Mailbag: Worshipping God

What sort of god would you ever consider worshipping?

This is definitely an interesting question - and not one that is easy to answer. The concept of "worship" is commonly defined as "ardent love and devotion" - but I think that it goes a bit further than that. It seems to me that to qualify as "worship," a person's attitude towards the object of worship must be superlative. That is to say, the person's "love and devotion" must be far above that show towards anything else in life. Thus, the object of worship must be something that one is willing to sacrifice absolutely everything else - all other loyalties, all other loves, all over concerns... everything. Otherwise, it isn't quite "worship."

I think that this captures the sort of "worship" people have towards their god, at least today. It might not be quite accurate for how some gods were worshipped in the past, but today at least it seems to fit. So the question becomes to me, what sort of "god" would I "worship" in the sense of being willing to abandon absolutely everything else for, no matter what it is, if I think that this god asks for it? I'm not entirely sure that any sort of "god" would qualify for that sort of devotion.

Let's be absolutely clear about this: we aren't talking about a being which merits a great deal of respect, attention, or devotion - no, there's a lot more involved than that. What we are talking about is a being for whom I would sacrifice everything - a being for whom I would, just to cite an example, replay the Biblical story of Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac. Would I go so far as to try and kill any child if I thought that deity ordered it?

No.

More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...