What Is The Purpose Of Religion?

John Fro is an area celebrity, who plays at the Salem venues like the Triangle, The Big Kahuna, The Ike Box and The Space, and other local venues. He was playing this weekend at the Space and #52 must have had a half dozen fares throughout the night coming or going to the show. Number 52 had a special interest in John Fro, since he knew that he was driver #25’s son, and Fro was just his stage last name, from his skateboarder days when he had wild curly hair that looked like an afro. He had 4 albums out, including a rap album called Room 4, a rock album with Nuclear and 2 solo albums. Tonight he was going to be playing solo, to a sold out packed house, for 3 shows, at $5.00 a head.

His fans talked about him like he was the messiah revisited. Number 52 found out that he was one of the best skateboarder’s in Salem, back in the late 1990’s, and was in bands back then, like Sylphid, with Steve Seahorn. The discussions tended to gravitate towards the metaphysical or spiritual, as the night progressed. When #52 picked up the last passenger, from the 3rd show, at nearly 3:00 AM, his shift was nearly over, when his drunken passenger asked, “what is the purpose of religion?”

Trevor didn’t respond immediately, since the question caught him by surprise and catapulted him back to his youth when he was a student at the NUC academy.

“What is the purpose of religion? Superior Entity Zzzyyk rhetorically asked, and then after a long enough silence, for effect, he proceeded to answer his own question. “The purpose of religion is to regulate the evolution of a planet as sentience incubators transform the group mind into the stuff of the over mind. This of course would raise the question, what is the overmind?”

Superior Entity Zzzyyk loved to hear himself talk and would wax eloquent, as the students sat, in polite deference to his irritating harangues, not realizing that he was explaining secrets of the universe that most sentient beings would never have a clue about. Students, he would begin, “The overmind is the aggregate collection of all the individual minds, that were once part of the group mind, prior to their discorporation.”

Then of course would come, the question, “what is the purpose of the overmind?”

To which Zzzyyk answered in his monotone staccato recitation delivered in a robotic manner. “The purpose of the overmind is to take its place as one of the infinite number of parts that make up the whole that never was , but always will be.”

Superior Entity Zzzyyk specialized in the subject of paradox, and founded the 1st Gathering of Skeptical Scoffers. The true nature of the universe and its ultimate purpose was first understood when ultimate entity Qqqwwm went on the first birth expedition to the 3333347th galaxy to observe the birth of an overmind, after the destruction of its host planet. After overmind exploration began, the first mathematical formula was created to explain the purpose of existence.

Once an overmind achieves maturity, it begins to collapse in on itself, and initiates a vortex that absorbs all matter within a diameter of a few billion parsecs. The resulting black hole becomes the Blastula of a new universe, after the cosmic ovum is impregnated. This process takes place billions of times within a universe, until it finally becomes empty of all sentience and takes its place as part of the lifeless mosaic of anti-bara.

After a few minutes of silence #52’s passenger said, “Okay, I understand,” “you don’t want to lose your tip by getting into a religious discussion.”

“No not at all,” #52 said, “I was just pulling my thoughts together, to answer your question, ‘what is the purpose of religion?’ The purpose of religion is to act as a brake in the liberal progress of civilization, at least if you accept Toynbee’s comparison of the evolution of civilization to that of an organism.”

“But that reduces us to mere cells, in that organism,” #52’s fare responded.

“Do you have a problem with that?” Number 52 Asked.

“I’m not sure, but how does God figure into all of this?” He asked.

“That’s another question,” Trevor answered, “but I’ll try to answer it to the best of my ability. God is the organism that you call the universe, and we are the fingers of God and are creating what He requires, while at the same time we do it through googolplex variations in the form of stories that weave themselves into a tapestry that is the universe of our reality. Our stories fulfill a function, whose purpose is to achieve ‘teleo.’”

At this point #52’s mind reached into his passengers mind, who called himself Jim Long, and the connections were made, for “teleo.” Then he imparted the thought that God is a trinity of mother/father/it, because of being asexual in nature. Universes are being reproduced of an infinite number and always have been, yet never were because none of this is happening, except as a story, if you take all of this to its logical conclusion.
By this time they reached their destination, and #52’s passenger paid him, as he called in his clearance and headed back downtown. There were no calls in the South, and he needed to gas up anyway, since his 12 hour shift would be over in less than half an hour.