I think the main issues I have with the concept of God is why create anything at all? Consider that most people are familiar with the idea that when one comes to God, they are made whole. They no longer have any wants and are like God in that regard. But if God is already perfect, then the shear act of creation of lesser beings is a move away from perfection. As a perfect being, God wouldn’t have “wants”, such as desire. Forget the question of why he would want worship. Why would God “want” at all?
Oh, no, I’m just as wrong as you are, and everybody else.
I was basing this on your own admission;
Have you changed your mind now?
GreenWyvern, I think I get it (although I could be wrong): People on Internet said something unfair about a group you’re a member of. It does suck. It’s also kinda gonna happen on Internet. If you’re a straight white male, you’re getting one of the mildest versions of that.
You won’t solve that problem by trying to get people to dive deep on the topic. You’ll solve it by having more equanimity for the fact that people on Internet saying something unfair about a group you’re a member of.
“Worship is for the worshipper, not God” actually jibes with what I believe. But I’m a non-Believer. I don’t think theists who put stock in this realize the implications of this view.
There’s something in the human psyche that makes us crave the arousal and euphoria that comes with fanaticism. Go to a concert attended by devoted fans and the experience is much like what you see in church. The ferver is easily perceived as a mystical experience, but really, when you see teenagers losing their wits at the sight of their favorite boy band the same way someone catches the holy sprit on Sunday, you realize what looks mystical is actually just psychological.
Celebrity worship and religious worship are manifestation of the same primal need. Hierarchical social animals that we are, there must be something about giving an entity superior status and then throwing emotional energy at it, that soothes our pain and makes us feel okay with existence. Or something.
So why do we need God to reap the benefits of worship? If a charismatic leader or musician or anime ccharacter can get us in the same frame of mind, then religion is not essential.
Sent from my iPhone
I respectfully disagree. I choose to express my belief in God in a way that I feel most comfortable doing. I don’t disrespect any other form of worship (assuming I agree with its theology) any more than I disrespect someone who doesn’t have the same taste in food as I. I’m very uncomfortable with charismatic worship services, and I know people who attend them who left a traditional church because they were hopelessly bored.
Clearly, you’ve never been to a mainline Christian suburban church. :D:D:D:D:D:D
I assure you, I doubt I’ve ever had an experience in any church that compares with the sheer adrenaline rush I felt at pretty much any rock concert I’ve ever attended. For me, church and rock concerts aren’t interchangeable, and when my wife and I attended a very traditional worship service that had grafted a “praise band” on it, it was all we could do to stifle our laughter.
Granted, there are some people who are exactly what eburacum45 and ** you with the face** describe. I know people who go from church to church because they get bored with the presentation and can’t even tell you what the ministers actually preach about, and people who never go to church at all, but click from televangelist to televangelist (and send all of the money) for the same reason. I even know a woman who was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic home and ended up as a Scientologist. Just not all of us, that’s all.
Basically, if you want to call yourself intellectually honest, you have to read and understand the arguments of the other side. I’ve tried to do this all my life. I’ve certainly read Dawkins and Hitchens and other atheists.
Bluster, jeers, and insults are not acceptable arguments.
The book I recommended can’t easily be summarized. It’s not a glib, superficial, populist screed, but a serious intellectual work.
My question is, why are you afraid of reading this book?
Are you afraid of being convinced?
Are you afraid you won’t be able to refute his arguments?
Are you afraid that it’s too heavy and intellectually difficult for you to follow? Are you simply afraid of reading books that are harder to understand than a powerpoint presentation?
If you can come back and say, for example, ‘I think his argument from contingency (expanded from the argument of Thomas Aquinas and others) is mistaken in this and that way, for this and that reason. This is what I think is the correct way of thinking about contingency.’ Then you will be worth listening to.
Otherwise you’re like a 6-year-old thumbing his nose at Einstein’s Relativity. You can jeer and insult, but you can’t counter the reasoning. You are no better than a Trump or Farage supporter who can’t be reasoned with. (If you are actually a Trump or Farage supporter, my condolences.) You’re not arguing and reasoning at a serious level, with a serious level of knowledge about the subject.
