Worship is immoral
Aikin and Talisse (potentially startling many readers of 3 Quarks Daily) argue that religious belief is morally wrong.
The thought is frequently associated with Bertrand Russell: The worship of anything is beneath the dignity of a rational creature. That is, we argue that worship is immoral. Consequently, for any type of religious belief, if it requires one to worship anything, then it is intrinsically immoral. The argument turns on the claim that any conception of worship that’s worth its salt will involve the voluntary and irrevocable submission of one’s rational faculties to those of another.
That idea resonates with me, whether I know how to defend it or not. It addresses what I dislike about “faith,” even (or possibly, sometimes, especially) the liberal kind. I dislike the hierarchical aspect, the (at least implicit) demand for submission, the abdication.
The challenge we pose to religious believers is to formulate a conception of worship that at once makes worship distinguishable from lesser attitudes and actions (such as praising, thanking, appreciating, admiring) and yet non-submissive. We think that there is no such conception. That is, any conception of worship that does not involve morally objectionable submission will be indistinguishable from, say, thanking, praising, and admiring. But the religious believer holds not only that God is entitled to thanks, praise, and admiration; the religious believer holds that God (uniquely) is entitled to worship. Yet worship is morally wrong. Hence so is any mode of religious belief which requires it.
That works. It’s quite possible to admire, praise, and thank other people, and still be on a footing of equality. Of course it is, and what a hell life would be if it weren’t. I enjoy admiring people. But worship? Hell no. That would be wrong. If we really do have an overlord who demands worship…we’ll just have to say No.
Well, my approach to mormons and other doorstep evangelists is to invite them in and give them a lecture on why I think their beliefs are immoral. Since they all believe themselves to be guardians of morality it’s fun to see their jaws drop when faced with a different view.
I do like that view. I would consider that worship is even more screwed up than suggested here.
As theism is false then what exactly is the believer worshiping? It’s some projection of their own thoughts and desires. It’s a form of narcissism.
I would also argue that religious faith is immoral, as it celebrates and encourages the rejection of reason in making major decisions about life.
It’s not so much submitting to another, it’s submitting to yourself with all the safeties switched off. It’s thinking without a seatbelt and encouraging others to do the same, even with children.
Hahaha–and not one rude word in it.
This means I have to repent of my attitude toward Michelle Forbes?
I think we (neoatheists or gnus) already have more or less rejected worship or even unjustified beliefs on moral grounds as well as rational grounds. And so we’re in almost total agreement with Aikin & Talisse, although from a more empirical or naturalist perspective than a rationalist perspective. Although we may be coming from different perspectives, we’re probably saying more or less the same thing.
However, neither ‘movements’ have clarified their ethical position, and so there is potential for plenty of confusion. Also, Aikin and Talisse risk falling into a trap of making a non-evidential moral claim–such as rejecting religious beliefs–that is not itself based on evidence.
Hence, why we need an evidential or naturalist framework to explain our ethics. I’ve already suggested that we do so through emotions, in particular empathy or sympathy. Emotions play an evidential premise from which to argue rationally about ethical judgements, and can form the basis for a scientific theory of ethics. This is a project that seems to be still in its infancy among gnus.
That is why the naturalist or scientific approach that we gnus take, is safer ground than the more formal rationalist position that Aikin and Talisse seem to want to take. However, there is no need for conflict, rather we are working from two different directions, and yet more or less we’re in almost complete agreement in our conclusions and our practical goals.
So while I applaud Aikin & Talisse approach, it is still a matter of whether theists or theologians will engage them or take them seriously, or whether they will be ignored, as perhaps the real conflict is a political and cultural one with the loud and visible atheists such as ourselves.
A (possibly) similar argument from James Rachels – http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_rachels/autonomy.html“;God and Moral Autonomy
It also appears in “The impossibility Of God”, which is where I encountered it.
Unfortunately that requires people to accept that reason is morally good, and outweights whatever moral good may be associated with faith. I suspect a lot of hardened theists wouldn’t accept that :-(
Very true, and this links with the issue of objective morality. A particular set of rules doesn’t become objective because a very powerful guy says it. It’s still as arbitrary as mine, and the fact that you are sending me to Hell because I refused to play by your horrible rules changes nothing.
Worship is good because God says it? I’m sorry, that’s not a valid reason. God will have to make a convincing case like anyone else or I won’t follow him. He created me? I don’t worship my father if he has been a bad father. Of course, if you who read this are a middle class white man in a rich country, I can see how you might think he has been a good father. I would advise you to take a look at 90% of humanity. If god exists, his very existence is a perfectly good reason not to follow him.
