Religion 3.0 - The Prequel : continued

Religions don't need gods . Buddhism, for example, regards super-natural life forms as subject to the Wheel of Life too. But a religion must have a satisfactory answer for the core question: Why? Why does the Universe exist? Why do we exist? Why do we suffer? Why do we die? ( and ask all these questions?)

Answers do not have to be true (i.e. conforming to an objective reality), only credible (to any particular individual).

What are the options? The Universe etc. might:

1. have no point at all
2. have a point too profound for us to comprehend
3. have the point that it's up to us to evolve a point (or points)
   
4. have already been thoroughly explained by some current religion
   

1. is undecidable. We humans, as a species, have a habit of manufacturing meanings, so this option is indistinguishable from 2. or 3..

4. fails the credibility test (for me, anyway). Buddhism, in its Zen form, might un-ask the question, but (to play on words again) that misses the point. The other religions of which I'm aware either actively resist Science, or demand a kind of Orwellian act of new-faith to accommodate it. And if there are to be new scriptures and/or prophets, then they are covered by option 3.

2. and 3. both explain why we have such difficulties with these questions (unintended word-play and all!). Whether there is a single point for us to discover, or one (or more) that our search actually creates, is almost a mere semantic wiffle. The 'point' that eventually evolves almost certainly would not be understandable by us today.

So, for me, 3. is it: the point of the Universe is for the Universe to evolve. It is always what happens next that matters. We exist (or, rather, are aware of our existence) due to the
current "state-of-the-evolution". We suffer likewise: somewhat like the first lungfish, gasping its weary way across the exposed mud. We die likewise, because our flesh is organic: and we are the first species (so far as we can tell) to be capable of imagining any alternative methods of evolving.

My first post on this topic included how insignificant Science has made us seem, as a species, on the physical scale, and, as individuals, on the temporal scale. About as insignificant as that ancient lungfish, gasping its weary way across the exposed mud. It had evolved the new trick of breathing air; albeit with some difficulty: but it survived, and evolved; eventually into us.

We have evolved the new trick of language, from which has followed our social organisations and Science itself, enabling us to dominate (if not actually control, yet) this Earth, our home. Whether we will survive and evolve remains to be seen...