Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Samantha Atkins]

ben wrote:

>
>
> I have a question, quite apart from the other considerations here:
>
> You seem to be assuming that the kind of god that religious people 
> believe in is automatically due the kind of worship they give it.
>
> Your quite reasonable questions refer to a celestial hacker, but I'd 
> like to know what sanction could there possibly be for worship of ANY 
> god, however it is construed?
>
> What moral authority could any god really have over us, other than 
> brute force? As far as i can see, the only valid moral authority has 
> to come from within each person, not imposed from outside, regardless 
> of the source. If somebody tells me that eating peanut butter on 
> wednesday is wrong, i'm going to want to know why, and it'd better be 
> a good reason, that i can consider and agree with. Otherwise, it's 
> just bullying. Maybe i would refrain from doing it if i was persuaded 
> that i would go to hell, or suffer some equally undesirable fate, but 
> that's got nothing to do with behaving morally.


Well, this is a way of asking what kind of God would deserve or draw out 
or inspire worship.   Relatively intelligent, independent beings aren't 
very likely going to worship any being, no matter how powerful, on the 
basis of power alone and some command presumably backed by that power.   
So what sort of being would be so inspiring, uplifting, life changing 
and so on that worship would be a likely and not apparently 
inappropriate response?   The question can't even be asked, much less 
answered, when we are still busy rebelling against the worship-demanding 
supposed God of our parents. 

While I have mostly lost belief that such a Being exists, I know deeply 
what that kind of being would be like for me.   It might be somewhat 
different for you.




>
> Even if you do believe in a god, that's no reason to respect it, let 
> alone follow it's percieved wishes. Surely there must be, somewhere in 
> our history, at least one sect whose scripture reads something like 
> "we believe in almighty god, and we think he's a complete bastard"?
>

If the god is merely a more powerful being then indeed this is so.   If 
the god is a separte, limited, but more powerful/knowledgeable/wise 
being than oneself then respect or fear is likely but probably not 
worship.    But conceptions of God are not this limited.

-s