I’m from a country who endured a dictator for a very long time. Like God, he demanded worship and punished disobedience with torture. And he also said he was going to save us. Carrying that kind of baggage, I don’t think a celestial dictatorship is a good thing either.
But they do accept that reason is morally good in just about every aspect of their lives. They expect people to be brought to justice on the basis of evidence, not feelings. They expect doctors to diagnose illnesses based on evidence, not tarot card readings. They expect a pilot to guide a plane based on evidence, not by following omens in the flight of birds.
They would be understandably unhappy if those guidelines were not followed.
I think we can make a case for moral consistency; applying the same standard in all aspects of life.
I completely agree, and I do think people who place faith above reason are being inconsistent. What I expect in practice, however, is that “religious faith” would be singled out as “special” or “different” somehow, for no good reason. The persons in question is likely to refuse to accept any reasons why they ought to abandon the preferred status of (their particular) religious faith, or even reasons pointing out that they’re being inconsistent and possibly irrational in doing so.
I’m intrigued by the idea that worship could be immoral, though I’m not sure about it. I certainly do find it disturbing that so many Christians profess to look forward to an eternal life of obeisance, worshiping an impetuous, genocidal, sociopathic being who they also believe is currently torturing billions of people for the thought crime of disbelief. That kind of desire really strikes me as above and beyond battered spouse/Stockholm syndrome.
If everyone were taught the ethical principle of Clifford, that “it is wrong, everywhere and always. to believe something with insufficient justification,” then all religious belief would be properly seen to be unethical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford
(The above was from memory. Wikipedia has it as
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” )
It is certainly a provocative claim but it does beg the definitions of “wrong,” “believe” and insufficient evidence.”
Let’s assume “wrong” means “morally wrong,” where, for instance, does provisional belief fit in? In a scientific mindset, one must be prepared to change belief. Does that by implication mean the previous belief was morally wrong and, by dint of being wrong, mean that the evidence for that belief was de facto insufficient? Is the whole concept of provisional belief morally wrong?
I don’t see any conflict of Clifford’s principle with the scientific method. When a scientist makes a hypothesis, she does not yet believe it. To say a hypothesis is a provisional “belief” is not the best description. Seems to me the term provisional belief is sort of an oxymoron.
Anyhow in science one believes a theory to the extent justified by the evidence, no more and no less.
Another nice Clifford quote from the article:
“If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it — the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.” – Contemporary Review (1877)
David Hestenes is leading a movement to make Clifford algebra the default language of physics and engineering. It’s a generalization of the vector methods taught primarily now. Clifford also anticipated general relativity. Quite a legacy for a man who died of TB at 34.
Paul, it’s true that WK Clifford deserves credit for bringing attention to evidentialism. Unfortunately, Clifford’s views are a neurotic overstatement of the case that can be made for evidentialism. (A sin against all mankind, eh Clifford? …oh, settle down.) We can, and have, done a lot better since then — Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, for instance. Though Conee and Feldman are not perfect either, they at least are conscientious enough that they decided not to replace one sort of Opus Dei with a secular alternative.
That having been said, I certainly agree with Talisse and Aikin that unconditional deference is morally wrong. The problem is, many theologians and defenders of religion would associate unconditional deference with “blind faith”, and then denounce blind faith as a self-defeating activity. (John Lennox, for instance, denounced blind faith in his debate with Dawkins.) So on the face of it, it seems that Talisse and Aikin’s critique might not be an unqualified critique of religious belief.
I hate to go against the grain, but I can see a moral value in worship — but if and only if there is a vast difference in intelligence, knowledge and experience between the worshipped and the worshipper. As a parent, for instance, I wanted my toddler-age children to respond immediately to my instructions and to obey them implicitly even when they didn’t understand them and thought they had better ideas of their own. I didn’t ask them to bow down and make sacrifices to me, but I certainly aimed to cultivate an attitude of blind obedience, simply for their own safety. But by the time they hit four I was trying to add some autonomy to the mix.
So assuming God exists in the first place, do we have any reason to assume he has such an overwhelmingly superior knowledge of the universe that we should blindly follow his commands? How’s it worked out for those Chosen People? Are believers spectacularly better off than non-believers? I can’t see it. Obviously the claim we should worship God is based on the same non-evidence as other God-related claims. But I can still envisage circumstances in which a worshipful attitude — at least to the extent of blind unquestioning obedience — would be not only morally but empirically correct.
Hmmmm, I’m having some problems with the premise myself. If we accept that “moral” means something similar to, “of the most benefit and least disadvantage” (about as close as I can get to defining “right” objectively,) then they’re not making a case, but presenting a non sequitur. They can say things about dignity or rationality, or maintain that worship is simply a irrelevant function, but providing a disadvantage?
