Monthly Archives: January 2023

Embarrassing misuse of the Criterion of Embarrassment

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Historians confronted with differing versions of ancient manuscripts have developed helpful principles of Bible criticism. These are simple but powerful ways scholars use to better understand the Bible (or any book from history). For example, multiple historical sources are better than a single one, and independent sources are better than sources that all copied from a single authority. Or: older documents are probably better than newer. Or: eyewitness testimony is better than secondhand.

Here’s a clever one: a passage that is embarrassing is more likely to be true than a variant interpretation that makes the heroes of the story look good. This is the Criterion of Embarrassment (CoE).

Consider this example from Mark 1:40–41.

Now a leper came to [Jesus] and fell to his knees, asking for help. “If you are willing, you can make me clean,” he said. Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be clean!”

A tiny minority of manuscripts replaced “moved with compassion” with “moved with anger” or “indignation.” If no other factor were present, scholars would go with the majority reading, “compassion.” But the powerful Criterion of Embarrassment asks us to imagine two possibilities. It’s easy to imagine the original being “anger/indignation,” which was then changed by a scribe to “compassion.” But if the original reading were “compassion,” that’s almost impossible to imagine being changed to “anger” or “indignation.” Why would a scribe do that?

Conclusion: anger/indignation—the more embarrassing option—is the likelier original word.

William Lane Craig’s use of the CoE

Apologist William Lane Craig illustrates a related way to use the CoE.

Because the early Christian church believed in the deity of Christ, you’d expect that if the Gospel accounts were largely the product of the church rather than accurate records of the life of Jesus, the Gospels would suppress or omit embarrassing or awkward traces of Jesus’ weakness and humanity. But they don’t! (Source)

Craig lists some of the gospels’ embarrassing incidents.

  • Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, which suggests that Jesus was the lesser figure who needed forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:9).
  • Jesus didn’t know when he would return. He said that only God knew (Matthew 24:36).
  • His own family thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21).
  • He couldn’t do miracles in his hometown (Mark 6:5).
  • He needed two tries to make a blind man see (Mark 8:22–5).
  • A man called Jesus good. Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone.” (Mark 8:10)
  • How important can the Trinity be when it’s not clearly explained in the Bible?
  • Jesus was betrayed by one of his own followers.
  • He was crucified as a common criminal.

Here’s Craig’s reaction:

These are not the sort of features someone who believed in Jesus’ deity would just invent. They are therefore indications of the historical credibility of the accounts in which they appear.

No, we’re not talking about someone deliberately making up parts of the gospel story. Rather, it’s easy to imagine the Jesus story as decades of legendary embellishments on the story of a first-century Jewish teacher. Everyone will agree that legends and Jewish teachers exist, and it’s easy to imagine that combination creating a supernatural result. This is a much likelier explanation of why the gospels say what they say than that the gospels’ supernatural claims are true.

You can’t make a case for the Criterion of Embarrassment without being embarrassed!

Jesus as messiah—embarrassing?

Here Craig talked about another fact that embarrasses Christians, that the idea of Jesus as messiah—a king who would kick the occupying Romans out of Israel—is incompatible with the gospel story.

The crucifixion of Jesus was a disaster for the disciples, not simply because their beloved master was gone, but because it exposed any Messianic pretensions that he might have had as being utterly vacuous and unfounded.… How do you explain the origin of the disciples’ belief in this very un-Jewish and outlandish idea? … When you look at the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, they give virtually no clue that Messiah isn’t going to be this triumphant warrior king that was expected. (Source)

He’s again using the Criterion of Embarrassment: how could the gospel authors call Jesus messiah, referring to the Old Testament’s idea of a conquering king, and yet document his complete defeat through crucifixion? That’s not the Old Testament’s promise.

What do other scholars say?

Other scholars see the conflict as Craig does. Atheist Bart Ehrman said,

Wasn’t the Messiah supposed to suffer horribly for the sins of others and be raised from the dead?  Not according to ancient Jews.

Christian C.S. Lewis also looked for an optimistic view of the Bible’s embarrassing claims.