One of the editorial reviews on the Amazon page says,
“Hart marshals powerful historical evidence and philosophical argument to suggest that atheists—if they want to attack the opposition’s strongest case—badly need to up their game.”—Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian
That’s a good point.
Hart’s book is not relevant to this thread, which is about whether the loosely defined and apparently interchangeable entities which are worshipped by humans actually desire or need to be worshipped. Your post #35 seems to indicate that they do not. I am in agreement with that. With luck, the rest of the world will come to the same realisation and stop bothering the divine.
- I don’t scoff at D.B. Hart out of ignorance of his ponderings, but I’m not surprised at your blind assumption.
- I am not afraid of what he says…which is another blind assumption made on behalf of atheists and agnostics when they don’t buy into the baseless musings of the religious intellectual.
- I see you’ve managed to name-drop the two atheists that are in the news the most, but what of Dan Barker, Greta Christina, Michael Shermer, Susan Blackmore, Sumitra Padmanabhan, Peter Singer and so many others?
You are correct, so getting back on track-Despite uncountable descriptions of Heaven being a place where angels and others spend their time singing about the greatness of God, is it commonly believed that God has no desire or need for such activity?
oh, well tell us how you really feel, then.
I didn’t go to church until I was in my thirties, maybe that’s the difference.
That isn’t what I would say, at all. Neither one.
I think the second (“he deserves it”) has to be part of it. The word “worship” is related to “worth” or “worthy.”
It seems to me that some of the people in this thread (and elsewhere) who have an issue with worship object to it because they don’t think that the G(g)od(s) they see people worshiping is worthy of worship—and to whatever extent they’re right about the god(s) not being worthy, they’re right to be bothered by the worship.
As for the first, I may be wrong, but I get the impression from the Bible that God spends more time telling people not to worship other gods, idols, “graven images,” etc. than he does telling them to worship Him.
“Don’t worship other gods” certainly implies “Just worship me”.
While I dispute that it’s productive to worship anyone, it’s certainly the case that being unworthy of praise should give pause to anyone praising them.
Wasn’t there something somewhere about not having other gods “before Me”? I don’t recall where that was, perhaps somewhere obscure. In any case it establishes that it’s definitely a contest that God wants to win, for one reason or another.
Who is exhibiting arrogance now? You think you’re the only one who is capable of evaluating information and coming to their own conclusions honestly?
Let’s cut to the chase; Argument from Contingency:
I have just a few questions:
- Who/What created the “necessary being”? And who created the creator of the “necessary being”?
- If the necessary being is eternal, why can’t the universe be eternal as well?
- What evidence is there in the known universe of a necessary being and what would the difference be if the known universe isn’t a creation of a necessary being?
Not it isn’t. Hart’s fans have not been paying attention.
I guess this is my view, at least somewhat. But mainly, it’s hard for me to conceive of a god that is concerned with whether people worship it or not. Just like I can get my mind around a god that cares whether I believe in it or not. These priorities seem exactly like the kind of things humans would project on to a deity.
I feel inspired to ponder different reasons a deity might want people to worship them.
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They’re a narcissist.
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They derive power from adulation, and/or their very survival depends on it.
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People who worship them become compliant and can then be more easily used for nefarious purposes. (Slaves, people batteries, lunch, whatever.)
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People benefit from the mere act of worshiping anything, and the god is a nice guy who wants people to benefit. (Note that if this is the case the god won’t care who or what you worship; they definitely won’t tell you not to put other gods before them.)
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They want to help humans in some way, but there’s some sort of arcane and extremely specific universal law that prevents them from helping humans that don’t worship them personally. This explanation only applies if the god didn’t set up the system and doesn’t have the power to change universal laws, of course.
Did I miss anything?
You claim you’re intellectually honest and read opposing viewpoints with an open mind. And yet you then dismiss those opposing viewpoints as nothing more than “bluster, jeers, and insults”. And “glib, superficial, populist”.
But the works which support your viewpoint; those are serious intellectual works. The only reason anyone wouldn’t read those books is because they’re afraid of their truth.
IMHO this has ceased to be a Great Debate and turned into another example of us talking past each other. I’ve said what I came here to say. Bye.