Why does God need to be worshipped?

It depends on who is defining omnipotence and whether the defintion includes actions that are non-sensical or logically impossible... i.e. "Can an Omnipotent being make itself exist and not exist at the same time?" Most theologians will define Omnipotence as '... anything that is logically possible.'Now, if one wanted an example of an omnipotent being doing something that doesn't make any logical sense, one just needs to look at creation --6,000 years ago an omnipotent being created man from the dust with an appendix and a birth canal too small.

I'm not sure that it's accurate to say that God needs people to worship him. Where did you get the notion that he did?The reason why some people worship God is simple enough. They want to express their unreserved love/devotion/admiration of God.

Not if pain generation was your aim.

quote:

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To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.

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I couldn't find anything on the appendix in the Bible but the above goes to show that "apparent absence of use" can be the result of absence of knowledge as to use.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Organised religion almost invariably implies this to be necessary and desired by God. Maybe. It may also be because they have been brainwashed into thinking it necessary by organised religion and family/social traditions that arise out of organised religion.
Prayers before bedtime, grace before meals, Church on a Sunday. Are these traditions being followed because people have an enthusiasm and desire to show their glorious love and devotion to God? Or because that it is what they are 'supposed' to do?

Whatever about that, this is about Gods supposed needs. The question stands.- There is no maybe about the "some people" I was referring to. You are probably referring to some other people and why they worship. I would agree with you that this is the case. In my opinion the majority case.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

You asked where the writer of the OP specifically (and presumably others with the same view) had got the notion that God wants to be worshipped.
I suggested that this notion came from the fact that organised religion strongly and repeatedly suggests that God does want to be worshipped.
For most of us the 'notions' of what God does or does not want us to do come directly or indirectly from organised religion. So does the answer.In your opinion does God want to be worshipped?
In your opinion why does organised religion seem so hell bent on such worship?

Hi, Grizz: you replied to Straggler's message instead of mine, so I didn't notice it until now. I was agreeing with that. I can't speak for the Protestant/Evangelical beliefs, but, in Mormon tradition, at least (and probably in other works-based denominations and movements), God's actions are motivated purely by concern for our welfare. Thus, everything is regarded as a teaching process. Worshiping (as in, the "Praise God! Hallelujah!" part) is asked of us so that we can learn humility, which in turn leads to honesty and better understanding of our current position before Him and in relation to our Eternal goal.And, God doesn't get anything out of it, except perhaps for the Divine equivalent of parental pride, or something like that. Again, I can only speak from a Mormon perspective, but we don't have a problem with limiting God: we make covenants which we consider binding on God, and we believe He is literally incapable of misleading us. We also believe in authority and offices, including the authority and "office" of God: while acting in the "office" of God, so to speak, God is bound to a certain set of duties and responsibilities, which include not deliberately misleading us, and fulfilling His side of a covenant that He has entered with us (as long as we fulfill our side).He has made His mission and purpose in regards to us clear: it is our salvation/exaltation. In my personal view, when He calls Himself "omnipotent," it generally means that He is capable of doing everything that is related to that purpose. He also does not particularly concern Himself with teaching us about what other purposes He may have in mind, so we are generally allowed free rein to speculate on things like evolution, whether or not He exists outside of our space-time, whether or not He can lift His own unliftable rock, etc.And, yes, this is different from a lot of mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs, but it is based upon much of the same information, and is attributed to the same God.So, I believe very strongly that the mainstream Christian view of God's personality (which was described well by Larni in message #4) is not correct.

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I'm Thylacosmilus.Darwin loves you.

Which doesn't really tell us from whence the notion of God's need came from. It might be that I want a cream cake. It doesn't mean I need one.Sorry to be pedantic but I don't recognise 'organised religion' saying that God needs anything at all. If anything it would say that God needs nothing at all from us.- Fair enough

Hi Bluejay. As always, it is nice to read your well-reasoned posts. Sorry about the reply button mix-up.Let me just give you an idea of where I am coming from:The fact that people ask questions such as ,"Why does God need to be worshipped?" reminds me why I am an agnostic. Most people base their belief or disbelief in the existence of a God on their metaphysical presuppositions about the nature of reality. To be quite honest, I really haven't entirely dismissed the idea that it is possible or even plausible that there exists a transcendental cause for the existence of the corporeal world. The more I have thought about it, however, the more I realize that, with the exception of deism, none of the claims being made about the nature of such a 'cause' really offer much in the way of internal consistency. I find the theistic idea of a personal deity rather disjointed and it seems to be more of a wish than an inference.Many properties theologians attribute to such a personal deity often don't jive with other attributes and are often at odds with plain old-fashioned common sense and/or empirical knowledge. An omnipotent deity concerned with human affairs who also desires that Mankind come to understand this divine relationship surely could have done a much better job at revealing information. It is absurd to think that the same transcendental deity whose omnipotent mind cooked up the laws of Physics and the complexities that resulted could fail so badly when it comes to revealing timely, precise, and relevant information. The information that we are told arrived to us through divine revelation is often disjointed, ambiguous, and is relayed with all the sophistication of a Children's bedtime story. Is it realistic to conclude that this information came from the same divine mind that authored Maxwell's Equations?No disrespect or offense intended, but in the case of Mormonism, it is just as absurd, in my opinion, to think that such a personal deity would leave mankind hanging by waiting thousands of years to reveal the 'real' story to a 19th century inhabitant of upstate New York.The stories people tell about God and pass off as divine revelation, the often ambiguous nature of this revelation, and the existence of so many differing views and opinions on it's meaning does more harm to the validity of these particular world views than any other argument even the most militant of atheists could put forward. Surely, an omnipotent and personal God could have done much better than this. People like to argue back and forth about the existence of a God, but it is the nature of the stories we tell about deity that I find more revealing and a bit more troubling.