The evangelists have the first great characteristic of honest witnesses: they mention facts that are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention.

The damaging facts that Lewis was responding to were (1) Jesus promising that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” when Jesus’s promised end still isn’t here, and (2) Jesus appealing to God from the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?”

Perhaps the most extreme statement of the CoE is this one, which throws reality out the window. It is attributed (probably wrongly) to second-century church father Tertullian:

The Son of God died: it is wholly believable because it is absurd; he was buried and rose again, which is certain because it is impossible.

Craig is trying to take lemons and make lemonade. Yes, the gospel stories are at odds with the promise of a messiah, but the gospel authors plowed ahead anyway, knowing their Jesus didn’t fit. Why record that embarrassing mismatch if it weren’t true?!

But he wants it both ways. If the gospel story has embarrassing claims that conflict with the Bible’s earlier promises or with modern Christian tenets, those must be true! And if there is no conflict—as when Matthew points to Isaiah to say that Jesus was born of a virgin and to Micah to say that he was born in Bethlehem—that must also be true! Craig wins when the Bible is embarrassing, and he wins when it’s not.

Problem 1: make sure it really is embarrassing

Apologists often stumble over two problems with the CoE.

Take the well-known story of Peter’s denial of Jesus. In all four gospels, Jesus predicts that Peter will deny knowing him. Peter insists that he won’t but then does it three times to avoid capture by the Romans.

That’s quite an embarrassing element to include … unless you don’t like Peter. The New Testament documents the friction between Christians allied with Peter and those allied with Paul. It’s easy to imagine a Pauline faction adding this story.

Another embarrassing Bible story is unreliable women finding the empty tomb on Sunday morning. Once again, apologists attack the idea of anyone making this up. Who would invent the idea of women at this critical moment of the story if they were seen as poor witnesses? It’s awkward and therefore true.

But I don’t think it was made up. In fact, if anyone is going to discover an empty tomb, it would be women since women were typically responsible for tending to the dead in this culture. Women finding the empty tomb isn’t surprising—it’s necessary.

Lesson 1 for using the CoE is to make sure that the story really was embarrassing to the source.

Problem 2: you must pay to use the CoE

You can’t make a case for the Criterion of Embarrassment without being embarrassed! That is, you must pay a price when using the CoE. This is obvious, and yet apologists never seem to acknowledge this.

William Lane Craig wants to use the CoE when he confronts embarrassing facts like Jesus being baptized by John, his inability to do miracles in Nazareth, and no Trinity in the Bible. It’s embarrassing that the gospels imagine Jesus as messiah—a butt-kicking king who will expel the Roman occupiers—and yet they document Jesus’s humiliating death by the Romans, just like countless other criminals. These are embarrassing incidents, so they must be true.

But hold on. We’re all on the same page. Craig is admitting what the rest of us can see, that these incidents and many more are embarrassing to the Christian. There must be payment for playing the CoE card, and that payment is admitting that the Bible story doesn’t hang together. One story collides with another. If Jesus is messiah on one hand but glaringly doesn’t fit the Bible’s description on the other, the entire religion is called into question. The CoE won’t get you out of this bind, and the New Testament looks like just another manmade collection of books.

Apologists like Craig refuse to acknowledge the embarrassment, but this isn’t how it works. You can’t say that something is embarrassing and therefore likelier to be true without confronting the fact that it’s embarrassing. If the Bible is reliable, then you can’t hide from its telling you that Jesus really ought not have been baptized by John; he should have been able to do miracles anywhere; the relationship between Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit should be evident in the Bible; and Jesus wasn’t the messiah.

Lesson 2: make sure that playing the CoE card costs something.

The naturalistic explanation

Why does the Bible have internal clashes? Because it was written over the course of a thousand years by dozens of people with differing agendas. The Bible isn’t even a fixed target. The Protestant Bible has different books than the Roman Catholic Bible, and both are different from the Georgian Orthodox Bible. Of course the books contradict.

