Do you think emperor worship is in BETWEEN atheism and theism?

[ZombieHorde]

One one hand, the emperor can usually be proven to exist, on the other hand, fantastic attributes are assigned to him.

The adherents don't need to have any faith in his existence, but they do need to have faith in his assigned attributes. Seems like a strange mix of atheism and theism to me.

What do you think?

[mzteris]

1. I think it's ridiculous...

then again, I think all religion is ridiculous.

[ZombieHorde]

3. I understand DUers don't adhere to emperor worship,

I was wondering how DUers would categorize emperor worship on the atheist/theist scale.

[The Sushi Bandit]

2. Flaw: Atheists do not Worship!

Theists think about it

[ZombieHorde]

4. I agree atheists don't worship, except perhaps as a metaphor,

but I am not talking about atheists, I am talking about a possible stance between atheism and theism.

[JI7]

5. what does atheism have to do with it ? it's still a belief, an atheist can support some dictator

but they wouldn't believe they had some god powers or anything like that.

[ZombieHorde]

7. Between. nt

[mzteris]

6. not atheism at all

the emperor and their followers believe he is a GOD. ergo - not atheism

[ZombieHorde]

8. Between. nt

[mzteris]

11. can't be if he and they both think

he's a GOD. Then it's clearly THEISM.

[NAO]

9. If Jesus ever existed as a historical person

(and there is a strong case that he did not - http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/home.htm is one very good example)

then Christianity would be the worship of a once living person who is now dead but came back from the dead so I guess...

What I think is that people make up religions - sometimes based on idols, sometimes on concepts of invisible beings, sometimes on hybred human/god beings...but I don't want to attempt a taxonomy of religions.

[ZombieHorde]

13. In the case of Christianity, there is also the Heavenly Father. nt

[NAO]

23. Heavely Father doesn't count in your OP, because he's not human

I thought this was where to rank emperor worship on the theism continuum; plain old Heavenly Father theism is just that.

[ZombieHorde]

24. I was thinking Christianity was mostly theist because of the Heavenly Father.

However, I don't think anyone actually agrees with my original idea. The polytheist comment was pretty interesting to me.

[jberryhill]

10. It's the kind I best like to receive, yes

Much better than ancestor worship.

[tama]

12. Especially

when the emperor has no clothes.

Just had to say that...

[jberryhill]

17. Zing!

[Warren Stupidity]

14. History says no.

Emperor deities are in the middle between polytheism and monotheism. If you want a progression it is polytheism -> monotheism -> atheism. However I don't think there is a big case for that either as there wash a fair amount of at least near atheism within the greek classical philosophical tradition.

[ZombieHorde]

15. Interesting take. nt

[alfredo]

16. It's just another expression of theism.

What's the difference between a revelation and a hallucination?

I have no confidence in the honesty, or sanity of those who told the stories. They are beyond fact checking.

[provis99]

18. If you're willing to go kamikaze for the Emperor of Japan,

it is definitely theism. there is no greater test of faith than to give up your own life to your deity.

[LeftishBrit]

19. Not exactly...

I think emperor worship is theocracy taken to extremes. Theocracy involves having rulers that are spokesmen for and enforcers of religion, and invested with divine authority. In emperor worship, the rulers are not only invested with divine authority; they are themselves divine. Rather than being in between theism and atheism, I would say that emperor worship is one end of a religious continuum, where the other pole is represented by belief systems that avoid worshipping specific deities: including atheism; agnosticism; nontheistic religions such as Taoism; and Pantheism. Politically, the opposite pole from emperor worship would be extreme forms of egalitarianism, and/or true anarchism.

[westerebus]

20. Does Steve Jobs count?

In the land of the i-junk he remains the worshipped emperor by his followers if you stretch the analogy.

[ZombieHorde]

27. Funny. nt

[westerebus]

32. They are a cult.

In a secular sense.

The emotional attachment to and the identification with its leader is close enough to follower status.

The hype related to the new offerings is documented.

The personal "touch" is there.

The iconology, pun included at no extra charge, is very identifiable.

Defense of the organization, its products and its leaders are articles of faith among the participants.

You seen this picture before, as we all have, we just assume it's normal.

Funny how indoctrintion works.

