In a post from a few days ago, I discussed the Bible’s teaching on the requirements to get into heaven. Christians will tell you the only verse that matters is John 3:16. Believe in God, believe Jesus was his son, worship them every day and you will earn eternal life.
Let’s look at this teaching from a logical perspective. All of the Bible’s most important laws and teachings are written from the viewpoint of an insecure and narcissistic being.
Important Teaching #1
God: Worship only me. It’s all about me all the time.
Important Teaching #2
God: Never use my name in vain. That would be very upsetting to me.
Important Teaching #3
God: Believe a Jewish guy who lived 2,000 years ago is my son. Even though you’ve never met him and the ancient stories about his life are flawed and unreliable.
Explain to me why this god needs people to validate him all the time? And why is it more important than anything else? He wants us to be good people, but is most concerned about his popularity? I was less insecure when I was in junior high school.
Am I wrong to expect an all-powerful deity to be slightly less vain? I am to believe that this god created an immeasurable universe of galaxies, but his biggest concern is that one species of mammals on one a tiny planet believe in him and worship him every day?
The only thing Christianity achieves is successfully is painting a picture of a very small god.
Tags: Atheist, Belief, Believe, Bible, Commandments, Faith, Flawed, God, Insecure, Invalid, Jesus, Narcissistic, Worship
July 20, 2009 at 11:16 pm |
Does God need to have humans worship him. No.
But humans will always worship something, and so the question becomes what is the best thing for us.
Worship money, power, fame or success? We know where that goes.
God invites us to worship him so that we will not worship the wrong things.
July 21, 2009 at 5:56 am |
But humans will always worship something, and so the question becomes what is the best thing for us.
How condesecending…
And for one who dares to make such a bold statement about the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE, you sure must have seen it all and done it all? I assume that you have travelled to, perhaps not all, but most countries of this world and seen the worship of money, power, fame, and success there?
God invites us to worship him so that we will not worship the wrong things.
Oh really? How nice of him…especially the part where you’re going to hell.
But let’s take a look at this brilliant plan of God: is God the only thing worth worshipping? In your post, you mentioned about the many undesirable qualities of humans such as greed and such. But is that all that we are? No. Humans possess many traits such as a strong sense of empathy that makes us unique among the animal kingdom. It is through our curiousity that we learn about the world. There are many traits in us that makes us deserving of what we are. Surely such traits could not have escape God’s notice? Surely it is better to “worship”, say, empathy than it is to an unprovable being in the sky?
July 21, 2009 at 9:46 am |
“I assume that you have travelled to, perhaps not all, but most countries of this world and seen the worship of money, power, fame, and success there?”
Nope. So can you name a society where power is not considered something worth worshipping? I can’t.
“Surely it is better to “worship”, say, empathy than it is to an unprovable being in the sky?”
How does one worship empathy? The worship of curiosity might be a fairly good definition of rationalism, however.
How is that better than worshipping God?
July 22, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Nope. So can you name a society where power is not considered something worth worshipping? I can’t.
Oh? No? Then for one making such a bold claim, you’re sure standing on spaghetti grounds.
Yeah, I think I can name a society where power is not worth worshipping. Every country that I’ve been so far is generally not composed of power hungry atheists.
Oh, just one more thing. Next time, remember that if YOU’RE the one claiming something, YOU’RE gonna have to be the one to think of something to back it up.
Your logic here goes something like this: I believe that watermelons are blue on the inside until you cut the skin. Prove me wrong.
Its absurd.
How does one worship empathy? The worship of curiosity might be a fairly good definition of rationalism, however.
How is that better than worshipping God?
Awesome, way to contradict yourself.
Worship is basically to hold something in extremely high esteem; to think that it is important. By “worshipping” desirable traits such as empathy and curiosity, the society would become a more altruistic and moral one; hence, benefitting all.
July 21, 2009 at 8:56 am |
God invites us to worship him so that we will not worship the wrong things.