With a naturalistic interpretation, the power of the Criterion of Embarrassment vanishes. It was never an honest ally to apologists when they refused to admit what it cost them. And on the other side of the coin, no longer is it a spell that turns an embarrassing contradiction or admission into truth. The naturalistic explanation is the better explanation.

See also: Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid #50: The Argument from Biblical Consistency

Argument from Divine Embarrassment.
If you were God,
looking upon your earthly representatives,
Wouldn’t you want to hide?
Ergo: God exists.
— Maarten Boudry

What Christians won’t do to defend God’s Marvelous Plan®

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God can’t defend or even explain his policies, but he has self-appointed people eager to put words in his mouth.

Christian apologist Greg Koukl was given the opportunity to stand up for God since God never bothers, and Koukl didn’t disappoint. He was asked this question:

If you [a Christian] found yourself on Judgement Day standing next to an unbeliever you cared for and liked, and Jesus offered to either annihilate you both or send you to heaven and your friend to hell for eternity, which would you choose and why? (audio @21:05)

God knows best, I guess

Koukl unsurprisingly chose option two. His justification: “because that’s God’s system” and God knows best.

So we’re supposed to accept an insane interpretation of justice—infinite punishment in hell for finite crimes here on earth—and just assume that God must have good reasons? This does nothing to justify the Christian position and would be satisfying only to Christians (and maybe only some of those).

This question is like God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac—it looked like an obedience test, but it was actually a morality test. The correct response for Abraham was: “No, of course I won’t sacrifice Isaac.” And this wasn’t presumptuous of Abraham. Since Man was supposedly created in God’s image (or the gods’ image), Man’s understanding of morality should be in sync with God’s, and the natural instinct of revulsion against killing one’s own son should be reliable.

Now apply that attitude to this question of annihilation vs. heaven for you and hell for your atheist friend. Any mentally healthy person would be horrified at the idea of anyone, let alone a friend, being tormented forever and would immediately choose the alternative. How could you enjoy heaven if you knew that, because of you, he was burning in hell? Besides, this hypothetical situation assumes that “God’s system” has suddenly become flexible, so that your choosing is allowed, and your God-given sense of morality would be an appropriate response.

Koukl has unwarranted confidence in his interpretation of God’s wishes. Christians can’t explain the logic behind the Trinity, they’re divided over hell (eternal torment vs. “the gates are locked from the inside”), they can’t agree on whether Christianity is at odds with science or not, and so on. Christians have found loads of contradictory interpretations of the Bible to justify various attitudes toward slavery, civil rights, same-sex marriage, abortion, health care, and so on. That Koukl is comfortable with his particular set of responses to the dozens of questions that divide Christians says a lot about him but little about what the Bible says.

(Aside: this clumsy justification reminds me of Koukl’s dancing around the issue of whether women getting abortions should be punished.)

Consequences in heaven

Koukl moves on to the question of how this will affect heaven. Will knowing about a friend (or billions of people) writhing in agony “tarnish our enjoyment of heaven”?

Yeah, that’d be a shame if someone else’s anguish rained on his enjoyment of heaven. He explained that when we get heavenly enlightenment, we will understand that “God’s judgments are just.”

Yet again, I’m not sure how humans can be so radically out of sync with God’s “morality” when we were supposedly created in his image. You’re an enlightened being in heaven (presumably greatly elevated from your flawed, limited human shell on earth), and you know about the billions in torment, and you’ll be okay with that?!

“We [in heaven] will rejoice in the good,” Koukl tells us, but what kind of Bizarro World are we talking about, when Christian belief obliges them to label as “good” a punishment system that makes the 11 million deaths in the Holocaust look like a church picnic? It’s pretty much the most inhumane situation conceivable, and it’s held up as a divine good.

And Christians wonder why atheists are occasionally peeved at Christian dogma.

Koukl isn’t alone in his evaluation. Plenty of other apologists have no reluctance in celebrating God’s perfect inhumane plan. Here is thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas doubling down:

That the saints [in heaven] may enjoy their beatitude more thoroughly and give more abundant thanks to God for it, a perfect sight of punishment of the damned is granted them.

(More on the history of Christians not tap dancing way from but celebrating the idea of hell here.)

