Hope and faith

After a discussion with mom and Caro last week at Emily's, I've been doing a lot of thinking about faith, hope, and god.

"The Architect" in the second edition of "The Matrix" trilogy said something like this to Neo:
"Hope, the quintessential human emotion; simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness."

At the time, this struck a chord.  Lately, I've been around religion and have drawn some parallel conclusions.
At my uncle's funeral, lots of praying took place.  Before he died, there were cards in his room from fellow church goers asking exactly what ailments he had so they could pray to god for specific cures (note that because I'm atheist, I don't capitalize the word "god" unless it begins a sentence) to said ailments.
At Jimmy and Annie's wedding, the pastor lady was non-stop with prayers.  She was non-stop the night before at the rehearsal.  All sorts of praying took place.  As I gazed into the crowd at the church, I noted that many people were taking the praying seriously, with hands folded and eyes shut, looking down in serious thought, using their minds to communicate with god.  From my viewpoint, this is utter foolishness; that someone could believe with all their heart that a supernatural being with all power is listening, despite evidence clearly showing otherwise (prayers are not answered, but this post will not argue god's existence).
My belief is that this stems from hope.  Humans are the only animal on earth that knows they will die someday, and that there is nothing they can do about it.  Sure, we can diet and exercise, visit the doctor regularly, and take our vitamins in the hope that it will make us live longer and healthier lives; knowing all along that at the end of the day, we're hardly cheating death, we're merely hoping to delay it's occurrence (notice the word hope was used several times there).
It is my belief that humans are the only animal to agonize about the past and worry about the future.  We hardly live in the moment.  If you observe a dog, they clearly live in the moment and it helps them deal with bad days or even bad beginnings in life!  A dog can be rescued as a violent and reactionary animal from horrible conditions, and become a "normal" dog in just a few months' time because they are unable to agonize about their past or worry about the future.
Humans, on the other hand, worry so much about the future that they try and convince themselves and other members of the human race to believe that there is a separate, spiritually based life that is not on Earth; in other words, that we're going to live forever, even after our bodies perish.  This "hope" for eternal life is what drives us to pray, sacrifice, and even fight/kill others who don't agree, to take up religion!  We're willing, as a species, to use precious time and resources to honor imaginary beings, and we've done it for our entire history.  We convince ourselves, in the deepest chasms of our minds, that these imaginary beings exist so we can cheat death and live forever.  Talk about false hope!  I almost feel sorry for religious people who sacrificed so much in life with the promise of "going to heaven," only to find that when they die, it all goes black and it's all over.  If more people would accept that, I suspect the world would be a much different, and much better, place.  We'd live in the moment more and take life much more seriously; there would certainly be no suicide bombers!  We'd respect life so much more that I suspect lots of wars wouldn't even be fought.  People would be more honest, and stop using religion and false hope as a source of motivation to the masses to commit atrocities.  As Voltaire said:  "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."

Since there is no way to convince 95% of the world's population that religion is an enormous waste of time, how about showing people the benefits of living in the moment from time to time?  When you're doing something fun/enjoyable, savor the moment!  Don't think about next week or last year, just enjoy living in the moment.  Dogs and little kids do it all the time and seem to enjoy themselves while doing it.  Also, it can help you shrug off disappointments or become over zealous over achievements.
I don't advocate never considering the past or contemplating your future.  All I'm saying is, live in the moment from time to time.  I bet you'll enjoy it, and "hope" you'll do it more and more often!