Now, requiring worship is a different matter, and entails the function of dictating to others what is a necessary performance – I can buy that. But any individual willfully worshiping a deity (or anything else)? That’s a personal decision, and you really can’t apply morality to internal processes. It appears to be implying that irrationality is immoral, which really doesn’t fit into the definition above, or the definitions most people seem to hold. Irrationality can lead to immoral actions, certainly, but that’s not the same thing either.
Much as it would be fun to establish, I think the ice is far too thin and we’d be in danger of promoting a case that is very easy to dismiss.
The idea of worship being immoral is certainly a refreshing thought to me. Oo, I like it.
jonjermey #16 I understand where are you are coming from, but sometimes children don’t need blind obedience. For every time you yell “No!” when they are near the hot stove, there should be a brief immediate follow-up on why not to go near it.
Kids can understand more than is sometimes expected. When my nephew was 5, he asked why he wasn’t allowed to play M (adult) rated games. Instead of just saying “that’s the rules” and relying on his hero-worship of me, I explained to him about becoming bored by violence if you see it all the time, and how it can shape his thoughts. He understood it and never forgot it.
I’ve always found the concept of ‘worship’ disturbing too, so this is a very interesting viewpoint. Worship has always struck me as psychologically dangerous – abdicating ones self-control and self-determination, deciding you are ‘less than’, not trusting your own sense of reason – these are things that could lead you to hurt yourself or others, surely, depending on the whim of the entity being worshipped. In that sense I’d agree that it could be not just disturbing but immoral too. You could see worship as quite reckless – almost like drink driving – in that it leads you to disengage your brain and make irrational decisions about the world around you.
Either way it surely has to be immoral to instruct children to worship – to teach them they are ‘less than’ from an early age, to encourage them not to think for themselves. But then you could argue that about religious instruction for children generally – and many do (and I would agree). A friend of mine had a baby recently and takes the poor child to ‘play and pray’ sessions at her local church. :o/ Never too young to be taught they’re not worthy, eh?
On a sightly different tack, I have been reading (simultaneously) three book lately: Patrick Sookhdeo’s Understanding Islamist Terrorism, and Global Jihad, and The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P Huntingdon. I strongly recommend all three. Much information and food for thought.
Polytheism in my view was mental balkanisation, and both Moses and Mohammed each led a big step forward in the way they led disparate polytheistic tribes to unite under monotheism, getting them in the process to recognise that they were not separate universes unto themselves but all related and part of a larger family with a common Father in Heaven. At any rate, this certainly increased their political and economic strength, and probably diminished inter-tribal warfare. (‘Balkan’ is pretty well synonymous with the latter.) But of course, those they conquered in the process would have a different view, and the modern legacies of those great unifiers are mainly obnoxious.
But monotheism was merely a superior myth. As I see it, it is dying in the modern western world, but can only be replaced by a non-myth that is at the same time more unifying still. As probably everyone alive today has been brought up in or at least influenced in some way by one of the major religious myths, a unifying non-myth would have to recognise that salient fact.
For me personally, a satisfactory non-mythological outlook is provided by rationalism and science, but I can accept that it is not enough for others. One can marvel at nature without the slightest temptation to bow down or bend one’s knee before it. Still, the King of Heaven who was King of Kings at least performed the function of demanding submission from all the other little kings in their balkan principalities.
(As far as I know I am still a communicant of the Church of England. But Her Majesty the Queen, being head of it, would have to be none the less higher in God’s hierarchy than I am.)
So a worldwide “no!” or even better “go and get stuffed!” is not a bad universal counter-prayer.
*three book lately
books
Jonjeremy. I’m not sure I see the point here. Certainly, if someone is greatly more intelligent than we are, we ought to pay attention to what they might say and think. Thus we all come here to receive wisdom from Ophelia. But we should not worship her. Worship is really a surrender of individuality in favour of the object worshipped, and that is immoral, because the moral personality, in order to be genuinely moral, must be (in some sense of that disputed term) free, and responsible. This is the deman of reason. Clifford may have resorted to hyperbole, but his central point is crucial. We are responsible for our beliefs, and if our beliefs are inadequately grounded, we are responsible for the consequences of holding them. And it makes no difference whether someone is greatly more intelligent than I am. I am still responsible for my beliefs, though it may be wise in some circumstances to defer to those whose judgement I believe to be surperior to mine. But to worship them. No. That is immoral.
