"This is my body"

When one talks about diet, it is only natural that the subject of transubstantiation come to the table: if all steaks and food could be replaced by a wafer each, so many pounds would melt!

And this brings me to the question of the belief in life after death. "It provides comfort," people say. No no no: This is not enough to explain the widespread belief in life after death. There is no reason why we should innately fear death. The fear of losing a limb would do as well for providing the extra zing that will make you run faster than the tiger. Losing a limb is much worse than death, from the prospective of the tri-limbed. Anything is worse than a quick death, even the feeling of dissatisfaction that comes after eating your third wafer.

If you ever lost a loved one, you will notice how easy it is to mistakenly recognize him in the street, to feel that he is behind you as you are working on your algebra homework. We are trained to recognized our loved ones from minute clues, and we generate false positives all the time, even when we know well that the person's body is no more. And thus, while the loved one is dead and well dead, he still seems to be around. A ghost. See Pascal Boyer, "Religion Explained."

All Darwinian explanations of the origins of religion are fine and well -- Dawkins, in "The God Delusion," promotes the idea that it is a side-effect of other well-adapted features of our brain, as opposed to something that is or ever was useful. OK, fine and well, but there is only one way to measure how reasonable a theory is concerning the origin of religious feelings: it is by devising a cure. And don't mention reason: it is too complex a treatment to vindicate any one theory.

All this killed my appetite. No more wafer tonight.