So the right thing to worship is a genocidal, homicidal, infanticidal super-being how condemns people to eternal torture if they don’t happen to believe in just the exact right religion even if that religion is an utter mess ????????
July 21, 2009 at 6:18 pm |
Oh, clearly. Where else would we get our morals?
(Yes, that was sarcastic.)
July 21, 2009 at 9:21 am |
Yeah, but what if we want to worship *NOTHING*?
The irony is that God here will NOT let us worship *NOTHING*!
(Even if that’s technically the right thing to do, according to this logic <_<)
July 21, 2009 at 12:25 am |
My old answer would have been fellowship. My new answer is social control via emotional “connection”.
July 21, 2009 at 2:26 am |
I always see the actions of the bible god as the same as a 2 or 3 yr old kid. Most kids that age are always wanting attention focused on them and will do what it takes to get it. Some people never grow out of this type of behavoir and seem to try and get all attention focused on them. I figure that is what lead people to write the stuff they did. They wanted the attention being focused on them and the select few chosen.
July 21, 2009 at 5:11 am |
God does not need anything from us, but he wants to have a relationship with us. He could have wiped us all out ( Noah and flood) but instead He chose to die for us and save us.
Worship = our gratitude and thanks to a loving God because He is worth all we can give Him.
We cannot fully appreciate this yet because we look through a mirror darkly, but one day we will see fully the truth of all this, when every knee will bow before Jesus. This is not because we will be forced to, as many think, but because everyone will become fully aware of the truth of the Gospel.
Worship is not singing a few songs, worship is 24/7 in every part of our life.
July 21, 2009 at 8:58 am |
he wants to have a relationship with us.
Fine. He can stop by my house or work anytime. So could Obama if he wanted a relationship with me. But if you told me that the pres wanted a personal relationship with me and all I ever got from him was a form letter, I’d say you were cracked.
July 21, 2009 at 9:26 am |
Well, I don’t see God doing any work in interpersonal relationships. It’s supposed to be a 1-on-1 thing with both parties contributing.
What does God do? Send messengers in the form of other humans. Then it is THEY who make the contributions while God just, um, sits there as if we’re all working in Earth Inc. and he was a CEO with a closed door policy.
July 21, 2009 at 9:49 pm |
God doesn’t need anything from us, but he demands it anyway. And if we dare deny this imaginary one way relationship he burns us for eternity.
God tried killing us with a flood and that didn’t work, so he thought a sadistic human sacrifice might work better. Brilliant.
July 22, 2009 at 3:12 am |
@theBEattitude
‘God doesn’t need anything from us, but he demands it anyway.’
This isn’t Scriptural. He guides us, it is our choice to follow Him, His guidance, or not.
‘imaginary one way relationship’
The relationship is two way, this is the experience of true conversion. I’m sorry that you only ever experienced a one-way relationship.
‘God tried killing us with a flood and that didn’t work, so he thought a sadistic human sacrifice might work better. Brilliant.’
The flood did work and so did God’s redemption of humanity. Can’t understand your comment here. How should a ‘sadistic human sacrifice’ kill us. It is very clear that Jesus died to save us, not to kill us. We manage to do that very well ourselves by rejecting Him.
July 22, 2009 at 1:29 pm
“This isn’t Scriptural. He guides us, it is our choice to follow Him, His guidance, or not. ”
You must have skipped over the first four Commandments, then.
July 22, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Just like it’s a robbery victim’s choice to give up his money or get shot in the face? That’s some choice your God is giving you, there.
Also, the notion that God had to kill almost the entire human population in order to save it sounds like serial killer logic. God, who is perfect, omniscient, and omnipotent couldn’t find any way to redeem humanity without killing almost all of it? That doesn’t even fly on imperfect human terms, how could that be the course of action of a perfect being with unlimited resources?
July 21, 2009 at 6:13 am |
He could have wiped us all out ( Noah and flood) but instead He chose to die for us and save us.
