ReventonRage's Waterfall
God, if you go by the traditional theistic definition, is the proper object of worship. This necessarily means that any rational moral agent is obligated to worship God, if he exists.
If you do not assume this is true, then you are attacking a straw man. However, even if you do, you are also begging the question because such an assumption is based on evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that God exists.
Thus, no matter how you look at it, your argument is invalid.
As I have said, to prove that God (in the theistic sense, of course) exists, one must establish beyond reasonable doubt that he is the proper object of worship and that rational moral agents are obligated to worship God. Your argument merely assumes that to be true without any supporting arguments to prove that it is true.
But you're committing the genetic fallacy here. Just because they're a theist, or at least they believe they are, it doesn't mean that what they say is true. What you have said is basically that the existence of God(s) is entirely arbitrary. This is going backwards.
I think that it is definitely true that the premise does seem to assume that. I think that even by the three premises given above, it is clear that the argument has no merit at all.
Yes, I understand the distinction. I sacrificed technicality for the sake of clarity to the layman here. However, I'll take note not do so in the future.
if god is defined as a worshiped being
I didn't say that God is defined as a worship being. I said that God is believed to be a being worthy of worship, i.e. a proper Object of worship. Thus, it is not that worship is improper, the reason why I suggest that theism is unjustifiable is because we are not obligated to worship any God, since the burden of proof is on the theist to prove beyond reasonable doubt why (1) such a God exists and (2) the God is worthy of worship.
I never said it did, and I agree with you that the premise doesn't necessarily imply it.
Yes, I do understand that you didn't say it at all. And no, it is not that the premise doesn't necessarily imply it, it is that the premise should not imply it at all. That is the main point of my discussion.
I'll go further and say the premise doesn't imply an ought at all.
And thus, if the premise doesn't imply that rational moral agents ought to worship any entity, then there is no proper object of worship. If there is no proper object of worship, either God's existence is unknown to us or that there is no God. However you look at it, this fails as an argument for God.
Are you thinking I am a theist? I'm not.
No, I don't think so. I am merely refuting the argument you have presented. Whether or not you are a theist does not affect my view of the argument.
Do you think that even atheists have the intellectual equivalent of a theology?
I don't think so. But atheism perhaps is itself a thought tradition in philosophy.
This question is a very common one in studying the philosophy of religion. To answer this question, one must first understand that theism is a cluster of 3 main views:
1. God exists.
2. God is maximally great and the Creator.
3. Rational moral agents are obliged to worship God.
This idea of obligation to worship is central to traditional theistic beliefs. One cannot be considered a theist if he/she does not believe that they have an obligation to worship God. This obligation to worship God implies that God is the proper object or worship. In other words, there are good reasons to suggest that one ought to worship God. All you have asserted in the first premise is that some humans do worship God. But just because it is a fact that some people worship a God (or Gods. Like I said, singular for simplicity), it does not necessarily imply that one ought to worship a God.
Premise 1: God is a title/label for a being or group of beings that are unwaveringly trusted.
I suppose that in this particular premise, you are equating "unwaveringly trusted" to "worhsipped", am I right?
According to the OED, worship refers to "To honour or revere as a supernatural being or power, or as a holy thing; to regard or approach with veneration; to adore with appropriate acts, rites, or ceremonies." The OED also defines trust as "To have faith or confidence; to place reliance; to confide."
The mere idea of worshipping an alleged maximally great being, however, implies the worshipper would have some reason to trust that being. If the person does not have any reason to trust that being, then that being ought not to be worshipped.
In summary, what I am saying is that one cannot derive ought facts from is facts. In other words, premise 1 of your argument doesn't necessarily hold true unless you have good reasons to show why something ought to be worshipped.
I am talking about the one that exists because worship exists.
I think this is perhaps where the flaw in the argument lies. Just because it is a fact that people worship (or worshipped) something, it doesn't mean that that entity (or group of entities) ought to be worshipped. In order to prove that some entity (I use the singular here for simplicity, but note that it includes the idea of a group of entities as well) is worthy of worship, one must show that there are properties that makes the entity worthy of worship and rational moral agents are obliged to worship that entity due to the property (or properties) that it possess.
It actually depends on which conception of "God" you are talking about. However, this argument still does not hold any water. In traditional Abrahamic religions, God is said to be a maximally great being, if he exists. What this means is that God is believed to be an actual rational moral agent and not a mere metaphor. Thus, it is obvious that if "God" here refers to the Judeo-Christian God, then premise 1 is false. If the premise is false, the argument is invalid and therefore, it doesn't prove the existence of God.
Even if you were to refer to God in the pantheistic sense, it still fails as the pantheistic "God" refers to nature. It thus is a metaphor for nature, and not "a person or group who is trusted".
