Yes, cockroaches do survive but I doubt most people would be happy living a cockroach's life. Not that they would die, of course not, but they would most likely lose the will to live which is almost the same thing.
The irony of it is that our lives are not essentially different from a cockroach's. We spend most of our time attending to biological needs and we perceive that to be wrong. Essentially we don't identify with our biological nature. From the moment our species gained a certain level of awareness the world suddenly seemed wrong. We built cities to isolate us from our natural environment, created science to gain the power to change it, created philosophy, religion, culture, art, entertainment, to place ourselves as far from our biological nature as possible.
To me there's obviously something wrong. I don't know why our psyche is not fit for our living conditions but I don't think anyone can deny that such is the case. The idea that a spiritual reality must exist comes directly from that feeling of discomfort, from the perception that what we think we are is not compatible with what we know ourselves to be. Once that perception is set in, the field is open to all modes of speculation, religion being just the most popular one.
So what I'm trying to say, basically, is that religion, or at least some form of spiritual vision, will always exist and be a major force in society for as long as the feeling of discomfort is there. You can only dismiss the need for religion if you can prove that there are more rational methods of getting away with the discomfort.
The fact that a minority of people don't feel the huge gap between expectations and reality, or won't admit that they do, in no way proves that religion is unnecessary for the majority.
By the way, Richard, your "live life as if this is the first and last day" is precisely what Buddhism teaches. Maybe you didn't need Buddhism to learn that, but the fact that you think it's a good attitude, and the fact that a lot of people could benefit from sharing that attitude with you, is to me clear indication that Buddhism can be extremely valuable to some people.
For the record:
Buddhists don't believe in God
I'm not Buddhist
So there you go |