(By the way, and parenthetically, Ophelia, I have been having a lot of trouble loading B&W lately, the only blog that doesn’t load quickly on my computer, and sometimes only loads without the formatting.)
I’ve never really understood what worship is actually supposed to be. I always get an image of John Cleese going “Oh Lord, you are so very big. We’re all awfully impressed down here, let me tell you” and so on.
It rings true that there may be something wrong with worship in and of itself. I’ll also add that worship was a large part of what was wrong with the regimes atheists often get blamed for. Worship of the Great Leader was a major component of Stalinism, Maoism, and other similar regimes.
I don’t think worship itself is necesarily evil. Consenting adults and all that but forcing worship (or religious observance) sounds very much like slavery to mme which I have always seen as one of the world’s greatest evils. Mandating someone give up all autonomy to some alien being (or person like in personality cults) is repulsive to the extreme.
But Joe Schmuckatelly thinking he has to sacrifice an hour of his life everyday so that the sun rises in the morning really isn’t all the repulsive. Just pathetic in my view. At least until he forces his children to do the same with stories about how the earth will freeze over and everyone and everything will die because of their insolence.
It’s not just the worship of some “divine” being that bugs me, but the worship of some alleged entity that people have been told to worship by other people who have no evidence for it either. The fact is, that imaginary entity is just being used as a proxy. It’s the hierarchy of the religion that is being worshiped – and oh, how they bask in it.
“But Joe Schmuckatelly thinking he has to sacrifice an hour of his life everyday so that the sun rises in the morning really isn’t all the repulsive.”
Depends on how obsessive he is about it. If it leads to neglecting his children for an hour a day, for example, I no longer care so much that at least he isn’t teaching them sun-worship.
But you did remind me of how I sometimes think of religious worship in my less charitable moods: as socially accepted forms of OCD. Not necessarily something to encourage – or leave untreated.
@Brian Jordan: good point. The worship of an entity worthy of worship pretty much always goes hand in hand with demands of respect for its followers. After all, if the entity is worthy of worship, those that do its will should be worthy of something too, right?
@Deen well naturally if it leads to neglecting their responsibilities then it has become a problem. But lots of things that aren’t evil or wrong do the same. A demanding job, warcraft, volunteer work, ect. Nothing evil about any of them even if to much of any can make you somewhat negligent in your duties.
What is with the pathetic need of the deity (of whichever monotheistic religion) to be worshipped and to be the only deity to be worshipped. It’s hard to identify this neurotic, insecure, pathetic creature with a being that could design and execute a project for creation of this planet let alone a whole universe or even, possibly, a plethora of universes. This deity seems to be rather a Clouzot type, not worth admiring let alone worshipping!
Or am I just missing the numinous ineffability of it all?
It distresses me to see the terms “morally wrong” and “immoral” being tossed around by anybody, theistic or otherwise, without regard to how the labeled beliefs or actions affect other people.
This argument could just as easily be applied to sado-masochism, dominance and submission. Not my cup of tea. But so long as participants are willing and derive some kind of enjoyment, not my business, either.
Let’s not confuse “distasteful” with “immoral”. Taste is subjective, but morality should be founded on objectively justified, empirically robust rules about how to treat one’s fellow thinking and feeling organisms, if one wishes to be treated well in turn. The most evil thing about religious dogma is how many thoughtful people have been killed or tormented for trying to put morality on a more rational footing.
It’s not the worship that bugs me, it’s the monopoly. The religious ask what would happen to morality without God, when they have been busily murdering the competition for millenia.
But what is being objected to is the abdication of responsibility, and that has real consequences in the real world. Or at least, it could have. Recall the opening example in Clifford’s 1877 essay, on the ship owner who sends a bunch of emigrants on a ship that is not seaworthy. Clifford rightly condemns this act as immoral, whether the ship arrives safely or not. Likewise, our beliefs and actions should be judged by how they are likely to affect other people, rather than how they actually affect them – since the actual outcome cannot be known until it’s too late. But we have a duty to consider the likely outcomes of our actions, and that means we do have to do our own thinking. Delegating these decisions to some being, real or not, that you happen to worship, is not going to relieve you of culpability if you decide wrongly.
It distresses me to see the terms “morally wrong” and “immoral” being tossed around by anybody, theistic or otherwise, without regard to how the labeled beliefs or actions affect other people.
What disregard? I label faith as thinking without a seat belt. When people screw themselves up because of a delusion about their abilities others have to patch them up. And, religion rarely if ever installs a child seat facing the right way.
If religion was a private sexual matter between consenting adults who knew what they were getting into, it would be no-one’s business. Perhaps we should encourage the idea of worship as a fetish, a kink. It may be fun to those involved, but, please, not in public: some of us are trying to eat a sandwich.
