Are religious people intellectually lazy and atheists more intellectually responsible?

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Question. Are religious people intellectually lazy and they’re looking for quick explanations for like, oh, God created everything and they’re meant to go to God? And are atheists intellectually more resourceful and responsible? Answer.
Every school of thought would like to pat itself on the back, in thinking that of believing its own intellectual solidness. And atheism is no exception to this universal intellectual temptation. So, atheists believe that they are intellectual heroes who go where the facts and the evidence takes them.
And religion goes where simply the naive belief takes one, even if it is not supported by evidence and even if it is contrary to evidence. But I would like to answer this question of intellectual laziness, intellectual resourcefulness on three distinct ways. First is that it is ultimately the search for meaning that animates both science and religion.
Of course, I’m using science over here because atheists often claim that science is on their side, that science supports atheism. But wherever atheism has been officially adopted as a political system, it has not been, for example, in China or in Soviet Russia or in some other dictatorial regimes. It is not because its founders, the proponents, the political activists who led to the atheistic government being established, it’s not that they were in any way much more scientific than the general mass of people.
Nor did these regions experience any effervescence of science because of atheism. So atheism, if we consider simply a secular history of the world, you could infer that atheism has existed as long as God has existed. Of course, God is eternal from the religious perspective.
But the idea that there is no God is from the history of belief point of view, is an idea of history of ideas point of view. The idea that there is no God is as old as the idea that there is God. And it’s not that science has led to the popularization of this idea.
It is often the political abuse of religiously legitimized power that has led to alienation from religion and the adoption of irreligion. And there has been, religion has also been guilty of similar political abuse of power, what Hitler’s Nazis did, or Stalin’s KGB did, the kind of atrocities they performed. They are no way, they are in some ways far more than what the Pope, what the Catholic Church performed when, during its heretical burning of, the burning of perceived heretics.
So that means there is basic human typology. And this human typology, the different kinds of people, and whichever ideology they adopt, that ideology will be directed according to the mentality of the people. So ideology and mentality are not the same.
Atheism is ideology that may be adopted by people who are peaceful. And atheism is an ideology that people may be, that may be adopted by people who are aggressive and malevolent. And the same applies to religion also.
So when we understand that atheism and religion are basically adopted by people with different mentalities, then there can be intellectually lazy people who adopt religion and intellectually lazy people who can adopt a religion. So yes, most people in general are not very intellectually equipped or intellectually inclined. Equipped indicates what they, whether they have been gifted or they have the resources for doing something.
Inclined means whether they have the tendency to explore something irrespective of whether they have the equipment or not. So the important thing is that the vast majority of people are generally not intellectual and they will follow whatever mainstream school of thought is prevalent in their times or whatever appeals to them. So if the mainstream school of thought at a particular places, a particular religion, more often than not that’s what will be adopted by most people.
And the mainstream school of thought happens to be religion, atheism, that’s what will be adopted by most people. So most people are intellectually lazy, you could say, or not very intellectually probing. That’s not necessarily the same as laziness.
Laziness indicates an unwillingness to work hard. Whereas it might just be that some people don’t have the intellectual inclination or equipment, intellectual ability to probe very deeply. So we could look at the most gullible, naive, superstitious religious believers and we could say that they are, just see what kind of belief they have.
Do you really believe that? And we could say that this is nonsense and this is what religious people believe. One thing to have an honest debate is to represent the opposition’s position accurately. And accurately means to actually take the strongest argument of the opponent, not their weakest.
The weakest also needs to be dismantled, but the opponent is not defeated unless their strongest arguments are considered. So if religion is equated with fanaticism, then criticizing religion is very easy. Now most people are not fanatical, most people are not sentimental, most people are basically functional.
If a religious belief adds some meaning to their life, adds some value to their life, they accept it and move on with their life. So if atheism seems to add meaning to their life, that’s what they will do also. But atheism, if we go deeper into it, it never adds meaning to life, it only subtracts meaning from life.
This is a hard fact which many atheists fail to consider. How does atheism not add meaning to life but subtract meaning from life? Because it removes the very foundation for the search for meaning. If we speak in a particular language and we start condemning the inanities of that language, this grammar rule is wrong, this spelling makes no sense, this pronunciation is useless.
Yes, there may be those deficiencies in that language, but the language has to be functional enough for us, for it to serve the function of conveying our criticism of that language. So if that language itself were entirely dysfunctional, then we would not be able to criticize also, because the criticism itself would make no sense. This is extremely important to understand, that actually when we criticize something or someone, we have to have some foundations.