An armed international terrorist group has just captured an entire school of students and is holding them hostage. Because the terrorists did not like students, they decided to open fire and kill all of the students. The only survivor was a student who managed to bribe his captor to not shoot him. The terrorists, now happy, decides to let that student go.
Would you say that this hypothetical terrorist group was acting mercifully and morally since they “could have wiped them all out” but instead chose to spare one student’s life?
But what difference is there between this group and your God?
You mentioned in your post about how He chose to die for us and save us. I’m gonna assume here that the reason why God “died” for us is to save us.
1) God, if he exists, cannot die.
2) God, if he exists, was the one that CREATED the entire threat of going to hell in the first place. So saying that he “saved” us from it by “dying” makes as much sense as saying that there are mile long pink elephants on Pluto.
Worship = our gratitude and thanks to a loving God because He is worth all we can give Him.
We cannot fully appreciate this yet because we look through a mirror darkly, but one day we will see fully the truth of all this, when every knee will bow before Jesus. This is not because we will be forced to, as many think, but because everyone will become fully aware of the truth of the Gospel.
Worship is not singing a few songs, worship is 24/7 in every part of our life.
Yeah, worship involves killing people by the million…
You’re gonna have a hard time proving virgin birth.
July 21, 2009 at 10:47 am |
@Butterfly
’1) God, if he exists, cannot die.’
You are correct in this: God cannot die. Which is why He came to earth as Jesus, taking on human flesh to pay the penalty for our sins. God then resurrected Him from death and so confirmed Christ’s victory over sin and death. In Christ is now all authority over heaven and earth.
2) God, if he exists, was the one that CREATED the entire threat of going to hell in the first place. So saying that he “saved” us from it by “dying” makes as much sense as saying that there are mile long pink elephants on Pluto.
Einstein once said, as a student, that darkness was not created but that it was caused by the absence of light. He also said that evil was not created, this is caused by the absence of good, love etc.
We separate ourself from God, not the other way round. We choose to reject God and unfortunately the result of this is death: eternity without God.
This is the message of the Gospel; the reason why Jesus died for you.
July 21, 2009 at 11:31 am |
Einstien also said “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”. I think it’s recently been discovered at the quantum level that he was wrong… kinda sad, actually. He left this world completely convinced that there’s a cosmological constant, and quantum mechanics was bunk. >_>
Least he gave us E=mc2. <_<
July 21, 2009 at 9:54 pm |
People don’t reject God. They reject an ancient fictional storybook created by men.
July 21, 2009 at 6:25 pm |
Butterfly, that is exactly what I thought when I read his post. “oh, nice. he only killed *almost* everybody. How compassionate of him.” I’m sure the thousands of people who weren’t in Noah’s family and the unicorns were all very grateful. Not to mention #3, 4, 5, 6, etc. of every animals species that did get on the boat.
July 22, 2009 at 1:19 pm |
Einstein once said, as a student, that darkness was not created but that it was caused by the absence of light. He also said that evil was not created, this is caused by the absence of good, love etc.
1) And your source for this is…?
2) So just because Einstein said it, it must be true? Awesome logic…
We separate ourself from God, not the other way round. We choose to reject God and unfortunately the result of this is death: eternity without God.
This is the message of the Gospel; the reason why Jesus died for you.
1) Jesus = God;
God = Cannot die
Is there really something so hard to grasp about this?
2) Alright, you apparently missed the entire point of my post. I’ll use a simpler example —
A cold-blooded serial robber has just cornered his victim down a a deserted alley. He raised his gun and “offtered” his victim a choice between his life or his money.
Would you say that the actions of this robber is moral and justified since he offered his victim a “free choice”? No, we generally don’t.
Now, let’s say that this robber decided to just let his victim go free without any payment. He lowered his gun and the victim was able to get to safety.
