Does everybody worship?
A Twitter conversation between Irshad Manji and Salman Rushdie.
Irshad @IrshadManji
There’s no such thing as #atheism. Everybody worships. Our only choice is what to worship. ~ David Foster Wallace:Salman Rushdie @SalmanRushdie Sep 6
Wrong. Sorry. Just wrong.
Irshad@IrshadManji
.@SalmanRushdie “Just wrong”? Such absolutism has a name: dogma.
Well, no, not unless that were the sum total of the reply at all times and in all media. As a reply on Twitter it doesn’t amount to dogma.
And announcing that “everybody worships” is pretty dogmatic anyway. No, everybody doesn’t worship. I don’t think I do anything that could be called worship, for example. Worship is a specifically religious word, naming a religious emotion and attitude, and I’m pretty sure I avoid and repudiate it.
And if it were true, what would the point of the observation be? It wouldn’t be evidence for the validity of anything that anyone was worshipping being true. Were it true, it would reveal nothing other than the fact of the observation. Since it isn’t true, it doesn’t even reveal that.
Someone should tell Irshad it’s called masturbation, not worship …
How is it dogma to say that a proposition is incorrect? Some things are true, some are false.
Especially since the proposition is an absolute one. A single counter-example is sufficient for it to be incorrect. I’d say the original statement is more dogmatic than the counterclaim.
Ah yes, the “atheists are the dogmatic ones” gambit — another tactic of the “NUH-UH! YOU ARE!” School of Debate.
No doubt we’ll be told that atheists worship themselves. Evidence for this proposition – or even a definition of what it means to “worship oneself” that applies to atheists but not to believers — will be sorely lacking.
I think Irshad is guilty of false authority. David Foster Wallace wrote best selling novels; that does not make him an authority on human behavior. I’ve never read Wallace’s books, but if I did, that still would not make him an authority. I’ve read Rushdie’s books, and wouldn’t allow him to pronounce himself as an authority on human behavior, either, but I do think he has enough information to be able to pronounce Irshad wrong.
I don’t worship. God or anyone (thing) else (except maybe cheese). Worship is a dangerous game, because it puts you in a bad spot whenever the worshipped turns out to not be worthy of worship. Humans are…human…and god is inhuman, so none worthy of worship – including me. Please, no one ever worship me, OK?
Not unless you stretch the definition of “worship” beyond all recognition — and since the context here is clearly intended as a muddle-headed criticism of atheism by virtue of that hashtag, surely the meaning of “worship” must be intended in something resembling its traditional religious meaning, which cannot intelligibly include atheists. I’m sure DFW went on to say something interesting and subtle (although still possibly quite wrong) about human psychology, but Irshad Manji insisting we take the quote out of context as a plain statement of literal truth is embarrassingly stupid.
Even if somehow it was proven that there WAS a god, and that god was not the creepy bastard of the bible but literally all good and perfect, I might LIKE that god, but I wouldn’t worship it.
I’m just not that kind of guy.
Oh, my.
One of my favorite quotes from Dostoevsky: “Lie to me, but in your own way, and I’ll kiss you for it.”
When, oh when, will one of them start lying in their own way? Will it ever happen? Why does it always have to be so standard … and boring?
Advocates of the notion that “everybody worships” typically have a very fluid and expansive definition of the word “worship”.
More striking to me: “There’s no such thing as #atheism. Everybody worships. Our only choice is what to worship.”
That’s wrong because the premise is wrong. It presumes that atheists cannot worship anything, as if that were part of the definition of ‘atheist’.
There’s nothing to say that a person could lack beliefs in any kind of God or Gods, but still worship something or somethings that isn’t a God. And that this person would still be fairly considered an atheist.
No, dear, it hardly seems to me ‘worship’ is especially necessary nor universal…
(/Disgust, on the other hand…)
Telling a person making a general statement they are just wrong, because one knows it doesn’t apply to oneself, is NOT dogma, it is lived experience.
Furthermore, in logic, *one* exception makes a general statement wrong. “All numbers are either positive or negative” is a WRONG statement, because zero is neither.
David Foster Wallace goes on to say “If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough.” So he is clearly using a very elastic definition of worship, and one that does nothing to justify “there is no such thing as atheism”.
It’s hilarious that this guy thinks “Everybody worships” is fine but “Wrong” is dogma. Russell conjugation time again: I am obviously right, you are dogmatic?
Irshad Manji is a Muslim woman, a lesbian if I recall correctly, who wrote a book I think highly of, The Trouble With Islam. Since that writing, she had become rather polemic against atheists, again if I recall correctly. She believes in fixing rather than jettisoning Islam, and remains a believer, obviously.
Again with hijacking a colloquial meaning of a word (ie, “she worships money”) in order to press it into the service of the formal definition (eg, the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.
“The worship of God”).
One would think that a professional writer is doing this bit of disingenuous sleight-of-hand deliberately and knowingly.
It’s bullshit of the highest order.
Inklast @ #6
A problem that you will never have with cheese.
What Irshad Manji has done, of course, is take a statement out of context and imbue it with a meaning not intended by the original speaker. Atheism is the rejection of the belief in a deity. I can worship knowledge and still be an atheist if I reject the existence of God. Manji is smart enough to know this but despises atheists enough to ignore it.
She really hates the Dawkins school of atheism but doesn’t seem to grasp that, just like imams who call for the oppression of women and the murder of homosexuals don’t speak for her Islam, Dawkins and his ilk don’t speak for all atheists. The difference, of course, is that I don’t claim to belong to Dawkins’s club nor do I have to in order to continue being an atheist.
Manji has a desperate commitment to the notion that Islam can be ‘reformed’ or somehow salvaged into a form compatible with civilization. That she has to live under constant security protection, and simply cannot travel to many destinations, requires dogmatic denial on her part.
So ‘worship’ has to be defined with infinite flexibility. Otherwise we’d have to confront ISIS and Kim Davis with clear eyes.
And announcing that “everybody worships” is pretty dogmatic anyway. – See more at:
heh its one of the things that i think about God. Even if one could demonstrably prove a God exists why the heck would one worship said God? I wouldnt.
Exactly. See Huck Finn: “All right then, I’ll go to hell.”