It's pretty clear that that "worship" here refers to where we practice focusing our heart's yearnings, not to a set of religious rites. Synonyms of this meaning of "worship" include "revere" and "venerate".
He's just playing word games, and you are falling for it.
From a christian/jewish/islamic perspective whatever you focus most on is your 'idol' - the bible talks alot about worshipping money, for instance.
In that sense, then whatever you focus on in life is idolatrous worship, an atheistic religion.
There is no truth to that whatsoever.
Contrary to some other comments in this thread, the people complaining about the literal truth value are the ones falling for the author’s writing technique, not the other way around.
Don’t interpret it literally. Its used to assemble an idea that anything can be worshipped/venerated, not to make the argument that atheism doesn’t exist.
Given DFW's history of depression, having rejected his parents' atheism, and having relied on AA in his struggle with addition, I am quite inclined to believe that the latter explanation is true in this case as well. I can understand why he wanted to have a special belief system which would be constructive as a break from the painful destructive behavior he was all too familiar with but that makes it the desperate longings of a broken person rather than a divine truth.
The statement about atheists not existing is hyperbole used in passing. He doesn't mean there is absolutely no difference between religious and unreligious people. He means they are often similar in non-obvious ways.
The central point of the full speech is that people should be intentional about what they choose to think and care about. It's not too far from stoicism which seems pretty popular in SV/HN.
The chain of points from this passage back to this central point are:
- Atheists and religious people are similar in that they both have a need to find meaning in their life.
- The alternatives that people find for sources of meaning (power, money, looks, etc) are often psychologically harmful.
- These harmful sources of meaning are often adopted by us unconsciously ("by default").
- It is important to be intentional about what we care about because if we are not, we will default to the harmful sources of meaning.
I agree that there is likely some projection of DFW's own psychological issues onto non-religious people at large, and that a lot of people can live happy lives without some form of veneration.
On the other hand, I think his advice is useful for some. I personally find his message about choosing your values intentionally valuable.
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Even when taken in context, I admit his writing isn't super clear to a general audience. DFW was fond of experimental writing and also believed that writing should be tailored to the audience. His audience in this case was a liberal arts college, so he may have felt comfortable stretching his use of language.
This why I generally lean towards the “sloppy writing” conclusion — it is indeed useful to consider your values carefully, but trying to dunk on atheists both confused the language and lead to the incorrect claim that religious beliefs are less harmful than secular ones which is easily disproven by talking to people who were mistreated by friends or family members who saw that as a religious requirement (e.g. many gay people) or whose religion embraced the same harmful behaviors (e.g. some state religions or cults, the prosperity gospel, etc.).
Better writing could avoid that distraction by focusing on the common harmful classes of behavior and how to recognize those patterns in any particular system. I don’t see this as experimental language use because it’s so far from novel in this particular context and the net effect is to obscure the point rather than reach some deeper understanding.
The canonical example of the difference is that plenty of religious Buddhists are also atheists.
Not to be confused with "agnosticism" which is "holding the belief that it cannot be known whether there is a god".
DFW is making a compelling point. The words were taken from his magnificent "This is water" commencement address at Kenyon College in the early naughts.
The point of the passage is that everyone needs a source of meaning in their life, and that religious is more psychologically healthy option than the alternatives.
‘round here we call that trolling.
Of course he's going to play on words and conflate emotions when waxing about the meaning of life.
I don't understand why so many have to be such a harsh critic. Yeesh.
But I'd still argue the opposite. This is a fiction writer who obviously is listened to. He's famous. He's quoted by random people on the internet. And those quotes are taken from speeches that he was presumably paid to give. Words are his profession. It's not correct to say that just because he doesn't do journalism that his words have no impact on reality.
On the contrary, because he is a writer, we should be especially wary of his words. His words are meant to convince you of a point. You can't just ignore his goals and say it's poetry.
His goal is to convince you that Atheism is bad, and he suggests that all atheists worship "something" that will destroy them (since it obviously isn't God, one of the only carve outs he leaves for worship that won't destroy you).
In the context of the above article, the point is crystal clear. The quote was posted with it's intended meaning: that atheists are nothing more than people who "worship" the material. That's bullshit. That's not what atheism is, and Wallace is being disingenuous.
I don't know how does this distinction work in other religions, but based on Wikipedia[1] it looks like adoration, veneration and reverence may also be different on many of them.
This is provably false.
"It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain: Especially is this the case with the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world."[1]
As an example, the New Testament is 25x more accurately copied across manuscripts than the Iliad [2].
"The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice."[3]
[1] Kenyon, "Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts", p. 23
[2] Bruce M. Metzger, "Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism", cited by Geisler and Nix, "A General Introduction to the Bible", pp. 366f
[3] F.F. Bruce, "The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?" p. 15
Until the Counter-reformation, Catholics were not allowed to lend money at interest due to the ancient prohibition against usury. After that point Catholic doctrine was changed to say that this was one of the commandments for the ancient Jews that was not intended for Christians. The Bible didn't change, but doctrine did. (This despite the fact that the only point in the Bible where Jesus is portrayed as acting angrily was throwing the moneychangers out of the temple. And why was their presence wrong? Because they were engaged in usury!)
The doctrine of papal infallibility is accepted by all Catholics today. Yet it was not part of Catholic doctrine until 1870.
Until 1616, the Catholic Church had no official doctrine on astronomy. In fact Copernicus dedicated his book to the Pope. And then the Copernican theory was ruled contrary to scripture. Catholics were banned from reading various books about it. A century later, the bans on the books were lifted. A century after that, the Catholic Church declared that the Copernican theory was in accord with scripture.
In all of these cases Scripture didn't change. Jesus still threw the moneylenders out of the temple for usury. Peter still received the keys to heaven. And Joshua bid the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth. But the beliefs that people had based on these passages /did/ change.
A tree that was out of season, no less.
And this happens immediately before the verse where he chases out the moneylenders.
And on the way back, they pass the withered fig tree again and one of the disciples points it out and Jesus says "Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them,"
...which is a weird flex but OK.
None of your examples feel like radically different Catholicism, except perhaps the papal infallibility thing, though even that seems it was generally believed, but not categorically, before being written down and today is generally believed, but not categorically, so, not radically different.
That seems to me to be a pretty radical difference.