Would we say that the actions of this robber is moral since he “saved” his victim from death? No, we don’t because the entire threat of death was raised by the killer himself in the first place.
Your God is not much different from this robber. Using the threat of entire BBQ in hell, your God is forcing people to bow down to him.
The message of the Gospel is basically this: in order to impress himself, God sent himself down to earth and have himself tortured and crucified. He then played dead for three days after which he finally got bored and decided to go get some pizza.
Erm…yeah…nice God.
July 23, 2009 at 1:48 am |
@Butterfly
’2) So just because Einstein said it, it must be true? Awesome logic…’
I don’t usually use quotes such as these, because they reason that man is correct and God isn’t.
But on athiest blogs it always seems that someone is using this ‘awesome logic’, by quoting some reputable scientist, to back up their claims that God does not exist, so just for once I thought I would do the same – obviously a mistake, I think I’ll stay with God’s quotes [word] in future!
As for ‘cite’ I don’t have research to hand, but it is genuine. I am sure that google could throw some light on it.
July 23, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Yeah, that’s right…
Attack ONE SENTENCE of mine and pretend that the rest isn’t there…
That’s what you fundamentalists do best isn’t it?
July 21, 2009 at 8:28 am |
One of my favorite takes on “Great Spirit”, “Universal Flow”, “Love”, “God”, whatever; is that it is impossible for this energy to bend it’s “brain” to be tiny enough to understand all our personal and societal drama, bullshit, and cruelty towards one another and the planet…much less judge us or keep any kind of tit for tat tally system going to reward and punish us. It simply provides and keeps on creating…..caretaking our sphere while WE, the silly children on the playground, work our own stuff out.
July 21, 2009 at 9:45 am |
On the flip side, I would say God is secure enough to do absolutely NOTHING when it’s pretty obvious there are influential folks out there telling others the wrong things about him. _<
July 21, 2009 at 11:24 am |
The pastor of the last church I used to attend says that the whole purpose was the glory of the lord, we are meant to give glory to the creator, because we are his creation. I remember going like, what? God created us and for that we are suppose to worship him for eternity? What’s the logic behind that? I don’t even ask my dog to worship me. That’s a very insecure god.
What about if I don’t want to have that relationship? I have a wonderful relationship with my wife, when we get sick we make chicken soup for the other, we take care of each other. That is a relationship. Why would anyone want to have a relationship with someone who doesn’t do anything for you? And doesn’t even show a shred of evidence of his existence? I don’t want relationships one way.
ericw says: “We separate ourself from God, not the other way round. We choose to reject God and unfortunately the result of this is death: eternity without God.
This is the message of the Gospel; the reason why Jesus died for you”
That doesn’t even make sense.
July 22, 2009 at 3:17 am |
@Brian
‘don’t even ask my dog to worship me. That’s a very insecure god.’
Did you create your dog?
‘What about if I don’t want to have that relationship?’
OKay, that’s your choice, nobody is forcing you to make that choice. The Gospel is proclaimed, you think it is rubbish, that’s fine.
July 22, 2009 at 4:34 am |
[QUOTE]Did you create your dog?[/QUOTE]
Which brings us back to the question: so what’s our purpose? What did He create us for? I’m sure he didn’t create us to worship him alone.
(And if he did, well, I guess God’s intention of redundancy moves in mysterious ways. >_>)
July 23, 2009 at 1:52 am
@A chicken passeth by Says:
‘Which brings us back to the question: so what’s our purpose? What did He create us for?’
For the sake of repeating myself: God created us to be in a relationship with Him. He created us because He wanted to do this. As well as creating the universe and everything in it.
This is clearly explained in the Bible.
July 22, 2009 at 7:14 am |
Did god create me? If so, for the purpose of worshipping? That is a very narcissistic god.
At least my dog can count on me.
So, what is going to happen to me for not wanting a relationship with god?
July 23, 2009 at 1:53 am
@Brian Says:
‘So, what is going to happen to me for not wanting a relationship with god?’
