Atheists and Prayer

[Angrboda]

I do a good bit of meditation. Sometimes I'll "pray" to the flying spaghetti monster, just to give my mind more focus. I think there's a bit of a difference between total-nothingness meditation and prayerful meditation.

I don't think the FSM is listening, but maybe there are some physiological benefits to pretending he does

My impression — based on nothing — is that all meditation is more or less functionally equivalent, it just varies in how well suited a particular technique is to the individual's strengths and weaknesses. This makes sense, as unlike beliefs, the practice of meditation, contemplation, or meditative prayer cuts across religious boundaries and tends to be rather agnostic. I'm Taoist and Hindu, yet I participate once a week with a group of Buddhists. I don't need to subscribe to Buddhist beliefs in order to follow a similar practice, and, even though I don't put any stock (or much stock) in the metaphysics of Buddhism, I can "manipulate" my practice of meditation based on the model presented by Buddhist metaphysics. And it's interesting to note that meditation or contemplation is extremely important to many of the most significant Christian mystics, for whom "experiencing" the divine is more important than reasoning one's way to it. Meditation appears to be one of few "one size fits all" spiritual practices, so I suspect that, despite individual variation in practice, the effects are largely the same.