Thank you, Banjo,

If indeed actions such as the burial of the dead were performed by the Palaeolithic people despite them not believing it to produce any material advantages, then I may believe that it was a "religious behaviour". If however, they believed for example that the spirits of the dead will help them in their hunts, then I cannot count such burials as religious. Do we in fact know WHY they buried their dead?

Are you also able to give us some rough idea about when the concept of 'existence' could have first appeared in human history/pre-history?

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Dear Dan,

<<This is to enter into the mystery of the question of human free will. Some people do not want to accept certain ideas.>>

Especially such ideas that imply "Thou shalt not commit adultery" or the like...

I think that religious people find it easier to become believers because the belief-system they adopt is already more harmonious with the way they have been living, based on previous good uses of their free will. Others find it harder to bear the cognitive dissonance and their need for evidence is only a cover-up.

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Dear Dan S de Merengue,

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Your evident sincerity prompts me to make a contribution to this debate though my trajectory and perspective run counter-current to yours.

Family was something I discovered later in life when I married and founded my own. It was not really on my radar when I was young. I never knew my father but grew up in the love of my mother whom I felt overly possessive and whom I left at the age of 18.

I grew up in the bush like a wild weed, in what I felt was total freedom, largely left to myself so far as my schooling was concerned. Nobody ever asked me what I did, whether I had any homework, etc. I came home when I had nothing better to do. My dinner was kept warm on the edge of the old wood-burning cast iron stove. Usually a small piece of steak as tough as the leather soles of my shoes by the time I got to it.

Conversation at home was pretty basic, purely practical and of no real interest. I spent most of my time talking with the young bush-brotherhood priests who relayed each other every few years in the local Anglican church.

My mother had me baptised as a baby and later confirmed. I became an altar boy and served at communion throughout the region, accompanying my friends, the young priests, from one little country church to another on Sundays. They were the only people whose conversation I found interesting. It was mostly about theology.

Everybody thought I was going to become a priest and my expectation was that I would eventually become convinced that God really did exist. As a youth, I never did. I kept the question in abeyance for another half a century until my retirement and then took it up again.

This time I was sure I would become convinced but exactly the opposite occurred. I had a revelation. I suddenly saw the light. I realized there was no God. It was an exhilarating experience. I finally reached the truth.

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Dear Banjo,

What a beautiful story!

Now that you realised that God does not exist, you are finally free to fulfil your childhood dream to serve Him. As your mind has settled and you no longer need to be convinced, now you are free to follow your heart.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

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« Are you also able to give us some rough idea about when the concept of 'existence' could have first appeared in human history/pre-history? »
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I’m afraid I have nothing on that, Yuyutsu.

My guess is that it emerged with the sense of self-awareness which I imagine all living creatures have to some degree or other.
The question of existence may also be formulated as “what is the meaning of life” which is a question philosophers have been grappling with ever since mankind has been capable of abstract thought. But please don’t ask me when that first emerged. I don’t know.

In “ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is given the numeric solution "42", after seven and a half million years of calculation by a giant supercomputer called Deep Thought. When this answer was met with confusion and anger from its constructors, Deep Thought explains that "I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

More seriously though, I am inclined to agree with the French philosopher Albert Camus who asserted that the absurdity (senselessness, meaninglessness, irrationality) of the human condition is that people search for external values and meaning in a world which has none, and is indifferent to them.

Camus wrote in his novel “The Stranger” of value-nihilists such as Meursault (a fictive character), but also of values in a nihilistic world, that people can instead strive to be "heroic nihilists", living with dignity in the face of absurdity, living with "secular saintliness", fraternal solidarity, and rebelling against and transcending the world's indifference.

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Dear Yuyutsu,

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« Now that you realised that God does not exist, you are finally free to fulfill your childhood dream to serve Him. »
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I gave up chasing illusions a long time ago, Yuyutsu. I’m better off without them.

But I recognize that they do serve a useful purpose. Some people can’t live without them. That’s what illusions are for.

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Dear Banjo,

I am also inclined to agree with Camus.

You are completely correct. Some people are better off with illusions, but not yourself.

The good news is that you don't need to chase illusions, that they are unnecessary and you can follow your childhood dream of serving God without any.

You could even be a priest, it's never too late! I know that some churches are closed-minded, but surely you could find some denominations that do not require their clergy to believe that God exists. What matters is to love and serve Him devotedly and to feed and tend to his flock, rather than to harbour a dry and useless mental idea about God's "existence".

Somehow the analogy of gay people come to mind: homosexuals used to be jeered at, they were made to be ashamed of themselves, so many suppressed it or went underground, but lately there came a movement of trying to rationalise their feelings, to claim for example that it is biological and genetic, therefore not their fault - but does it really matter why someone feels the sexual attraction they have? Does it need a proof?

Similarly since the Western "enlightenment", religious people are jeered at. We are being told "Your God doesn't exist, you fools" and like beaten children some of us cry "Mommy, she said that my God doesn't exist, please prove her wrong" and they do try to prove their offenders wrong... except that by doing so they play their offenders' own game: true religion was never about that new secular game in town, existence - it was the deep yearning of the heart to return to God, and like the analogy of sexual attraction, this yearning is not an illusion and the heart needs no proof!