GOD HAS NO RIGHT TO BE WORSHIPPED

ANSWERING, "WHY DO YOU HATE A GOD WHO IS NOT REAL?"

 

God is real to the believers.  Belief influences their actions.  They treat you as if what matters is that God wants them to help you.  They worship.  Time spent on that could mean it should be spent on you instead.  So we can link opposition to God and God-belief to self-respect. 

 

Any lie gains a lot of power before the truth has a chance to step in.  It can take a page to refute a simple lie.  It is complicated.  A lie about an invisible being who won't talk clearly like God has special power to circle the world and need centuries to unravel.

 

Hate and fear the God in their heads.

 

Moreover, a psychological God is a human creation and thus it will reflect the toxic side of human nature.  It is hidden by prayers and theologies and wishful thinking, but it is really bad.  Philosophers have always warned that your actions, willing and unwilling, that lead to harm will do so in ways you will never know or even imagine.  So it is with this faith in this God.

 

WORSHIP

"Worship" means to portray the value of something by doing something positive for it. Worship comes from "worth-shape". In the Bible, worship usually implies a posture of submission and an attitude of praise. God gets full worship meaning he is to be granted full submission. Believers say we can and should worship in all parts of our life. They say that if we get distracted from God to do our daily work, we are still worshipping him if we keep within his rules. Worship is our opportunity to interact with God on his terms. 
 
WORSHIP AND GOD
 
Judaism and Christianity and Islam are based on the worship of God.
 
They claim God has a right to our worship. They say he is perfectly good in himself and so deserves adoration and worship. They say not only that but he is good to us to so we owe him worship for the wonder of our being and what we receive from him.
 
If I had no experience of God's goodness at all, it would follow that I should still worship him for he is good even though for some reason he is not showing his goodness to me.
 
The majority of believers think God has done good for them and that is why they worship him. They feel they must give God his due in that sense. They never think of the other reason. It does not interest them. What does that tell us? They say they have a duty to worship God because he freely bestowed love on them. So God did it freely so he has no duty to help or love them.
 
GOD AND HIS DUTY
 
Can you have a duty to a God who is kind to you not out of duty but out of generosity?
 
Does having a duty to God imply that he served a duty to you?
 
Is doing your duty in return to God for his doing his duty to you better or worse than doing your duty to God in return for his generosity? Or is it just as much one as the other?
 
First, of all it is impossible to have a real debt of justice to a being that has no needs and therefore no rights. If you worship that being, it is not justice but generosity. Your motive cannot be justice but kindness. You should not have a motive of justice. You are no servant of justice if you don't understand what justice is.
 
If your motive is to be generous then it follows that you don't care if God is good or evil. It is not about being fair.
 
GOD'S KNOWLEDGE
 
God is supposed to know all things. This is impossible. Apart from the fact that I exist now, I know nothing. Everything I say I know I mean I believe. It must be the same with God. It is impossible to know anything for sure apart from one's own existence. Thus God is a contradictory idea. A God that has beliefs is not a God at all. Even if those beliefs are right, God cannot know this for he only believes it. God is not entitled to any worship.
 
RIGHTS
 
You cannot have right and wrong behaviour without justice. Justice depends on rights – it is respecting rights. Now, rights depend on needs not desires. You need food so you have a right to it but you don’t have the right to have a child or a luxury. The state is not bound to pay for your holiday to Spain.
 
The Christian religion says that God does not need our worship or service or even our existence and they are useless to him (page 195, Moral Philosophy; page 38,40, The Problem of Pain). And yet it says that God has the right to our worship which is unintelligible. The only solution if we want to continue believing is to drop the idea of rights being based on needs and base rights on desires. So if most people want to kill the Queen they have the right to. When the God belief undermines the logic behind rights, God undermines everything that is good for us. He implies that if you desire to kill then you have the right to kill and you are being unjustly treated if you don’t get away with it. Don’t let your children be conditioned to believe in God for that belief insults the very life in your body.
 
Christians keep saying that if you want to get away from the view that right and wrong with regard to respecting others is just a matter of opinion, you must believe in a just God. Then right/wrong is real and it is fact. It is not mere opinion that you cannot take seriously. This reasoning is wrong as we have seen.
 
If God needs nothing – and God by definition is that which has need of nothing – then he expects our service not because he is planning to reward it but because it is our duty. It would be primarily our duty to him if he is to be loved before all else as Christianity says for he deserves it. But how can you have a duty to help a person who needs no help? All religion can say is that unreasonable self-sacrifice is God’s law for us. We have to kill ourselves in order to help the undertaker make more money. If we do wrong it is not wrong because it hurt the person but because God who is not affected by it and who does not need the person to be okay says it is wrong. It is wrong to put a being like that before a human being who cries and bleeds and needs to be treated right. So non-needs are put before needs which underlines the harmfulness of theism. It is hard to see how anybody could have needs and therefore rights when God doesn’t for God made all things and claims the right to be put first so his non-needs come first and needs have to be ignored.
 
