But that's just it - he's not analyzing the god himself, he's analyzing your perception of god, and what that causes you to do. Whether or not there is a god, and/or whether or not you believe in him - he is trying to analyze what psychological need there is within you, the human, to worship the god (again, disregarding the reality of the god's existence). A worshiper's worship remains an action, the motivations of which can be analyzed, with out analyzing the target of the worship. The worshiper can say that he worships because of what the god is and you can't comprehend because you don't what the god is, but your definition of what the god is remains your personal human perception, which is capable of analysis, as well as the actions it leads you to performing.
I dealt with the first part of this in my extensive previous reply. As for the second part, remember where we came from. The question was: "Why worship god?" Even if I don't believe in god, I can still find this to be a fascinating question, especially since the standard answer you'd get today is that god is supposedly all good, something that flies in the face of the actual biblical stories. That's way my hypothesis is that worship was originally supposed to influence nature and only later, when we understood how nature works, did people find new rationalizations for worshipping.
..but the question is relevant if you believe in Santa because you saw some old pictures of santa and his deeds, which were drawn by other 2 year olds, and\or told by other 2 year old's that it be the truth. If through the awe and wonder of life, the universe and beyond, you have come to the conclusion that there must be an ultimate creator...fair enough, everybody follows their own path through this life. However, it just never ceases to amaze me how blindly some will buy into a book\s written (and in some case re written or closely resembling other civilisations teachings) by other humans (motives\reason\mindset unknown) and be so immovable on that belief when others question the logic behind it. I know you will say unless you have faith, you can't understand....but when it comes to these teachings (stories), what you call faith, I see as a mental shield to protect yourself from the obvious (obvious being our nature and motives as human beings).
I did try to address this as well in my first post. Here's what I wrote: Full post here: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=24700046&postcount=12 Let me expand on that: Worship itself has a useful function for society. It gives people political and/or spiritual power, it helps forming communities, it's the center of public life for many. And when people really like something, they'll find new rationalizations to do it. So my point was that the reinterpretation of the Bible and the re-imagination of god as the perfectly good god are a result of worship, they are a result of the need for a justification to continue with it, they're not the reason why people worship. The real reason is in the social function worship has.
I see your point. I guess I go back to what I said originally on the subject. that the reason for my worship is a result of of my own personal experiences, which you will probably not understand and they won't make sense to you - at least not in the way that they do to me. so the decision to worship, and the reason for that worship are both very personal that I don't expect anyone else to understand, or to make sense to you. which makes objective analysis of the reason for worship impossible.
in my case, it was a combination of things. part of it was the picture book drawn by other two year olds, but part of it was also my own subjective experiences, and my own thought processes. either way, why I believe in Santa or why I worship Santa cannot be analyzed objectively by another person.
Without knowing a single thing about you, I would feel very confident in saying that being raised in a christian environment (either by your immediate family or by merely existing in a 'christian society') had a huge influence in your choice of which god figure was responsible/behind your own subjective experiences. In other words, if you had been raised in a muslim environment, there's a good chance your life experiences would have made you a believer of the Koran.
perhaps. but although I was raised in a Christian environment, I completely and utterly rejected it for about 15 years, and wandered far and wide into other religions, as well as agnosticism. so it's not quite that simple.
people idolized Britney Spears. they thought she was the ideal playmate. maybe some guys still do. whatever. what's ironic about your idea here is that you use the word "worthy". the entire concept of "worship", obviously, is about the worth of something. if you perceive God as the source of all that is good and that there is nothing bad, evil, unwholesome -- pick your poison -- about him, then he's worthy of worship, purely because he encompasses everything that is good. it goes far beyond admiration or approval. God is absolute Goodness, from the perspective of Hebrew/Christian scripture. this is a version of Pascal's wager, no doubt. and it's true. if you worship God, there's something in it for you. of course, worship ultimately entails following and obeying, so it's not the case that there is no cost involved. Jesus said that a person doesn't build a barn without accounting the cost; to do so would be foolhardy, and people would laugh at you when you failed to complete the barn because you ran out of money. obviously, with God it's not a question of money, but it's a matter of commitment to following and obeying. i don't get what you're driving at. that's a relief!!! you would have the choice whether to "worship" somebody who had the power of life or death over a loved one. you could decide that you would not bow your knee to a monster who was going to murder your mother/father/spouse/child just to maintain your integrity, and i would respect that integrity, but i think i would respect it more if your head was on the block. worship could be a practical matter to somebody. but in the final analysis, worship is about absolutes. surely you can see that there is a quantum difference between admiration and worship. For example, I don't love my parents simply because they created me, I do love them as well as liking them and respecting them but that's for the people they are, not for bringing me into existence.[/QUOTE]
I think choice number one is good for earthly things where the scientific process can be put to work to come up with concrete conclusions. but doesn't work very well in the spiritual realm, or if you're going to go with choice 1, you have to recognize the limitations of that approach when it comes to spiritual things - which is not the same thing as religious things. I suppose that may be where some of our differences are stemming from. because worship happens both in a group, at a religious level, and at the individual, personal, spiritual level, we first have to define which kind of worship we are talking about. I think your theory about the need for worship is pretty accurate when describing public, religious worship. but spiritual worship is a lot more difficult to come to grips with because it's so intensely personal and the reasons for it are peculiar to the individual. you raise a lot of good points here. I've raised many of them myself in the past, and sometimes still do, because I have yet to find an answer that satisfies my intellect. but in my case, there are sufficient reasons for me to believe and accept God's goodness (because I experienced it personally), that I can accept that I don't have good answers to these questions, and I don't know and understand why God did what he did, and does what he does when it comes to these issues. I realize that's not a very satisfying answer for you, and some times I struggle with an answer that my own intellect can come to grips with as well. now you're playing god telling God how he should have created us. I recognize that the human perspective is the only one we've got to work with, and that we also have an insatiable curiosity as a species, a desire to know and to learn, and so we're going to take what we have, including our human perspective and understanding, and try to use it to understand everything around us. we apply it to everything. which is fine, as long as we do it with discrimination, and recognize that our human perspective and our human intelligence may not be capable of solving all kinds of different problems, and answering all kinds of questions equally well. it has limitations, especially when it comes to spiritual matters. I don't know, is God sending them to destruction, or is that the path a person has chosen. God may be all powerful, but he will not take away our free will, and he will not take away or lighten the consequences of our choices. if he did, it wouldn't be free will any more. if the result was the same (heaven, let's say) no matter which choice we make, then the concept of free will would just be a fraud. we wouldn't have any real choice.
