Are all believers in God automatically idol worshipers?

Greatest I am said:
As stated, what they worship is their own mental construct of God. Just as Paris is your mental construct of Paris when you are going by what others have said of Paris. When you actually get there, it is likely different form what you have been told.
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Very likely. But that doesn't mean that Paris doesn't exist, or that my use of the name 'Paris' can't have reference to the French capital. It doesn't mean that when I speak of Paris, I'm not talking about the city but only talking about an idea in my own head.

I asked you how you had acquired your 'apotheosis'.

By accessing what I call a cosmic consciousness via telepathy. A process that has yet to be fully proven to exist.
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Why shouldn't your dismissal of theism as idolatry apply equally to your own claims? Shouldn't you humbly admit that you have merely experienced strange ideas in your own head and are equally guilty of idolatry for imagining that somehow they were God?

Not the miracle working type of God but I think it was what most have called God for want of a better word.
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It doesn't matter what kind of God it was. What matters is that you are seemingly conflating your own experience with God. And on your own principles, which seemingly entail the denial that things can have reference to other things, your own experiences can have nothing to do with God.
 
Greatest I am said:
What real God are they worshipping if not their own mental construct of that God gleaned from the words of other people?
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Depends on the person, of course. Some worship a God that is identical to what their Church describes as God. Some worship a God that is completely different from any conventional description.
 
sideshowbob said:
So you believed it and the witness confirmed your existing bias. That's the poorest kind of evidence.
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She did not know of what I believed and I did not believe in it prior to the confirmation.
She had just felt the impact of the process that proved to both of us that telepathy was real.

Regards
DL
 
Greatest I am said:
She did not know of what I believed and I did not believe in it prior to the confirmation.
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You said it was you "initial view". She confirmed your "initial view", didn't she? That's just confirmation bias.

You need a much bigger sample before you can "prove" that telepathy is real.
 
Yazata said:
Assuming that a deity really exists, and that the words, beliefs and doctrines of at least some of the theistic traditions succeed in referring to that deity, then the answer would be that deity.
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Greatest I am said:
Yet most traditions say that God or their deity cannot be known as he is unfathomable and unknowable and works in mysterious ways.
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It's entirely possible to refer to something without knowing what it is. We often establish reference by pointing at things (philosophers call it ostension), "I don't have a clue what that is." In religion, contemplative and meditative experience often plays that ostensive pointing role towards what is ostensibly transcendant.

Round and round we go and only the most gullible will not see the lies being invented to explain God.
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The issue here isn't explaining God, it's whether any theistic beliefs (including your own) can possibly have reference to God. That's assuming that God exists. If God doesn't exist, then reference wouldn't be possible by definition. (So you seem to be coming very close to repeating the atheist arguments.)

You seem to be arguing that words, ideas and experiences can't refer to anything beyond themselves. That's much too strong.
 
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Yazata said:
Why shouldn't your dismissal of theism as idolatry apply equally to your own claims?
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Because theirs involve the supernatural and mine do not and I do not worship what I found in any way. They do.

Yazata said:
It doesn't matter what kind of God it was. What matters is that you are seemingly conflating your own experience with God. And on your own principles, which seemingly entail the denial that things can have reference to other things, your own experiences can have nothing to do with God.
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I defined the God I found as ideas and not some entity so it does matter what kind of God it was.

My experiences do have to do with God as most theists are defining God poorly. That is why I gave the definition of God as rules and laws. Whatever God anyone follows can only be the laws and rules of that God as there is no entity here for them to follow.

Regards
DL
 
billvon said:
Depends on the person, of course. Some worship a God that is identical to what their Church describes as God. Some worship a God that is completely different from any conventional description.
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Your last is true but few follow what Jesus described as God. Which is ourselves.

If many do, then they would likely call themselves Gnostic Christians and not Christians.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Regards
DL
 
sideshowbob said:
You said it was you "initial view". She confirmed your "initial view", didn't she? That's just confirmation bias.

You need a much bigger sample before you can "prove" that telepathy is real.
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Noetic science has basically proven that already. They do not know how it happens but do know it happens.


Regards
DL
 
Greatest I am said:
Noetic science has basically proven that already.
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"Noetic science" isn't science.

