I’ve mentioned it before on here plenty of times, but I note the not-very-groundbreaking, Voltairean idea that a disbelief in God will necessary a man to find divine attributes in the physical or abstract—not metaphysical—universe (as such, Volataire’s quote is more accurate if we put “find” instead of “it would be necessary to invent him.”). Just Thomism explicitly defined that as idolatry:
Since idolatry is imputing divine characteristics to nature and to human art, we can replace this definition with the word. Put this way, the first three steps are well known:
It fits, though for some reason I’ve been passing it over. Basing idolatry solely on scriptural instances doesn’t help since most of those were the worship of other (supposed) gods. No one cares about pagan gods anymore, and accusing people of idolatry nowadays is on the same social relevance level as gluttony.
On a related note, I have a forthcoming post about paganism and modern science. No, I’m not calling scientists pagans and you’re not a secret pagan if you think science is cool.