Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Religion is being lazy
I walked by a church today, and saw “Jesus is the answer”
It’s a very interesting sentence, in that firstly it implies everybody is looking for an answer, and it also implies that misery and pain people felt in the search of the answer, and then it gives you an ultimate solution: Jesus.
But my meager experience and knowledge of the world tells me that there is no such thing as “ultimate solution”, instead, most attempts to solve complicated problems in very simple ways result in horrifying tragedies, like holocaust in second world war or cultural revolution in China.
We are troubled by the question of “what’s the meaning of life”, “why is there poor and rich, happy and miserable”, etc etc. And everyone lives their lives looking for answers, trying out different theories, or practicing certain rituals believing they will lead them there. And, the process is hard work. Life is hard. What if now somebody just gives you an answer to all your questions and frustrations? That will be so enticing.
I remember in the hilarious sci-fi novel “hitchhikers guide to the galaxy”, in a distant planet where very smart aliens built a gigantic super computer as large as the planet itself to calculate the meaning of life. After thousands years of super computer’s calculation, the answer is out, it is “42”. Nobody knows what it means, and now an even bigger computer needs to be build to interpret this answer. The whole story is just as ridiculous as Christianity, where Jesus or bible is given as an answer and the whole Christian theology is built to explain why that is the answer.
Well, it is certainly an ease to just give up the quest and accept Jesus as the answer to everything. Like my Christian friends trying to convince me: “look at the world, the trees, the sky, they are so beautiful, delicate and complicated, how could they not be created from a higher intelligence?” Well yes the world is big and complex, and it’s extremely hard to figure it out. But that means we will have a hard time figuring it out that’s all, it does not logically lead to the conclusion that they are created from a higher being. In fact human beings have made a lot of progress figuring out trees and sky and such, even though merely a teeny-tiny fraction of all. By just exclaiming and say “shit this is too hard, it’s got to be GOD”, that’s called laziness (or stupidity...) in my dictionary.
Therefore I can safely conclude that religion is being lazy.
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Really? I'm a Christian and I find what you have "safely concluded" to be lazy. And wildly simplistic. But I understand your frustration. When I became a Christian, it certainly did NOT end my frustration. Those who claim that it answers all their questions are lying.
ReplyDeleteGiant, science-minded, vastly gifted people like Einstein wrestled with the question of God's existence over their entires lives. Do you consider him lazy?
Here's someone in (I think) your own field who has something to say about it:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743286391/ref=wms_ohs_product
Hope that link works. If not, it's a book called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Frances Collins, who was head of the Human Genome Project. (I'm sure you already know him.)
Anyway...was just stopping by to see your blog and say hi and I need to be working.
:) Enjoy your summer.
Julie
Hi Julie, I sort of expected your response to this article because I know you are Christian and you check out my blog sometimes (which I am so happy about :) )
DeleteI agree that all attempts to simplistically drawing conclusion for complicated situations are being lazy, and my "safely concluded" part is one of them. or I'd prefer to call myself conveniently lazy, as I want to make the article concise and to the point to express my point, which is not necessarily right, but not necessarily wrong either :)
To my understanding "Jesus is the answer" doesn't mean that God is the ultimate solution, but that by following God people are led out of miserableness and frustration, and the world is led to be a better place. And also instead of being built to explain why Jesus is the answer, christianity/bible is rather to explain how to follow God and how to find the answers. But one thing for sure - that particular Christian friend of yours was just being lazy...lol.
ReplyDeleteMing
Dear Ming,
DeleteI understand what you meant, and I believe that sentence "Jesus is the answer" was meant to be what you just explained. Now I think back, I was picking out the literal meaning of the sentence to conclude that religion is being lazy.
But I disagree with what you said about "by following God people are led out of miserableness and frustration, and the world is led to be a better place", for the following reasons:
1. Historically religion doesn't make the world a better place. For example, the dark mid-age in Europe, science was stifled and prohibited from developing because it challenged the religious view of the universe. Scientists and innocent people are killed, burned, prisoned for life. the churches charge money based on blind belief of people and religion is just a way of taking power and control.
2. the continuous wars in mid-east is (partially) originated from stubborn religious belief. When Chinese people worshiped Mao as if he was the god in 50 and 60s, (that was kind of religious), everyone is blind and crazy, shit happened, I think I don't need to explain that to you.
There are endless other examples, in fact most big crimes in the history are committed under the facade of religion. I don't believe in god therefore I don't think answers could be found from god, but motivating ignorant people that lack logical reasoning ability to believe in such thing, and then take power and do crimes using the power, that doesn't sound like a "good world" to me.
Molly
I agree with your conclusion made from the examples in history - Using religion belief, or other faith(as in the Mao case) as power to take control of the people or a nation, and doing crimes is a shame, and definitely doesn't make a "good world".
DeleteBut I thought we were discussing about the nature of religions, instead of how religions have been misused. I use the word 'misuse' because a religion is not supposed to be used as a political weapon(and almost not anymore nowadays), and while evil things have happened, there are also good deeds being done because of religion belief.
And by saying "by following God people are led out of miserableness and frustration, and the world is led to be a better place", I was not stating the facts, but rather the capability of christianity, and also how "Jesus is the answer" is interpreted. Maybe it's better to put it this way: "by following God people can be led out of miserableness and frustration, and the world can be led to be a better place".
We shouldn't judge evil and good from how something has been used. Just like we shouldn't conclude the use of nuclear reactions as a regression in humanity merely because nuclear weapon causes wars and kills.
Ming
to summarize what I discussed with you the other day, it is the blind faith of religion that makes it easily being used for bad purposes, plus the blind faith is not solidified by real life observations therefore it's not a good system.
DeleteI agree with everything Ming said.
ReplyDeleteAnd Molly: I like your phrase "conveniently lazy." I plan to do some of that this week, before digging in to work this summer.
:)
Oops. Forgot to sign my name.
ReplyDeleteJulie :)
I agree with what you said. I believe everybody is “conveniently lazy” to some extent. Critical thinking is too energy consuming. It is impossible for everyone to make every single decision by doing statistical analysis. “Laziness” is a bug in evolution. In most occasions, this bug is not severe enough to induce strong evolutionary pressure to wipe out stupid/lazy people.
ReplyDeleteluchang
well conversely, laziness is evolutionarily advantages because it conserves energy
Delete