If you’re in hell, it’s your own fault

As usual, we can’t demand that God answer for his barbaric justice. God is a fragile baby, and it would be too harsh to treat him like an adult. Luckily, we have Christian apologists happy to pull the strings on the God marionette and speak for him. Koukl defends God’s system:

On this system, forgiveness is available and [the damned] did not avail themselves of it, and they are justly punished for what they did and I am unjustly … forgiven.

See, I told you! If you’re roasting on a spit in hell, that’s too bad, because it’s your own fault.

Let’s reconsider this claim that forgiveness is available, because it’s not available to me. Who can believe the unbelievable? I need evidence, and Christianity has pretty much none. The Christian can demonstrate to us how this is supposed to work by believing in leprechauns. When they show me that believing in the unbelievable is possible, then we can move on to the question of whether it’s a smart thing to do.

And let’s just set aside the claim that Jesus taking on our sin with substitutionary atonement makes any sense (it doesn’t).

Is Koukl being selfish?

Koukl anticipates the charge that he’s being selfish, that he’ll make the other person go to hell just so he gets heaven.

It is the consequence of the plan that God has put in place, and it’s an expression of two appropriate things, justice being done to somebody who deserves it and grace being extended based on God’s plan and purpose, both good things.

“Justice”? Ask anyone if hell is the justice they’d impose if they were the boss. Koukl here is judging God’s plan as reasonable and good when it obviously isn’t according to any human interpretation. Hell would make a sadist recoil. If he means that hell only sounds brutally unjust, but we must trust God, then he should (1) admit that it sounds crazy and that he doesn’t understand and (2) explain why that trust in God’s plan would be justified. When the divine plan unravels like this, go back and question your assumptions. Maybe God isn’t good. Maybe he doesn’t exist.

And let’s return to the original scenario, annihilation vs. heaven for Koukl and hell for the atheist. If neither of them deserves heaven, why does Koukl get forgiven and the atheist get “justice”? Wouldn’t the other way around make as much sense? And suppose they did switch places. Could Koukl have any grounds for protesting that this was unfair? After all, he does insist that he deserves hell, and he’s taking as a given that God’s plan is perfect. Would he celebrate the fact that eternity in hell would support God’s plan?

Or consider another scenario: now it’s Koukl and a Muslim friend standing in judgment, and Allah gives the friend the choice. Greg Koukl, you decide: should the friend choose annihilation or paradise for the friend and hell for Koukl?

Koukl has done nothing to help his Christian audience defend hell. God’s Marvelous Plan® still sounds like Bronze Age insanity.

God never fails, because he never tries.
He’s not even a loser.
He doesn’t show up to the game.
— commenter Jack Baynes, Sandwichmaker

Christian defense of praise and worship: give praise to get presents

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We’ve been looking at how the Christian god has been shaped into a narcissistic Donald Trump. This is the concluding article in this six-part series. Part 1 is here.

The final reason Christians give for praising God:

10. Because praise brings goodies 

[Praise] paves the way for God’s power to be displayed, [and] miracles ​[do] happen. People’s lives are affected and changed. (Source)

Praise discharges strength in faith, which causes God to move on our behalf…. God inhabits the atmosphere of praise…. If we want to see a clear manifestation of God’s blessings and grace, all we need to do is to praise Him with all our heart, our mind, and our soul. Source

So what happens if we praise God, and nothing happens? God moves nothing on our behalf, and there are no miracles? Let me guess: you weren’t wrong, and it’s never God’s fault. The blame is always on the individual Christian.

Next time, back up these bold claims of miracles with evidence.

Confirmation bias

The evidence for God is so paltry that he’s indistinguishable from a being who doesn’t exist at all. Confirmation bias is one of Christians’ few friends supporting their belief that their praise and worship has a target that actually exists. (Confirmation bias is our tendency to accept evidence that supports our preconceived ideas and ignore evidence that goes against them.) Changing our minds is difficult and unpleasant, and confirmation bias is like air bags for the psyche, protecting us from reality.

