In the moonlight

Yesterday evening, under a bright shining moon, Rat-a-Lin asked me what religions are there in my planet. I stared at the moon for a while trying to make sense of what he meant by religion. Despite having learnt many words from several Earth peoples, sometimes it is difficult to me to make sense of them in the same way as humans perceive them.
I revisited my encyclopaedic memory in search for the meaning of the word religion. One of the stored dictionaries spelled out a random definition: “Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.”
This suggested more questions than provided answers. What is the meaning of belief?, What are gods? Purpose with the Universe? The word purpose has specially activated my recently acquired cat feline neurons. What do they mean by purpose. Surely the Universe has no purpose. Life has no purpose! It just is! Then I understood while browsing some information about how the human brain is built, that they have a tiny programme that makes them look for purpose in everything, as if their life wasn’t enough living just as it is. Being part of a community of other living beings, interacting with each other, trying to negotiate survival between themselves and the environment, that is their life. If survival is not enough purpose, what else would it be?
Then the word belief. What does it mean? I asked Rat-a-Lin if he had beliefs.
“Of course I do!...” he answered intrigued by my question. “Each time I visit the Guinea Pigs’ hut I expect to see freshly laid food. If food is there each time, then I believe that food will be there again in the future.”
Ah.. so belief is nothing more than an expectation for something to happen. Having sampled that thing before, the belief is formed. However humans believe in things they have never sampled, like gods, gremlins, ghosts and fairies. How would you explain this Rat-a-Lin?
-Well, Cat-a-List, it is enough for them to create the images in their own minds, and if these entities exist in their mind this is enough for them to believe that they exist. The mind plays trick on humans. This does not mean that the object of their belief actually exists in the real world.
I wondered that the very trait that made humans so different from the other animals, was also their biggest handicap. The trait that will lead them to their own end.
Some crawling nocturnal insect softly touched the hairs of my tail, and I was prompt to lick it. What bug was that? A spider? I could not see in the dim light of the night. By now a fat dark cloud had obfuscated the moon and we were in total darkness. I realised that I formulated a belief based on a sensation. I could not really see what it was, but I assumed it to be a spider, because I am terrified of spiders. Assuming that the infamous bug was something that could be harmful to me, has actually provided me with a survival advantage. This is the adaptive value of belief. Getting away from what could be dangerous. Even if it wasn’t dangerous, the most I could have lost was time or energy moving away. However if I did not assume it to be dangerous and it really was, I could have lost my own life. So belief does have some survival advantages.
Rat-a-Lin’s eyes shined again in the new light piping out of a crack in the cloud covering the moon. - You got it right Cat!...
Rat-a-Lin was an old sage and I wondered which planet he had come from. I assumed he was nothing else but a common Earth rat, but the wise words that came out of that tiny creature were as large as the world itself. Earth creatures are not gifted with such levels of wisdom , but then I remembered that I read somewhere thoughts that have been produced thousands of years ago in the history of humanity. There were some ancient humans who said pretty wise things once in a while. I wonder if they were inspired by some extra-terrestrial creatures morphed into the shape of rats!!!
I have a problem about accepting that wise thoughts could have come from humans alone, and so many thousands of years ago. From what I have observed of human behaviour since I have landed on Earth, they did not sound like very clever creatures, and to make things worth those who were supposed to be the leaders of their tribes, where perhaps the worse of them all.
I asked myself, why would these hordes of humans follow leaders that seemed to be so ignorant, despite the amount of wisdom available to them? And more importantly, why would intelligent humans, support such leaders? I realised then that all can be simply explained through a simple understanding of evolution and animal behaviour. There are a lot of common features that link humans to other species. Actually the more I look at it in depth, the more difficult it gets to identify any differences between what does it mean to be human.
So I decided to get back in the house, as it started to get cold, and download some information from the human female. By now she would be deeply asleep and it would be easy to dive into her deepest memories.