Religion is Convenient for Those Uncomfortable with Questioning [View all]

[MineralMan]

Religion is a simple way of answering the many difficult questions humans seem to have. By creating deities who "did it," people are relieved of the uncertainty and discomfort of not understanding the world around them, their place in it, and other problematic issues.

Some religions assign different deities to different things. Polytheism, though, is complicated in its own way. All those deities to think about, worship, or propitiate. Still, humans, early on, used that method to create whatever deities were needed to answer whatever questions were being asked. But there was still a lot of inconvenient stuff in polytheistic cultures. Too damned complex, really.

Monotheistic religions and those which combine deities into some sort of conglomerate deity have it somewhat easier. It's more convenient to have just a single deity to explain stuff and to blame when things aren't going well. So, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were progressive, in the sense that they reduced the number of deities needed to explain everything. That saved people even more time and let them just worship and propitiate a single deity.

Stuff needs explanation. People think. They wonder. Deities help with that. If you believe the stories about whatever deities your culture created, you don't have to worry about those things. The deity is responsible for all that stuff. End of story.

Fortunately, some people don't mind being inconvenienced and set about investigating stuff. They aren't satisfied with simple explanations that require some sort of supernatural entity to create and manage. They don't want convenience. They want answers that can be demonstrated, studied, theorized about and tested.

Religion is convenient. Reality is quite inconvenient, but far more interesting. Religion is a comfy chair. Reality is a series of jobs that will never be completed, really.

Thank goodness there are so many people who don't mind doing those jobs, while the others are sitting on their convenient furniture. Without the searchers for real answers, we'd still be scratching at the ground with sticks and hunting for food with spears.

So, if convenience is your priority, follow a religion, settle into your comfortable spot, sit back, and relax. If you don't mind not knowing everything, but are interested in searching for greater understanding, there's a terrifically interesting Universe out there to explore. You can easily learn, too, from other explorers. It's a choice that anyone can make, really. Personally, I don't mind being uncomfortable, as long as things are interesting.