Making Sense of Religion... Somehow

THERE IS A REFERENCE BOOK, the "Encyclopedia of World Religions", and there is a veritable bunch of 'em; religions, that is. Something between 750 and eleven thousand. They all have one thing in common; they are stark raving crazy, with absolutely no basis in verifiable reality. Stupid crazy. They make no sense at all, none of them. Except, maybe, pantheism, or deism, the religion of America's founding fathers, and of eighteenth century intellectuals, like Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. Why should religions make any sense? They were almost all invented centuries and millenia ago, back when humanity knew even less about the universe than it does now, which isn't much. If the Christian Bible, for example, is the "word of God", then God is either a liar, very uneducated concerning basic cosmology, or a very merry prankster. In the first place, the real world isn't flat, and it isn't immobile, standing upon pillars. Stars are not shiny ornamental trinkets, attached to the "vault of heaven", which can fall to earth and crash, like Christmas tree ornaments. Even recently invented religions, which one might expect to be a bit more sane, are crazier than basketball bats. Dude digs up some golden tablets in upper New York state around 1820, attracts a following, as all nut cases somehow seem to, and proceeds to get kicked out of every state between New York and Utah, where the group finally settles, only because nobody else of European descent is living there, or wants to. Granted, Salt Lake City turned out to be a beautiful place, if a bit slow on a Saturday night. And let us not forget William Miller and the "Millerites". The world was scheduled to end in 1843, but didn't. All over America people liquidated their assets, and gathered on hilltops on the appointed date, which Miller had ascertained by the usual method; adding up all the begets in the Holy Scripture. Long about day break everyone went home, either relieved or disappointed, depending upon the particular mental dysfunction of the individual Millerite. They had to start over, from scratch. financially. You can't take it with you, and they didn't have to, but they didn't have much to keep either. Miller Amended his math, and set the date for October, 1844. Again, a bust. You know what they say about doing the same thing more than once, and expecting a different result. The second time around, however, far fewer people sold out and waited atop hills. We can take some consolation in that. More recently, let us not forget that kool aid drinkers of Jonestown, Guyana, in the late seventies, with the late Jim Jones, ascending to heaven rather than hanging around and facing a congressional inquiry. Then there were the folks of the "heavens gate" cult, followers of the reverend Applewhite, who died wearing clean white clothing and new running shoes, lined up in bunk beds, awaiting the arrival of a spacecraft of some sort. The lunacy never ends. How many of these cults are functioning in America even now, not including the biggest one, which has millions of adherents? The lunacy never ends, because human frailty, human emotional needs never end, human gullibility never ends. But couldn't we at least, if we must have religion at all, invent a religion which makes a modicum of sense? How about the "first church of the four forces of nature"? Or perhaps, the "god of the trillion galaxies". Or maybe even "The relativistic church of the unified field of quantum mechanics, reformed." Something! anything" Or maybe just take a cue from Albert Einstein, a nominal Jew, who really wasn't, who said: "my religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. Morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for God." And there you have it. simple, elegant, sensible, with reverence for a sane and sensible God. But that's the problem, isn't it? It just make too damned much sense...