QualifiedCommenter Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 This is something I wrote about in my blog recently. http://kindasortadeep.blogspot.com/2013/02/worship-as-meaning-of-life_23.html tl;dr for those unwilling to read it, I debate these main points: 1: God does not need us to worship him. God is God and can be happy regardless. 2: When we are in Heaven, we will be just like the angels. The angels had free will too, just like us, but they obviously did not need faith to worship God. When we are in Heaven, neither will we, bringing back the initial issue that God had with angels to start with that would have made him want to make humans. 3: There is still no obvious or outstanding reason why worship is so important. Is the ultimate purpose to feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to make God feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to not go to Hell, but instead to dwell forever in Heaven with God? What is the big purpose behind worship that makes it worthy of being the purpose of life, the universe and everything for Christians? What great claim to meaning does this have that atheism doesn't have? I am interested to see what people say about this. This isn't something I see talked about much.
kolaida Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 1. Yeah, I never got that. My answer to this was we were made TO worship and bring glory to God. I mean, it obviously has ALL kind of holes but this is what was given and I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but I took it at face value for a long time. I never really thought Christianity or beliefs could hurt me. 2. That.... is a very good point. It's something I never remembered being discussed. I guess it was well, all the people without faith are in hell by now, anyway? I don't know. It gets dumber by the moment, though, doesn't it? 3.I think it's a feel good thing. I know during some worships, I felt REALLY good like GOD was IN THE HOUSE, LOL!! Other times, I felt guilty and sometimes I felt annoyed. But usually, I felt good. I don't know. I guess if you honestly really believe you are worshiping some god and making them happy with a bunch of other people, it feels good. There's probably some kind of emotional/human social behavior coming into play as well- feels nice to be doing something in unison with so many others.
pandora Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 The true reason, of course, is to get everyone to become easily manipulated while in a trance, whether to entice people to open their pocketbooks or be more easily convinced of the whatever dogma was being preached. The stated reason at the churches I went to was "communion" with God. Worship time was supposed to make you feel the Holy Spirit... the love, the forgiveness, etc...
mymistake Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 Biblegod is impossible for the reasons noted above along with many others. Biblegod just doesn't add up.
QualifiedCommenter Posted March 2, 2013 Author Posted March 2, 2013 1. Yeah, I never got that. My answer to this was we were made TO worship and bring glory to God. I mean, it obviously has ALL kind of holes but this is what was given and I'm kind of ashamed to admit it, but I took it at face value for a long time. I never really thought Christianity or beliefs could hurt me. 2. That.... is a very good point. It's something I never remembered being discussed. I guess it was well, all the people without faith are in hell by now, anyway? I don't know. It gets dumber by the moment, though, doesn't it? 3.I think it's a feel good thing. I know during some worships, I felt REALLY good like GOD was IN THE HOUSE, LOL!! Other times, I felt guilty and sometimes I felt annoyed. But usually, I felt good. I don't know. I guess if you honestly really believe you are worshiping some god and making them happy with a bunch of other people, it feels good. There's probably some kind of emotional/human social behavior coming into play as well- feels nice to be doing something in unison with so many others. I think you pretty much nailed it with everything you said. For your reply to the first one, it's nothing to be ashamed of, really. Being that this is an ex-Christian forum, I only assume a good amount of us were like that. I was. But I got past it, as did you and everyone else here. The true reason, of course, is to get everyone to become easily manipulated while in a trance, whether to entice people to open their pocketbooks or be more easily convinced of the whatever dogma was being preached. The stated reason at the churches I went to was "communion" with God. Worship time was supposed to make you feel the Holy Spirit... the love, the forgiveness, etc... I have denied this for most of my life, but I honestly think it's true to some large extent. I would argue that some churches really are asking for money out of the good of their hearts, but I would also argue those churches are the minority. Even as a Christian, I never gave tithes or offerings on a regular basis since I never really trusted where the money would go. It obviously doesn't go directly up to God, so...... what becomes of my money? I would much rather give to legitimate charities where I know that the money is being put to good use. As for the whole communion with God thing, that is not far from what I was taught. At the time I never questioned it. It is only fairly recently it really struck me that that, too, does not signify any deep meaning at all. There is still no real purpose behind it. I wish that logic struck me years ago. Biblegod is impossible for the reasons noted above along with many others. Biblegod just doesn't add up. I completely agree. That is what my entire blog, as linked above, is about. I go through everything I once took at face value and analyze it, as well as explore things I have simply never thought about before. I honestly do it more for me than anyone else right now, as doing that sort of research is nothing short of fascinating. I would personally argue it is not exclusive to blbiegod, though. I don't think ANY god can exist. That is exactly why I decided to be an atheist. The evidence I found against God wasn't exclusive evidence against biblegod, but against all gods. The idea of god is just illogical when you get right down to it.
