Religion is a product of the evolution and the increased complexity of the Human Mind.
As the more complex the human brain became, the more humans needed to have explanations of the world around them.
For humans would compare their worldviews to their immediate environment, first humans would compare themselves to the trees because trees are large, strong and are in the many. This would be common knowledge, lore and a deity, but the smarter the human brain became, the trees could be climbed, cut down and used.
So the next deity would become the mountains because mountains are huge, solid and rise up the sky, but the smarter the human brain became, the mountains could be climbed, mined and used.
Then the next deity would become the sun because the sun is enormous, powerful and controls the sky.
As historical deities go, there were sun gods, nature and Pagan gods, Greek and Roman gods, Egyptian gods, etc. – as Organized Religions came to rein to-date – the hijacking of the people’s religion has come to pass.
Organized Religions were created for the purpose of three main components:
- Control
- Obedience
- Conformity
- To control not only the people, but their culture, laws and views of the world.
- To have obedience not only of the people, but submission of self, as observed from family, friends and society watching your actions.
- To create conformity not only of the people, but their thought processes and observance of religious rules & laws and more likely to be compliant when directed by the church.
As for a belief deity myself – I see the world from a naturalistic viewpoint where evidence has to be present and repeatable amoung others, in order to be accepted as proof, fact and true (truth).
**[ God = Nature – (sight & consciousness) ]**
(God equals Nature minus both sigth and Consciousness)
God is a fiction which was constructed to be consistent with the religion of its followers. God was a conversion of evolution’s complexity of the Human Mind, since God became an answer which literally is used to explain everything, through ‘God did it’ or ‘God’ as a filler word.
It would be best expressed by Daniel C. Dennett (paraphrased)
‘Life exists because life can exist, not because it was suppose to exist, but because it can and so it does.’
The simple truth is subjective, since nature dances to its own beat, with life and death merely being both actions within nature's construct. Life and death have no meaning because nature does not require them to have meaning, since they are clearly part of a long list of actions that happen in nature.
The Human Mind, being complex and likes to assign meaning to one's environment and will assign meaning to help it better cope and deal with the worldly imput of information. Life and death exist within the naturalistic world and both have direct effect on our personal existance. They hold great power over us, but any meaning placed on life and death are subjective because they only exist in one's mind and that meaning varies from person to person. Life and death are facts of nature. If one is to have life, at some point in time a death shall follow, this is a fact.
To apply meaning:
- life - the quantity that distinguishes living beings from dead or inanimate ones
- death - the end of life
To have the Human Mind assign meaning to life and death to help it better cope and make one feel better is selective reasoning, because in the naturalistic world, to cope and feelings are not presentable as evidence and cannot be accepted as proof or true (truth). Truth is subjective and holds only personal truth.
