Bloody poll: would you worship a God whose existence was certain?

[Angrboda]

I was looking forward to delivering my cost/benefit analysis, but it looks like I'm getting dissed in both threads. I tell ya, I don't get no respect.

[Whateverist]

Wait a minute, rasetsu. So if Kali turned out to be nothing more than Jehovah's hit-man (hit-person?), would you still be tight with her? Common, you know you couldn't hang with that guy.

[paulpablo]

He wouldn't have any explaining to do, he's god, his brain compared to mine would be like mine compared to an ants I'd imagine so I wouldn't question him.

Hold your horses, G'Kar!
If humans were made in god's image, shouldn't he be somewhat humanoid, with a brain like ours, or is he like Stewie and made a really shitty clone of us..?

Not necessarily, someone who is completely brain dead still has the same physical form as people who have the highest IQ ratings on the planet, I don't see why god would need to have the same mentality as us because he looks like us.

[Kayenneh]

Not necessarily, someone who is completely brain dead still has the same physical form as people who have the highest IQ ratings on the planet, I don't see why god would need to have the same mentality as us because he looks like us.

Fair enough, point taken.

[Angrboda]

Wait a minute, rasetsu. So if Kali turned out to be nothing more than Jehovah's hit-man (hit-person?), would you still be tight with her? Common, you know you couldn't hang with that guy.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about such hypotheticals which would have to be faced before a serious answer could be given. The most serious being how I know that my belief in this Jehovah entity is reliable. As a person who has had psychotic delusions since the age of 4, I realize the epistemic questions are far from trivial. How do I know that what the being claims, that they are a god with such and such powers and past, is not just the lie of a very powerful, superhuman non-god?

My preliminary cost/benefit analysis seemed to imply that trusting such a being was not a cost effective proposition. There are various ways to assess risk, and in a straight cost/benefit analysis, risk is quantified as a liability or cost; the greater the risk, the greater the liability. The ideal situation would be that I worship the entity for eternity and reap eternal reward. But the number of scenarios where my worship isn't adequately rewarded greatly outnumber such scenarios, including one in which I pay in worship, and am rewarded with eternal suffering. And there is no oversight, so I have no redress if he defaults on any bargain. In short, the cost exceeds the benefit to my understanding of such things. So, buying a pig in a poke, of this nature, doesn't seem like a wise investment.

If I knew for certain that worship would help me avoid terrible consequences, I would do it, but there's no guarantees such a being could provide me that it would faithfully fulfill the bargain, and it's foolish to offer blind trust to anyone, no matter what they promise you. I trust based on my history with another. I've known Kali from before I could hear or speak. The trust is there, and would remain. In particular, if this god Yahweh claimed to be the god of the bible, I don't see that I would want to develop a trust relationship with that being; I'm not even sure I could. Yahweh, as portrayed in the bible is a two-timing, faithless asshole. Why would I even try to trust that being? Would it not be unwise to even begin?

[Whateverist]

Interesting answer. So the idea that you've known Kali from an early age and know it (her) to be reliable gets at an important distinction in knowing. In french there are two verbs for "to know", savoir and connaitre. Savoir for simple knowing of discrete facts seems to be the sort of knowledge philosophy is most concerned with. But to know something more complex, like a person, place or piece of art seems to me (and I wasn't a very good french student) to emphasize the extent to which you know something which is far from discrete, about which there is much to know. I often think that theists have this sort of knowledge of what they call god.

If you know a person, you can often anticipate how they might respond in various situations. If only theists could embrace with uncertainty the true nature of what it is they know as god we would have very little to talk about here. It is only the claims made about these gods' role in the creation of the universe, in moral absolutes and eternal rewards and punishments which trip them up. If they could just live with "as if" rather than insisting on distilling savoir-facts, from connaitre-knowing, they could have it all.

My sense is that it is our own minds which give rise to gods, I mean produce the sense of their living presence in our lives - just as they produce our sense of who we are. But that doesn't seem to matter a great deal. How we relate to such creations still impacts our well being even if they can't part the Red sea or hurl real lightning bolts at our enemies.

[ignoramus]

Guys, my first post after my brief introduction.
Why would the majority pick option #3?

Why would "it" have to explain anything?
Nothing "it" has caused in our world or our life has got anything to do with him...

Eg: God says:
G'day bro! Wassup?

Yeah, I am an entity that has the ability to create stuff.
Yeah, I vaguely remember making this place, took me about a week! Boy was I buggered after that, had to rest!

That was a long time ago, I've made countless others since.
I haven't really thought about checking back, too busy with work, etc.

You're all still here so what's the prob?
Am I supposed to hold your hand or something?
Nature is rough and violent sometimes, but that is the only way it can work.
I designed you all to have survival instincts ...cool hey?

All the minor stuff is not really my business, I don't like interfering with stuff once I've made it. Otherwise I can't know if my designs are any good.

Catch! I'll catch you whenever bro....

[Jenny A]

Ultimately, if it were the Judeo-Christian god, I'd worship because eternal torment is well eternal. But I'd still think that a god demanding worship in this way was not a loving god, but a childish tyrant.

Otherwise, it depends on the actual god. There are many people vastly superior to me, but I don't worship them. I'd find a human father who wants his children to worship him creepy. Wouldn't you?

[Marsellus Wallace]

If not doing so would send me to eternal torture, yes. I'd worship. Though, inside I'd be doing this:


If eternal torture was out of the way, fuck the god. Hail its enemy.

I don't want explanations. They wouldn't cut it. Nothing could explain so much.

definitely that ^

[VAN BELLE Jean Marc]

i like this question: it urges me to think "out of the box":

worship > a very old word from 1300 and on: weorðscipe (West Saxon) "condition of being worthy, dignity, glory, distinction, honor, renown," from weorð "worthy" (see worth) + -scipe (see -ship). Sense of "reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being" is first recorded c.1300. The original sense is preserved in the title worshipful "honorable" (c.1300).

Here it starts: Only from 1300 they talk about something "supernatural", not before.

If we go to Arabic/Hebrew they more talk about "bidda" (like our Dutch "bidden").

In every way we talk about to look up at something, greater than what we can understand.

Now the question is, what would we do if it "the existance was certain". I think that then we will understand "it/he/she" scientifically and that we had some science to have prooven it with dogma's.

So we could understand...

QED (quod erat demonstrandum, which was to be proven) it would be no longer possible to look up at it, or to worship it anymore.

The term from 1300 would have been susceptible to eradication...

No, i would not worship "a" God whose existence was certain.

[and now you can get crazy of me, "it" always was certain to me, only sometimes i cannot believe in "it"; this is NOT contradictory to the former]