Belief, Worship & Action.

Belief is a very deep concept. In general, we seem to think that we know what a person believes in, in a metaphysical or spiritual sense, by what they say they believe in. While they may think they are being honest, it may not be so straight forward. Many psychologists will argue that we can tell what a person truly believes in by their repetitive actions, and how they conduct themselves in the world, and not by what they necessarily say. In saying that, there may be many people whose actions are fairly aligned with what they say they believe. In this piece, I will argue that a person’s belief system may not be so obvious to themselves, but by looking at their actions, we can infer what they truly believe in. I will also argue that everyone worships something, even the atheists. When I use the word “worship” I do not necessarily mean “bow down to” or “pray to”, but instead I mean to “live in alignment with”. For the sake of this piece, what one “worships” and/or “believes in” are essentially the same thing.

Let’s imagine a person who says they are an atheist. Let’s also imagine that this person has a strong sense of morality. Generally, they consistently demonstrate acts of kindness, love, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, positivity and empathy. Through their actions, we can see that they believe in these values strongly. Instead of assuming that they live by these values in a fragmented sense, there must be something that unites these values. We could call it goodness itself, or goodness as such. In other words, they are obviously a good person, shown by their actions, which are driven by good moral values. This “goodness as such” is what they believe in, or worship on a very deep level, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. In an a more abstract sense, that goodness, that encompasses all their good values, is their God, or the God they believe in, partly because it is the thing that they ultimately try to follow. That is not to say that they always act perfectly moral. They are human and are bound to make mistakes, and when they do make a mistake, they are simply falling short of their own moral aim.

So, in this view, God is not something that creates the values, but instead, it is the values that create or infer the God. The example I gave in the last paragraph was an example of someone who acts as though he believes in a good God, but the same idea can be applied to someone who believes in an evil God. An immoral person, who claims to be an atheist, will still demonstrate a set of values through their actions. These may be hatred, envy, resentment and pride, just to name a few. These values may fall under the category, or meta-value of “evil as such”. There may be an argument for the idea that people simply act out of their own self-interest, for the purposes of pleasure, survival and reproduction. But even then, if that was true for someone, we can still infer the meta-value they believe in, and it may be “hedonistic selfishness as such”. The point is, that we are always worshiping something through our actions, and we can conceptualise what that is by looking at our actions, and more fundamentally, the values that drive them.

I think there’s a lot of people who worship the meta-value of goodness, or the good God, whether they refer to themselves as a believer or an atheist. Of course, for the sake of this piece, I have used the term “God” to represent something that sits at the top of a value hierarchy. God can mean many things in different contexts, so when I have referred to God in this piece, I am not referring to a “Creator”. However, consciousness itself may be very close to the meta-value (or God) that I referred to. I may leave that for another piece. I’ll finish with this… I think it’s important for us to be mindful of what we worship, particularly through our actions.