If, it was proven beyond all doubt that a god existed. Would you worship it?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Well my thoughts on Heaven and Hell are well documented and Heaven appears to be the worst option. Spending an eternity worshipping some Trump like creep.
No give me fire and brimstone any day. At least there will be some interesting people in hell

As Twain quipped, heaven for the climate, hell for the company.

 

[Scott C.]

Well I'm very happy for you that you believe that. I don't find it any where near as plausible.

I don't find my very existence to be plausible. And yet, here I am.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

No because I don't see the point.

 

[Mohsen]

As an atheist I think this is highly unlikely but for this thought experiment, let's assume that a god has revealed themselves to the world.

Now would you worship it?

I couldn't bring myself to do so; I'd be happy to say thanks for what I have but regularly get on my knees and give thanks, NO!

Thoughts.

Why would you be interested in the thoughts of human beings when you would deny God revealing His thoughts to you? Makes no sense

 

[Altfish]

Why would you be interested in the thoughts of human beings when you would deny God revealing His thoughts to you? Makes no sense

Because human beings are real, gods are just fairy stories.

 

[Altfish]

I don't find my very existence to be plausible. And yet, here I am.

Strange, my existence is easily explained; I'll introduce you to my mum and dad

 

[Scott C.]

Strange, my existence is easily explained; I'll introduce you to my mum and dad

Ha, yeah, we all come from mums and dads. But I'm freaked out that anything exists at all, you, me, God, anything. Existence over nothingness is not plausible to me. Yet, here we are. Mind blown.

 

[Altfish]

Ha, yeah, we all come from mums and dads. But I'm freaked out that anything exists at all, you, me, God, anything. Existence over nothingness is not plausible to me. Yet, here we are. Mind blown.

You, me = pretty amazing
God = sorry, don't buy that
"Existence over nothingness is not plausible to me" = That's known as an argument from incredulity ie I can't understand it so it can't be true.

Yes, we are lucky to be here. Most people are never born and never have the opportunity to live their 3 score and 10 years on this earth.

 

[syo]

let's assume that a god has revealed themselves to the world.

Now would you worship it?

only if he was good-natured.

 

[syo]

let's assume that a god has revealed themselves to the world.

I hope that if he revealed himself to the world, then pain and suffering would dissappear.

 

[InChrist]

Poor choice of word on my part, but nonetheless, "benign" would do.

Honestly, I would prefer that than a God who sends a plage to wipe out a population because the King refused to "let his people go"; or sends death angels to slay all 1st born children because of the one who refused to bend to his will; or one that throws people in eternal hellfire for minute crimes; or one who wipes out an entire population, save 7, because they weren't acting like he wanted them to act; or the "one" who wrote the rules that forgiveness of sin requires a blood sacrifice ...

So while I'd prefer a more benevolent deity, a more benign one would certainly be the better choice.

One description given in the NT is that... God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29).

 

[InChrist]

I don't think it would matter that much. I couldn't see an all-powerful, loving God caring whether we worship him. I would imagine God would not be that self-serving. I would just try to live my life as best I could, helping as many people as I could, thinking of others before myself, etc. I don't think worshiping God would matter all that much to God.

I used to feel that way as a non-believer. Now I realize that it does matter, not for God's sake who is entirely Self-sufficient with no need of us, but for our sake.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Free will is essential in God's plan. That leads to evil choices and the suffering of the innocent. People also suffer as the result of a dangerous world with disease and risk, not related to evil. Life is meant to be hard.

And that's a good god?

Anything bad that happens in this life will be only a blink of the eye against the backdrop of forever.

Doesn't matter.

Also, shouldn't we be concerned about spending forever with a god that permits evil and suffering?

God's perspective is eternal.

So He still condones slavery and rape? You sure that you trust this god to treat you well in the afterlife?

no matter how convinced someone is that the Christian God, if he exists, is evil, that perception will melt away in an instant when one is actually in God's presence.

There is no reason to believe that.

The person will realize how obviously wrong he was, and the need to ask "why" might go away all together.

Perhaps it is you who realize how wrong he was. Your argument seems to be that we cannot see the love involved in sitting idly by and watching suffering (or causing it), but will be able to do so later. Will we see the love of condemning souls to eternal torture for not worshiping this god?

These are the arguments that are necessary for someone who believes in an omniscient, ommnipotent, benevolent god in the a godless universe in which bad things are expected to happen and do. We're asked to suspend judgment on this god for now. Well, If I'm to do that, I have no reason to judge this god good, either.