mymistake Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 Imagine you have a new neighbor move in next door. His name is Frank. You meet him. He seems nice. He seems normal. Everything is fine. Then Frank gets a parrot. It's a fine bird. Nothing unusual there. But then Frank teaches the bird to say "Praise Lord Frank". Then Frank gets another parrot. Frank teaches the new bird to say "Praise Lord Frank" as well. Then Frank gets a third parrot and trains that one to say it too. Frank keeps buying parrots and trains them all to say "Praise Lord Frank. He starts filling up his entire back yard with bird cages with parrots who all sing his praises. Would you think Frank is a well adjusted person with a healthy self-esteem? You start to document Frank's outrageous behavior for the lawsuit you are going to file against him when you discover a large pile of dead parrots. You move to part of your yard closest to the corps pile and when you get a better view you can tell the dead birds were butchered. That is when Frank sees you. And his response is to tell you that those are the birds that refused to praise him. Is Frank crazy? Is Frank a criminal? Oh but when God does it then it's great for children's stories. 3
Vigile Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 It offers proof that you're a sycophant and god loves himself an army of sycophants.
Ravenstar Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 I never understood the word 'worship'. I understood reverence, and gratitude - but worship always made me uncomfortable. When I became a parent it made me more uncomfortable... I can't imagine expecting my child to 'worship' me (ick) because I want her to grow and be her own person... ultimately a good parent understands that the child will grow up and move on, and that's the way it should be. Nature teaches that.. and for all those christians who use the equivocation of god as a cosmic parent - this is what I would tell them; A good parent doesn't tie you to himself, but encourages independence. And if you can see god in 'nature' (revealed god) then it is plain to see that nature shows this too. No animal keeps it's young by them forever... mostly they will drive them off close to maturity.. those few who stay in a family group change their relationships from parent/child to adult/adult after maturity. Also the idea that something that could create the flippin' entire universe needs to be praised by finite simian beings on a tiny backwater planet is patently ridiculous. It reduces the wonder of the cosmos to the level of a small-minded narcissistic dictator. Maybe god is actually Kim Il-Jong. (?) LOL 3
Geezer Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 As far as has been determined by science there is no such thing as supernatural deities, demons, angels, heaven, or hell. Until these things have been proven to actually exist debating their meaning and relevance would seem to be pointless.
QualifiedCommenter Posted March 2, 2013 Author Posted March 2, 2013 I never understood the word 'worship'. I understood reverence, and gratitude - but worship always made me uncomfortable. When I became a parent it made me more uncomfortable... I can't imagine expecting my child to 'worship' me (ick) because I want her to grow and be her own person... ultimately a good parent understands that the child will grow up and move on, and that's the way it should be. Nature teaches that.. and for all those christians who use the equivocation of god as a cosmic parent - this is what I would tell them; A good parent doesn't tie you to himself, but encourages independence. And if you can see god in 'nature' (revealed god) then it is plain to see that nature shows this too. No animal keeps it's young by them forever... mostly they will drive them off close to maturity.. those few who stay in a family group change their relationships from parent/child to adult/adult after maturity. Also the idea that something that could create the flippin' entire universe needs to be praised by finite simian beings on a tiny backwater planet is patently ridiculous. It reduces the wonder of the cosmos to the level of a small-minded narcissistic dictator. Maybe god is actually Kim Il-Jong. (?) LOL You make several interesting points. I've never directly thought about the whole parent thing. Like, I've been deeply presented with the idea that God is essentially our heavenly father, but I've never compared it to how horrible it would be if compared to real parenting. That's very interesting. image.jpg Haha, that's awesome. I think I wanna keep that one around for later use. Nice find! As far as has been determined by science there is no such thing as supernatural deities, demons, angels, heaven, or hell. Until these things have been proven to actually exist debating their meaning and relevance would seem to be pointless. Yes, that's ultimately what it all comes down to in the end, really. In my blog, I play devil's advocate (so to speak) a lot. I just 'assume' that all of these things are true for the sake of argument, but simultaneously explain how they either can't be true or, if they were true, how bad and/or meaningless things would be. However, this is an ex-Christian forum, so the whole point of this forum is to largely discuss Christian theology and why we no longer believe it. I think it's fair to bring up all of these things for the purpose of explaining why we don't feel it's for real anymore. Most to all of us believed in these sort of things at one point of time. It would also be a way for Christians to find these kind of arguments while researching their own theology.