One of our apologists shows us how it’s done:

[God provides encouragement] along the way, letting us know how He feels about us…. Reminders of particular lessons arrive at the moment when they’re most needed, and we become aware that God knows how we’re feeling and knows precisely what we need to hear…. The man who has the skills to repair our stove appears just when we need him; a job comes open at just the right time; we hear a chance word that settles the secret worry of our heart. (Source)

Only with confirmation bias could anyone buy this claim. Everyone experiences happy coincidences, but they’re infrequent. The Christian who thinks that God is clearly moving the chess pieces of their life (and that any observer would agree) is making a scientifically testable claim. They need to demonstrate this to the world through something like the JREF Million-Dollar Challenge (now terminated).

This apologist continues with an example of Christian magic that could only be supported through confirmation bias.

My wife, for example, sees significance in colors. When God has something to say to her, she notices a particular color that stands out, and over the years she’s come to associate specific colors with specific meanings. Also, when God wants to get her attention, she loses something; she might misplace her car keys, for example, and whenever she finds them, the location where she finds them and the nature of how she misplaced them will give her insight into some problem she’s facing at the moment.

Seriously? I’ll bet that’s as reliable a divination tool as picking a Bible verse blindfolded and then parsing it for God’s meaning. You might as well read tea leaves or animal entrails.

He concludes:

All of the interaction I’ve described goes on subtly, without fanfare. God is seldom ostentatious; He does what He needs to do to get His point across with a bare minimum of disturbance, and He leaves no tracks.

Which is what you’d have to say if “God” were nothing more than coincidence and wishful thinking.

Conclusion

I marvel at the god Christians have collectively created with these ten rationalizations (realizing, of course, that not every Christian would embrace them all). God becomes a Donald Trump, drunk on power and demanding that he get all the praise he’s due. On a sticky note above God’s computer screen is “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

This God is no sage, determined to reduce his ego. On the contrary, his ego is bigger than a Trump Baby balloon.

And yet these apologists must explain why this thin-skinned God is unaccountably hidden. If praise were so important, that’s all the more reason for him not to be hidden. A God unwilling to step into this spotlight of praise is as likely as Donald Trump avoiding the opportunity to be the center of attention.

We’ve looked at ten reasons Christians give to praise and worship God. Now it’s my turn.

  • Focusing on praise and worship keeps Christians compliant and submissive. They’re repeatedly shown how insignificant they are and how dependent they are on the church. Like a battered woman, the Christian is continually told that they can’t do it alone and that they’re inherently worthless. This benefits those in power at the top, the priesthood and politicians.
  • Praise and worship can help the Christian feel better, like music or the grandeur of a big church. It’s comforting and infantilizing (more on how Christianity infantilizes churchgoers).

These natural explanations are sufficient to explain why a religion might incorporate praise and worship. No gods are required. Religions evolve, and these are two of the beneficial traits that stuck around.

I cannot believe in a God
who wants to be praised all the time.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Christian defense of praise and worship: fearing, fairness, and fighting back

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My thesis in this multi-part post (part 1 here) has been that praise and worship might be relevant to someone like Donald Trump who admires dictators, but it makes no sense for a wise and powerful god to want it.

Let’s continue with Christian apologists’ justifications for praise and worship of God.

7. Worship God because we need to fear him

Here’s an old-school approach to our relationship with God:

If at any point in the process we lose respect, trust, appropriate fear, or love for God, we lose the ability to learn and grow as we ought, and then, like unruly children, we can do ourselves great damage….

For this reason, it’s necessary to command people to worship God, just as it’s necessary for a parent at times to command their children to show respect…. God insists on worship, because He has to protect our ability to learn from Him. (Source)

Ah, the “You’re gonna worship me or else!” school of thought. I knew it would pop up somewhere. The source continues, and it gets a little spooky.

[After a disaster] is a dangerous time in which faith can be lost; and it might be lost, if there was not a standing command to honor God, and an already-existing relationship.

So forget the need for evidence and just believe? No: if your common sense is telling you that there is no god, given his no-show status at a disaster, listen to it. This nonsensical “just believe, regardless of the evidence” advice is the sound of a meme struggling to survive.

