Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Worship is a feeling of reverence and adoration for a deity. Many worship God because he is God; The holy one who flows throughout reality. Many worship because God supposedly responds to the worship, God gave form to creation and loved it first.
Jesus says God is spirit and truth and we should worship God in spirit and truth. God is here to stay.
If one is going to think philosophically and investigate underlying foundations, it raises more questions than it answers.
What is a "deity"? How are 'deities' distinguished from everything that isn't a deity? Why is worshipping a deity so important, why isn't the deity's simple existence sufficient?
Compare 'God' with 'the Big Bang'. Seemingly physical reality is dependent on both of them. But nobody worships the Big Bang or builds temples to it.
I am saying that humans have no clue as to what god is and will never fathom what the spirit is like until the time of departure. Then it will no longer be possible to covey understanding to another. For a god to exist I believe he would have to have a superior form that we humans couldn't probably begin to grasp.
That sounds like you are defining God as the transcendent. That which lies... beyond. I personally like that and often think in a similar way.
But the question remains, what distinguishes 'God' from 'the unknown', from 'whatever remains mysterious to humans'? What makes God a proper object of religious worship?
'God' seems to mix together the idea of 'mysterious' and perhaps 'impossible to put into words', with the idea of 'ultimate goodness and value', or 'best possible being', and with the idea of human personality that possesses intentions, motives and emotions. (And hence desires and responds to worship.)
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