24th
I’m sure someone much more intelligent and philosophical said something like this a hundred years ago, but it occurred to me whilst driving yesterday that religion is just a construct created by the human mind to compensate for it’s inability to compute the notion that one day it won’t exist. I think our primitive, caveman brains are hard-wired in such a way that they simply can’t cope with the idea that it won’t be anything one day. We die and that’s that. So our conscious minds invented religion, the concept of a higher power, a creator, reincarnation, immortal souls, or whatever - anything to make us feel less alone in preparation for the moment of death. Personally, I’ve started to like the idea of Gaia. The spirit of the earth. Yes, it sounds hippie-ish and kind of stupid, but logically, when we die, we just turn back into the elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. While my body melts back into the earth, I like the thought that my soul will join Gaia. And that’s about as religious as I need to be.