• “Please notice the double standard that people like Dr. Craig use to exonerate God from all this evil. We’re told that God is loving, and kind, and just, and intrinsically good; but when someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people, of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we’re told that God is mysterious. “Who can understand God’s will?”
  
  “And yet, this is precisely - this “merely human” understanding of God’s will - is precisely what believers use to establish his goodness in the first place. Something good happens to a Christian - he feels some bliss while praying, say, or he sees some positive change in his life - and we’re told that God is good. But when children by the tens of thousands are torn from their parents’ arms and drowned, we’re told that God is mysterious. This is how you play tennis without the net. And I want to suggest to you, that it is not only tiresome when otherwise-intelligent people speak this way, it is morally reprehensible.
  
  “Given all the good, all that this God of yours does not accomplish in the lives of others, given - given the misery that’s being imposed on some helpless child at this instant - this kind of faith is obscene. To think in this way is to fail to reason honestly, or to care sufficiently about the suffering of other human beings." - Sam Harris

 

[Scott C.]

You, me = pretty amazing

Agree that you and I are amazing.

God = sorry, don't buy that

Can't agree on everything.

"Existence over nothingness is not plausible to me" = That's known as an argument from incredulity ie I can't understand it so it can't be true.

I am arguing against arguments from incredulity. Sometimes things are true, which we can't understand or which we find implausible.

Yes, we are lucky to be here. Most people are never born and never have the opportunity to live their 3 score and 10 years on this earth.

Not sure if I detect sarcasm. It's hard for me to imagine how I would perceive my life if I did not believe in God and life after death. My belief is so deeply rooted in my consciousness and is so much a part of who I am. My world view would be radically different and so would my life style. But I think I would still feel a sense of awe and wonder at life and the universe.

 

[Scott C.]

And that's a good god?

I understand your arguments. But right in the here and now, in the midst of evil and suffering in this world, I feel and perceive God's existence, his goodness, and his love. I have for as long as I can remember. While I have not suffered as much as many people in this world, when I consider the pain that has come my way, I see it as a learning experience. I see God's hand helping me through it. I see purpose. I see meaning. And I believe when I die I will see even much more clearly. We are in the area of faith, hope, and things of the soul. Hard to prove.

 

[Augustus]

Well my thoughts on Heaven and Hell are well documented and Heaven appears to be the worst option. Spending an eternity worshipping some Trump like creep.
No give me fire and brimstone any day. At least there will be some interesting people in hell

That's just about the most irrational thing I've ever heard. It's the sort of thing you say when you don't believe in hell, not when you know for a 100% fact it exists as per this thought experiment.

There are no 'interesting people' because you are being brutally tortured. Hold a blow torch to your eyeball and see how much you enjoy a bit of banter. And if an omnimax god created heaven, you'd like it. He has the blueprints for what you like.

I'm going to absolutely guarantee you that if you were kidnapped by a sadistic billionaire and given the options:

A) Worship him. Just turn a webcam on every Sunday and sing about him for an hour and in return he will give you $1 million per week
B) He will cut your balls off then flay you and dip you in rubbing alcohol.

You would choose A.

Choosing hell is infinitely worse than choosing B. There is 0% chance you would choose hell if you genuinely believed it existed as per the scare stories.

 

[Mohsen]

Because human beings are real, gods are just fairy stories.

what if - you are not real? and I am not human? and what if, this post and the last you read from this account named Mohsen, are actually authored by a monkey who just took a chance at the laptop it had stolen? what can you really believe?

The one thing you failed to understand is that the absence of proof does not equate to a proof of absence!

Prove to me God doesn't exist?

You see - the fallacy of proof is actually on you, and you can never prove that He doesn't exist! simply because - the absence of proof is not proof of absence. Belief in God is axiomatic, and not indoctrinated. Just ask any believer in God here.

God has made it infinitely impossible to disprove His existence - while proving His existence is in itself, defined by those who have faith in Him due to very personal experiences, rationality, and innate disposition to know He exists, as well as the argument from design, and other intellectually sound facets of reason. Empiricism is a one trick pony, and can only answer the "how" and never the "why". As for Cause & Effect, being applied to the Prime Mover argument would have the atheist chasing his own tail with his insistence that the cause has to have a cause (ad infinitum) while ignoring his own "scientific method" in this one instance. That's a type of intellectual dishonesty which doesn't slip over my head. The infinite regress is something which I find quite ironic when it comes to atheists asking for proof. It seems they wouldn't know proof if it hit them square on the jaw.

Would you like to go further?

 

[Altfish]

That's just about the most irrational thing I've ever heard. It's the sort of thing you say when you don't believe in hell, not when you know for a 100% fact it exists as per this thought experiment.

