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12 - Worship for Atheists

from Part III - Normative Aspects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Saul Smilansky
Edited by
Aaron Segal  and
Samuel Lebens
Aaron Segal
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Samuel Lebens
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
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Summary

Worship is typically understood as an act of religious reverence and devotion to a deity, usually involving some ritual. I aim here to explore whether, and how far, we might make sense of the idea of worship even on robust atheistic assumptions, according to which there is good reason to believe that there is no deity, nor supernatural beings of any kind, so that the only live beings in the world are humans, animals, plants and the like. We shall call this Atheist Worship (AW). Beyond that, I wish to explore the possible value of such practice. If there is no God, then in some sense AW is normatively the only possible form of worship that is not based on error or pretence. But as we shall see, there is no reason why theists cannot also engage in many forms of “AW” (in the sense of engaging in practices expressing attitudes of reverence and devotion towards something held to be of great value and importance, without theistic assumptions), so the value of this project does not depend upon atheism.

Keywords

worshipatheismreverenceritualvalue
Type
Chapter
Information
The Philosophy of Worship
Divine and Human Aspects
 , pp. 209 - 226
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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