RipVanWinkle Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 When I was a Xtian I thought of prayer as something I needed, not god. Now I really believe it is what the church needs to keep Xtians dependent on them (the churches) under the guise of god. bill
miekko Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 Some movements in some religions consider the important parts of worship to be the effect it has on the worshipper rather than God. The Jewish medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, for instance, thought prayer was about contemplation. A thing that's been noted in Judaism is that one of the main words for prayer in Hebrew - tefillah - is the reflexive of the verb 'to judge', essentially 'to judge oneself'; so while praying, one should consider ones conduct and consider whether it's been good or bad, and decide to act better next time, or be happy about having acted well if one has acted well. In another rationalist view of prayer, prayer is meant to influence the person performing the prayer. In Judaism, prayer is generally a pre-written liturgy, written by various rabbis of history; the points being made in the prayers are sometimes not very obvious. Another set of prayers commonly prayed are those found in the book of psalms. If one knows the stories that the psalms are supposed to relate to, these may serve as a springboard for both learning and reflection. There's been some studies in communities where prayer is a social thing. In Judaism, it's considered better to pray in a minyan than to pray by oneself. The service is not a complete service if there's no minyan. (In orthodox Judaism, a minyan is a quorum of ten or more men of age 13 or older; in most of conservative Judaism, women age 12 or older can also be counted for the minyan. There's some situations where a woman can be counted for the minyan even in orthodox Judaism, though, but those would be individual cases, so at such an event, no women for which those special circumstances apply would be counted, and thus if there's eight men and two women out of which one has those special circumstances, it's still no minyan.) Anyways, orthodox Judaism does not consider prayer in a minyan to be required of women, and so women usually do not attend. Men who can attend a minyan are supposed to do so. In conservative Judaism, women and men are both supposed to. So we basically have a good test group: turns out orthodox men who attend minyans are more likely to give to charity than orthodox women and orthodox men who don't attend a minyan, but conservative women and men who attend minyan are about equally likely. So prayer, as a social thing, clearly has an effect on people's relation to their community as well.
Eugene39 Posted March 2, 2013 Posted March 2, 2013 The worship part of the service was so God could prepare our hearts for the message from His word. That's what I heard from the pulpit.
QualifiedCommenter Posted March 3, 2013 Author Posted March 3, 2013 When I was a Xtian I thought of prayer as something I needed, not god. Now I really believe it is what the church needs to keep Xtians dependent on them (the churches) under the guise of god. bill That's very possible. In the case of what I was taught, if I were to believe that worship is THE meaning of life and the reason why we were created, coming back every week for another great opportunity to worship along with so many people (and with quite a fantastic sound-system and set of music equipment in the case of my church) would be a very convincing reason to keep on coming back. I really liked worship. I was even on the worship team for the youth group at my church for awhile. I do wonder if I only really liked it so much because of how good the sound systems and music were, and while I was on the band, the pure thrill of being in a semi-rock band. Some movements in some religions consider the important parts of worship to be the effect it has on the worshipper rather than God. The Jewish medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides, for instance, thought prayer was about contemplation. A thing that's been noted in Judaism is that one of the main words for prayer in Hebrew - tefillah - is the reflexive of the verb 'to judge', essentially 'to judge oneself'; so while praying, one should consider ones conduct and consider whether it's been good or bad, and decide to act better next time, or be happy about having acted well if one has acted well. In another rationalist view of prayer, prayer is meant to influence the person performing the prayer. In Judaism, prayer is generally a pre-written liturgy, written by various rabbis of history; the points being made in the prayers are sometimes not very obvious. Another set of prayers commonly prayed are those found in the book of psalms. If one knows the stories that the psalms are supposed to relate to, these may serve as a springboard for both learning and reflection. There's been some studies in communities where prayer is a social thing. In Judaism, it's considered better to pray in a minyan than to pray by oneself. The service is not a complete service if there's no minyan. (In orthodox Judaism, a minyan is a quorum of ten or more men of age 13 or older; in most of conservative Judaism, women age 12 or older can also be counted for the minyan. There's some situations where a woman can be counted for the minyan even in orthodox Judaism, though, but those would be individual cases, so at such an event, no women for which those special circumstances apply would be counted, and thus if there's eight men and two women out of which one has those special circumstances, it's still no minyan.) Anyways, orthodox Judaism does not consider prayer in a minyan to be required of women, and so women usually do not attend. Men who can attend a minyan are supposed to do so. In conservative Judaism, women and men are both supposed to. So we basically have a good test group: turns out orthodox men who attend minyans are more likely to give to charity than orthodox women and orthodox men who don't attend a minyan, but conservative women and men who attend minyan are about equally likely. So prayer, as a social thing, clearly has an effect on people's relation to their community as well. That's all very interesting! I never knew any of that. I've never thought to think of worship in those kind of ways. I could see it as being a good way of reflection of self and a way of sociability. It certainly makes a lot more sense than worship for the sake of worship because we're just supposed to worship and that's that. The worship part of the service was so God could prepare our hearts for the message from His word. That's what I heard from the pulpit. That's certainly not what I was ever taught. I was taught that worship was far more important than the message and that worship is what we should truly seek after. Think "Desiring God" by John Piper. I guess I can't exactly call you wrong and me right, though. That would be rather silly.