I think there is something morally wrong with sado-masochism. However, there are different degrees to wrongness and different degrees to sado-masochism. We are all sado-masochistic at some level and we all behave wrongly at some level (whether it be self-neglect, inconsideration, eating meat etc.).
Leading a pure moral life is impossible, and not even realistic or desirable. And so we’re interested in certain immoral behaviours that are harmful or unacceptable in a society.
Oooh! I’m very wary of ‘we/are/all’s. wearealls tend to be used a lot in newspapers: “We weareall in love with frills this spring”. The trouble is, the wearealls can hide the somearenots. Well, it may be that weareall wearing sado-masochism right now, but I’m afraid I’m just not that fashionable. I don’t have the figure.
Man, what a couple of weaselly accomodationists those guys are… ;)
There was a Mohammed. There was no Moses (at least in the biblical sense of Moses). There was no Abraham (again, in the biblical sense). The Jews were not from some place different, they were not slaves in Egypt, they didn’t wander the desert for 40-years. However, they certainly give us a boat-load of archaeological evidence they the survivors of the Canaanite city-states that evolved increasingly divergent religious practices and first become distinct in the record when some of the basic dietary differences from their Canaanite cousins first arose.
Even after the dietary split off, polytheism (including infant sacrifice) was practiced by the early Jews (Israelites) for (approximately) five centuries until they invented monotheism under King Josiah. I should point out the reasons were political control, not divine. He was consolidating power and trying to make the combined kingdom of Israel and Judah a regional power.
In order to do this his high-priest (right hand man) ‘found’ the ‘Book of Moses.’ Which we know, now, is full of errors, copied in part from multiple religions and rife with archaeological anachronisms.
When Josiah was killed by the Egyptians, the Jews went back to polytheism for quite some time. Even after they converted back to monotheism some elements of polytheism remained in some segments of Jewish religious practice until the 14th Century AD.
All of which, to me, makes religion (and worship) even more immoral, at least in my view. What we’re left with today is bronze/iron age superstition designed to serve the interests of the rich and power for population control.
I don’t. The S&M crowd may have issues, but as long as they’re not raping people, what they do as consulting adults is what they do… And as long as they’re, appropriately keeping to their business with it, it’s none of my fucking business.
MosesZD, I wonder what you think about the origin of Christianity. Did it arise innocently around a historical Jesus, or was it a cynical invention by the powerful for the purpose of “population control”?
It’s interesting to me that you use that particular phrase. Here is an instance where it is used in regard to the origin of Christianity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGdRDLRZaoo&feature=player_embedded
Eric – hahahahahahaha! Great morning laugh; thank you.
Cath –
It’s been done! Only not by Cleese – by his close colleague Peter Cook, in (the first, and only real) Bedazzled. Fall on floor funny.
Apart from worship being unethical on its face, I have a bigger problem with it in that if someone believes that a god will withhold unleashing its earthquakes and so forth only if it is properly worshipped, it’s only a tiny step to conclude the god will not look kindly on those who decline to participate. Then it’s but another small step to condemnation of those who are also worshipping but simply doing it wrong. Someone who accepts the premise that the god demands worship is thus well justified in taking action against those who won’t go along, or are doing it wrong. Certainly this is a very real and common outcome, repeated on small and large scales throughout history and to the present day.
I also thought of James Rachels essay on “God and Moral Autonomy.” He puts his case thus:
Rachel’s trying to make a case against God by establishing and then working from the premise that autonomous moral agency (the much lauded ‘free-will’ of the theist) is a good. The interesting thing is that he’s not just arguing against worshiping God — he’s taking apart the definition of God to show there’s a logical contradiction in the entire concept.
I think the ultimate ethical weak spot in “worship” isn’t the abdication of moral responsibility, but the human arrogance of putting any empirical conclusion beyond question. Even if you grant that IF there is a morally perfect being THEN this being deserves worship — this has practical application IF and only IF we can be absolutely positively without a doubt certain that we are dealing with a “morally perfect being.” Given that human beings are not morally perfect themselves — and are not omniscient either — could we ever have that kind of certainty? Even with God? Even if there really is a God and we feel as if we’ve had some sort of Vulcan mind meld with this God could we then conclude there is no possibility we’ve made a mistake? The stakes are very high when we’re talking about instant and unquestioning submission.
When we claim certainty of the divine, that’s pretty much the same thing as claiming divinity for ourselves. God can’t make a mistake only if we can’t make a mistake.