But this rabbit hole started with my question about your "apotheosis". If you claim to have had an apotheosis, how is that different from making a false image (yourself) of God?
 
sideshowbob said:
If you claim to have had an apotheosis, how is that different from making a false image (yourself) of God?
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There's an XKCD for that!

(albeit framed in the language of IT)

standards.png
 
DaveC426913 said:
A mental construct is an idea; a mental thing.
Demonstrably different from an idol, which is a physical thing, by definition.
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I'll repeat the remarks that I made earlier when Fraggle said the same thing:

Not necessarily. From the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Religions. (2000 Oxford University Press) p. 266

"Idolatry (Gk eidolon image + latreia worship.) The attributing of absolute value to that which is not absolute, and acting toward that object, person or concept as though it is worthy of worship or complete commitment. In a religious context this most usually means treating as God that which is not God, and in particular acting toward a representation of God as if it is God. In that sense, idolatry is extremely rare, since most religious worshippers are well aware that the signpost is not to be confused with that which is signified." [Discussion of Jewish and Islamic attitudes to idolatry follow.]

In the broader theological sense, idols needn't always be statues. Ideas and words would certainly seem to qualify as representations.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07636a.htm
 
Yazata said:
It's entirely possible to refer to something without knowing what it is. We often establish reference by pointing at things (philosophers call it ostension), "I don't have a clue what that is." In religion, contemplative and meditative experience often plays that ostensive pointing role towards what is ostensibly transcendant.



The issue here isn't explaining God, it's whether any theistic beliefs (including your own) can possibly have reference to God. That's assuming that God exists. If God doesn't exist, then reference wouldn't be possible by definition. (So you seem to be coming very close to repeating the atheist arguments.)

You seem to be arguing that words, ideas and experiences can't refer to anything beyond themselves. That's much too strong.
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I do not hold the common theistic belief as the attributes that religions attribute to their Gods are un-provable by their own admittance of the un-knowability of God. Even if a God did exist, we could not know any of his attributes unless he popped up to show what they were.

So any reference to God has to be seen as speculative and likely nonsense as we cannot have ant true facts concerning God till one of them pops up.

Regards
DL
 
billvon said:
Or Unitarians, or Muslims, or Christians. There are as many beliefs in God as there are people in the world.
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The Christians and Muslim Gods are subject to the conventional description. I am not sure about Unitarians but the Gnostic Christian God certainly does not fit the conventional description. It says that there is no supernatural God above man.

Regards
DL
 
sideshowbob said:
"Noetic science" isn't science.

But this rabbit hole started with my question about your "apotheosis". If you claim to have had an apotheosis, how is that different from making a false image (yourself) of God?
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If I am God, then the image of myself is as close to truth as a mind can make it.

We all have our own little delusions of what we are but at least my view of myself as the highest entity to follow will be closer than anything else on offer. Gnosis is knowing our innermost thinking and that has degees, but are close to what we think we are.

Regards
DL
 
Yazata said:
I'll repeat the remarks that I made earlier when Fraggle said the same thing:

Not necessarily. From the Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Religions. (2000 Oxford University Press) p. 266

"Idolatry (Gk eidolon image + latreia worship.) The attributing of absolute value to that which is not absolute, and acting toward that object, person or concept as though it is worthy of worship or complete commitment. In a religious context this most usually means treating as God that which is not God, and in particular acting toward a representation of God as if it is God. In that sense, idolatry is extremely rare, since most religious worshippers are well aware that the signpost is not to be confused with that which is signified." [Discussion of Jewish and Islamic attitudes to idolatry follow.]

In the broader theological sense, idols needn't always be statues. Ideas and words would certainly seem to qualify as representations.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07636a.htm
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I think you might want to read that more carefully. It very nicely makes my point, several times.

"...acting toward that object, person or concept as though it is worthy of worship"
This refers to things that are NOT otherwise worthy of worship. Worshipping a god is the definition of worshipping the thing that is worthy of the worship. i.e. not some substitute.

"... treating as God that which is not God, and in particular acting toward a representation of God as if it is God. .."
i.e the worship is directed at something other than the god.

"..worshippers are well aware that the signpost is not to be confused with that which is signified."
i.e. the idol is not the god. The god is not the idol.
 
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