ABSTRACT
Mulgan's central question in this chapter is whether a non-human-centred God and/or an impersonal cosmic purpose could be an appropriate object of worship and play the same religious, spiritual, or moral roles as the benevolent God of traditional Abrahamic theism.
This chapter draws on Mulgan's earlier work, especially Purpose in the Universe (2015), where he defends Ananthropocentric Purposivism (AP) – the view that there is a cosmic purpose but that humans are irrelevant to that purpose. In principle, AP leaves it open whether the cosmic purpose is linked to a personal God, an impersonal Platonic Form, or formal axiarchic requirements. Mulgan focuses in this chapter on an Ananthropocentric God and asks whether we could worship a God who did not care for us. Mulgan also argues that if we could worship a non-human-centred God, then we could also worship an impersonal cosmic purpose (or its source).
