Why Must We Worship God?

I respect your agnosticism, and was myself proud of my own until I acquired (what I worry is not really good enough) evidence that there is a God. Inevitably the evidence is of a rather private nature, but then so, after all, is anti-skeptical evidence, for example. So, whilst it may well be that you would be making a mistake if you made theistic (or atheistic) claims, it does not follow that all theists (or all atheists) are making such a mistake. It seems to me that the range of evidence that could be available to all (or even to all of a certain IQ and/or social standing) would be a lot less than would be required to justify most of our beliefs, many of which are surely perfectly rational. (Of course, the problem is that so much bullshit is talked about God.)

(And the following may well be part of that, as I’m no theologian.) If God wants you to worship him, then s/he will presumably give you opportunities to choose to. I would not expect the range of such opportunities to be humanly describable, or that humans (even theologians) could possibly judge your response. And why should they, I wonder, why is God’s judgement of such things not enough? Well, it is only natural that we should judge each other, as we go about our business within society. And our social structures naturally build themselves around such assessments. So much is political, I think; but having said that, maybe s/he commands us to worship that we might (more often) look optimistically upon the bigger picture (as one of our social activities) because it is good for us. Personally, because I’m not part of any religion (and because God has not said anything to me about it) I don’t feel that I am under any such instruction. But then I would think of God anyway (in a sort of worshipful way) as a consequence of my theistic beliefs.

Hi Richard — like Aaron, I would be curious to learn whether your epistemic abstention generalizes, or if theology is a special case?

On the main part of your post, I’m not sure that your 2nd argument is in line with your conclusion. The problem of evil is a reason to doubt that any all-loving God actually exists. I’m not sure that you’ve shown that an all-loving God would not “deserve to be worshiped”.

I was timed-out of my terminal, so that ended abruptly. So to continue with (iii), suppose that I have a fallacious conception of an acquaintance. It seems likely that my delusions will come between us, will get in the way of my part in our forging a deep friendship; and in place of ‘acquaintance’ I could have put ‘parent’ etc. So, I suspect that it was in part my former agnosticism (my analytical mind, my faithlessness in matters of religious doctrine, etc.) that qualified me for perceiving God’s existence (unless I’m imagining that). So I suspect, but on no evidence really. The experts (priests, theologians, psychiatrists etc.) might give a better range of possible explanations, though I doubt it because they are professionally commited to certain sorts of explanation, for inappropriate reasons.

And similarly, it seems to me that the standard explanations for why God created the world are not very convincing. They seem to go along the lines of God wanting to increase the amount of loveliness in existence (as though his own infinite loveliness was not enough) by creating people who would choose to love him. But since we have to choose to do that when he is absent, either because we are built that way or because he graciously reveals himself to us, that explanation convinces me no more than it does you. Such explanations seem, however, to make perfect socio-political sense! Of course, there may well be hidden depths to such explanations (as there are said to be for David Lewis’s metaphysics, or for materialistic explanations of our selves, etc.) but my point is that there are surely other possibilities, which do not of course have to be prima facie plausible stories (no more than scientific explanations do).

It seems to me that the idea of God involving himself in his creation in order to constantly repair it (such as the Bible gives us) is an odd one; but it also seems plausible that God would be concerned with his creation, or else why bother to create it? So in what ways would a creator of a universe such as this one be involved with it? I find it very hard to give a justified answer, due to my lack of experience with such things as such sorts of creators, but that hardly makes the idea of a Creator incoherent. I’ve my own speculations (e.g. s/he would not necessarily know everything about stuff that s/he did not create, so perhaps we are part of a scientific research programme, aimed at investigating the abyss) but nothing substantial (and assuming that speculation, we might worship God much as soldiers at a remote post salute the flag of their homeland, whence it would be that we ought to). But enough waffle…

The main reason why I’m an atheist, though (with your definitions), is precisely your stipulation that God is all-knowing in the sense that there could not be anything that God would want to find out. Presumably that concept of knowledge is akin to ours (or else that stipulation does not mean anything) but then I don’t see how He could know everything because it’s inconceivable (for me) how His knowledge of Himself (and the stuff around Him) could be sufficient to rule out the possibility of there being, in some completely unconnected (spatially, causally, etc.) place, another such being, another God.

From what I know of knowledge, I’m pretty sure that no one could ever know such things. Of course, I might be wrong (given that we are considering the properties of an infinite being), and so your agnosticism might be justified. But still, such an all-knowing God would have to be quite unlike us. E.g. I don’t see how He could have the sort of free will that we have. Our free will seems to rely on our ability to choose between live options, whereas your (possible) God would already know what He was going to choose. (Again, maybe it could, but then if anything might follow, at every stage of our reasoning, then we could hardly think about such a hypothesis at all.)

Still, I admit that your agnosticism might be justified (although my own would be no more justified than my belief that 1 + 1 might not be 2) and so, since our free will also seems to be connected to our moral responsibility (for our freely chosen actions), it occurs to me that your God might not be morally responsible (for anything), and in particular might not be to blame for anything. Such a God would not (could not) change through time (and might not even be persisting through time, as we do, but might exist in a more atemporal sort of way), and His amorality (in the sense of freedom from blame) might follow from that.

