@Matias
Interesting thought. Yes, maybe it is a mismatch of sorts in modern society. But still, it would not be so had we not changed our environment so radically and rapidly. Consciousness would not have been any more of a mismatch than our natural craving of salt, fat and sugar had we not invented language, philosophy and science. Our consciousness would have remained as that of all other animals. It evolved in one environment and now has to exist in a radically altered one.

Studies of hunter gatherers suggest that suicide is virtually non-existent until they come in contact with civilization. Consciousness was nothing but an advantage in our ancestral environment. Only in modern civilization are humans separated from a sense of significance and meaning that would be in abundance in the natural environmental relationship. The Meaning Crisis is a modern phenomenon.

@Matias
There's not much point in getting too attached to our ideas of precisely what humans were feeling before writing was invented. There is no way to know for certain.

When I say
"Consciousness would not have been any more of a mismatch... had we not invented language, philosophy and science. Our consciousness would have remained as that of all other animals."
I don't mean to say the kind and quality of our consciousness was the same as other animals. I'm saying its relationship to mismatch was more like that of other animals than it is for modern humans today.

As with "free will", the concepts of religion and consciousness do not enjoy a scholarly consensus as to exact definitions. So the subject of the relationship between consciousness and religion before humans could record their thoughts in writing is so elusive as to hardly warrant discussion at all, let alone firm convictions.

But the subject of evolutionary mismatch is relatively simple and well-defined. Mismatch occurs when traits that evolved in one environment are subjected to a different environment in which they are not well-suited.

It is counter to everything we know about the mechanisms of evolution to think that a trait would biologically evolve to be maladaptive. Natural selection, by definition, removes maladaptive traits from the gene pool, unless they are otherwise compensated for.

And yes, we agree that advanced human brain function ( I don't know what consciousness is ) required some compensation, and that the compensation was supplied by a cultural mechanism, and that it took the form of what modern, Western humans today call "religion".

But, whatever consciousness is, it must surely have evolved before we went wandering from our African cradle of evolution. Whatever environmental changes occurred during our evolutionary development within Africa were relatively slight compared to those H.sapiens faced after the great agricultural revolution, a mere ten thousand years ago.

Before that time, whatever behaviors Western analysis deems worthy of labeling "religion" were so radically different from modern organized religion as to more nearly resemble no religion at all. The phenomenon we see today that we recognize as religion is only a very few thousand years old.

The reason hunter/gatherer animism blossomed into organized religion some six to ten thousand years ago is because that is when agriculture ushered in the greatest environmental mismatch H.sapiens had ever encountered. And that was exactly when the greatest mismatch compensation was needed.

No evolved trait is, in itself, an evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch is only between an evolved trait and a rapidly and radically altered environment.

I recently watched a video program in which a camera crew made contact with one of the few extant hunter/gatherer tribes. The interviewer was apparently hoping to find out something profound about the tribe's deepest, spiritual/philosophical musings. He asked, through the translator, "What are your deepest concerns?"

The disappointingly lean answer came back - "Meat."

"Yes, but beyond that..." the interviewer pressed.

"Water."

"Do you have any other concerns beyond those basics?"

"Honey."

Not exactly a portrait of self-conscious angst.
Survival provided all the "meaning" they could tolerate.

@PapPap
I try to base most of my beliefs on verifiable evidence. It’s not that there couldn’t be something that exists beyond what we can currently verify - surely there is. But we clearly don’t need knowledge of it in order to survive and be happy. On the other hand, believing in things that don’t exist can lead to suffering and disappointment.

It makes me smile when I hear someone talk about being in the NOW. My thoughts are be somewhere else other than in the NOW and show me....

@ASTRALMAX When I speak of the NOW I am not talking about a place in time. We all live in the eternal NOW. I use the term in my avoidance of every ongoing trend that continually pops up. I cannot live in that NOW.

@PapPap Most people would read my words and take the remarks to mean me personally. I am speaking of me personally. The mechanics of all this was in no way what was implied and you know that to..

@PapPap You appear to think that you have found a way that your consciousness is separate from your body. I simply do not see it that way and I will not be convinced otherwise.