goal that no one can ever actually achieve.&quot;
I'm a not very well studied or practiced, so I didn't know exactly how to respond and it's shaking my worldview.
For me, the Buddha’s great insight about suffering had a very practical goal in this life—not some future one. I see this goal being confused with the accomplishment of the enlightenment and total realization of the Buddha. That takes much time and patient dedication which I won’t speak about.
I feel that it is important to point out a couple of obvious differences between Christianity and Islam, and what came to be called Buddhism: the Buddha was not God and is not the creator, and the point of Buddhism is not to worship Buddha, but to emulate him throughout your life, while practicing what he taught about ending suffering. The desire to end suffering does not bring about ‘happiness’. That is the well-crafted carrot on a stick that consumptive corporatists dangle in front of us to keep us wanting more and more in a hopeless chase to find something which ultimately can’t be found outside ourselves.
The Buddha’s path doesn’t make you happy, although you might experience being happy while on that path; instead, the Buddha taught how to end suffering, which leads to the satisfaction called comfort. All too often today, that message is corrupted, by those that should know better, into a ‘buddhist’ search for ‘happiness.’

The goal to be sought is not momentary elation, but an enduring, universal omnipresent enjoyment: “… Unshakable freedom of mind, this is the goal…” [1] when achieved, then “to whatever place you go, you shall go in comfort; wherever you stand, you shall stand in comfort; wherever you sit, you shall sit in comfort; and wherever you make your bed, you shall lie down in comfort.” [2]

If you think about it, all sentient beings seek comfort, not happiness. It is only in modern times that ‘happiness’ has become our stated goal, but it is only an abstraction, not something that is attainable, and marketeers know this. That is why they are always trying to convince us that we need to buy their products to be more comfortable in some way. They know that this is our actual motivation, but they also know that desiring or craving things will not bring us happiness, nor comfort, so we will never be satisfied.

Any community that lives on staples has relatively few wants. The community that can be trained to desire new things, even before the old have been entirely… consumed, yields a market to be measured more by desires than needs. And man’s desires can be developed so that they will greatly overshadow his needs.[3]

This is the exact opposite of Buddha’s great insight about how not to suffer.
I’ll leave it at that, so you can answer your brother without getting into the complexities of how one goes about implementing what Buddha taught.
[1] “The Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima Nikaya),” Volume I, tr. I.B. Horner, Luzac and Co., Ltd., London, 1954, pg 253
[2] “The Book of the Gradual Sayings,” Volume IV, tr. E.M. Hare, Luzac and Co., Ltd., London, 1935, 1955, pg 200
[3] American Prosperity - Its Causes And Consequences, Paul M. Mazur (Lehman Brothers) 1928, pgs. 24-25