The conflict between grief and love for God produces tension; the tension eventually produces new growth, trust with a more mature understanding. The obligation to worship is the lynch-pin that keeps the believer tethered to his salvation when life makes little sense.

This apologist tips his hand. This “mature understanding” realizes that you can’t take the Bible at its word. When Jesus says, “Ask and you will receive,” it’s not like that’s supposed to actually work in the real world. Prayer doesn’t “work” in the same way a car or light switch works. You must have a “mature understanding,” you see. Prayer is good at self-soothing and supporting a confirmation bias, but “mature” Christians know it’s not like prayer works or God will look out for you or that you can rely on any of Christianity’s other supernatural claims.

8. Because it’s only fair

We’re supposed to praise God because it’s just the right thing to do. Here’s an example:

Imagine that you crafted an incredibly beautiful sculpture and won a prestigious award for your creation; but when the time came for the award ceremony, they gave the prize for your sculpture to the wrong artist! That would not be just, right, or good. (Source)

Human artists are burdened by concerns that never bother God. They need to make a living, and prizes can be an important way to build a reputation and raise the value of their art. Or, maybe they just have an ego, and they like hearing praise. God has no such concerns for money, and he should be above ego-driven needs.

Tibetan Buddhist monks might spend a week or more creating a sand mandala on a floor and then sweep it up afterwards. That’s how enlightened people approach praise for their work.

In the same way, God—as the only being perfect in goodness, justice, love, etc.—is worthy of our praise. We do, in fact, owe Him that praise. He wants us to praise Him because it is right and good for us to do so. Since God wants us to do right and good things, of course he wants us to praise and worship Him.

Even if we accept that God is “perfect in goodness, justice, love, etc.,” which is assumed without evidence, why does that demand praise? It’s not like he worked hard at it to get good like the artist did. This is like praising water for flowing downhill.

If praise is to make sense in the case of a maximally enlightened being, we need an argument.

9. Because we’re under attack!

Circle the wagons, people! We’re under attack:

Praise makes the enemy flee. It pushes back the darkness [that] surrounds, and blocks the attacks and hissing lies over us. Evil will not stick around if we’re praising our God, who will fight our battles for us. (Source)

Praise is an effective weapon against the devil…. He has hated praise ever since because of its reminder of what he gave up and can’t regain. (Source)

God fights our battles for us? Evidence needed.

Here’s a Chicken Little apologist with an active imagination who imagines a celestial D-Day:

Every place in history where God intervened in the affairs of men constitutes a beachhead where God’s dominion has been re-established in some measure. Around those beachheads … hover the unclean spirits as an occupying army, deceiving and destroying the souls who are their captives. (Source)

In the first place, Satan works for God. Read Job 1 to see that he does what God tells him to. (Yes, Satan killed people in this story, but it’s with God’s permission, and this was the limit of Satan’s killing in the Bible. God, by contrast, killed millions.)

The idea of a celestial battle probably came into Judaism after captivity in Babylon. Zoroastrianism was the religion of Persia, and it had the concept of two equally matched gods, one good and one bad, and a final battle with Good triumphing.

Christianity is left with an odd mixture. On one hand, Satan is roaming the world at will and capturing souls. But on the other, Revelation lays out the entire convoluted end game in which Satan will unquestionably be subdued and imprisoned.

I’m still waiting for evidence for any of these claims.

Continue here.

The more I study religions
the more I am convinced
that man never worshipped
anything but himself.
— Sir Richard Burton

Christian defense of praise and worship: God’s greatness and our debasement

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Why would a perfect god accept praise or worship? Donald Trump would, but how could this make sense for a perfect god?

Let’s continue with Christian apologists’ justifications for praise and worship of God (part 1 here).

6. “By praising God, we are reminded of the greatness of God!”

Let’s consider some quotes to illustrate the Christian position.

[God is] saying, “if you serve Me things will go well with you because this is how I intended the whole thing to work. I love you and want only the best for you. It’s good for you to acknowledge the natural order of things: the way things simply are.” (Source)

Sounds like the “know your place” lesson slave owners taught the people they enslaved.

