If the Christian God were real could you worship him?

[Vertetuesi]

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[SteveF]

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It's a naturalist only forum I'm afraid, hence no theists.

[burgy]

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[Griggsy]

Naturalists such as Perahk have refuted Polkinghorne. How could the theist position be the better as it cannot pass the ignostic and Ockham challenges?

[the_eliot_one]

quite simply no. Any God that has little children mauled by bears for saying "baldy" is not a God I want to worship, I'd stick with the devil or neutrality, depends

[Griggsy]

Amen! Dawkins has His number!

[hamandcheese]

To answer the original question: Yes. • Edited by a Moderator •

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Edited for profanity.

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[Iconoclastithon]

Atheism as I understand it is a rejection in the belief of a god. This is true of all ideas of god including the christian version but there is something more at work. I could become a theist without worshipping god. That is to say that if real solid evidence proved that the god of the christian bible was real then I would be forced by reason to believe in his existence but I would never worship the fellow. There would be no point in trying to fool him into thinking that I loved him when in reality I think he is disgusting for his actions in the bible.

The question is could any of you guys worship the god of the christian bible even if you knew he existed? Now I'm not asking if you could go through the perfunctory motions but rather could you really love and worship him? This also goes for other Abrahamic religions or any religion in general. I've yet to find many religions that offer a god pleasant enough to be worshipped.

No more than I could Adolf Hitler.

In Reason:
Bill

[rizdek]

I always thought that if the right set of arguments were presented in the right way, I might be convinced to becoming a believer in the christian god again...but I had a rude awakening the other day.

I read L Strobel's The Case for Christ (and he wasn't describing a casket)

Being caught up in his charismatic approach I felt myself lured back to "believing" again based on the apparent historical accuracy of the NT. Rest assured I have recovered after thinking more about exactly what was said and what was not said by the respective experts. I also read several reviews of Strobel's book that supported my own suspicions and provided new ones

But the rude awakening was that for the few hours I was deluded by Strobel's drama, I felt incredible depression...I could hardly talk....literally. To think there actually might be a God/Jesus team that in any way shape or form matches the God/Jesus of the OT/NT. To live in a world where such might be the case would be, well, mental hell.

Background:

I deconverted 30-35 years ago and never seriously looked back. As many of the people who deconverted know, it shakes one to the core to realize the very essence of the universe is not as one was taught. It didn't happen overnight...I can remember asking myself for years, seriously, "could there not be a God?" So engrained were my beliefs that I had trouble answering that question in the affirmative.

My deconversion was not based on a thorough understanding of evolution, nor on deep philosophical debate nor on logic. Unlike Strobel who apparently naively thought "science had all the answers" as the basis for his supposed skepticism/atheism, I did not have such delusions. Nor did I read essays on alternate christ theories. I seriously believed the authors of the bible were inspired such that dating the writing of the gospels and other bible texts was unimportant . if God inspired them, then what they wrote must be basically correct.

The beginning of my deconversion was based pretty much solely on

1) observing the world and people around me. (IE, I didn't/don't see evidence of a god-like intervention any way shape or form). Prayers seem to be equally effective if ones prays to a rabbit as if one prays to god. I didn't/don't see the universe or life on earth particularly "ordered" or representative of "intelligent or intentional design." The viciousness of life on earth....essentially a heriarchy of one creature eating another creature for food; often in violence and pain does not suggest a particularly intelligent creation. Unless that creator is sadistic. Galaxies, stars and planets are not all neatly spinning about in an orderly fashion. They are continually (in cosmic time) crashing into one another eternally forming and reforming themselves, essentially following blind laws of physics.

2) reading the bible itself

When I was a child, I was advised by some well-meaning Sunday-school teacher to "read the bible." In child-like faith, I did just that. I started at the beginning and read it through to the end. Yes, believe it or not, as a young teenager I read the entire bible. What an incredible story unfolded before me. I had no theologian/mideast expert standing over me explaining away each and every idiocracy/inconsistency/exaggeration/atrocity I came upon.

[as an aside, why do they do that? many take great pains and expend oceans of ink writing on skies of paper, to reinterpret the scriptures at every juncture whenever the message is apparently inconsistent with THEIR perception of God and reality, but I see no essasys on reinterpretation of other texts that they happen to agree with "as written." ]

I took the bible at face value.

If it said god ordered the killing of thousands of men, women and children, except to keep the virgins for yourselves...I assume that is what God meant for them to do. It didn't read like a figure of speech or hyperbole, it seemed pretty straight-forward.

If it said God hardened Pharoah's heart, I believed it meant that God inserted himself into Pharoah's free will so Pharoah would not let the people go. Until the plagues culminated in god himself killing the first born throughout Egypt...so why are christians opposed to abortion when god himself killed babies? Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

If it said god gambled with satan and allowed satan to "have his way" with Job, I took it to mean god made a deal with satan on Job's behalf. I wish I could actually see this made into a movie so people could see the absurdity/out rageousness of such a story.

