My own view of religion is that it is needed now more than ever, to be able to understand the messages nature is giving us, on how we need to handle energy.

There seems to me to be a relationship between the mindset of dismissing religion, and the mindset of dismissing the power of the sun.

If the idea of good and bad, as defined in religious scripts, don't mean anything to us, maybe we really don't see the difference between taking all of our energy from Earth, and accepting the energy gifted from the sun, in fact we don't value it at all in our economy as stands if it is gifted, we really only the value in things that had to be worked for, or fought for.

And yet the gifted energy is the one all of nature uses, so has to be the most valuable in reality.

I actually worry that this is existential, there is no physical reason for us to perish as a species, yet we seem to be choosing to perish anyway by consuming everything that shouldn't be consumed, whilst ignoring the one thing we should be taking, offered to us on a plate by nature.

With no religion, we can't see the solution to the energy problem literally staring us in the face, it seems to me, and this is now existantial.

Here is the message I take from religion, on energy, and how it works:

Nature is the grand authority. Her currency is energy. The only issuer and enforcer of it is the sun. We have to use it, or burn, literally.

The energies we extract from Earth are false, not from the sun. They come from below, on Earth, and the only come with the labor of extraction, which is also the mechanism producing all pollution, whilst the sun shines from above, from the heavens, offered in return for nothing, no labor of extraction, no costs to us, or Earth, whatsoever.

That looks pretty religious and compelling to me, but if we don't believe religion, or even think it is some kind of evil itself, then we can't see this reality, that the sun is the only actual live energy source, all others on Earth, are just stores, created originally from the live energy of the sun, now not live energy at all. When we deplete and destroy those, there are costs to Earth, and all life on Earth, which accumulate to the point now where we are seriously worried about the future of Earth and all life on it.

Sorry for rambling, it isn't a simple answer.