Praising God is useful and favorable for us. By praising God, we are reminded of the greatness of God! (Source)

According to the Bible, our purpose, the reason we are here, is for God’s glory. In other words, our purpose is to praise God, worship him, to proclaim his greatness, and to accomplish his will. This is what glorifies him. (Source)

We are not worthy even to gather up the crumbs under your table (from the “Prayer of Humble Access” from the 1993 Book of Common Worship of the Presbyterian Church).

When Christians say this, it’s not with head hung and feet dragging. Telling God how fantastic he is (and, conversely, how worthless they are) suits them just fine. The people in church praying with their eyes shut and hands forward to collect the holy baryons (or whatever the custom is in your local church) are getting an emotional reward.

Here’s how one person described the experience. Here is their response to the lyrics, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, / oh my soul, / worship His Holy Name / Sing like never before, / oh my soul, / I’ll worship your holy name”:

The first time I heard this praise song it melted my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

I didn’t know the name of it. I didn’t know who wrote it or who was singing it. I just knew my heart was bursting with praise and that I was in the presence of the Lord.

To some, a worship song is just a song. But to the believer, a heart of praise is a surrendered heart to the will of God, and open to the moving of the Spirit.

For some, the process of praising a god (and, in so doing, debasing themselves) is a reassuring thing. Losing yourself in the embrace of something greater than you can be comforting. If there’s a god that’s vastly smarter, more powerful, and more compassionate than you, then you’re in good hands. It’s a way of patting yourself (since God won’t) and saying, “There, there—everything’s going to be all right.”

Worship can have meditative benefits like prayer, and it can keep our egos in check. But these are benefits in the here and now. God doesn’t have to exist for worship to deliver these psychological benefits.

Debasement feels good

You don’t need to be born again; you need to grow up. The problem is that the church is not your ally. As John Shelby Spong observed, “The church doesn’t like for people to grow up because you can’t control grown-ups.”

I’ve written about how Christianity infantilizes people here and here. Let’s explore that a little more.

Worship is the art of losing self in the adoration of another…. To truly worship God, we must let go of our self-worship.

… The physical acts often associated with worship—bowing, kneeling, lifting hands—help to create the necessary attitude of humility required for real worship. (Source)

The worship habits that feel good—that scratch that psychological itch—will stick and become part of a church’s custom. The priesthood is motivated to help. These are natural reasons that help explain the custom of god worship. No actual god is needed.

Here’s a sensible bit of caution.

Too many people say that they cannot praise God while refugees wander without a home, while people freeze to death for lack of shelter, while children remain hungry, while hatred runs free in our streets, and on down the list of social ills. (Source)

But they have an odd solution.

Perhaps this is part of the reason for everything feeling overwhelming or out of control; we have forgotten how to sing God’s praises every day…. If the world is overwhelmed with hatred and poverty and fear, it is not God’s doing. God is still God in the midst of the mess we have created.

Yeah, when the world sucks, don’t blame God. It’s not like it’s his creation or anything. Let’s only credit God with the good stuff because he might get sad if you pointed to “his” creation and demanded that he justify the problems.

You paint a pathetic picture of your god. How can you praise God when he helps without cursing him when he doesn’t? More than 1000 garment workers died when a building collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013. The last survivor pulled from the rubble had survived an incredible 17 days. Her sister said, “We got her back just when we had lost all our hope to find her alive…. God is so merciful.”

If that was God being merciful to you, then he was being a mass murderer to the families who lost loved ones.

The self-debasing attraction of worship has a natural explanation. Worshipping God simply because he’s powerful is like worshipping a natural disaster because it, too, is powerful and deadly, which is kind of what ancient people did. Perhaps Christianity personifies nature.

Note also that we see no equivalent or worship within science, the discipline that actually does get results. Perhaps then worship is an ancient vestigial artifact we have yet to get rid of.

Continue here.