Religious moral reasoning always seems to take a sort of “peek” at the back of the book, so that the conclusion is taken into account when the decision is made. The religious work backwards, as if they’re not just characters in the story of life, but authors, too. When the blind man mistakes an elephant for a snake, we know it’s an elephant and not a snake — for we aren’t blind and we’re telling the story. When you have a true precognition about which way the dice will fall, you should trust that true precognition and bet your money and not just think it’s an ordinary “hunch,” shouldn’t you? Sure. Follows logically — if you take out the real life context where we can’t tell a hunch from a revelation.
It’s just too easy, too child-like simple. If you believe God is talking to you when He is talking to you then you’re right to believe God talked to you. If God is said to be morally perfect because he is morally perfect, then you should accept that. It’s all lovely and self-contained and perfectly arrogant when you move out of the bubble and recognize that we can’t assume we are perfectly reliable narrators of reality. We grow up.
Abraham’s real sin was not agreeing to obey God and kill his child in sacrifice. His sin was in not asking “wait, I’m hearing voices — maybe I’m crazy.” And God’s sin — and the sin of those who wrote the Bible — was in failing to address this issue because they and the reader all “knew” it was really God’s voice after all, so self-doubt was completely unnecessary.
Self-doubt is never completely unnecessary. The absolute submission demanded by “worship” entails that it is. Those faithful who have no moral problem with abject grovelling might very well have a moral problem with assertions of human infallibility.
The first Bedazzled is such a gem. And then Dudley Moore says, “Mind if we switch now?” Peter Cook (as Lucifer): “That’s what I said!”
I don’t think I watched more than a few minutes of the remake on cable, but I guess there is no trace of this kind sacreligiousness in it. Am I incorrect in this assumption?
I did watch the remake of The Wicker Man in entirety however and in that case there is now no hint of criticism of religious belief in it. What a crime to remake a movie while stripping out its essential point.
When I challenge christians on their need to worship their god, they frequently slide to the word Glorify, apparently meaning that their mission is to glorify god. I don’t see the difference, and they can’t articulate one.
Frankly, the whole concept of worship is incomprehensible to me. If there were some hypothetical 3-omni abrahamic god, like Hitchens I would feel the impulse to resist with all my power, not worship or glorify it.
Maybe the need to worship is hard-wired in some brains (but obviously not in the Gnu’s).
1.) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship.
There a great radio comedy series in the UK called ‘Old Harry’s Game’. It’s set in Hell. Anyway, there is this professor who was mistakenly sent to Hell, and he meets God. He manages to annoy God with all kinds of sceptical questions. One of these is: “How do you know you are the ultimate being?”
I like that. How would we know if a being claiming to be God was not suffering from A God Delusion?
Go on, theologians, have a good go at that one, I say.
MosesZD @ #37:
Interesting stuff. But I would think that ‘divine control’ is at its base human control, except where the divinely inspired ancient documents conflict with contemporary political fashion or need, in which case they are generally ignored by believers.
From what I can gather on the web, scholars differ on the historicity of Moses. Arguably, peoples with a variety of separate gods can be welded together into single nations if the separate gods are somehow collected together into a pantheon, but the extraordinary power of monothiesm over polytheism, is everywhere to be seen in the modern world. Pre-literate societies’ verbal traditions are subject to huge variation over time, but literate societies nail things down more securely. I thus remain unconvinced that a Moses figure never existed; itself a negative proposition inherently unprovable..
On the other hand, Elvis never died.
;-)
Locutus @ 44:
The first question in my catechism class exam when I was 12 (and asked by my preacher dad) was: ‘What is the chief end of man?’, to which our drilled-in answer was:’To glorify God and enjoy him forever.’ Even then, I reckoned that this was a set-up.
Much current atheist/skeptical appears to be setting up those with (any?) religious belief as straw men, and therefore assuming they all have identical beliefs. The truth is of course that from extreme atheism to unquestioning worship there is a continuum of people with attitudes lying at any point on that line, and off it too.
P.S. I liked Ian MacDougall’s comment.
Hywel Owen, care to provide some examples of where this setting up of religiosity as overly uniform is happening? It’s completely new to me if so. Not only am I unaware of it among well-known atheist writers and bloggers, I can’t think of it happening in blog comments even. So please elaborate.
At the start of Aikin and Talisse’s post, they indicate that they reject “religious belief”. Unfortunately, this is not a conclusion that is actually supported by the argument they go on to produce — it is still possible for religious believers to say that what they call “worship” is what Aikin and Talisse call “thanking, admiring…” etc. Still, when the opening remarks are considered in isolation, it’s understandable that Hywel would respond the way he/she did, even though ultimately Aikin and Talisse are able to dodge the objection.
