I'm not religious, but I'll chip in my 2-cent philosophy on life to see if it helps. In a sadly ironic way, it has to do with my cats, so apologies to ariesmars (and condolences for your losses ).

Anyway, I look at my cats, and I see that they think they have things pretty together. They prance around and know they lay of their limited land pretty well (these are indoor cats). But the truth of it is, they don't anything about the world, at least not in the same way we do. They don't know that they're in a house, they know little about the outside world, they don't know what a world is, period.

And this is the important point: no matter what, my cats will never understand more than their brains can handle. They can't conceive of things on a scale that we can.

Now we humans think we're pretty important, but truth of the matter is that we're just as limited by our own minds as are my cats. Sure, we can understand more than they do, but it's pretty presumptuous of us to assume that we understand everything there is to know, or that we have the capacity to do so.

So maybe this doesn't answer your question, but it gives me hope, because it makes me realize that there's a whole lot going on around us that we simply don't understand. And that the things we take so seriously maybe aren't that serious. Remember, when cats are acting their funniest, they believe that what they're doing is important and serious business.

Anyway, hope this helps you a little bit.

P.S. I hope that this doesn't insult anyone's religious sensibilities. Though religions are based on belief, most are also in part based on mystery and mysticism and the unknown, so I think that my own beliefs don't clash with that kind of thinking.