(May 19, 2012 at 9:38 am)Markos Wrote: From a Christian point a view, this question is a bit like asking "Just because your wife exists, it doesn't logically follow that you should love her." For the Christian, it's not a question of logically necessity, or even moral obligation; it is a question of the very nature of the relationship between God and humanity. And what is the nature of that relationship? It is one of God's grace towards humanity, and humanity's response to that grace. That response is what Christian's (should) mean by the word "worship". It is not a word solely to do with particular acts of devotion like prayer or praise (though those things can be acts of worship). Paul "defines" worship in Romans 12:1 (NRSV) as follows:
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
That is where you are wrong. Love is not in the nature of marriage - one can be married and remain married without love. Similarly, worship would not be within the nature of relationship between man and god (if such a thing exists). If either of those were in the "nature of the relationship", they'd be both logically necessary and morally obligatory. Your claim that it can be in the very nature of the relation and yet not be logically necessary is self-defeating.
(May 19, 2012 at 9:38 am)Markos Wrote: So, Christian worship is the response to the mercies of God of a whole life lived as an offering to God. Of course, the obvious question is this: why is a whole of life of this sort of worship the proper response to God's grace? It is because of the costly nature of that grace, which means that an uncostly response does not take God's grace seriously:
"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in a field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will gladly sell all his goods...Above all, [grace] is costly because it cost God the life of his Son...and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship)
So this is the "rationale" for worship - not a logical requirement or a moral obligation to show an abstract god that we acknowledge his existence, but a concrete response to God's concrete expression of himself in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus.
This, right here, demonstrates one of the many reasons why I despise you god. Any dealings between conscious beings should be on equal terms. Your god's way of dealing is heavy-handed. We did not ask for his "mercies" or "grace" (whatever the hell that means). He wasn't asked to sacrifice his son. That doesn't even address the fact that his son's life was not his to sacrifice in the first place. And let's not even go into the discussion if it can really be called a sacrifice if the bastard comes back to life three days later.
What your god is trying to do is to trick us into thinking that he gave up something for us and therefore we owe him our lives or our worship, disregarding the fact that they are not for sale, we didn't ask him to give up anything and he didn't.