Already discussed
July 22, 2009 at 1:34 pm |
Did you create your dog?
No, but I think I can assume here that the dog’s parents would not ask it to worship them either.
OKay, that’s your choice, nobody is forcing you to make that choice. The Gospel is proclaimed, you think it is rubbish, that’s fine.
If you get cornered by a robber with a fully loaded gun and the robber gives you a choice between “Your money or your life”, would you claim that’s free will?
And yeah, the Gospel is proclaimed in the sense that we’ve yet to witness in practice or even in THEORY virgin birth yet.
July 21, 2009 at 4:57 pm |
It all about me. Me! Me me! Me me me! Me me me me me me! Worship me!
Or else…
July 21, 2009 at 5:08 pm |
I’m worshipping the word “me”. Just not you in particular. Does that count? >_>
July 22, 2009 at 3:19 am |
@A chicken passeth by Says:
‘I’m worshipping the word “me”.’
That’s the problem. It’s all about ME!
July 22, 2009 at 4:38 am
Sorry eric, I can’t worship you, to busy worshipping the word.
(Actually, I’m too busy trying to make whatever I’ve left go as far as I can to even think about worshipping anything. <_<)
July 23, 2009 at 1:40 am
LOL!
July 21, 2009 at 7:19 pm |
You’ve hit the nail right on the head, my friend!
July 21, 2009 at 6:28 pm |
[...] http://thebeattitude.com/2009/07/20/what-is-the-purpose-of-faith-and-worship-is-god-really-that-ins... [...]
July 22, 2009 at 2:24 pm |
When I was a Christian, I remember the interpretation of my particular church was the line about God wanting a relationship with man, not worship.
Of course, where I come from, a relationship isn’t built on the threat of torture. But hey, that’s just me.
July 22, 2009 at 11:40 pm |
Good point. I also thought a relationship was supposed to have some give and take and two way communication. Neither of these things happened during my ‘relationship’ with god. Instead, it was like I continued to give my number out, to the same guy, but he never called.
July 24, 2009 at 1:06 am |
In real life he’s be that guy with the HUGE truck and big abs who is only 5’2″. Small penis complex if you ask me.
July 28, 2009 at 10:14 pm |
The atheist’s and Naturalist’s faith:
1. believe life can come from non-life.
2. believe intelligence can come from non-intelligence.
3. believe specificity, complexity, and functionality within nature, even that which is way beyond human achievement, is un-intentional.
4. believe morality can come from non-morality.
5. believe logic can come from the absence of logic.
6. believe information, such as DNA, can come from non-information, or create itself.
July 29, 2009 at 7:54 am |
It makes it better that you’re claiming all of these things about God?
Besides, creating over-simplified juxtapositions doesn’t make them false, nor does it make them crucial “tenets” of an atheists belief. To not believe in God, you don’t need to then believe in abiogenesis or evolution.
The fact of the matter is that we’re still not certain how life came about. We have clues and ideas and they’ve certainly held up to scientific scrutiny thus far, but all we really have is an idea on how it developed once it did come about. However, to say that God did it and call it a day is intellectually lazy, unless you’re willing to go the extra length and actually prove that God exists AND that He created life on earth.
Just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean that God did it. To say that is absurd. You could just as easily say that any number of millions of supernatural explanations happened just because we don’t have a hard scientific model to describe it. And yet, you’re only willing to entertain the idea that your God did it, not that fairies and goblins built everything. They’re pretty much on equal footing, evidence-wise.
Secondly, morality from non-morality, are you joking? You’re talking about a God that endorsed wholesale slaughter of infants and, if we’re to take the Bible at its word, actually sent an angel to do just that at one point. You’re talking about a God that had rape victims forcibly married to their assailants. And then you have the gall to say that outside of this construct, no morality existed? Worse yet, you’re saying that morality comes from such a construct? No thank you, that sort of twisted morality I don’t need. I would much rather treat people nicely because it’s the right thing to do, not because I want some self-serving reward in some theme park of an afterlife.
