Let us assume that God exists and that all religions are wrong, you don’t have to do this but I am going to to make my arguement.
God created you, you do not need to worship God. Gratitude is a creation of society on the basis of the urges of life, that is procreation, self preservation, and the preservation of ones genetic material. God does not adhere to this concept and you don’t have to either.
God gave you the free will to choose and you are chossing not to. The mere fact that God gave you free will is proof that choosing not to believe in him is, in God’s eyes, as worthy of virtue as choosing to believe(though under such a God as the one described, nothing would be virtuous or indulgant).
Well, Say gods do exist, why would they need or want us to worship them? That is egotistical and power hungry. Why should they need to feed ego?
If they do need to feed their ego then they can’t be very omnipotent or loving or Godly except in the Old Greek and Roman way. Which they were more human than gods anyway.
Why on earth would I ever worship something that is not perfect? If its not perfect then its really not that much different than me.
A true omnipotent being would not require nor need worshiping not even to teach fledgling being like us lessons.
“God” has to be defined before the question can be meaningfully answered. Many and in fact probably most definitions of “God” include something similar to the phrase “a being worthy of worship.”
Therefore (although I might quibble about the word “need”) I would say that based on the preceding definition of “god” and on the assumption that such a god exists, it follows that we ought to worship (as in ‘honor and love’) god.
Yeah even if there was a god, there are two forces at play here. A) you shouldn’t have to worship it, and B) if the god told you to worship it, the god by no means would deserve worship.
Say for instance that the judeo-christian god came down and physicaly walked among us and somehow beyond resonable doubt proved that it was in fact God.
“Airex, why don’t you believe in me?” he’d ask.
“Well, you didn’t offer any proof or evidence that would support your being real, so I went with you being not real,” I’d say.
“Do you still not believe in me?” he’s ask.
“Well it would be kinda silly for me NOT to believe in you, seeing as how you are actually right there in front of me and I can see you and I know you are real,” I respond.
“Excellent! Now bow to me and worship me and beg for forgiveness!!!”
“Umm no thanks. You have done nothing but sit idly by while the world crumbles at my and other people’s expense, and you expect worship? You sent a non-credible book that says to drop everything and worship you, even though you offered no proof of validity, no scrap of evidence. And you want us to kneel before you?? Fuck you.”
Of course this is all assuming there is a god, and that the particular god is the god of the Christian bible.
Despite my anti-formalist protestant roots, when you included gratitude under the worship category, that made it easy for me to respond negativley to the poll. The experience of being thankful for being is one of the most life affirming ones that I have. This is what I think Jesus is talking about is John 4:24 when he speaks of worshipping in spirit and in truth. A mere social construct? The depth of my being answers “No”.
yea joe we’ve seen that, took awhile to figure out what you were doing in the corner but, we all agreed it was best to agree that you were merely worshipping yourself.
This would be perfectly reasonable, and indeed practical.
I would point to all of the strong positive agnostics. They are compelled to believe in God and do accept God’s being as [highly] probably true, but they are skeptical as if to the fact that we can know anything of God’s nature. Worshiping God would be a rediculous concept if we have no knowledge of how to adequatly do so, thus they accept God but do nothing about it.
Seems plausable if you have found faith in God but not in the coniditons of God.
krissy? Ohhhhhh joekoba, not that name please. Kris, kristy, wench , hey you, any number of names but not that one Ok? I will even smile at the occasional bitch. Uh since personna names change around here and at other forums did you already know that and you are just poking?
To answer Raven’s question— The controversy arises(for me anyway) in the fact that a lot of people cannot find a happy medium between faith and non-faith. Both people who believe and those who do not are more often than not self-righteous a-holes who cannot realise the advantages of both sides. Being religiou has it’s advantages in that it can strengthen a community and the general happiness of people who are in that community, however this sense of community gives rise to the crowd mentality, that is that love is shown to those in the crowd(believers of the same faith) and violent hostility to those who are outside the crowd(people who are not of the same faith and those who violate the laws of that faith). For atheists it is that they see this as brainwashing or they only see the bad side of the religious group(they may have been on the recieving end of this) and the religious people see the lack of community in atheists.
This kind of gulf between people is another contributing factor to the segregation and hate that is still rife in our world:
Racism
Nationalism
Religion
Sexual(not just women, men are discriminated against too)
Ageism(youth are discriminated against in a big way in modern society)
That is for me why it is contentious and contraversial, it is another barrier that people feel needs to be one or the other instead of being mediated by a sense of human community.
You see I don’t understand racism, I hope I never do. I don’t understand when another can say “Your are wrong in your beliefs.”
I see a need to understand each other. To not see who is wrong or right, but understanding. Wars are fought over this very thing. Children are dieing. Yet… no one is right.
Raven–
Racism and other forms of discrimination are in the vast majority of cases psychological. This is due to the crowd mentality I explained above, I will explain it better here:
Someone in a crowd, for example, let’s say a particular country is the crowd this time. The person, due to the crowd mentality, feels love towards other people in the same country, and hate or at least indifference(in some cases this is as bad as hate) towards those outside the country.
This example can be applied to racism, religious segregation, age discrimination, and sexual discrimination.
When two groups come against each other this is when violence occurs.
People will never accept each other, never be understanding of each other because of this.
I do know how you feel, I too wish for understanding and peace.
I see only two solutions to the hate in the world:
People stop being ruled by their emotions.
People stop creating the barriers between each other.
Neither seems likely, that is why I despair as I know you must sometimes when I see the results of this, human pain and suffering.
Even if these barriers degrade, hate begets hate, any pain one person may have been exposed to by a group, they will hate them for this too.
Maybe one-by-one people can be changed, but there are six billion people in the world, the vast majority have some kind of prejudice or hate, if there was even time to try and change them all, it is likely most wouldn’t even listen.
No please don’t be formal, I too like the name Missy and apreciate your sentiment. Thank you
Its just that name caused me alot of headaches when I was young, and is still used to push my buttons occasionally. See there was a character in a sitcom called Threes Company, I don’t know if you are familiar with it. but, This character was dizzy, dumb and stupid. her name was Chrissy.
So of course alot of people around me decided to pick up on that. After a bit my humor and patience wore thin even with the good natured ribbing. I still have not fully escaped that character and the name because at least twice a year someone remembers it. I should not hold it against the name but, habits that irritate are just as hard to let go of as ones that bring pleasure.
Hmmmm, pehaps a mass social habit of worship is hard to release. Is worship ingrained as a habit?
The reason we have free will to choose to worship is because worshipping (the summit of loving) God is not possible if it is not a choice.
Raven’s Moon – You asked, “Why is it these two groups always…always saying who is right…who is wrong?”
Not all beliefs can be true.
The statement “all beliefs can be true” logically cancels itself out, because if it were true, it would mean the belief “not all beliefs can be true” is as true as the belief “all beliefs can be true”.
You are here in the religion forum of a philosophy site. The main concern here is what really, truly matters. If two beliefs about what really, truly matters contradict eachother, they cannot both be true – they cannot both really, truly matter.
If you believe something really, truly matters, and someone else shows you that your belief is not true (hopefully in a loving manner, and because they believe it really, truly matters that you know the truth), it is going to pull some emotional triggers – even if you come to agree with them.