If somebody is cutting the very branch of the tree on which they are sitting and they do that to prove how strong their sword is, they may prove how strong their sword is, but how sharp their sword is, but they are also proving how blunt their brain is. To cut the branch on which we are sitting to prove the sharpness of our sword is to prove bluntness of our brain. So similarly, if we basically argue that religion doesn’t make any sense or this particular religious practice, that particular religious ritual doesn’t make any sense, then that begs the question, why should anything make any sense at all? Why should even science make sense? Why should we have a desire to make sense of things, if we were simply biological creatures driven by our genes for survival and reproduction? Then we would be concerned about where to get food and mates, where to get our food and our mate and not about life’s ultimate meaning or even the meaning of and if we are not capable of considering, if we are not designed to consider the meaning of life, then we are not equipped to even evaluate the meaninglessness of something.
To say something is meaningless, that itself means that sentence has to have meaning. If somebody says everything is meaningless, then is that sentence meaningless? If that sentence itself is meaningless, then that criticism becomes meaningless. What if the sentence is meaningful, then actually the meaninglessness of the everything is meaningless argument is refuted because something is not meaningless.
So, if we use a particular language to criticize that language, using a particular language to criticize that language’s meaninglessness is self-contradictory because we are using that very language and if that language were utterly meaningless and useless, then our criticism would also not be conveyable by that language. So, atheism uses a language of meaning when atheism itself allows for no language of meaning. Why no language of meaning? Because within the atheistic worldview, we are just biological creatures driven by our genes for finding mates and food and maintaining our survival and perpetuating our species.
Then why would we be concerned about meaning? So, atheists who are intellectually responsible would explore the full ramifications of atheistic worldview and recognize that actually there is no meaning to the search for meaning in atheism. Now, everything becomes void. Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who famously proclaimed God is dead is well known for that declaration, but he also took atheism to its full implication when he said that atheism would imply that there is no way to decide whether anything is right or wrong also.
In fact, there is no reason to conceive of anything as right or wrong. So, that would mean that if we are so gullible that we can’t perceive what is right, if we are so unequipped by evolution to even perceive what is right or wrong, then how can we say that religion is wrong and how can we say that atheism is right? If our brains are not designed to search for meaning, then how can any thought that is a product of that brain be right? So, how can we be sure that even atheism is right? So, intellectual shallowness is seen when we only criticize other schools of thought, but not our own school of thought. So, when we caricature the cheapest, the intellectually substandard representations of religion, but don’t examine the intellectual ramifications of our own disbelief, then that is intellectual laziness.
So, the second point would be that are religious people intellectually lazy or intellectually resourceful? Well, if we consider the Vedanta Sutra, it begins with an inquiry about the search for meaning. Now, how do we understand what is the meaning of life? How do we understand what we are meant to live for? What is life meant for? That question is what makes us search in life. And we are encouraged to search this question.
And that means we all have a biological imperative to eat, sleep, mate, defend, but we are inclined to do something more. Now, where does this inclination come from? We are meant to transcend our biological imperatives and look for something higher in life. That search for something higher is what brings, what differentiates intellectual resourcefulness from intellectual laziness.
So, science is also, especially in its pure sense, not its utilitarian sense, science is characterized by the search for meaning. And religion is also characterized, or rather we could say metaphysics, philosophy of religion, not as an academic branch, but as a something integral to the tradition, religious traditions, has philosophy of religion has contemplated the toughest questions and come up with answers. Now, whether those answers are something which we are inclined to accept or not, whether those answers are, whether those answers withstand intellectual scrutiny or not, that is something which can be separately investigated.
But the fact that these answers have been proposed, that these questions themselves have been contemplated, indicates an intellectual, any thoughts of intellectual responsibility, any thoughts of hard thinking about life’s difficult questions. So, to the extent we see this in the religious traditions, we can understand that religion does have thinkers who have been intellectually responsible. And to the extent the intellectuals within the religious traditions share this with the general masses, to that extent, we can have harmony, we can have any thoughts of intellectual responsibility, resourcefulness, even in the broader tradition.
So, to conclude, while there can be both intellectually lazy and intellectually responsible people in both religion and in atheism, ideology is used or abused by the mentality of people. But atheism, when it is taken to its fullness, it does not leave any room for the exercise of intellectual responsibility. Because it deems that the very basis of the resource for intellectual responsibility, our own brain is geared only for biological functioning and not for intellectual exploring.
So, on the other hand, religion holds that we have a higher side within us, and it exhorts us to explore that higher side. So, religion anchors intellectual responsibility in our essential spiritual reality. Whereas, religion, by denying our spirituality, by reducing us to we could say our animality, it implodes, it destroys the very foundation, the very fundamental resource for intellectual responsibility.
And atheists who fail to recognize this are actually being seriously, shockingly, intellectually lazy. Thank you.