There are no 'interesting people' because you are being brutally tortured. Hold a blow torch to your eyeball and see how much you enjoy a bit of banter. And if an omnimax god created heaven, you'd like it. He has the blueprints for what you like.

I'm going to absolutely guarantee you that if you were kidnapped by a sadistic billionaire and given the options:

A) Worship him. Just turn a webcam on every Sunday and sing about him for an hour and in return he will give you $1 million per week
B) He will cut your balls off then flay you and dip you in rubbing alcohol.

You would choose A.

Choosing hell is infinitely worse than choosing B. There is 0% chance you would choose hell if you genuinely believed it existed as per the scare stories.

You don't understand, imagine eternity with the likes of Mother Teresa, The Popes and Archbishops, righteous evangelists. No, that would be hell.
Give me Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Bowie, George Best, etc anytime

 

[Mohsen]

Would you like to go further?

I'm gonna take it there... heck why not lol, it's been a while!

The Muslim idea which presupposes the innate disposition to know God exists is supported by psychological, sociological and anthropological evidence. Here are some examples

The Evidence from Psychology: An famous academic named Olivera Petrovich concluded her research concerning the psychology of the human being and God’s existence. Her research determined that the belief in a non-anthropomorphic God is the natural state of an human being. Atheism is a learned psychology. You can find this information here:

Infants ‘have natural belief in God’. The Age National (Australia) Infants 'have natural belief in God'.

Theism is our natural state. Atheism is unnatural.

Olivera Petrovich further examined this "natural state" or as I call it - "innate disposition" - and she wrote this: “The possibility that some religious beliefs are universal (e.g., basic belief in a non-anthropomorphic God as creator of the natural world) seems to have a stronger empirical foundation than could be inferred from religious texts. Some of the initial findings of research into early religious understanding are consistent with other areas of developmental research which suggest that there are cognitive universals in a number of domains of human knowledge…” - Source: Key Psychological Issues in the Study of Religion. Olivera Petrovich. psihologija, 2007, Vol. 40 (3), str. 351-363

The Evidence from Sociology: Professor Barrett’s research in his book Born believers looked at the science of children’s religious beliefs and at the behaviour and claims of children. He concluded that children believed in what he calls “natural religion”. This is the idea that there is a personal being that created the entire universe. And that That ‘being’ cannot be human – it must be divine, supernatural.

He wrote: “Scientific research on children’s developing minds and supernatural beliefs suggests that children normally and rapidly acquire minds that facilitate belief in supernatural agents. Particularly in the first year after birth, children distinguish between agents and non-agents, understanding agents as able to move themselves in purposeful ways to pursue goals. They are keen to find agency around them, even given scant evidence. Not long after their first birthday, babies appear to understand that agents, but not natural forces or ordinary objects, can create order out of disorder…This tendency to see function and purpose, plus an understanding that purpose and order come from minded beings, makes children likely to see natural phenomena as intentionally created. Who is the Creator? Children know people are not good candidates. It must have been a god…children are born believers of what I call natural religion…” Source: Justin L. Barrett. Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief. Free Press. 2012, pp. 35 – 36.

The Evidence from Anthropology: I'm asking you to consider the atheism of communist Russia and communist China. They still had signs of what you would call a worship instinct, a sanctification instinct, awe of a greater being, which relates to the innate disposition. For example their big statues of Stalin and Lenin were almost revered. When you look at different cultures you can see this worship instinct coming through. This instinct even manifests itself in Atheist cultures. So for an atheist to claim they "do not believe in God(s)" is silly.

Before this post gets too long, I summarise with some words from the Qur'an,

Qur'an 52:35/36 "
Or were they created by nothing, or were they the creators [of themselves]?
Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Rather, they are not certain.

peace

 

[Profound Realization]

As an atheist I think this is highly unlikely but for this thought experiment, let's assume that a god has revealed themselves to the world.

Now would you worship it?

I couldn't bring myself to do so; I'd be happy to say thanks for what I have but regularly get on my knees and give thanks, NO!

Thoughts.

What's the world? Inside or outside?

What's worthy to give reverence to for me are invincible attributes such as goodness, peace, kindness, forgiveness, unconditional love, patience, honesty, truth, things that are just and right, etc. In my internal world where I once did not know of these on a deeper scale... they were revealed to me on a deeper scale I never knew existed.

I cannot personally imagine an individual entity with above attributes as being needy for praise as in ego-stroking, flattering its greatness, or having need for anything. So no, I wouldn't give praise to an individual entity. It would be more as giving praise to its nature/character/attributes as opposed to giving praise to it.