Religion and Fiction

I regularly find myself engrossed in a novel, where strange worlds and exciting lives keep me entertained. Time goes at massively accelerated speeds and there's always an overarching feeling that either things are going to end happily ever after or I'll walk away from the book having had an adventure myself. The world of a novel is written by humans, for humans, to entertain and at the same time convey part of the belief system of the writer in a sort of proof by example. Communication coupled with the ability to convey a fictional story is a powerful and ancient tool, and is truly one of the most beautiful aspects of humanity. However much we would like to live many lives, we can't, but in our heads we can experience as much and as fanciful worlds as we or someone else can imagine.

And what a striking parallel we can draw with religion. All evidence would suggest we are unremarkable, but complex and beautiful pieces of machinery rotating an unremarkable sun in a normal galaxy. However, religion postulates that we are important and central. That there is something special about humans and something more out there, if not true it is certainly fanciful. Furthermore, the afterlife offers a kind of novel type experience, where our true selves will live on in happiness forever. The kind of doublethink which, if correctly applied can give us the same feeling that we are simply reading a novel. It appears to form the same structure as human written fiction. A good friend used to joke that eventually people might believe Harry Potter to be a factual account of reality, and I don't think he is far wrong.

Perhaps then religion is a more remarkable invention, a fiction so rich and fanciful that is can be believed, shielding us from the harsh realities of this cold nothingness.