Do we owe God?


Christians say, "God has property rights over all he has made. This tells us why we are obligated to do what he wants." So the idea is that as God made you and is so good you owe him goodness back. But that assumes God asserted his rights. And God has all he needs so he cannot really have any rights. Rights are based on and proceed from needs. A God who asserts and demands rights he has not really got is not much of a God and only the insane or ignorant would enjoy worshipping him.


The view that because God made us we owe him and so we must obey him out of gratitude seems to be saying that God invents morality and we must do what he says regardless if we think it makes sense or not. It would be evil to do good not because it is right but because it commanded.

What if God wanted us to do something bad? Would we have the duty to do it because we owe him? Yes if we really have a duty to care about God's demand for his rights to be respected when he has not got any. Even when he demands that we help others he is being bad for he is asserting his fictitious rights and being a bully.

Could it be that we have to obey God because he made us and he is good and so he has the right to be obeyed? But even then we should be obeying good not God. He would not be good if he wanted it any other way for being God he does not need anything from us. A boss only has authority when he or she has to show the way to good. Strictly speaking, he or she has no authority of his or her own at all. It is not him or her we obey but the goodness that is expressed through him or her. We only have bosses and authorities for the sake of order. Somebody needs to make final decisions.

What is most important? That God is fair and so we must be fair like him? Or that we owe it to God to be fair for making us? If there is a choice then which one? Obviously the first.


God, if good, cannot help valuing good so it makes no sense to say that he is entitled to worship. You might as well worship a statue for being made perfect.


Another version of the idea that we owe God obedience is that his commands are not about hindering us but blessing us and helping us.  But why commands? Why not advice?  The commands are about control period.  The religionists who use such arguments are trying to play on the human tendency to be blind to being manipulated.  The reality is that if God banned adultery in the ten commandments and says that you must be stoned to death for it this is not about loving or helping us.  The arguments that the commands are not commands but signposts are only meant to appeal to those who cannot even slightly find their way around a Bible.



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