Hiya Revl.
Welcome back.
Me too! Isn't summer wonderful! Almost daily I marvel that it is all still limping along (Nature/our ecosystem, biosphere, etc.).

re: "Atheistic existentialists have been known to say that the whole idea of existence and our consciousness of it is simply "absurd"." -Revl.

My thought was that it depends on how you define absurd.
...and y'know, it's not just a simple definition that matters, but how we inculcate the word.
Am I using that word right?
I mean how we take the word in and what it "means" to us individually.

We all define G0d into, or out of, existence. What bothers me is that even if I define G0d into existence, I may still have the wrong definition.

Anyway....
I'm reading E.O. Wilson's 2006 book, The Creation, and thought his take on religion was interesting. He points out that from an evolutionary standpoint religion (belief in overarching principles based on external powers or motives)(~my quick definition)... religion is a fairly recent development.
Hmmmm... I'm losing the point here.
Religion is maybe 30,000 yr. old, but science is only 300 years old (depending on how you gauge science).
That alone deserves some pondering, but....

I like his point that science is "The invention of this remarkable engine of testable learning...." -E.O.Wilson

...and after pointing out that our "learning" has doubled roughly every 15 years for the past 350 years, he goes on to conclude...

This "learning" has led us to a worldview or "image [that] has subsumed religious rivalries and reduced them to intertribal conflict." -E.O.W.

...well, I guess not all of "us." ...and I mean worldwide, not "us" here, personally.

...and I'm only halfway throught the book. More later.

Lately I've been thinking that Religion might be the answer (to climate change), since governments clearly won't be saving us.
This is basically the thrust of this book also.
Save the Creation.

~~SA smile

Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.