But therefore He might nonetheless, despite such (an unusual and infinitary sort of) amorality, be worthy of worship, not entirely dissimilarly to how a great piece of music might be appreciated and admirable (in its entirety) even though some of its parts might (considered by themselves) be inadequate or even annoying. When we first hear a great piece of music, we might fail to appreciate its greatness, and so we might be tempted not to bother with it, whence it can make sense for it to be suggested to us that we try to appreciate it. Or maybe it is like a conductor telling each musician to think about their place within the whole piece, even as they must also immerse themselves in their playing.

Thinking like that is, for me, a bit like thinking of how 1 + 1 might not be 2, but in short it seems that we might tell some analogical stories about how it is possible that the suggestion that we (try to) worship God could be justified.

Hi Richard… yes, I didn’t mean to suggest that you’d invented a silly definition of ‘God,’ it does indeed crop up a lot. But since the “all-knowing” etc. bits are also part of my conception (if not my definition), with appropriate precisifications of ‘all’ etc. following from my preferred definition of ‘God’ (as the Creator of this Universe), so I used ‘your definition’ to indicate when the precisification of ‘all’ etc. was as you indicated at the begining of this post. (I did feel awkward typing “your definition” incidentally, but I couldn’t think of a better way of putting it without waffling even more:)

If I comment much more I’ll feel like I ought to be posting on my own blog, but to return to the question of why we should worship God (with your definition), I recall that believers used to tell me that I had to want to believe, and that going through the motions of worhip (with at least a mind open to God’s influence) would help me to do that. To me, that seems a lot like asking to be hypnotised, but I wonder if the nature of God might not make a difference. After all, simplicity in a theory is not just to be preferred for its pragmatic virtues, it is also regarded (quite widely) as a sign of truth. That is, we might deduce truth from simplicity. And again, we might deduce truth from the goodness of a hypothesis (all else being equal), if we are optimists, and one could argue that perhaps we ought to be optimists…

Thanks Richard, I was misreading you again; and I think you’re right that even if there is a God (in the omni sense) then you need not worship It. Also I think that you’re right about God’s omniscience not contradicting Its free will. But I still don’t see how it’s possible for any knower to know the full extent of what they don’t know.

We can posit that God just does know that there is nothing about which It doesn’t know everything, but consider God’s knowledge of Its justification for that belief… how could such justification (merely that It knows it) not appear circular to the believer in question, i.e. to God? But if the justification seems circular to God, then God knows that it is circular, and so It knows that that belief does not amount to knowledge (even if it happens to be true). That is, to imagine that omniscience (in your strict sense) is possible is to imagine that such a belief might not have a circular justification, and it is that that I can’t imagine.

The reason that religion demands worship of “God” is that all religions depend on brainwashing of their flock. That’s why it has to start when the poor schnuck is so young (I was such a schnuck, myself..) Brainwashing will wither and eventually vanish unless it is constantly reinforced. That is why religions promote bible study, daily prayer, Sunday “worship,” various ceremonies. That’s why at every service, Christians have to recite the Apostles Creed time and again. An effective brainwashing technique is also mind-numbing repetition, such as the catholic rosary. How could any rational being on their knees recite the same incantations over and over and over, unless it is to brainwash the person doing the chanting. I have been freed from this brainwashing and am now seriously searching for answers to how the universe came to be, how the earth was born, how life came to be on this planet, and how we became human. As long as I was trapped in this mental prison of religion, I never sought answers to any of these things, because I had been taught that it was all “God’s Work.” Absolute and Total Nonsense. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has said that, throughout history, whenever man reached the limits of his knowledge, he would involke a deity. Examples are wind, rain, fire, volcanoes, earthquakes, fertility, storms, etc. etc. etc. As these have been explained as natural phenomena, these “gods” have disappeared. There is no supernatural anything. All there is is the natural world.

I love the title of the blog; it fits with the irreverence. Your Chinese Menu on Godliness is, well, disturbingly limited. I am debating, even now, on the MickeyD next door. You narrowly define ( and this by de facto inference ) “worship.” Let’s stay with this.
You point out, or hint at, that problems with the motivations for “worship.” Agreed: crap all. But prayer and “worship” need not be motivated by the above-mentioned. God does not have being; God is the idea of being; Godness is in relatedhood — to “know” God is to be a participant in predication; that there is predication is “proof” of God. A loving and all powerful God? What? You mean the Wizard of Oz? — Still working this out.
Now go to worship or Sister Sarah will build you a new layer of skin on your ass!

Although thinking some more… here are 3 possible (admittedly somewhat question begging) arguments that I thought of by using your 3 points as starters.

1) god is ultimate good – so we should contemplate him and that the proper approach to contemplating ultimate good is worshiping
2) You should worship/thank him IF you are grateful for existing
3) God has a perfect plan (which flows from being all loving and omniscient), any change you make to it no matter how well thought out will detract from that plan – part of that plan is that you worship him.

Hi again David!

Yeah, I have no problem with that kind of view, but a lot of religions take the position that we are morally obligated to worship god, or that we are in some sense required to worship him…I was trying to question that assumption. I was asking whether I would count as doing anything morally wrong by choosing not to worship an existing God.