PROOF THAT THE WORSHIP OF GOD IS REALLY INDIRECT SELF-WORSHIP

Derrida, “Neither Priests, who supposedly speak for God, nor Philosophers, who supposedly speak for Reason, should be trusted; this ‘logocentric’ claim to speak from a privileged perspective (e.g., Reason, the Word of God) is a bluff that must be called."

Comment: It depends on the ability of the Philosopher.  And it is worse to depend on hearsay about what God has said than to depend on any philosopher.

If you have desires about what you want God to mean, what God is and how you are going to honour him, it is not really about what he wants. You are the real God underneath all this. God is just your echo chamber, your idol.

And that is exactly what is probably going on with most religionists we would think. But in fact it is what ALL of them are doing.

People want to believe in something that can make life okay or bearable in times of trouble. That’s what’s attractive about believing in God.
 
And how does faith in God make life bearable? Because no matter what happens we tell ourselves God has a plan and we have an extremely important and indispensible role to play in that plan. We use God to delude ourselves about our absolute importance.
 
It is delusional because it contradicts the notion that if God is perfect and free he was under no obligation to make us or make our lives the way they are. It is irrational. So believers have to adore something that cannot really be called a God in order to feel okay about living.

The reality is that emotionally and physically some things are unbearable. Trying to feel they are not only adds to this torture. Being asked to feel that is being tortured.

The driver towards God then is a cruel lie. If that is what our interest in God has to depend on then we can say even if there is a God people's faith is toxic and like arsenic.

God is really just you being about you and you blaming others for their knowledge that their situation is terrible and won't be improved.
 
What about people who seem to be helped?  What helps those who need comfort and a sense of meaning in life is belief. Belief is your creation, your self-empowerment. So it is not God that helps but belief in God. But why does the belief need to be in God? Why not believe in your power to find strength within, a strength that is all your own? That would be better and more effective.   How valuable is this help when it harms others and many of those who are harmed will not broadcast it?  The success or seeming success is what you hear about for religion does not want to think about the other side.  It is not good if some are getting success while the same message is destroying others.
 
Why is it that religions with the most charm and charisma and dynamism get the converts? The answer is that it is not so much the message that gets the converts as those who sell it.

Enthusiasm is contagious. If religion were really about God, people wouldn’t be so easily swayed by what others say and feel in making up their minds. It is about fitting in with the neighbours or the family or becoming part of an exciting plan. The religious person, though claiming that God comes first, in fact puts God in a niche so it is themselves they are really out to satisfy. They are not interested in God except as a fantasy tool to please themselves with.
 
Good gives us pleasure. That is why it attracts us. When we do good, we do it not because it is good or because God wants us to but because we want to. Therefore we are our own God. We are lying if we pretend to oppose erotica on television or abortion or injustice for the love of God.
 
The Mormons worship a God the Father who is little more than a resurrected man with magical powers. The Catholics worship a God the Father who is completely different: he is spirit and totally unlike man. Put a Catholic theologian and a Mormon theologian in a room and each one will be convinced his God is real and that the others is false. But one of them is wrong despite what he thinks and feels and no matter how many good works he says his view of God inspires him to undertake. One of them is creating his God. One of them is serving himself by serving his own creation. That is what many people would think. I would go a step further. Since psychologically they feel the same and their faith works the same way, BOTH of them are creating their Gods. Both of them are idolaters. Atheists are idolaters too but at least we are honest about it. We admit that we prefer this world and ordinary life to any God. When the believer is outraged at blasphemy against his God, it is outrage against his own creation and therefore himself that he is worried about.

No religion can rely on miracles or reason to justify belief in its view of divinity. When anyone starts to believe in God they are just inventing a God for themselves plus a creed for themselves that happens to be similar to that of the other members.  If they were in another religion they would invent another kind of god.

What about people who believe in a bad God? It seems at first that if God were just a mental idol nobody would want to have an evil one. Some people like fear and are addicted to creating their own problems. They are masochists and/or sadists who would like to have a bad God to worship. And if you are a sadist or masochist life will not feel that bad for you so you think others have to worry about God being bad not you.

If there is a God and Jesus Christ, then they cannot be worshipped for there is no evidence that we should worship. No matter how much closely imagined versions of them resemble them they are not intended to be them. The Church denies the Father and the Son in a subtle way thus it is drunk with what it calls the spirit of antichrist (1 John 2:22,23; 4:2,3).

Religion is not devotion to God if God is good for it resides on blind faith which is dangerous and bad. It is obvious that it is malign to blindly believe whatever you want. Religion is base self-gratification therefore the adoration of God is insincere and is really done out of selfishness. It is self-worship and it is criminal for the religious rules that go with it are a great source of misery.