Maybe God wants us to do good not because he needs us to but because he wants to see us do our duty to others. So if it is about others and not him then why care what he wants? It would actually be mistaken and immoral to care.
 
Our moral obligation to honour God is a myth. Moral implies a rule along the lines of, "Do good or suffer retribution. You will be paid back evil for doing evil." That is why people do not like moralisers - they feel threatened by them and their judgements. We are fools if we think that we want to believe in God. It is only the lack of knowledge that makes us think that. There is enough to moralise about without making up a God to increase the problem. Society probably senses that for it's not keen on people who are huge into God.
 
The idea that morality presupposes God or belief in him is a fallacy. It is the contrary that is the truth. If morality and God are not linked, then it follows that we have no moral obligation to worship him.
 
GOD AND MEANING
 
The idea that God can give meaning and purpose to life is as fallacious. God cannot need anything for he is almighty and all perfect. Meaning and purpose mean that you see your life as important and valuable but God ultimately reserves being prized for himself and he cannot be used as a ground for moral belief therefore it is only a God you imagine exists and the God you would like to exist, the one that fits your preconceived ideas of what is good for you, is the God you think you get meaning from. He is a mental idol in other words.
 
Christian worship is based on the idea that God commands that we love him totally for he deserves it. But love is voluntary and no loving God can command it. He would prove himself unlovable if he did. The Church is lying that the meaning of life is to be found in obeying God's command to love him. If believers feel their lives have meaning because of God, it is because they are wrong about what is giving them the sense of meaning. People prefer goodness to be what they want to be good rather than what really is good. When we are like that, many of us can get meaning from worshipping a vindictive God. But it proves you don't need to believe in ultimate real goodness to get a sense of meaning.

 

People might tell you to live a life of service to others and God or gods will reward you even if you are not devout. So are the devout going to get a reward for their piety or not? Is that fair? The argument assumes that gods are not worth worrying about even if they are real and that makes no sense. Beings that are supernaturally or magically involved in our lives have to matter. If the divine is unfair or just does not care then it should not be worshipped. What if it threatens you and others if you do not worship it? Such worship will not be worship but insincere. If it wants worship, it will have to find a way to fool you. And you will worship it if it seems to treat you okay as long as others suffer the abuse. In that light, we have to be suspicious of worshippers. Would they really worry about worshipping an evil God when even Herod had friends?  God has no right to ask for - never mind command! - worship when we are like that!

I find the following method of making life bearable and more enjoyable extremely effective. The person you are most interested in is yourself. Therefore if you make the habit of recording your day in detail in a diary and putting in times and the most mundane things you are making sure you will remember the good in that day. You will be able to look back at the bad and good later with fascination. It makes the bad less bad because you know that reading about it and the lessons in it will bring you enjoyment. When you experience something bad you can say that in years to come you will still be able to look back on it and want to. It will console you and make you more determined to live a happier and more fulfilling life. Great suffering can be waiting for you around the corner - all you can do is get through it without making it worse. If God is what gives your life meaning then surely you crave being with him? Thus your suffering will only be worsened by belief in God. The more you suffer the more you will want him and to be with him.
 
Religion has to invent rights for God in order to try and tie us down to rules. It is a good ego boost for religion.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED

A CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, CTS, London, 1985
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL 6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image, New York 1964
AQUINAS, FC Copleston, Penguin Books, London, 1991
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin, London, 1990
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, Dublin, 1960
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Veritas, London, 1995
CHARITY, MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH, Richard F Clarke SJ, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1973
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Edited by John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship, Minnesota, 1973
CRISIS OF MORAL AUTHORITY, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1995
EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOL 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
ECUMENICAL JIHAD, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
GOD IS NOT GREAT, THE CASE AGAINST RELIGION, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
HONEST TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM, London, 1963
HOW DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996
MADAME GUYON, MARTYR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Phyllis Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1986
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans Green and Co, London, 1912
NEW COLOUR PIETA, Divine Mercy Publications, Skerries, Co Dublin, 1994
OXFORD DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996
PRACTICAL ETHICS, Peter Singer, Cambridge University Press, England, 1994
PSYCHOLOGY, George A Miller, Penguin, London, 1991
RADIO REPLIES, 1, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938
RADIO REPLIES, 2, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1940
RADIO REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1942
REASON AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982
THE ATONEMENT: MYSTERY OF RECONCILIATION, Kevin McNamara, Archbishop of Dublin, Veritas, Dublin, 1987
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD, Jonathan Edwards, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, undated
THE BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1978
THE BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF PADUA (Vol 44, No 4)
THE GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri, Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn, 1988
THE IMITATION OF CHRIST, Thomas A Kempis, Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE NEW WALK, Captain Reginald Wallis, The Christian Press, Pembridge Villas, England, undated
THE PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, Brother Lawrence, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1981
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, CS Lewis, Fontana, London, 1972
THE PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins, London, 1990
THE SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey, Avon Books, New York, 1969
THE SPIRITUAL GUIDE, Michael Molinos, Christian Books, Gardiner Maine, 1982
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982

No Copyright