A Philosophical Meander

  I'm curious about the preponderence of belief in the world. Counter-argumentative religions which any number of people claim to be the one true faith. Often to the degree where they hate and fear those who don't agree. Why?
  What is religion but a set of values and beliefs passed down through the generations?
  It is the fear of chaos, an escape from chance. A solid house built in shifting sands.
  Maybe.
 
  From the earliest sun worshippers to the rigorous dogmas of modern faiths religion has served but one purpose, to answer the unanswerable to stop us thinking about the question.
  Where did we come from and where will we go?
  To even come close to an answer the question needs to be defined. When did we get here from there and where exactly is here? From the off we’re trying to plot a seemingly simple equation on a grid with more dimensions than we can perceive. How does religion do this?

  Firstly lets look at the soul; the immortal, intangible essence of life. Seemingly it is trapped inside our physical bodies, a clear reasoning voice that controls and sates our baser instincts. When our bodies come from whence they came the soul is there and when we shuffle off the mortal plane it is only our soul that continues the journey.
  Most faiths take the view that if you live a good life and don’t break the rules you go to an everlasting paradise, mess around with the scriptures however and its eternal damnation in fiery pits of hellfire. Basically an eternity of what you deserve.
 
  But an eternity is a very long time. Whether you’re having a good time or bad you’ll have written Hamlet with a troupe of lemurs several times over before even a fraction of infinity has passed.
  Sooner rather than later you’ll have experienced every possible permutation of pleasure and type of torture so much that ennui cannot help but be all consuming.   
  Boredom such as this can only be assessed as simple oblivion the absence of sensation and true ‘death’.

  Another option is the reincarnation theory. The soul gets back in the queue for life after it dies and takes control of a fresh new biological buggy.
  Bill Hicks telling us ‘It’s just a ride’ may not have been a joke
  The memories are erased and the soul is clean, retaining only deeply ingrained lessons from past lives, a spiritual instinct. This idea likens the soul to a blackboard and life to chalk. Life is writing on the soul. There’s a dusting down at days end but school again tomorrow.
 
  I've heard it said that energy can never truly be destroyed, merely converted into other forms. E=Mc2. If this is the case, what happens to our life energy when it stops powering our mortal forms? Does it seep away and disperse or does it transmute into something wholly different?
  Much has been written and debated over this singular issue but there is only one indelible answer. One fate for all that lives. No matter what you believe there is only one moment when you can know for sure. The moment after your last.

  It’s my opinion(s) therefore that:
  (1) The soul may be immortal but that memory is not and reincarnation is the recycling of life;
  (2) The soul is neither immortal nor separate from our bodies. All we have is from now until we die;
  (3) Time is an illusion and we are all just living one moment suspended above unimaginable depths of nothingness, no one ever dies, they just go out of sync; 
  (4) None of the above are true and (the) God(s) shall surely punish my hubris;
  (5) All of the above are true and it’s a lot more fucked up than we thought.
  Try not to worry about it.