If it said god flooded the earth to kill every living thing, except Noah and the ark inhabitants, I thought it meant what it said. But where, exactly, did the water go? It doesn't compress, so the water that flooded the earth is somewhere. Maybe in the Martian polar ice caps? But no, really, my Mom said god made it just disappear and she wouldn't lie.

If it said there was a tempting serpent in the garden of eden, that caused Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and thereby damning mankind to being born in sin from there on out, then it must be so.

If god required the Hebrews to kill and burn lambs to please him, then it must be so. Leviticus doesn't say it's just a good idea, it's pretty much required and it has to be meat, it can't be grain (as Cain found out). Well, it can't be grain until the priesthood decided they wanted to expand their menu to include bread and drink along with roast lamb.

If the bible says that for thousands of years, god helped and protected one people (Jews) and then turned around and represented himself as jesus, who the jews generally rejected, it must be so. And if the bible says that by rejecting jesus, the Jews won rejection by god and most christians from there on out, then it must be so. After all, his own received him not.

If the bible says god required human sacrifice (jesus) to appease himself for human sin, then it must be so. That has to be one of the most barbaric concepts in any religion. That a god who is able to, with a thought, create matter and energy out of nothing, give it the properties that would result in the universe we see, who is able to create life and consciousness, would then turned around and not be able to figure any other way to interact with the short-comings of man THAT HE CREATED than to require human sacrifice becomes utterly preposterous once one sheds the burden of believing the absurd. And to think, each time christians celebrate communion, they are celebrating human sacrifice and actually pretend they are eating the flesh of, and drinking the blood of, the sacrificed human.

If the bible says god felt compelled to create, among the lovely things in the universe, a "hell" where in a "live happily everafter world" he'll stash satan and punish anyone who doesn't accept the "human sacrifice" story, then...well, it must be so. Note that contrary to what some christians believe, hell is not to punish for acts of sin. A person might live a life of almost perfect morality, never harming anyone and in fact doing much good, but if they reject the jesus human sacrifice story, they are destined for hell. And even the most heinous offender can, with a thought and a word, repent and "believe" in the human sacrifice story and thereby be accepted into the holy heavens where he might worship god side by side with those he raped, tortured and mutilated on earth. And this offender need not apologize to the humans he harmed (as we can see in the story of David) he only offended god, so he only need seek atonement with god. That's biblical. Christians must forgive, but offenders need not apologize.

If the bible says god keeps a "pet detractor" around (Satan) just to be sure people (who are already born in sin) are tempted enough, then it must be so.

But the "image" I got by having these thoughts burned into my childlike mind was not a god of love, or even a god of rationality. Before I disbelieved in the christian god, I learned to loathe him.

So, no, I could never "worship" such an entity. And my recent encounter with irrationality in the form of Strobel, proved that to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. Fortunately, those of us who have been freed from the bondage of god-worship do not have to fear that, somehow, the existence of the christian god will ever be proven even plausible, much less likely; or true.

In closing, I would agree with what proponents of "reinterpreting the bible each time it says something with which they disagree" say, i.e the people in those days were given to exaggeration, figures of speech, and hyperbole. The bible is indeed, from beginning to, end full of exaggeration, figure of speech, hyperbole....which, when applied in rationale debate as "truth" are essentially lies. Remember that, when someone starts quoting scripture to you in an effort to prove something/disprove something. It's all a lie except they sadly see it as truth.

[Seasanctuary]

Well said, Rizdek.

[jordanriver]

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[laserfocused]

If I knew the Christian God was real and that he loved me I would worship him. You know why? Because everything else "bad" and contradictory in the Bible can be explained. It's the sense of his love that I must have in order to believe in God the way the Christians do.

I was a strong Christian now I'm just, just here. I don't know anymore, haven't known for a very long time. It's sad for me. I feel no hope right now. Oh well, time heals everything

[StephenR]

I'm not sure.

[Chrs]

I'm sorry if the 10ish day gap between the last post and this is too big. But I wanted to comment on a very interesting topic.

It depends what you meant by the christian God:
A literal interpretation of the bible. I.E. Everything that was said in the bible was true. I would have a problem with. In the bible the Christian God killed over 2,000,000 people (Kind of a source- Dwindlinginunbelief blog), and the God here has alot more of "human" characteristics (Jealousy, Wrath...). I don't really know if I could worship such a God.

However. A more liberal view of God I could worship. The idea that some/most of it is made up of stories that show us how to live and not of actual historical events is more reasonable to me.



Obviously, I don't believe in a God, or I wouldn't be an atheist. This is purely speculating on "if the christian God was real"

[insanezenmiss]

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