Humanity is meant to worship That Which Is Sacred (God) in many different ways.

"This topic assumes that there is a greater purpose to humanity- that is, our existence did not spontaneously occur, but that we exist to fulfill a greater purpose. I honestly appreciate your efforts to be inclusive to atheists/agnostics/secularists, but in order to take your position, if one accepts that we are "meant" to do certain things, one must accept that there is a divine mandate." Nope. I can prove humanity did not spontaneously come into existence yesterday. I can prove that the earth is 4.6 billion years old, that dinosaurs existed a couple hundred million years ago (Jurassic to the Cretaceous). And that human skeletons have been discovered up to tens of thousands of years ago. I could go look up all this stuff and show it to you, but I'm pretty sure you can do that yourself, and that this isn't the point. While I do believe that humanity is meant to fulfill a greater purpose in life that is not what I intended by the word "meant." We do not need a creator God to be meant to act in certain ways. Let's make it a little less personal. Polar Bears are meant to live in the Arctic, on a permanent ice sheet over the Arctic Ocean. They are meant to eat seal cubs. They have evolved over hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years to live in this niche environment and eat the foods available to them there. Once that environment ceases to exist (5-20 years?) they will cease to exist outside of zoos and children's storybooks. This is a scientific fact. It is not dependent on the belief in a creator God. A human is meant to live in a certain temperature range, eat some foods and not others, and breathe air with a certain mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen, preferably without anything poisonous added. If we stop doing those things we stop being human. I am arguing that we are also meant to worship the sacred in life. I am trying to be inclusive of the atheist/secular community here. And I'm also trying to encourage members of that community to not let the Christians/Monotheists steal all the good words. I do appreciate you bringing up this point, because I hadn't realized "meant" would be so God-centeric to other folks. Although I was expecting issues with worship and sacred, which we'll get into further on. "There is a big difference between the argument that it's beneficial for all mankind to be tolerant and get along with one another, which I wholeheartedly support, and your claim." I believe those are very different statements, also. There are plenty of people who would state that they think it is beneficial for everyone to be tolerant and loving, BUT... BUT, you are going to hell if you don't worship God the same way I do... BUT, you are stupid and lazy if you believe in an afterlife... BUT, I will be afraid of you if you read a Qu'ran. If we can agree that we are meant to experience and worship that which is sacred and holy in different ways, our "tolerance" of each other can become something deeper like acceptance, acknowledgment, and even love. "Additionally, I am troubled by the word "worship." Christopher Hitchens is right when he warns of the dangers of abandoning reason for faith. There is a crucial difference between solemnly respecting/cherishing and worshiping. When one chooses to make decisions based on doctrine instead of one's innate morality, there is a risk of veering into fundamentalism. Religion is not innately evil, but I believe that fundamentalism is." So it would be ok if people just respected their doctrines above their respect for reason and compassion? I think solemnly respecting and cherishing IS worshiping, and there is no difference between these phrases. I agree completely that worshiping doctrine (being fundamentalist) leads to tragedy and evil. But this is not pertinent to the central thesis of the debate. It would be sad if in our attempt to avoid worshiping doctrine we became too scared to ever worship anything. It's a bit of a fad in my faith community of choice, Unitarian Universalism (www.uua.org), to talk about the fact that the word worship comes from the old Anglo-Saxon for "shaping matters of worth", or "to place worth in". So recognizing and expressing reverence for the things that matter in our life is worship of the sacred. I am arguing that humans are meant to recognize and express reverence for the things that matter in our lives in many different ways. I chose to state this in a more compact way by saying worship. "Most religious texts contain useful and time-honored moral teachings, but I think it would be an insult to humanity to claim that these moral truths are accessible to us only via religion. This will probably make me lose the debate because it will offend religious voters, but every religion's holy texts were written by people, fallible mortals just like you and me, and there is zero proof that any supernatural entity used them as a conduit. Religious texts contain fundamental pillars of morality because the people who wrote them were moral. Also, by almost any modern moral standard, they were far from perfectly moral. There are certain parts of the Old and New Testaments, for example, that basically no reasonable Jews or Christians agree with. A good number of them can be found here: http://www.religioustolerance.org...... Many Jews and Christians choose to interpret those passages metaphorically/figuratively, and this underscores my point. When they encounter parts of their texts that conflict with their innate morals, they value their innate morals above the text. That is, they do not worship the controversial text, they shy away from it in deference to what they know is right. This illustrates the difference between rationality and fundamentalism. When the typical person reads controversial text, he/she defers to his/her deep moral convictions, but the fundamentalist worships unquestioningly." I agree with this section, as it matches my own personal experiences. I would argue that a liberal Christian/Jew by valuing their innate morals above their worship of a particular religious text, they are also worshiping (placing worth in) their innate moral compass above the value they place in a particular religious text. So let me restate again, I am arguing that humankind is meant to express our value of That Which Is Sacred in many different ways. "If the topic were "It is in humanity's best interest for everyone to be tolerant, respectful and compassionate and to ardently value love and global harmony" I would have nothing to say. That ain't the topic though." Again, I agree wholeheartedly. I just think that we can get there faster by acknowledging that we are meant (have evolved to a point where it is far simpler) to get there by different paths.