@Ian MacDougall: polytheism also seems to be a popular thing.
Here’s Tom Paine:
“It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called theChristian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. Adirect incorporation took place in the first instance, by making thereputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods thatthen followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality,which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Marysucceeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroeschanged into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had godsfor everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything.The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had beenwith the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theoryis little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists,accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remainsto reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.”
(The Age of Reason, last paragraph of Chapter 2.)
This is the skit I’m thinking of, from the Meaning of Life. The Pythons worship: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fINh4SsOyBw
Actually I was wrong; Cleese does the bible reading but the prayer leader is Michael Palin.
But it sounds like i need to watch Bedazzled. Thanks!
Not to say that I haven’t made this mistake myself, but skeptical atheists cannot make claims of what is right and wrong. Right and Wrong based on what exactly? You do not have divine revelation of an absolute morality… so can you say that something is right or wrong? Religious people are not an exception to this Absurdity, they may believe / have faith in what is right and wrong, but they too cannot say definitively what is right and wrong. If anyone cares enough to read my elaborations on this topic, I am actually sitting down to write a blog post about this right now. It should be published in about 10-20min from now.
I have my own scale, which others are welcome to use. It’s based around baby eating. 1be is wrongness equivalent to one eaten baby. 1 gigabe is global nuclear war. 1 femtobe is forgetting to put the loo seat down. I have only calibrated on the wrongness scale, as atheists rarely do good works.
Stephen Turner @ #51:
The ideas of spirit world and afterlife probably go back to Homo erectus, and polytheism emerged out of that, and it predates monotheism by a long period of time: probably by half a million years. Around half the world’s present religious population is spread between three major monotheisms: Catholicism, Christianity and Islam. (There I go again: I must keep that old Protestant prejudice of mine under better control.)
Hinduism, the major polytehism, comes fourth, and the fastest-growing religion is Islam. Had not the Indian subcontinent been divided into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, religious war there might have changed that situation further in favour of Islam.
Catholicism has had a marvellous talent for incorporating enough of the old polytheisms into itself to make itself appealing to those it sought to convert: something there for everyone. (eg All Souls Night is a really big festival in the formerly ancestor-worshipping Phillipines.)
So I don’t see where I have contradicted Tom Paine.
God forbid.
I LIKE! I hope that Aikin and Talisse take on the fundamental moral incoherence of the Christian concept of redemption next…
Paul (# 43) – dunno – I wouldn’t dream of watching the remake. Contamination; nooooo.
Cath – you do indeed!
By the way, I do wish you people would stop being such terrible shocking rowdy cruel savage badnewatheists. You’re embarrassing me.
Next time the Bedazzled remake comes on cable maybe I’ll sacrifice myself for social science and watch it.
When I watched the Wicker Man remake it was based on hearing that the original was a great anti-theism movie, not seeing it. When I could see no trace of criticality of theistic ideas in the remake, I bought the DVD of the original and wasn’t disappointed. When you’ve seen the original though there’s a strong disincentive to watch a remake, probably of any good movie, when you can only expect to be disappointed, or angered, even.
Well and Bedazzled especially – I mean to say – it’s Pete and Dud – it’s Pete and Dud. You can’t just stick other people in it. No one wants Fawlty Towers with a new Basil.
Well, I’m excited, I never knew this even existed. I saw the remake on TV some years ago now. It was a pretty unmemorable comedy, but struck me as quite tolerable mindless entertainment. It starred Brendan Fraser, which is nice. Of course, I had no comparison point to upset me.
But PETE and DUD you say? Wow. I wonder where I can find a copy. Lalala off to google some shops…
Ha I finally looked at the Aikin and Talisse link and found out they actually produced the Clifford quote.
I haven’t been very interested in what they have to say since their observation about the Ontological argument, or I might’ve looked at it sooner.
I looked at it for possible lumping of theists into one, or too few, baskets, but I’m not seeing it.
Maybe some theists are made uncomfortable by the term worship, as opposed to, say, giving thanks (as well they should). Sunday worship is a very common thing to see on a church sign, though, and call it what you will, we all know the thanks-giving is for the purpose of avoiding deity-inflicted punishment or to curry some reward. So it is not simply a heartfelt thank-you. Thanking the god for (say) your food denigrates the efforts of all those who got it to the table. The motivation for that can only be fear, seems to me. So, calling it worship is perfectly apt, in spite of all the primitive images it conjures.
I liked the suggestion I heard recently, not sure where now, that a good not-buying-in term for churches and other “houses of worship” is “worship hut.” That really brings the point home. Theism implies worship. We have a different word for people who believe in deity but don’t worship it. Those are deists; a different species entirely. (We see damn few of those these days. Their habitat seems to have vanished, or something.)
