In Reply to 'What is the Purpose of Religion?' etc.

For much of human civilization the effort to make life easier or better; to get food when hungry easier through agriculture than hunting and migrating, to find a cure for cancer rather than stoically croaking in agony, to have a nation driving cars and watching big screen TV’s and football instead of inventing super-conducting electromagnetic highways or jogging super-marathons to work-that sort of seek-consumer-comfort project has been an essential goal of western civilization and that of much of the rest. It is why one fixes a leaky roof, makes war on bedbugs across Europe and generates electrical power. The revision necessary today is to accomplish that without destroying the ecosphere or reducing the quality of life for the poor and middle class.

The most strong men, those using steroids and performance enhancing drugs, want huge pay for playing kids ball games in order to have huge luxury things, pay low taxes and receive applause, glory and maybe enhanced dating opportunities, admission to the growing planetary aristocracy of elite millionaires and billionaires etc. Intellectually strong men (and women) might want some things to be made easy and others to be made more difficult. Who wants easy illegal drug importation into California from Mexico, or automatic rifles sent to Mexico? I think it would be great if it were easy to fly on a spaceship all over the Universe. Working to make difficult or impossible things easy has led inventors to try to make it so

In ages past of course people like Achilles wanted a warriors death as noble. Battlefield death avoided cancer and a variety of unpleasant, less glorious and unprofitable alternative ways to die.

If one has comparative social privations one wants things as easy as one's peers if possible.

The coefficient of physical, mental and moral adversity varies from circumstance to circumstance socially and geo-historically. Seeking after comfort as an end in itself can be as dangerous to one's well being philosophically as too much social and environmental stress. Of course those following The Lord have a mission in progress allowing them to rate challenges with a prioritization of values not the same as those with rather epicurean goals I would think.

'What is the purpose of religion' places the word religion into a class itself as an existing thing. If one is a sociologist one might examine them from an entirely empirical perspective and note ala B.F. Skinner some of the amoebic purposes of conformable behavior in each respective case. Philosophically speaking it may be inappropriate to generalize outside of the historical context or in disregard of it on the purpose of some religions assuming that all have equal functions within the meta-class of religions.

I believe the word religion is derived from a French word-meaning liege or allegiance. Christ had a mission to the world's lost different from that of other religions. One should at least make a survey of religions to learn why followers of particular beliefs regarded the works of the founder as worth devotion.

What is the purpose of life is a larger question that entails human responses to life in sub-unit paradigms such as 'what is the purpose of religion'. Some religious actions such as Islam may have been created for political organizing and power, yet one cannot assume that human knowledge has all knowledge of the purpose of religion if the origin is atemporal and divine. The search for the ultimate particle-a Higgs possibly, or a Higgs field as a field giving value and form to all other particles paradoxically itself possibly deterministic and not an all-possible world locations continuum before downloaded to observation. That is a Higgs field that creates solid state quantum particle selections entangling and excluding sufficient probabilities of being at other locations to statistically create the apparent Universe of solid state matter, has a comparable sort of uncertainty for human observers to us intrinsically that substantial knowledge of a Divine Being and His purpose have for clerics and mystics enquiring into the nature of God-one has a lot of uncertainty even if the topic is fascinating.