The Logical Atheist

Why does Yahweh want or need to be served? Isn't that selfish?

What we have, then, is a conflict between the role of a worshiper, which by its very nature commits one to total subservience to God, and the role of moral agent, which necessarily involves autonomous decision-making. The point is that the role of worshiper takes precedence over every other role which the worshiper has -- when there is any conflict, the worshiper's commitment to God has priority over any other commitments which he might have. But the first commitment of a moral agent is to do what in his own heart he thinks right. Thus the following argument might be constructed: (a) If any being is God, he must be a fitting object of worship. (b) No being could possibly be a fitting object of worship, since worship requires the abandonment of one's role as an autonomous moral agent. (c) Therefore, there cannot be any being who is God. --James Rachels, "God and Human Attitudes"

In this paper I shall present an a priori argument against the existence of God which is based on the conception of God as a fitting object of worship. The argument is that God cannot exist, because no being could ever be a fitting object of worship.... [T]he idea that any being could be worthy  of worship is much more problematical than we might have at first imagined. For in admitting that a being is worthy of worship we should be recognising him as having an unqualified claim on our obedience. The question, then, is whether there could be such an unqualified claim.... In fact, there is a long tradition in moral philosophy, from Plato to Kant, according to which such a recognition could never be made by a moral agent. According to this tradition, to be a moral agent is to be an autonomous or self-directed agent.... On this view, to deliver oneself over to a moral authority for directions about what to do is simply incompatible with being a moral agent.    --James Rachel...