[cbayer]

21. Great questions

I have never thought about this in terms of emperor's, but have often wondered about monarchs.


They are treated as if they are one step closer to god than the common man. And then there is the strong emphasis on bloodlines that seems to confirm that they are somehow special.

I don't have a lot of knowledge in this area, so would be interested in what others might have to say.

[backscatter712]

22. I'd say it carries most of the same psychology as god-worship.

The same viral meme-spreading, the same in-group/out-group behavior that leads to people acting like violent meth-addicted chimpanzees, the same use of the rhetoric to brainwash the masses and control them...

The most recent prominent example is North Korea, and their deification and worship of Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and now Kim Jong-Un. They even attributed superpowers to the Dear Leader.

So my answer is that I consider emperor-worship or king-worship or dictator-worship to be equivalent to god worship.

Atheism is merely the state of mind that has the absence of something that apparently needs to be worshiped.

[darkstar3]

25. Why would it be between?

The concept you describe, of worshipping an emporer or similar powerful figure, is referred to as "deification" for a reason. Furthermore, in what definition of theism is there a requirement for blind faith in the existence of the deity in question?

[ZombieHorde]

26. Yea, I guess it was an idea that didn't go anywhere. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. If you're talking about the Japanese emperor, he was never considered a god

in the sense that Westerners think of a god, a supernatural being who can work miracles, etc.

He was a kami (honorific form kami-sama), which can mean god but also refers to anyone who has some kind of charisma or special abilities.

Emperor Hirohito and his predecessors were considered the descendants of the Sun Goddess but not in any way immortal or all-powerful themselves.

All that was gone after World War II.

Do you know that the weekend Hirohito died in 1989, when Japanese TV was all-emperor all-the-time, was the greatest weekend of business EVER for Japan's video stores? That's how much present-day Japanese "worship" the emperor.

[LeftishBrit]

29. Don't know about ZombieHorde...

but I wasn't even thinking about Japan in this context. Emperor worship was a big thing at times in the Roman Empire; and has recent parallels in the extreme adulation given to certain leaders - the biggest parallel nowadays is North Korea.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

31. Don't forget the pharaohs.

The Assyrians and Persians also had god-kings.

[onager]

33. Be careful saying that around a Japanese right-winger...

Mayor Who Faulted Hirohito Is Shot

By DAVID E. SANGER, Special to The New York Times, Published: January 19, 1990

The Mayor of Nagasaki, who broke one of the nation's most sensitive taboos by saying a year ago that Emperor Hirohito bore some responsibility for World War II, was shot today, and the police arrested a 40-year-old ultranationalist.

The Mayor, Hitoshi Motoshima, was reported in critical condition but out of danger tonight after two hours of surgery. Mr. Motoshima, 67 years old, who received many threats after he refused to retract his unusually blunt comments about the Emperor, was shot once in the chest at close range as he left City Hall at 3 P.M. today.

Within five hours, the police had arrested Kazumi Tajiri, whom they identified as a sub-chief of a small right-wing group, the Spiritual Justice School. They said that Mr. Tajiri had been apprehended at an inn not far from City Hall, and that he had immediately volunteered, ''I shot Mayor Motoshima.''

The shooting sent a chill through Japan, a seeming echo from the 1930's when Tokyo was thrown into near-anarchy by a wave of assassinations by right-wing military officers.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/19/world/mayor-who-faulted-hirohito-is-shot.html

Funniest phrase I heard in Japan: "Half of Japanese are Shinto. Half are Buddhist. And half don't have any religion at all."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. Your statement about Japanese religious attitudes is true

The predominant religions in Japan don't require regular attendance at services, and Buddhism and Shinto are used for different purposes. It is common to have Shinto weddings and Buddhist funerals.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

30. That's kind of a narrow-minded definition of "theism."

Just because believer in say, ancient Rome, believed different things about some of their gods than most people do today does not mean they were not religious believers. It is a very narrow definition of "belief" or "theism" if it only includes modern (and Western, I might add) religious ideas.

Further, I don't think that just because the existence of one of their gods can be verified that makes them atheists. Recall that there were actual atheists in the classical world, and I don't believe any of them assented to the divinity of the emperor on and intellectual level.