When one cracks the nut of religion, what constitutes the meat within? What is it that we want from our gods (of which we’ve had a plethora across our literate ages and, no doubt, some “plethora to the n-th power” across all of the pre-literate æons of our existence)? Do we request our divinities to provide an extension for our egos? This is but a particular wording for our desire for a so-called “afterlife,” and what is an afterlife but a means of denying the existence of death? We find the concept of the dissolution of our egos to be distasteful at the very least, so we choose to deny death its due by choosing to believe that our egos shall carry on unperturbed, even though the form of its future container remains an unknown. But do these overtime periods of our lives require the intervention of a superhuman entity? No. So what is it that we desire of our gods? In fact, what do we want of our gods so badly that we have chosen over the ages to bribe entities (of which we possess no objective, empirical knowledge whatsoever) with gifts that the gods do not need and the sacrifice of which (by some means guaranteed to render any given sacrifice useless to the person making the offering) only serves to impoverish the believer. Let’s take just one instance as a class-action example: a shepherd wishes to please the theoretical entity of his/her choice by making a burnt offering of a newly born lamb. The lamb is killed and then its corpse is burned (there may be special instructions for conducting this voluntary descent down the ladder of economic well-being but they are irrelevant to the principle of the process). Has the shepherd now satisfied the hunger of the supernatural recipient of the sacrifice? Has the Being been saved from death by starvation? Does the family of the shepherd now have less to eat? The answers are: No, No & Yes.
Humans who dispose of the profits of their labour in a more-or-less voluntary manner, either directly or through individuals who have specialised in acting as the A&R personnel of some specific Higher Being, are in point of fact attempting to get a service of some kind from one or another of these Beings. Letting any and all activities having to do with the state of a human ego after the demise and decomposition of its original fleshy vessel slide, one is left with nothing to desire of one’s god(s) except protection from the ills, ill wills of others and the multitude of accidents that any person may experience during the course of their life.
If you spend some time paying attention to the events that happen all around you, by using the data source(s) of your choice, you will very quickly realise that Higher Beings are not spending much of Their time or effort protecting anybody from anything. No matter how thick the pillars of smoke may be from the would-be bribers of gods, or how loud the chants, how numerous the prayers of the faithful, life goes on just as it always has: day by day, chance by chance, and with no Shielding From Above over anyone anywhere from the ubiquitous arrows of Chaos. Chaos is not another direction to turn to if you are still looking for the Why of it all, because Chaos does not have even a walk-on silent rôle in the play (or interplay) of Life. Chaos just hangs around and, when so inclined, it will fuck shit up.
So save your sheep. Or eat ‘em. Or whatever.
