Reply #7: In fact, "worship" seems to be exactly the right word for the "devotion" .. [View All]

[struggle4progress]

.. many people show towards various objects or ideals.

Self-worship, for example, is extremely common, both among those of us who claim to follow a standard religion and also among those who claim no such thing -- and "devotion" and "reverence" and "extravagant admiration" are often accurately descriptive of the attitude of the worshipper towards the object self-worship. I myself have always tended to adore the natural world: "reverence" towards, and "extravagant admiration" of, the astonishing and beautiful products of evolution, for example, has always seemed to me an entirely appropriate response. Certain people seem to me clearly to worship football or auto-sports.

I have had good friends who were avowedly atheists who very consciously and deliberately decided to work for environmental causes or nuclear disarmament or workers rights, for example, and it seems to me that they have had a real "devotion" to their ideals and a real "reverence" for the people or places they sought to protect. Perhaps "just deciding what's important in one's life" is itself important and deserves continuing intensity, not only in the decision itself but in the work done putting the decision in motion, but of course you are entirely free to be neither passionate nor intense about "what's important" in your life, should you so choose.