Atheism
Politics
Memes
Mind
Matters
Interact
Feedback
Links
Forum
Home
The Logic of Christians
Why I am an Atheist
Why We are Atheists
Do You Want to Buy My Soul?
The Power of Faith
Faith, Hope and Belief
Jealous God
The Leap of Faith
What the Bible Says About Abortion
Aborting Babies
Respecting God
The Mob, the Mask and the Masquerade
Religious indoctrination is child abuse
Animal Rights
Women and Islam
Fitna, Geert Wilders and the Death of European Freedom
Evils of Music
Kill the Puppy Dogs
Masturbation
Animals: Give and Take
Does God Bless America?
Teenage Sex
The Clitoris
GM and Other Nameless Fears
Pollyanna Meets Captain Kirk
The Defence of Liberty
The Power of Faith
What present do you give to the being who made everything?
If the entire universe was made by a being capable of doing the job what could such a being possibly require of us? Nothing we have is of any value to a god. If a god can create all life what does he want a phlebotomized calf, ram, goat or first-born son for? Anything that we can conceive of offering to God (the supreme creator god, under whatever alias) would be futile. What do you buy daddy for his birthday when daddy owns all the shops and all the money you have he gave you?
Sacrificing something to a god makes no sense. If the god wants a goat he can make his own; a blue one with six orange wings if he wants. So it cannot be about making the god richer and happier because that is silly. Why would a god ever be short of something that would make him happy? Why would something that predated (if such a word is appropriate) the creation of the simplest particles and drafted the laws of physics have such an obviously evolved character? The lack of happiness is a goad to action, we are not happy when we have unfulfilled urges and we have urges because we have evolved. Happiness is a device used to make us, the robots that genes have built, into efficient maximizers of their utility. We feel happy when we do things in the interests of the genes such as eat food to stop us starving, protect our bodies from harm, impress important people around us or have sex with attractive partners. There is no reason to expect a god to be capable of unhappiness or requiring a condition to be met before he was happy. Put it another way: if you could do anything why would you need to?
Sacrificing to gods must surely have evolved out of an old stone age protection racket. Give the big man some of your meat and the big man lets you keep the use of your kneecaps. Show the big man proper respect and he won't burn your hut down, who knows, he might even chase away somebody else who might burn it down. Possibly. But don't hold him to anything. The big man doesn't like people being tricky or clever. Nod your head if you understand, lower, lower, that's better. The concept of showing respect and giving up a portion of your food or wealth to somebody with power over you would surely have evolved in societies all over the world. The invention of agriculture strengthened the power of the big men by making it easier to put pressure on people. “Oi, nice wheat field you've got there. The big man's offering fire insurance on crops now, know what I mean? No need to fill in the form, we know where you live.” There is no fundamental difference between a king and a gangster except that a gangster operates within the boundaries of a state without permission of the king. A king is just a warlord with a family history and an extravagant taste in headwear. One of the last warlords to make himself a king and be accepted as such was Muslim warlord Ahmed Bey Zogu who declared himself King Zog I of Albania in 1928, three years after becoming Prime Minister. It isn't a trick that anybody is likely to get away with these days, kings are a bit last millennium.
Sacrificial religion was a way for clever people to get all the rewards of being in with the big man without going to the trouble of breaking anybody's knees, or indeed having a big man. Those who became good at it learned how to avoid getting their knees broken and some even managed to get the big man to bend down in the direction they indicated, and hand over some of the meat. Excellent. Admittedly it did tend to get a bit over-done at times as they had to do the flaming altar bit but the shrewd priests managed to ensure that they were never short of meat for themselves.
The career plan of self-proclaimed intermediary between the people and the sky-god is still attempted today. People are familiar with the idea of giving up something in return for getting favour, although that bargain is usually dressed up to sound more respectable, some modern churches do allow that message to come through loud and clear: give until you feel the pain, and you will receive rewards! These days burning goats is considered old hat. Even for Jews. Why burn a calf when you have MasterCard?
Muslims have managed to have their cake and eat it. They sacrifice an animal, by cutting its throat as best they can (often nowhere near competently) and then when they notice Allah leaving his gift at the side of his plate they eat it up for him to stop it going rotten, in the finest traditions of sacrifices to the gods. I can see what the animal has sacrificed, a professional and competent slaughter, but what sacrifice has the “believer” made? He's had a party and made a meal of it, in the process performing an act of cerebral masturbation that makes him feel good while achieving absolutely nothing. In what way is that more of a sacrifice to the sky god than a doner kebab made with Halal meat? Killing and eating meat is a sacrifice, and so apparently is not eating while the sun is in the sky, but stuffing yourself like an unclean unmentionable beast when the sun isn't watching.
Is tithing a sacrifice? That depends on what the money is used for. It would only be a sacrifice if the money was wasted. Giving money to worthy causes isn't a sacrifice. If you give money to a street beggar there is a pay-off, it makes you feel better. It would only be a sacrifice if you knew the beggar would not appreciate the money. That is where churches come in. You can give money to build a beautiful house for nobody to live in. You can live in a hovel and give your money to build a temple covered with gold. That is sacrifice. Except, well, doesn't even that make you feel good in some way? It's no good, as long as there is something tangible there that the money has been spent on it cannot feel like a pure sacrifice because the beauty of the thing produced (pyramid, ziggurat, henge, cathedral, temple, mosque) can be appreciated and pride can be taken. The answer has got to be to find a religion that will allow you to pay over a big chunk of money and get absolutely nothing in return except a vague feeling of being conned.
But that's silly, isn't it? That's my point. The entire concept of sacrificing to a god is silly. Buying something from a god is absurd. A god wouldn't need anything you have and would have no need to want anything you have and would have no need to want you to deprive yourself of anything or to withhold anything he could give to you. God doesn't need to sacrifice anything: forgiveness costs nothing and infinite love is free.
It is easy to come up with a credible explanation for why men would invent gods. It is extremely difficult to come up with the explanation for why gods would invent men to choose to obey them or not. Can you explain how an intelligence can exist with wisdom and desires and a personality but without any experience? In (or immediately adjacent to) a universe with no dimensions, matter or energy why would any god decide to create a universe of billions of galaxies in order to give a few hundred square miles of scrubby semi-desert to one particular tribe? How can it be possible to come with a better explanation for why a god would create men than it is to come up with explanations for why men would invent gods? It is hardly a unique process. Men have created more gods than languages. Stories about gods usually come before stories about folk heroes, fairy tales, plays or novels. They are a primitive fictional form. Even tribes for whom facepaint and pointy sticks are high tech manage to invent gods. No people anywhere on the planet have been found who lack superstitions. Postulating intent in the sky, sea, clouds, rocks and forest is the normal way our species thinks. Coming up with better explanations for what happens in the world around us takes time. Superstitions always get at least a thousand years head-start on science. I don't think that is due to any property unique to humanity or unique to a universe created by a real god, I say that is likely to be the case whenever intelligence evolves. Mythology is always easier to invent than technology and religion takes less intelligence, effort and culture than does science.