My biggest fear (which still worries me) is that if I’m wrong, I’m being ungrateful to God. It would be a terrible person who refused to appreciate her greatest benefactor, right?
I’ve always found this aspect of religion particularly bizarre. An essential component of gratitude when directed at another human is the sense that they have gone out of their way to help you at some cost to themselves. An omnipotent being can never do something at cost to themselves (being omnipotent all actions are effectively zero cost and an omnipotent being can’t really ‘go out of their way’ to do anything) so gratitude seems an entirely inappropriate emotion to direct at them.
It seems more reasonable to feel indignant at the deity’s failure to do any one of the many no effort things they could do to help people out but don’t.
We might be relieved if they turn out to allow us to continue to pursue (most of) our present values, that they won’t strip our solar system of resources, or that they don’t desire to kill or torture us.
That’s the sort of gratitude I imagine people have toward a really powerful god. There’s no reason we should expect a powerful being to do anything to help us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I’ve always found this aspect of religion particularly bizarre. An essential component of gratitude when directed at another human is the sense that they have gone out of their way to help you at some cost to themselves. An omnipotent being can never do something at cost to themselves (being omnipotent all actions are effectively zero cost and an omnipotent being can’t really ‘go out of their way’ to do anything) so gratitude seems an entirely inappropriate emotion to direct at them.
It seems more reasonable to feel indignant at the deity’s failure to do any one of the many no effort things they could do to help people out but don’t.
Say some super-powerful aliens show up.
We might be relieved if they turn out to allow us to continue to pursue (most of) our present values, that they won’t strip our solar system of resources, or that they don’t desire to kill or torture us.
That’s the sort of gratitude I imagine people have toward a really powerful god. There’s no reason we should expect a powerful being to do anything to help us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.