duderonomy Posted March 3, 2013 Posted March 3, 2013 This is something I wrote about in my blog recently. http://kindasortadeep.blogspot.com/2013/02/worship-as-meaning-of-life_23.html tl;dr for those unwilling to read it, I debate these main points: 1: God does not need us to worship him. God is God and can be happy regardless. 2: When we are in Heaven, we will be just like the angels. The angels had free will too, just like us, but they obviously did not need faith to worship God. When we are in Heaven, neither will we, bringing back the initial issue that God had with angels to start with that would have made him want to make humans. 3: There is still no obvious or outstanding reason why worship is so important. Is the ultimate purpose to feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to make God feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to not go to Hell, but instead to dwell forever in Heaven with God? What is the big purpose behind worship that makes it worthy of being the purpose of life, the universe and everything for Christians? What great claim to meaning does this have that atheism doesn't have? I am interested to see what people say about this. This isn't something I see talked about much. 1) Yes, God can be anything he wants to be. Happy, sad, or pissed off. 2) Read the book of Hebrews in the N.T. Christians will judge angels. 3) Could it be that the ultimate purpose for worshiping god is to worship god?
QualifiedCommenter Posted March 3, 2013 Author Posted March 3, 2013 This is something I wrote about in my blog recently. http://kindasortadeep.blogspot.com/2013/02/worship-as-meaning-of-life_23.html tl;dr for those unwilling to read it, I debate these main points: 1: God does not need us to worship him. God is God and can be happy regardless. 2: When we are in Heaven, we will be just like the angels. The angels had free will too, just like us, but they obviously did not need faith to worship God. When we are in Heaven, neither will we, bringing back the initial issue that God had with angels to start with that would have made him want to make humans. 3: There is still no obvious or outstanding reason why worship is so important. Is the ultimate purpose to feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to make God feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to not go to Hell, but instead to dwell forever in Heaven with God? What is the big purpose behind worship that makes it worthy of being the purpose of life, the universe and everything for Christians? What great claim to meaning does this have that atheism doesn't have? I am interested to see what people say about this. This isn't something I see talked about much. 1) Yes, God can be anything he wants to be. Happy, sad, or pissed off. 2) Read the book of Hebrews in the N.T. Christians will judge angels. 3) Could it be that the ultimate purpose for worshiping god is to worship god? for the second one, the "The Saints will Judge Angels" section in this article explains that. It's a very confusing statement and the writer of this article basically admits we cannot fully know what it means. But it reaffirms what I claimed earlier that angels did indeed have free will, just like us. That is why, like us, they were able to go to Hell. For the third one, I really don't think it can be. Nothing essentially gets accomplished through worship. It cannot be the meaning of life if there is no deep reason why. It really has no more claim to fame than saying 42 is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Without a good reason why, it just cannot work. In the Hitchhiker's Guide book, the main issue at the end was what the great question was: WHY is 42 important? In Christianity, the main issue is that worship doesn't ultimately do anything for God or the worshipers. If in the Hitchhiker's Guide series the big question is "why does 42 matter?", in Christianity, the big question is "Why does worship matter?" See where I'm coming from? There is no good, full and/or obvious answer as to why worship matters so much, especially when the Christian God absolutely does not deserve it.
QualifiedCommenter Posted March 3, 2013 Author Posted March 3, 2013 Whoa, sorry, I never posted the article I mentioned. Here it is: http://www.zianet.com/maxey/reflx396.htm I do not know how to edit posts, so I just made a new one.
