If you stop worshipping God will you end up worshipping anything at all?

 

Some Christians worry that once people stop worshipping God, rather than worship nothing, they could worship anything. They find something else to worship - maybe money, maybe the universe, maybe sex. This view implies that in terms of ideas, if you are going to worship anything, God is the best thing to worship. They suggest that if God exists or not, it makes no difference. This is like Voltaire's assertion that if God did not exist then it would be necessary to invent him.

 

Answering yes to the question puts pressure on people to worship God (as they interpret him - there are more interpretations of the divine than idols in the world!!) and perhaps go to worship in a Church which expands the wallets and influence of Church leaders. 

 

Could it be that those who claim to be servants of God secretly only promote God because they think we are better to worship him even if he does not exist? We are left with no way of being able to tell if a believer is sincere or not. We would suspect them of being pious frauds.

 

If the mere idea of God is so great for us, then it follows that believers should be considered to be innocent of serving God until proven guilty. They are doing us a favour not by honouring God but by endorsing the helpful idea of God.

 

It would explain why even seemingly ardent believers fall far short from the full-on love for God demanded by Jesus Christ 24/7. The Bible says that real faith is matched by good works but there is nothing special about most Christians.

 

Religion says that God is the best hypothesis for explaining the seeming fine-tuning of the universe. All the drama about a fine-tuner is really about people looking for comfort. People - even some agnostics - pray to God and sometimes feel a sense of comfort. A person may feel afraid of flying on a plane and say a prayer and feel safer. That on the face of it seems okay. But it is saying, "It is dangerous to fly unless I pray." It is fanaticism to step on the plane then over faith in God. They sign up to the principle, "People are made for faith and not faith for people." They cannot complain if a person decides to blow up innocent people as a sacrifice to God.

 

If you really think flying is so unsafe, then you degrade yourself by using God and faith as a crutch to get yourself to board the plane. You also degrade others by letting them take what you see is a dangerous and foolish risk.

 

It is said that once we reject religion or God we create a hole inside ourselves that needs to be filled with a substitute which will be some ideology or principle.

 

That is patronising those who say they experience no such hole.

 

It insults good people involved in religion who are not really religious.

 

It makes you ask that if religion fails to bring you to God and to fulfil you then is it to blame for suicides and other problems that arise if people feel dissatisfied with life?  It refuses to take the blame or care if it is to blame!

 

If people are replacing God and religion with power and money what then?  Maybe they only want God  for they think they feel powerful when he and they are on the page?  Maybe they are only replacing one way of being arrogant with another?  Maybe they would be as filthy inside with God as without him?

 

And if religion (or faith in God) is harmful and risky, then the replacement will be bad too. Why? Because you are rejecting religion in the name of goodness and then sneaking in something as bad. You are creating a substitute faith.

 

If religion is harmful it is because people create religion. What man makes will have its side-effects for man has a toxic crafty side. 

 

If faith in religion is bad and you need to substitute it the substitute will not be good either for it is just another creation based on the evil religious impulse. And what is worse is that you have stopped yourself seeing it. So it would follow that it is better to be in a bad religion than to feed a bad impulse by being underhand and fooling yourself.

 

And if religion is essential, Catholicism claims this more than most for it says outside the Church there is no chance of an eternal relationship with God in this life or the next.

Going to church is blasphemy because the Church denies that the greatest sin is to undermine the first greatest commandment that God alone comes first. It mouths the commandment but it does not mean it as it proves time and time again with its evil and ungodly actions.

 

Going to Church is blasphemy against human beings because God claims to be the only thing that is important. People are only to be treated right to please him but they are not thought of as important in themselves which means that all our niceness is just false. Christians may believe that the person is important but what use is it is to say this when that importance has to be lost sight of in seeing the importance of God? It is an insult rather than a compliment. It is only said to deceitfully make people feel at home in the Church.

 

Some pagans honour shifty and unworthy gods but are still very good.  It is as if they want to be better than their gods.

 

Those who complain, "If you don't worship my God you will worship anything" need to be reminded that it does not matter what you do or do not worship as long as you are good as a person.  They are bigots for they imply you are doing something evil if you do not bend the knee to their god.

 

Tell them that if we need their God to just avoid worshipping horse manure or the rum bottle, those with a radically different version of God think the same thing.  So whose God is the best?  And is it really God anybody wants?  Do they want something that is going to miraculously save them from some harm or grant them eternal happiness.  If so anything would do as long as it could do that.

 

Tell them that their argument that without a decent God we would worship anything is blackmail.  It does not give atheists confidence that believers really have the moral compass to inspire us to be like them and love their God.  If they are pressured then how reliable is their faith and their theology?  It does not give them the right to pass these problems on to children and schools.

 

Tell them that people who worship a gold bar can still be better philanthropists than them.  So what are they afraid of?

 

Remember that the person telling you that you will end up worshipping money if you don't worship God needs reminding that it would not be real worship. You don't treat the money as like some kind of sacred mascot and burn incense to it. 

 

As bad as the "if you abandon the worship of God you will replace that with something stupid like money" is, it was clearly what Jesus had in mind when he said you cannot serve God and Mammon.