Are Christians, Muslims and atheists idolaters?

Neither can theism, which indicates that agnostic or Gnostic is the best position. No?

Regards
DL

Your two post say exactly nothing to the rank and file.

Why are you even here?

Regards
DL

You go ahead and analyze knowledge all you want.

I am not here to bother with that as that comes at the end of a debate and discussion, so say most philosophers, so I will go with them.

I do not intend to let you deflect from or derail the O.P.

Regards
DL

That Jews are not idolaters, and that scholars know this, raises a classic question: when in fact do we enjoy a twilight of the idols?

Jews run the gamete from atheists to orthodox.
Each group will put their ideology or God as their ideal and that makes them idol worshipers of their ideologies.

Ignore the preachy ending in this clip, but try to understand what he says as far as his description of whatever we place as our number one and ideal belief, regardless of what that belief is.

youtube.com/watch?v=SkZg1ZflpJs&t=1s

Regards
DL

Perhaps, when most people truly know?

Well indeed, not one idol to be found…

I think in the above there is a mixed up of perspectives and thus conflations and equivocations.

To put into perspective, the above issue fall into the main set of ‘representations’.
The point is representations can be presented in terms of;

A.Mental

  1. a mental thought
  2. an idea
  3. a concept
  4. words
  5. an ideology
    B. Physical
  6. an physical image [pictures, etc.]
  7. graven image
  8. human being [heroes, celebrities etc.]

From the above idols general refer to the physical and within religion and spirituality refer to graven images. Thus literally idols are one type of representation but not all representations are idols.

When the scriptures warned against idol worshipping, the reference is to representations that are physical ONLY and not to mental representations.
The point here is when Christians and Muslims are accusing others of idolatry they don’t realize they are also idolaters in the sense of their own use of images, statues and physical objects [e.g. Kaabah re Muslims, crosses, etc.].

Fundamentally a non-theist or atheist will just say ‘I am not a theist’ and this is a reliance of mental representations using words and sentences. This is merely a statement and is not even an ideology or an organized set of beliefs like theology or political beliefs.

Thus non-theists cannot be idolaters in any near sense to real idolaters who supposedly idolize physical representations ,i.e. graven images.

Agnostic like yourself may not be an idolater, but you are a representationalist who rely on an ideology [mental -5].

At best, we can say, theists, agnostics and non-theists rely on representations where some representations are idols while others are not.
So both theists and non-theists are representationalist, i.e. some theists are idolater-representationalist or ideological-representationalists, and non-theists are merely words-representationalists.

Agnostic theism is a better position than gnostic theism
Agnostic atheism is a better position than gnostic atheism

Agnostic atheism for me is the default position because of zero evidence for theism

this should be fun.

Greatest I Am

What kind of an idolater are you?
The way that I look at it, we all, in a sense, idolize something or someone ~ not just the Christian, Muslim, et cetera.
I idolize the stars, the trees, the ocean and its waves…

If a Christian or a Muslim or any spiritual person loves his/her god, that is not necessarily being an idolater.
It may simply be about having a relationship with Something or Someone thought to be greater than one’s self and finding meaning and perhaps service within that.

What makes an idolater depends on how extreme or fanatical one is and how that influences one’s behavior.
I think that it is a question of degrees.

Let us not go throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Again, what is it that you idolize? What brings out the idolater in you? :evilfun:

Aside from all of that, the only real thing perhaps which I see as pure idolatry is kneeling in front of a !statue! ~ it does not matter what statue ~ and praying to it, as if the statue itself was the real embodiment of who is being prayed to.
That is like a superstition to me, kind of magical thinking and behavior. I do realize that sometimes these statues are just to be used to maintain one’s focus on who is really being addressed but I can greatly suggest that these idolaters are praying to cold, hard formed material, though beautiful forms, without even realizing it.

Now that, to me, is idolatry.

Indeed.

And stop lying about what they do not or cannot know.

youtube.com/watch?v=vjRy29R4gP8

vimeo.com/25149893

Regards
DL

The differences in thinking is irrelevant to the idea that we all place our thinking system above all else and are thus idolizing them.

Give a listen to this poet as he take the semantics out of the argument before he goes into preach mode.

youtube.com/watch?v=SkZg1ZflpJs

If you keep things simple, my point is easier to see.

If you do not put whatever thinking system you follow, your ideology, as your idolized ideal, then what system do you think is better and why are you not thinking that way?

Regards
DL

Theism of the supernatural kind. I agree.

Theism that put’s man above God, I think is the way to go, which is basically what was going on before Christtians and Muslims began reading their myths literally.

Have a look at how much more intelligent things were before literalism.

bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Regards
DL

Be it a statue or whatever mental picture a person forms of his God or ideology, it is the thinking pattern/ideology which is idolized. The various groups mentioned in the O.P. all hold fast to their ideologies and are thus idol worshipers.

“What kind of an idolater are you?”

The kind that might not be an idolater in the real sense of that word.

My ideal and ideology tells me to take what I have, raise the bar of excellence and seek anew. In that sense, Gnostic Christians cannot ever be satisfied or be idol worshipers as we are never satisfied and always looking to dethrone our God and replace him with a better one.

I guess one could see that as my idolizing my ideology, of not idolizing my ideology, as it should be seeking to evolve to something better.

Please follow that link just above to get a better picture of my thinking.

Regards
DL

:text-thankyouyellow:

As they say, a being who wants to be worshipped isn’t worthy of worship. To explain what this phrase means: don’t worship!!

Maybe God doesn’t care about being worshiped.

Well, at least we got rid of that idolatry issue and now we have moved on to a new idea: worshiping is bad. New thread?

Worship meaning

and so…

and

Sounds terrible.

Who is this ‘they’`?

Me personally, I am not a big fan or worshipping, not because respecting and loving are bad but because one is told what to feel, rather the feeling coming naturally from the relationship. That’s me.