Fail so badly (and absurdly) as he did when he created ... Which only goes to show that absurdity resides in the mind of the beholder. "I don't get it therefore it's absurd" (translated as: "I'm god")

What is even more absurd is the fact that some adults cannot manage to figure out why someone would possibly see as absurd those conclusions about the world that have been generated by taking at face value certain literary tales that have the level of information content one would expect to find in a child's bedtime story.

Hi, Grizz: I've grown to respect you, your viewpoints and your logic during my time at EvC. Thank you for your input. Grizz, you make a good point, and I don't have the knowledge, evidence, faith or heart to try to refute it. I portray myself here on EvC as a devout Mormon (and I generally am), but I inevitably have my own concerns about my religion (including many of the ones you've brought up here), which often puts me at odds with my fellow Mormons and makes my mother condemn my actions sometimes.Well, in order to keep it related to the topic, I'll only mention my troubles with the "God needing worship" thing. I'm no literary expert, but I have read the Bible and the Book of Mormon all my life (the BoM was the first thing I actually read on my own, after a kid's book called "The Bee"). There is a very sharp distinction between OT, NT and BoM in terms of doctrinal/theological/mythological content, which has always confused me. God in the BoM is calm, gentle and loving throughout, and speaks openly about resurrection, spirits and repentance, and doesn't do an inordinate amount of "worship me, puny mortals" stuff. But the OT version of God is vengeful, jealous and narcissistic, does not get around to mentioning an afterlife, and would rather kill than forgive minor misdemeanors. And, these two books are partially synchronistic, meaning that God is either very two-faced, not the only god active at the time, or non-existent.I personally believe in something more akin to deism, wherein God is not as involved in events as we tend to think He is (this is mostly influenced by scientific evidences of gradual, cumulative changes in nature). Thus, each culture attributes to God a number of things that are not really His direct doing, all based on their local views on the nature of God. So, the Hebrews, who lived among many mutually-hostile peoples with lots of mean gods in their mythologies, thought of God as mean, demanding and quick to anger. The Nephites of the BoM generally subscribed to the gentler views of God held by their founding father, Lehi, and thus, attributed nice, happy things to Him, and evil things to their own disobedience. However, in truth, God was only actually involved in the most crucial bits of the stories.However, all this is moot when you factor in my refusal to definitively state whether I believe any scripture to be literal, historical truth.Either way, I don't see God striking you (Grizz "you") down for refusing to worship Him now (or for other admitted atheists speaking rudely about Him on this forum, or for Perdition having a "sacrilegious" alias, etc. other cliche protests), so I submit that, if He exists, and if He is, indeed, the Judeo-Christian God, He is not as vengeful or narcissistic as most mainstream Judeo-Christian types believe and as the OT portrays Him to be.

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Darwin loves you.

Ah I see. You are splitting hairs regarding want and need in a way that I had indeed not taken into account. My apologies.It seems to me that whichever of these two words the OP used the general gist of the question relates to why God would possibly care one way or the other as to whether he is worshipped or not. Why would he want (or need) such a thing?Yet organised religion and the various books on which they are based all seem to demand that God be worshipped.
I am far from an expert in the bible but it has always seemed to me to be quite hot on the idea of worshipping God. If the bible is indeed the source from which we are to determine our actions with regard to God then it would seem to indicate that God does want us to worship him.Why would he want this?

Simple. Without worship, gods cease to exist.

I can understand perfectly why an unbeliever would see only absurdity. To them the story has all the fantastical hallmarks of a fairytale and I can see no way for an unbeliever to come to any other conclusion whilst remaining in that state. Such is unbelief and when I was an unbeliever I would have seen things exactly the same way as you do.Once placed in a position of belief (by act of God) however, there is ample information to draw many of the base conclusions that are drawn.Not that the information contained in the Bible is intended to build a case which would lead an unbeliever to belief - the Bible has other fish to fry and is aimed primarily at those who already believe.