@TruthSandwich@lednabm I would argue that the sun is a far better thing to worship than the example given by Merriam-Webster (“a celebrity worshipped by her fans”) but that is because I utterly reject the cult of celebrity in our society. I’m not saying it is “dumb” but it sure seems more worthy of that moniker than worshipping the major source of all energy on earth.
A celebrity could appreciate your worship and even return it (in a vague, parasocial way; “I give my thanks to all the little people”).
The sun is a ball of hot gas. It has no clue that you exist, and if it somehow did learn of this, it would not care because it is as incapable of caring as it is of learning. It’s mindless.
Your own chosen definition lists:
- respect - honor - devotion
I don’t see how any of these make sense when the target is an inanimate object.
A celebrity could appreciate your worship and even return it (in a vague, parasocial way; “I give my thanks to all the little people”).
The sun is a ball of hot gas. It has no clue that you exist, and if it somehow did learn of this, it would not care because it is as incapable of caring as it is of learning. It’s mindless.
@TruthSandwich@lednabm That’s an interesting way of looking at it. As an atheist, it never occurred to me to consider that someone might consider appreciation and response by the worshippee as a sine qua non for worship, since that is completely lacking in theistic worship where people worship a non-existent idea.
I have always considered worship to be a one-sided thing, that meets some psychological or spiritual needs of the worshipper, independent of whether what they are worshipping exists, is sentient, or is aware of their worship. In the case of a celebrity, for example, fans often worship them even more after their deaths (Presley, Kobain, Lennon, etc.).
So for me, respect, honor, and devotion make perfect sense with what you call “inanimate objects.” But that is probably because I am an animist, and I see all objects as endowed with anima, from humans to animals to trees, from the fusing gravitationally-attracted ball of plasma to clumps of rock orbiting it, to each tree and each rock on the surface of the 3rd rock from the sun.
How, you might ask, can a lump of quartzite be endowed with anima? The same way that a complex conglomeration of eukaryotic cells derived themselves through symbiogenesis from multiple prokaryotes can be endowed with anima. And that comes down to personal introspection of myself, observation of meat-sacks that appear similar to myself, and ultimately a decision that I would rather live in a reality where I am not a solipsistic mind living in a biological or virtual simulation, and the humans around me are people like me. What distinguishes a programmed meat-sack from a person? I don’t know, but the term anima is as good an identifier as any to represent that difference.
From that observationally-influenced but essentially arbitrary decision to endow anima to other humans, one must then decide what other objects possess anima. The nihilist will say, there is no such thing as reality. Anattā in Buddhism says there is no anima, and there are some materialists who reject the idea that there is anything other than chemical and electrical reactions. The solipsist will say that he or she alone possesses anima. A racist may believe that only humans with their skin color or culture has anima. A humanist may ascribe anima to all Homo sapiens. Many Hindu adherents endow all animals with anima. And an animist sees anima in everything.
An animist sees no difference between rocks and humans because both are made of matter and endowed with anima. A materialist sees no difference between rocks and humans because both are made of matter and that’s it.
I like my choice of reality better, and for me, that’s what life is all about.
[ edited to get rid of repetitive uses of “ultimately” ]
@TruthSandwich@lednabm That’s an interesting way of looking at it. As an atheist, it never occurred to me to consider that someone might consider appreciation and response by the worshippee as a sine qua non for worship, since that is completely lacking in theistic worship where people worship a non-existent idea.
This sounds, at least superficially, very much like panpsychism (the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of all physical matter). Would you make any distinction between these ideas?
The core of religion the mistaken attempt to impose a social view onto the natural world, often generating a supernatural world as an ontological artifact.
Consider blessings.
I could ask for your blessing in an endeavor, which means I’m requesting your approval and support. This is a real thing with real consequences.
“Yes, I took his car, but I had his blessings for the trip.”
Awkward sentence, but it gets the point across, which is that blessings are a social construct that is entirely meaningful in describing how people interact.
“He asked his fiance’s father for his blessing” means he asked for permission to marry the man’s daughter. Again, completely meaningful. If he didn’t get the man’s blessing, she might call off the wedding plans. Or, at a minimum, they might have to elope.
Now consider holy water, which is distinct from regular water only in that a priest blessed it. Same word, but it’s lost all meaning. Water is unaffected by our feelings; it is incapable of participating in social contexts because it lacks agency.
If someone secretly replaced all the holy water with unblessed tap water, literally nothing would have changed. There are no consequences. There is no conceivable test to detect this swap because the status of being blessed exists solely in the mind of the priest and those who go along with the cosplay.
Bluntly, animism is more of the same error. It is ascribing human characteristics to the natural world. Rocks don’t have feelings. They don’t care if you kick them or even crush them. They’re rocks. Worrying about rocks’ feelings is a fine example of trying to extend social reasoning past its limits.
The core of religion the mistaken attempt to impose a social view onto the natural world, often generating a supernatural world as an ontological artifact.
Consider blessings.
I could ask for your blessing in an endeavor, which means I’m requesting your approval and support. This is a real thing with real consequences.
Gregory's Server
@TruthSandwich @lednabm I would argue that the sun is a far better thing to worship than the example given by Merriam-Webster (“a celebrity worshipped by her fans”) but that is because I utterly reject the cult of celebrity in our society. I’m not saying it is “dumb” but it sure seems more worthy of that moniker than worshipping the major source of all energy on earth.