I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning, yeah, that coffee shop, and I overheard a group of 4 older men talking to a younger man mostly about how he had “walked with God” and prayed on this and prayed on that and generally brought these religious ideas into his life. I thought this was kind of a strange place to be having this conversation but whatever gets you going in the morning I guess. What struck me most was the way this guy was talking. He sounded like a child describing some adolescent make-believe fantasy but with all the seriousness of an adult. The more he talked, the more he sounding like a kid with a new found idea that he just had to share with anyone who was willing to listen no matter how absurd the idea sounded when spoken out loud. Perhaps religion is nothing more than youthful gibberish evolved into an adult-acceptable format so that people will take you seriously. This guy certainly sounded to me like the fantasy musings of a child with a hyperactive imagination. The entire concept of God, heaven, hell, and all the fixings that go along with religion could easily have been cooked up by an 11-year old high on a sugar rush as easily as they could come from an organized religious movement.
I had considered the financial angel but greenbacks for God is a whole 'nother issue. I think that if you can maintain that act your entire life, you deserve some cash for the 24-hour, 7-days a week, 365 days a year acting job you have taken on. I seriously would consider upon retiring starting my own religious movement worshiping the holy miracle of chicken McNuggets of something similar but I don't have the patience to be around nut jobs 24/7 for any amount of money.
The sainted Christopher Hitchens expressed it for me when he said, "[Religion] comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion..."
I have to agree that religion is a vestigial left-over from the early days of our reasoning development. And what generation that has ever existed didn't believe that they were superior in thought and belief to all previous generations? Hitchens extends that ideal to his own offspring. I guess he was eventually right.