Some gods are crap and are worthy of nothing. Some gods are awesome and are worthy of honour.

Depending, I suppose, what they are allegedly responsible for. That's one thing polytheism doesn't have to worry about-- if you have a reasonably balanced war of the gods, you can subscribe all the crappy stuff to the "bad" gods and all the flowers and rainbows to the "good" gods. Monotheism automatically gets itself into a bit of a problem.

I think the real question is, "are gods intrinsicly worthy of worship aside from things they may do?"

No.

This makes me think of the Ancients in Stargate. They had the powers of gods, but they were really just people. Initially, they were regarded as quite worthy of awe, but as the show went along, they basically ended up being people, unless they had actually DONE something. I feel this should apply to God or gods, as well as kings and other unelected beings.

Hallowed are the Ori.

Ciarin wrote:Hallowed are the Ori.

Yoruba spirituality and mythology?

I never did get it, even when I was a Lutheran. I could see that I had concern for my eternity and all, and if the rules demanded repsect, sure I can do it. But what exactly he got out of it, us ants worshipping the allpowerful, I had no clue.

Hallowed are the Ori.

Ooh, chills.

dylan wrote:

Ciarin wrote:Hallowed are the Ori.

Yoruba spirituality and mythology?

They must be shown the path. Hallowed are the Ori.

Ciarin wrote:
They must be shown the path. Hallowed are the Ori.

ahhh..."ascended" beings who use their advanced technology!

dylan wrote:

Ciarin wrote:Hallowed are the Ori.

Yoruba spirituality and mythology?

That would be the Orisha.

The silly thing about this notion that gods should automatically be considered worthy of worship is that if a mortal were to go around behaving like Yahweh, Christian fundies would be the first to demand that person be punished with the death penalty. However, if that person has a whole bunch of magic powers, suddenly it makes them 'good'. The only thing that separates us from gods is the level of power, and it is not the powers that one possesses that determines a person's virtue, but how one chooses to use them.

My favourite has to be Ninkasi. Sumerian beer goddess. Can't go wrong worshipping that.

Actually there is a funny outline here showing an example of the many plaques found in Mesopotamia, which this one depicts a woman drinking beer (?) from a jar while having sexual intercourse (Clay plaque. Old Babylonian, around 1800 BCE.)

I'm male so what's the Sumerian for "pass the jar please darling, I'm a desert back here.".

For god to exist, the only way I can see it is that there has to be all "society" of gods.

And that multiverse is a reality.

And that there is a god for each universe in that multiverse.

And that all gods are almighty, all-knowing and fully divine as taught by the religions.


Then the god that created our universe is one of those gods with a serious mental retardation, because he fucked up at every step of the way.

To be almighty, and all knowing and to despite all those divine attributes create this - what we have around us - you have to be an idiot, a god with "less than average divine IQ", a seriously mentally retarded god.

In that case, "our god" needs our help, not worship.

Because he is 45 yo and just shat himself...


Or.. he is just a Nazi cunt.

I imagine creating universes is probably quite dangerous, with all the destructive explosions required. Perhaps the creator of the universe was originally a rational and sensible god, but suffered immense brain damage after being caught in the Big Bang?

Arcanyn wrote:The silly thing about this notion that gods should automatically be considered worthy of worship is that if a mortal were to go around behaving like Yahweh, Christian fundies would be the first to demand that person be punished with the death penalty. However, if that person has a whole bunch of magic powers, suddenly it makes them 'good'. The only thing that separates us from gods is the level of power, and it is not the powers that one possesses that determines a person's virtue, but how one chooses to use them.

Orange Proximity wrote:For god to exist, the only way I can see it is that there has to be all "society" of gods.

And that multiverse is a reality.

And that there is a god for each universe in that multiverse.

And that all gods are almighty, all-knowing and fully divine as taught by the religions.


Then the god that created our universe is one of those gods with a serious mental retardation, because he fucked up at every step of the way.

To be almighty, and all knowing and to despite all those divine attributes create this - what we have around us - you have to be an idiot, a god with "less than average divine IQ", a seriously mentally retarded god.

In that case, "our god" needs our help, not worship.

Because he is 45 yo and just shat himself...


Or.. he is just a Nazi cunt.

What if gods don't create universes?

What if they have big hammers ?

byofrcs wrote:My favourite has to be Ninkasi. Sumerian beer goddess. Can't go wrong worshipping that.

Actually there is a funny outline here showing an example of the many plaques found in Mesopotamia, which this one depicts a woman drinking beer (?) from a jar while having sexual intercourse (Clay plaque. Old Babylonian, around 1800 BCE.)

I'm male so what's the Sumerian for "pass the jar please darling, I'm a desert back here.".

That was a great link! They didn't mess around, those Sumerians.

The Mexicans (Aztecs) had a whole horde of booze related Gods (most regional Gods of small towns and villages doubled up as Dieties of Having a Few Jars), one of my favourites being Quatlapanqui (The Head Splitter) - you can kind of tell which part of the eqauation he fits into from the name.

Anyway, to briefly bore anyone who will bother reading this shitless, those Mexican Gods (and this is probably true of the Americas in general) weren't really quite Gods in the same way as Himself of Bible fame. There's a strong argument for their being er... handily anthropomorphised descriptions of things in nature (as in the term God was a function of language in this case rather than a description in the sense we tend to recognise) and not necessarily viewed as 'disembodied intelligences sitting on clouds' or even necessarily things with an immediately comprehensible self-will. That still amounts to "nature worship" I suppose, though if you rephrase that as "appreciation" it seems reasonable to me. This could also be true of Sumeria, Greece etc, but I don't know enough about those to really say.

The bottom line is therefore something like trees / flowers = cool, and I'm not going to worship someone whose power seems to be the ability to tell me what I can and cannot do with my johnson.

IrrationalSkeptic wrote:Picking up on something thedistillers said ...

See, there's your problem right there. thedistillers finds arguments of the following form convincing: "Imagine a perfect thing. Would that perfect thing be more perfect if it existed? Now, imagine God: wouldn't God be more perfect if he existed? Therefore, God exists . . . John 3:16" . . . atheists are idiots . . . yada yada yada . . .

No, if we were to imagine a being that doesn't give a shit about you, or me, or the fate of the universe. This being would not be worthy of worship . . . and this putative being wouldn't care if we did or not. The thing is; worship is done for the sake of currying favour; for a defect free birth, a bountiful harvest, calm seas, green lights and an accident free commute . . . A God "worthy" of worship is a God that has the same petty values as the self indulgent egoists that most naive Christians really are.

A God worthy of worship is just another way of saying "my God agrees with me" which is just another way of saying; "I am better than you" and isn't that what Christians really want, to be better than everybody else? Especially considering that they are told they are miserable sinners every Sunday.

heathen wrote:
The thing is; worship is done for the sake of currying favour; for a defect free birth, a bountiful harvest, calm seas, green lights and an accident free commute . . .

Don't particularly disagree with anything in your post but I'd add that worship might also be regarded as a leveller, for want of a better term, a means (even if it is not intended as such) of reminding oneself that one is NOT the center of the universe.