By the way didn’t they replace Dud with Brendan Frazier? I mean, talk about adding insult to injury!
I am also wondering at what church they practice questioning worship, as opposed to the unquestioning kind that is alleged above to be only the extremum of the spectrum of theistic thought. Are there churches with suggestion boxes for God, now? One can then imagine, some churches will put tight constraints, particularly on the tone, of suggestions, while at others there will be no bounds at all.
Sorry Cath, I see you already mentioned it was (Fraser).
Also, back in the old days, when God still used to answer the occasional direct question, the answers were not usually very informative, as I recall. There was, “I am that I am,” etc. On the other hand instructions, such as how to deal with Canaanites and so forth, could be quite explicit. These were not generally in response to queries, though. They would just come out of the blue, as it were.
I think, under the heading of “Non serviam”, that Christian theology has a box for this: we’re committing the Sin of Pride by refusing to worship the deity even if it exists. This is the sin of Lucifer, we must be playing in the big leagues :)
Andrew Lovley @ 53: “skeptical atheists cannot make claims of what is right and wrong. Right and Wrong based on what exactly? You do not have divine revelation of an absolute morality… so can you say that something is right or wrong?”
It’s easy.
Given that morality is an evolutionary strategy to maximize fitness in a social, self-aware population; it is not at all problematic to assert that some things are right and wrong.
Other things might be more problematic; it is possible that some acts are so below the threshold for fitness that they don’t even qualify as moral issues. Also, various issues that have nothing to do with interactions between two moral agents are also outside of morality.
There is no absolute morality, in that there is no moral code that holds regardless of circumstances or consequences. However, there is clearly objective morality, which is to say that for a given population of creatures in a given environment, there are objectively more successful and less successful strategies.
[…] (via Butterflies and Wheels) […]
What no Nietzsche? I believe he was the first to suggest that subservience is by definition immoral.
“”…the Jews achieved that miracle of inversion of values thanks to which life on earth has for a couple millennia acquired a new and dangerous fascination–their prophets fused ‘rich’, ‘godless’, ‘evil’, ‘violent’, ‘sensual’ into one and were the first to coin the word ‘world’ as a term of infamy. It is this inversion of values (with which is involved the employment of the word for ‘poor’ as a synonym for ‘holy’ and ‘friend’) that the significance of the Jewish people resides: with them there begins the slave revolt in morals.”[9]“
Before the question of worship even arises, I would point out (as Aikin and Talisse do) that religion is immoral because it’s false. And even if one of our religions were true, that wouldn’t mean that all its precepts and commandments are moral. But even if some religion’s doctrines were true and all its rules were ethical, it would still be intrinsically immoral — because religion requires worship.
Another point to consider is, what kind of supreme being would want to be worshiped, anyway? Or glorified? Or obeyed blindly? The best humans we know never seek such things.
The willingness to worship causes much evil in this world — whether the object being worshiped exists or not. There’s always some human authority happy to step in and take advantage of the religiously cultivated inclination towards submission, obedience, and servility.
You can see my full comments on this topic here.
The idea here is intriguing. I wonder if A & T would have a stronger case if they were to focus more on the morality of obliging others to worship (like children) rather than on worship itself.
No it isn’t.
yahzi:
Spoken like a true fan of eugenics / social darwinism!
ignored:
your quote is a display of Nietzsche’s reasoning that morality has meant different things to different people at different times. I do not think he was making a moral judgment there, but instead an observation. And when he was apparently critical of slave-morality vis-a-vis the noble manner of valuation, I do not recall Nietzsche claiming that he knew what was Good or Bad.. his critiques were based on his own personal convictions and I think he as well thought of his critiques as such.
“your quote is a display of Nietzsche’s reasoning that morality has meant different things to different people at different times. ”
The quote was more about how Nietzche believed that religion changed natural morality from that of the Master Morality, into a slave morality where being subservient and weak became a good thing, while becoming strong and self reliant became a bad thing. He blames this change in morality on the introduction of Monotheism.
Nietzche, and Ayn Rand later, made it very clear that worship of anything but the self is wrong and evil. (Ayn Rand is another name I’m surprised hasn’t come up in this conversation yet.)
Regardless, I was just pointing out my surprise.
I will happily re-read Essay 1 of the Genealogy of Morality, but I was never got the impression that Nietzsche believed there was a natural morality in the sense that there is an authentic, or true-to-form morality. I got the sense that there was a morality that he admired and one he didn’t (in regards to Noble / slave morality).