The most preposterous notion ever conceived by homo sapiens
is that the Lord God, creator and shaper of all the universe,
wants the prayers of his subjects, and the adulations of his subjects,
and that if he doesn’t get this flattery he becomes petulant.
This absurd notion, without a trace of evidence to back it up,
pays for the biggest, least productive industry on Earth.
— Lazarus Long
(quoted by Ray Romano at the 1995 AAI Convention)

Christian defense of praise and worship: God needs it, and the Bible commands it

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Why would a perfect god accept praise or worship? Donald Trump, sure, but a perfect god?

Let’s continue with Christian apologists’ justifications for praise and worship of God (part 1 here).

3. Worship isn’t for God’s benefit but Man’s

We don’t worship God because He needs it (He needs nothing and is entirely self-sufficient), but because we need it…. God “needs” no worship whatever because in Christian theology, He needs nothing. He’s completely all-sufficient and self-sufficient. It’s for our sake that we “render unto God’s what is rightfully God’s.” (Source)

Don’t tell me that God gets no benefit from human actions. Burnt offerings are a “pleasing aroma” in the Bible, but this wasn’t like incense, where God could take it or leave it. This is explicitly labeled a food offering 27 times in the Old Testament. And in the Garden of Eden story, God created Adam to be the gardener, offloading that burden from God (Genesis 2:15).

Getting onto more cerebral or emotional needs, God refers to “everyone … whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:7). No, God isn’t “entirely self-sufficient” when humans support his Maslow’s pyramid, providing food and labor at the bottom and glory and esteem at the top.

Christianity confuses itself because God evolved dramatically through the Bible. Perhaps an apologist could cherry pick Bible verses later in the Bible to show that God is aloof from human actions. Maybe this god sings along with Simon and Garfunkel, “I am a rock / I am an island.” But early in his development, God needed humans, and that included their worship.

4. Or maybe worship is for God’s benefit

It must be maddening being a Christian apologist. You’ve just taught some manners to an insolent atheist cur with the back of your hand and a powerful argument. And then a fellow Christian comes along and undercuts it.

Argument 3 declared that worship is for our benefit, not God’s. And 4 says the opposite:

God created us for His pleasure (just as we create delightful things for our pleasure). Praising God—acknowledging His goodness, love, perfection, and all the incredible things He has done for us—brings Him pleasure. If you have children, you know what a beautiful thing it is to have them praise you. (Source)

Yes, I have children. No, I don’t want them praising me. Love, appreciation, thanks, and so on (as appropriate) is great, but not praise.

We praise children. God is like a child in this sense—or like a happy performing artist. Creation is like a great performance in which the artist loves to create and also loves to be praised for creating. Praise of God is a gift to be prayed for, not a duty to be performed. (Source)

We praise God like a child? I suppose “Aren’t you the smart boy for tying your shoes?” becomes, “Didn’t you create a nice earth?”

And “Nice job destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. You’re so thorough!”

And “What a pretty rainbow—and the bunnies are so fluffy!”

Maybe you ought to talk it over with the proponents for argument #3 to get your story straight. Like the poor analogies in argument 2, the Christian might retreat by saying that analogies only go so far. Fair enough—if the analogies are poor (like God as a child) then don’t use them.

5. Why worship? Because the Bible tells me so. 

You might think that praise is the same as saying “thank you,” but there is a difference…. All believers are commanded to praise God! (Source)

The Bible commands it. As the Psalmist says, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6). (Source)

Why is praising God important? The reasons are countless. First, God deserves to be praised and He is worthy to receive our praise: “For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods” (Psalm 96:4). (Source)

There are a mountain of Bible verses with this demand.

“If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings” (Malachi 2:2–3).

Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water (Revelation 14:7).

At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Philippians 2:10).

This isn’t God wanting praise simply because it’s the best thing for us. This is a demand.

We laypeople get a piece of that with the hymn that has the phrase, “Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and mighty! / God in three persons, blessed Trinity!” And then Revelation talks about the four living creatures who say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8), forever.

And Christians wonder what is weird about worship when their god tolerates that.

Continued here.

I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father,
expects or requires no worship or praise from us,
but that He is even infinitely above it.
— Benjamin Franklin