Three weeks ago I wrote about the about the shock my kitten visited up me when she brought me in her jaws a living blackbird. This was followed two days later with a living mouse. Wenusia meant these gifts to me as tokens of affection and gratitude; my undisguisable reaction was horror rather than appreciation. It made me think of Aztec human sacrifice, live human beings put to death as an expression of praise and thanks to God – though for the Supreme Purpose of the Universe such offerings do not align. "Not in my name – indeed, not at all!"
Does God need praise? No – God needs no praise because God is not a person, therefore has no narcissistic traits; consciousness does not equal ego. Moments of pure consciousness are ego-free. Religions telling us to praise God are conflating human personhood, with its weaknesses, its desire for flattery, with Divinity.
Gratitude is something quite different to praise. You thank people for favours, for holding the door open as you struggle through with a large package. For stopping the bus a little longer while you run up to it. For sending you that email you'd asked for. A simple word of appreciation. Thank you.
But does God need gratitude? Yes. Gratitude is the opposite to Indifference. Feeling gratitude proves that the succession of small miracles traceable back to the Big Bang (via the creation of the Milky Way galaxy, the birth of our star, the Sun, the formation of the Earth, abiogenesis and biological evolution from first life via the last universal common ancestor and the unbroken chain of reproduction that led to you being here rather than not being here to read this) goes on. And will go on.
I am grateful above all for life, for life's little miracles, for looking out onto a sunlit forest. For visits from friends, for long walks, for the spring that's returning life to the world. For the kitten that walked into my life. For joy.
To atheists I ask – do you ever feel gratitude for good fortune, for misfortune averted?
If so – to whom?
It's at those moments when feeling grateful sweeps over you that you get that intuition that God exists.
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