duderonomy Posted March 5, 2013 Posted March 5, 2013 This is something I wrote about in my blog recently. http://kindasortadeep.blogspot.com/2013/02/worship-as-meaning-of-life_23.html tl;dr for those unwilling to read it, I debate these main points: 1: God does not need us to worship him. God is God and can be happy regardless. 2: When we are in Heaven, we will be just like the angels. The angels had free will too, just like us, but they obviously did not need faith to worship God. When we are in Heaven, neither will we, bringing back the initial issue that God had with angels to start with that would have made him want to make humans. 3: There is still no obvious or outstanding reason why worship is so important. Is the ultimate purpose to feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to make God feel good? Is the ultimate purpose to not go to Hell, but instead to dwell forever in Heaven with God? What is the big purpose behind worship that makes it worthy of being the purpose of life, the universe and everything for Christians? What great claim to meaning does this have that atheism doesn't have? I am interested to see what people say about this. This isn't something I see talked about much. 1) Yes, God can be anything he wants to be. Happy, sad, or pissed off. 2) Read the book of Hebrews in the N.T. Christians will judge angels. 3) Could it be that the ultimate purpose for worshiping god is to worship god? for the second one, the "The Saints will Judge Angels" section in this article explains that. It's a very confusing statement and the writer of this article basically admits we cannot fully know what it means. But it reaffirms what I claimed earlier that angels did indeed have free will, just like us. That is why, like us, they were able to go to Hell. For the third one, I really don't think it can be. Nothing essentially gets accomplished through worship. It cannot be the meaning of life if there is no deep reason why. It really has no more claim to fame than saying 42 is the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Without a good reason why, it just cannot work. In the Hitchhiker's Guide book, the main issue at the end was what the great question was: WHY is 42 important? In Christianity, the main issue is that worship doesn't ultimately do anything for God or the worshipers. If in the Hitchhiker's Guide series the big question is "why does 42 matter?", in Christianity, the big question is "Why does worship matter?" See where I'm coming from? There is no good, full and/or obvious answer as to why worship matters so much, especially when the Christian God absolutely does not deserve it. 2) Oops... I went to the article, and it seems it was Corinthians that spoke of Christians judging angels. I thought of Hebrews because it says we are lower than the angels now, but blah blah blah... Yeah I do see where you are coming from. I guess I never saw worship as the meaning of life or put that much importance on it when I was a Christian. I can't say what someone else might get out of it. I always wondered in the back of my head why a God that didn't need anything would need my worship anyway. And those angels the Bible describes in Revelation as saying "holy holy holy, etc" all the time forever? That kind of creeped me out too. I'll check out your blog.
VacuumFlux Posted March 5, 2013 Posted March 5, 2013 I never understood the word 'worship'. I understood reverence, and gratitude - but worship always made me uncomfortable. When I became a parent it made me more uncomfortable... I can't imagine expecting my child to 'worship' me (ick) because I want her to grow and be her own person... ultimately a good parent understands that the child will grow up and move on, and that's the way it should be. Nature teaches that.. and for all those christians who use the equivocation of god as a cosmic parent - this is what I would tell them; A good parent doesn't tie you to himself, but encourages independence. And if you can see god in 'nature' (revealed god) then it is plain to see that nature shows this too. No animal keeps it's young by them forever... mostly they will drive them off close to maturity.. those few who stay in a family group change their relationships from parent/child to adult/adult after maturity. I was taught that "as you grow more independent from your parents, you need to grow more dependent on god". Because obviously, you're incapable of living life on your own power.
miekko Posted March 5, 2013 Posted March 5, 2013 .... That's all very interesting! I never knew any of that. I've never thought to think of worship in those kind of ways. I could see it as being a good way of reflection of self and a way of sociability. It certainly makes a lot more sense than worship for the sake of worship because we're just supposed to worship and that's that. I should probably clarify one thing: I said "the points being made in the prayers are sometimes not very obvious." This might seem like a weird thing to say, but I think that aspect of the prayers is one thing that makes them flexible enough as a "mental tool" for those who do pray - if there were very clear points made, thinking the prayer over while reciting it would always reach trivial conclusions, and would not help when circumstances change. Another thing with reciting prayer - and especially, it seems, in languages you do not speak natively - rather than improvising on the spot, is that the brain learns to associate things. If you always get along well with someone who always wears a certain perfume, twenty years later that perfume can bring you very vivid memories of those feelings. Same goes for other habitual things. If you most of the time are reasonably happy with your situation, and during this time you regularly do some kind of ritual, doing this ritual later when things aren't all dandy can help reduce the anxiety your situation is causing. This can of course be achieved by other means than prayer, but there seems to be reason to think that reciting a text in a language you don't perfectly master is rather strong at this: there are instances of Jews and Muslims, who after a stroke robbed them of their ability to speak coherently still could recite the prayers (which in such a situation probably is rather comforting for them). This isn't a miracle or anything, this is because the brain stored the prayer-behaviors' neural pathways elsewhere than it stored normal speech. Any regular habit changes things in the brain (everything, actually, changes the state of the brain, but regular things more so than others).
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