God is Lazy

April 27, 2012 7:22 p.m.

I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” lately.  He makes an interesting point in one of the chapters (I forget which one).  Scientists will see something mysterious that they can’t immediately explain and will get very curious.  This curiosity impels them to action and investigation.  The religionist sees a mystery and stops his inquiry there: it’s a mystery--ascribe it to God.

I think this may illustrate a major difference between personality types of the religious and non-religious.  In short: God is lazy.  Godly thinking is lazy.  Cryptic declarations such as “Everything happens for a reason” or “God’s ways are not our ways” or “We will only understand that after we die” are highly unproductive.  They represent the end of inquiry, not the beginning.  End of discussion.  They are a cop out for real thinking.  It’s lazy to examine moral questions and quickly conclude that “God just said so.”  Claiming God endorses any particular course of action is a dangerous shortcut.  It is much easier to look at things in black and white and use hard and fast rules to decide what is right and what is wrong.  Good and evil.  Them vs. us.  In contrast, it takes energy and effort to painstakingly examine the moral implications or ramifications of any given act or category of acts.  Seeing the world in shades of gray is difficult.  The problem is that the wide spectrum of human experience doesn’t fit neatly into any religious worldview.  Mormonism clumsily tries to cope with the issues and problems of a modern world.  But much of the counsel in its scriptures is inadequate, at best.

Could it be that religion self-selects for less rigorous minds?  That isn’t to say that there are no truly intelligent and religious people--at best my theory might just shift the bell curve to the left a bit.  Perhaps the vast majority of people remain under the “fog” of the limited thinking and relative superstition of their day until the particularly scientific/curious outliers pave the way for more progressive thinking and greater open-mindedness.

But it seems that religion provides a simplified alternative to viewing the world.  A very religious person doesn’t have to dwell on the implications of obliteration.  Their minds are safely insulated from that scary proposition.  

The lazy cognition that pervades religion also manifests itself in lazy outward actions.  Religions stress repetitive rituals which can be done almost mindlessly.  Mormonism has one ceremony where people change their clothes around and watch a movie for a couple hours (and do some weird handshakes with each other), and they call it “service” for dead people.  It really doesn’t get much lazier than that.

Science, on the other hand, requires meticulous attention to detail and results.  It cannot be done mindlessly.  You cannot “go through the motions” in a scientific endeavor and expect meaningful results.  It, too, can be repetitive, but for different reasons: to achieve reliable and consistent data that can better explain whatever phenomenon they are studying.  

Mormonism touts the principle that God helps us “after all we can do.”  So wouldn’t it make more sense to only look for God’s hand in our lives after we’ve eliminated every plausible alternative explanation?  Science looks for solutions.  Religion looks for reaffirmation of what it already believes.