Loving the sinner and hating the sin or as it is more sweetly put "love the sinner not the sin" [it says  you must not feel indifferent to the sin and you cannot love it so then you have no option but to hate it] is impossible. Can you trust the sinner and not the sin? Can you punish the sin and not the sinner? Can you curse the sin and not the sinner? Can you ostracise the sin and not the sinner? Christians are fully aware of the hypocrisy - they don't believe anybody who tells them they hate their Christianity but love them. Christians call to hate. They demand that you hate and then do the additional evil of lying about it that it is really love you do. People would have little time for God if they didn't think he loved them despite their sins and those of their loved ones. They want a crutch and a God who orders others to love them despite their sins. They invent a God who can do this impossibility to console themselves. Because he is based on self-deceit, they are prone to hate anybody who sees through their lies.
 
God religion is commanded to hate sin. You would also be bound to hate evil acts that are not sinful. For example, a person who mistakenly believes that babies are demons and goes and murders them is not sinning but doing a good work in his heart. The results however are evil. The Catholic would have to hate the Protestant worship of God for he would see it as erroneous for the Protestant is outside the one true faith, the one true system of worship that God has set up. Nobody hates sin and misplaced good very much and as long as that is the case they can be held to be adoring an idol that may look like the real God if he exists but which actually is not. In so far as you do not hate what God hates, you do not love God but a caricature of him. To love God is to hate what he says is evil.
 
To ask one to hate sin is to ask one to hate sinners. To also ask one to love sinners is asking one to pretend to love. The Church boasts that it can love the sinner and hate the sin. It is a lying boast and the Church even goes as far as to say that it is an extreme sin to doubt that loving sinners and hating sin is possible. There is no point in believing in God or wanting God if loving the sinner and hating the sin are contradictory. The Church's worship of God is based on self-righteous pride. The Church hates and maligns those who see the deceit of loving sinners and hating sin.
 
To say that John does bad, whether he is deliberately bad or not, is to say that if bad is hateful then John is hateful. If bad is not hateful then why counsel to hate sin? It is never sin we hate but what sin says about the person. Sin indicates that the person is hateful assuming sin is to be hated. To hate the sin and to love the sinner makes out that there is a distinction without a difference. It is like saying, "I hate your Christianity but admire your religious notions." "I oppose everything about you and everything that you do but I don't oppose you." "I am glad you are alive but I am opposed to the fact that you are breathing."
 
It is bad enough for an unbeliever in God to say, "Love the evil person but hate and detest the evil they do." But it is worse for a God believer to say that for they believe that evil is not just hurting a person but insulting God so evil is worse if there is a God. God deepens hypocrisy and the deceit and darkness of the human heart. Its black evil appears as an angel of light. Imagine how bad it gets if the belief in God and the adoration of him is just hypocrisy!

The believers tend towards hypocrisy. This itself does not prove the doctrine of God to be a blight. But it shows he will not really have men as custodians of his revelation. Following Messiahs and Popes and Prophets is just asking for trouble. It’s really idolatry.
The God of the Church then is an expression of hypocrisy. The Christians treat their ethical opinions as if they were God's will and an expression of what God is like. This is idolatry and self-serving.
 
If God exists and supports say the Roman Catholic Church as the only true Church he can look after it. If the Church is mocked and if somebody denies a treasured doctrine such as that Mary was sinless the Catholics get bigoted and insecure. They will want to retaliate and often will retaliate. This is a sure sign that they sense their faith is not of divine origin. Why else would they act in a way so inconsistent with the doctrine of God?
 
Most people do not have the knowledge and intelligence to know what they are talking about when they talk about God and their true religion. The more stupid I am in relation to my friend, the more it is the image I have of that person that I have the relationship with and not the person.

Stephen the first Christian martyr reminded the Jews how they believed in the right God who lived in the Temple. Yet he attacked their view as idolatry on the basis that there is nothing special about the Temple for God dwells everywhere. The Temple is just as sacred as anywhere else. He illustrates how shockingly easy it is to be idolatrous and not know it. You can worship the real God in idolatrous fashion without it being noticeable.

 If somebody does not have a personal relationship with God and God is not giving guidance to that person then the person has a God who is just a bigger version of themselves. They worship themselves indirectly. They create God and worship that creation.  One way can that be done even if you have a God who is not you, is you internalise that God.  You can internalise another person so that your devotion to them is really devotion to yourself.

The Christians invent a God of lies - he is their special idol. They make him not out of wood and metal but out of the desires and fears they have. To worship your own invention is to worship yourself.