I think this makes a lot of sense if you're talking about the kind of public worship one often associates with religion, churches, temples, etc. but if we're talking about spiritual worship, that tends to be a lot more personal and individual, and therefore the reasons for it will vary with each person.
a) perfect goodness is not an oxymoron. the terms are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. b) the statement that "God is good and whatever He does is good" isn't a statement that is developed from reasoning. it's a truth claim. the fact that God is good means that everything he does is good. if you disagree that God is good, that's one thing, but the whole problem here is that the Bible, which says that it's divinely sourced, says that God is good. let me say that i do understand your objection and normally i would agree that it's valid, but the whole God subject is a special case. we both know that. if it has to be subject to our reasoning, then we are, in fact, "above" God. we aren't. He made us. as long as that's the playing field, we have to play by those rules.
I don't think the form of worship matters that much. Even if all worship was done privately, it would still be defining for the group as a whole. It would be something people could immediately relate to, it would still be part of the wall of separation between US and THEM, and spiritual or political leaders could still harness that custom to their advantage.
I think this is only possible with public, institutionalized, religious worship. nobody could or would care about the worship that takes place within the 4 walls of my apt.
Well think about the word "worship" used in its more ordinary sense, "I worship that guy!" "I totally worship the Beatles", etc. It means you deeply appreciate them for being what they are and thus it's a natural outpouring of that feeling, and I think authentic worship of God is the same thing applied to the Creator of all that is.
It's not so much that others care what you do as it's that you use a common language. A politician who wants your support tries to reach you with his message, he doesn't care how exactly you worship, like whether you kill the bird first and the ox second or vice versa. It's the mere fit that you follow the ritual that counts. Everybody in your group does it, it defines the group, it makes you part of it, it gives you the feeling that you're important. One example: Think of coming of age rituals. They are virtually universal. Pretty much every culture in every time has them. They look very different. The Spartans did something that's quite different from the Hindus of today, the Aztecs did it differently than Muslims, etc. But the social function is the same everywhere. It must be very important for any group, otherwise it wouldn't be as dominant a ritual as it is. And it's something the Communists in Eastern Germany for example soon learned as well. In mainline Christianity, the coming of age ritual is usually called confirmation (though in Evangelical circles it's being born again), where adolescents come together, get taught in the Bible, do stuff together and over the course of a year prepare to be confirmed, which ultimately is a big ceremony where the entire community comes together and celebrates. When the Communists tried to get rid of religion, they realized how important these rituals were and they cane up with the "Jugendweihe". Here's an explanation: http://www.goethe.de/ges/phi/dos/rkd/en118849.htm The interesting thing is how well it worked. Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain most East German families opt to go for the Jugendweihe (although nowadays usually without any political pledges). It goes to show that it's the ritual itself that is important, not the form of the ritual. What mattes is that your group has its distinctive ritual.
Yes they are. Goodness is a relative concept. Nothing can be perfect in attaining or displaying a relative property. No, I get that. I said, "God's goodness is taken as a given and an absolute." The fact of God's goodness is the truth claim. The reasoning comes in when you conclude that everything God does is good, because God is by definition good. Or you can expand the truth claim and say that the goodness of every action performed by God is a given. Fine. It really makes no difference either way. I totally understand that that's where you come from on this. You are reinforcing what I was trying to explain to benztown, namely that a belief in a perfect and good God is immune to any debate about the rightness or wrongness of God's actions in human terms.
You don't have Fox Soccer Channel apparently. This next Sunday morning I'll be watching Juve v. Palermo and then Chelsea v. Liverpool.
Just got back from seeing a wonderful talk by George Coyne about the intersection of science and religion. He's a marvelous speaker, mixing delightful stories with humor and often blunt honesty. However, I left feeling slightly unsatisfied with his seeming unwillingness to subject his religious beliefs to the same kind of rigorous scrutiny that he applies to his work. Although, I imagine he would also admit that it's not very satisfying either. Anyhow, I just found an earlier version of the same talk he gave tonight on YouTube and would recommend viewing it if you have an hour or so to kill. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzRvEGxmHAQ"]Children of a Fertile Universe: Chance, Destiny and a Creator God - YouTube[/ame] Unfortunately the cameraman failed to capture the slides which add a great deal to his presentation.
I hate to take issue with this chart, but... ...pretty sure Jews love them some hummus too! http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0725/p07s02-wome.html