Ok you guys, I'm about to go from zero to MAD DEEP SHIT and back

I'm e-mailing back and forth with an old childhood friend that I've just reconnected with, and somehow we've immediately plunged into a super-deep philosophical discussion.  He asked me about my take on religion, and this is what I somehow was able to articulate.

My take on organized religion is pretty jaded. I think it's attended by a vast majority of sheep whose hearts are in the right place but who just have some human need for something to lean on, to depend on, to believe in, something beyond our empirical existence. Religion sets peoples' minds at ease about the huge question in life, which is, "What is there outside of the life we know?" Maybe a more accurate way to say it is that it sets peoples' minds at ease about the huge fear in life - that there IS nothing outside of the life we know. That death really is a final end. So I think religion is largely the successful operation of a few leaders to actively and knowingly exploit that question/fear, and a whole lot of people below them who for their own reasons, choose to genuinely believe.

Now of course, there are some caveats. Was Jesus a real dude? I think absolutely so. Did he preach everything the Bible says he did? He probably did. Did he believe it? Who knows. Did he die all dramatically? Probably so. But I don't think that necessarily justifies Christianity as a whole. I think people got ahold of the excitement around the dude and exploded his teachings out into a whole framework and made it into a religion in order to further their own agendas, whether those were power, or a genuine feeling that pressing their morality onto others was beneficial, or whatever.

There are other caveats too. I do still believe there is *something* outside of the life we know. Life and the universe as we know it are in some measure finite. Our little human brains can only comprehend the finite, not the infinite. To most people this means that the universe had to have started at some point in time. To me, this means that there is simply a dimension of conception, of understanding, that is beyond what we as humans are capable of grasping, and that if we could, it would blur or remove the lines between the finite and the inifnite, and that question wouldn't matter any more. Regardless, either way of looking at the universe implies that there is *something* going on that is beyond our comprehension. As a matter of fact, I think it's arrogant of humanity to dream up religion and attempt to claim that we have even a sparkle of understanding what is beyond, let alone a full and complete explanation.

But there's gotta be something. We came from somewhere. I just choose to believe that out of the incomprehensibly infinite number of possible explanations, it's not super likely that any of the 20 or so ideas humanity has dreamed up are actually right.

Unless of course a loving, caring God sensed the loneliness and desperation of a humanity that felt so alone, and chose to send a messenger to explain it all to us, and set our minds at ease. *shrug* I guess that's just as likely as any other possibility.

Which makes it not really all that likely at all.