More Ruminations on Religion

I was talking to one of my fellows the other day. There was a discussion about dietary restrictions. He was surprised to hear that I have no religious affiliation and no dietary restrictions. He was under the impression that most Indians are Hindus and vegetarian. He told me that most Japanese people do not have a religious affiliation which, in turn, surprised me. My only visit to Japan was to Kyoto and most of the 'places to see' there seemed to be Buddhist temples.
In any case, my thoughts turned to the manifest fact that much of the irrational human behavior of the modern age seems to be rooted in religion. Objections to abortion and stem cell research in the US, the fact that nobody from a minority religion or without religious affiliation has ever been elected to a major leadership position here, the conflicts between India and Pakistan, the middle east situation, Israel and the Arabic countries, the list goes on. In history too, some of the greatest crimes committed by humans against other humans have been due to religion, whether the crucifixion of Christ or the Crusades in his name or the Jihads in those of Allah. Although I've read the Bible and some portion of the Quran, I've never been able to figure out the conflict (or that between Shias and Sunnis). They seem to be talking about the same deity. They seem to be killing each other over codes of conduct or something. Strange.
The Hindu deities are much more interesting of course, as the Roman, Norse, Egyptian and Greek ones are. These are more like Marvel's Avengers. Each has their own superpower. They interact and even have intercourse with humans and behave largely like arrogant human beings with relatively sub-par intelligence.
At its best, I suppose religion could be an attempt to understand the more philosophical questions we think of when we have the leisure from day to day life. Things like 'is there a purpose to our lives?' 'How did the universe come into being?' 'Is these an objective good and bad?' 'Is death a final end to consciousness or does some form of consciousness continue after death?'' Is there an entity which created the universe?' 'Does it care how individual humans behave?''Is there punishment for 'bad' behavior and reward for 'good' behavior?' Unfortunately, instead of actually considering such questions, most religions have come up with simple minded standard answers to these questions which seem little more than wish fulfillment fantasies.
Take the concept of a 'soul' for instance. It seems to be one thing common to all religions. The idea that death is not final is an appealing one. It's nice to think that when we die, we will not actually die and something called a 'soul' will continue to exist. Some properties of this soul appear to be agreed upon. It is a continuation of the consciousness of the animal which dies. Most religions deny a soul to other animals, permitting only humans to have souls. I suppose it makes eating other animals easier. The soul is either rewarded for the behavior of the animal during life or punished for it or punished for some time and then rewarded (the purgatory concept). The soul may also be reincarnated, generally with its memory wiped and the events in the reincarnation are rigged to punish or reward the soul. The basic concept seems to be to deny death, which is an understandably unpleasant idea to be aware of in view of its inevitability. As we have learned more about Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Neurobiology and the nature of consciousness, it has become increasingly evident that souls are a low probability hypothesis. Permanent cessation of electrical activity in the brain seems to be what determines death and there does not seem to be any reason to believe that any form of consciousness continues after that.
Unfortunately the concept is a deeply subversive one. In the Bhagwat Gita which many Hindus consider to be a sort of distillation of the wisdom of Hindu philosophy, Krishna is trying to persuade Arjun to go to war against his cousins, the Kauravas. The war is to recover the Kingdom, which Arjun's elder brother (and King), lost to the Kaurvas in a game of chance. Basically a turf battle to recover something they lost in a gambling session. Arjun does not feel that it's worthwhile killing so many people, many of them friends, teachers and family members. Krishna responds by telling him that he will only be killing their bodies and that their souls will live on. Now that would make an interesting defence in a court of law nowadays wouldn't it? Sure, I killed him but his soul did not die so no harm done, right?
Another concept which began in Hindu philosophy and has infiltrated Western thought processes is that of 'Karma'. In the Gita, 'Karma' meant doing the right thing. The idea was that you should do the right thing and not worry about the consequences. So Arjun was supposed to start the war, fight as well as he could and not worry about dying or about the people he was going to kill (many of them with fairly dirty tricks as it would turn out later in the Mahabharat). The Western interpretation of the concept seems to be that if someone does something wrong, punishment will take place at some point. Unfortunately, it takes away the motivation for righting wrongs. It's all very well to say 'Karma is a bitch' but the fact is that in most cases people get away with selfish, harmful and antisocial behavior unless we make a conscious and systematic effort to structure society in such a way as to avoid it.
I must admit, as a child growing up, the steady state theory of the universe appealed to me. The idea of an infinitely large universe which has always existed and will always continue to exist is a pleasant one. It would have required no 'Creator'. Unfortunately, since then it has become evident that the universe that we're aware of came into existence a little over 13 billion years ago in a phenomenon known as the 'Big Bang'. Since then it has been expanding. Although the question is not settled, it appears that the expansion will likely continue indefinitely (the alternative models are the big crush or the oscillating universe) and that eventually increasing entropy will result in the all the energy being uniformly distributed resulting in the 'heat death of the universe'.
Is it possible that there is a larger universe or a multiverse? Is it possible that the Big Bang was initiated as an act of volition by an entity in the larger universe? Sure, why not? But I see no way that we can verify that.
Is that entity interested in the behavior of one species of animal on one planet of this very large universe? That seems vanishingly unlikely.