July 30, 2009 at 12:17 pm |
Exactly. I’m not arrogant enough to think I have every answer to why we are here on earth. But pretending all of the answers are in the writings of ignorant ancient hebrew men is far from infallible truth. Fearing the unknown by embracing flawed ancient theology is waste of time.
Why are we here on earth? I don’t know and I’m just fine with that.
July 30, 2009 at 1:56 am |
It is not apparent to me what you hoped to accomplish with this comment, Cameron.
You seem to be trying to tell the author and regular readers what they think, as if you know their minds better than they do; trying to tell them that they operate on faith and have these various tenets as part of that faith. It seems unlikely, however, that you think people here do not know their own minds. So there must be some other reason for your comment.
I think maybe it is a clumsy form of argument about the origin of the universe and, specifically, the origin of life and human culture; and I think you see it as an argument in favor of a god as the creator of these things. So let’s forget the nonsense about atheists having faith. Let’s untwist the deceptive wording of these propositions and discuss the substance of your argument in a way that can actually convey some information.
The 6 principles listed are all really statements of a single principle: you posit that structure, complexity, and functionality cannot occur spontaneously as a result of the forces of nature. I do not know whether this principle is an article of faith with you, although, from the form of your comment, it seems to be. A contrary point of view, however, does not require faith but can come from physical knowledge and reason. Dealing with all 6 of your propositions would make a very long comment indeed; let’s just look at your number 1.
It is not known how life on Earth began. We do know as a result of several centuries of scientific activity that the fundamental mechanisms of life are the forces of physics and, more specifically, of chemistry. Organic chemists and molecular biologists know with good specificity what are the primary building blocks of living organisms: the amino acids, proteins, and other substances that perform the day-to-day, minute-to-minute tasks of living at the molecular level. We do not yet know all the details of how these substances combine, but we can see the general outline.
Knowing how the system works does not tell us how it started. But there is some preliminary information. There have been experiments and serendipitous discoveries that show that organic compounds can be produced spontaneously in a variety of ways from elements and simple compounds found commonly on the surface of the Earth. In some cases power is supplied by sunlight or electrical discharges such as lightning. Surprisingly, ice also has been involved in producing some of these biological compounds. Wikipedia has an article on this topic which can be found by searching for either “origin of life” or “Abiogenesis”.
Knowing that the building blocks of life can occur naturally in the absence of life does not tell us the exact environment or geological formation which would be conducive producing them in quantity nor the conditions that would be necessary for them to combine to form the original primitive life forms. But we do not need to know the details to form a reasonable hypothesis that this is possible and probably still occurring in many places around the universe. This is not faith. It is observation of physical facts and reason based on those facts and on scientific knowledge.
So, it is your prerogative to limit your understanding of the world with faith if you so choose, but please understand, at least, that intelligent people will not replace their real knowledge of real things with faith and ignorance no matter how you present the argument.
August 26, 2009 at 3:38 pm |
If there were no humans ther would be no gods.
October 13, 2009 at 2:27 pm |
theBEattitude and Butterfly are brilliant.. Reading this whole page took a while, but it was well worth it.. I’ve tried so hard searching for god and I can’t find any thing.. Every thing Butterfly said to all the responses I completely 100% agree with.. It seems like religion is all opinion based, whether there is a god or not.. To me, I think the bible was written for control.. If you don’t do as I say or you don’t believe me then you will be burned and ripped apart over and over for eternity blah blah blah.. seriously? Isn’t that a F’d up God for condemning us for our spiritual beliefs..
So if God has a plan for all of us and already knows our path, then why would he even put us on this earth? I mean basically that’s just a waste of a step in the process of going to heaven if he already knows who is going to worship him or not.. Haha damn.. I could really care less about all this.. Good points though.. Kudos to every one.. Good debate^_^