(February 22, 2014 at 2:06 pm)whateverist Wrote: Define prayer.There is also stuff like affirmations and self-hypnosis, where you are (or someone else is) trying to influence the subconscious part of the brain. Prayer can work in this manner, in that some faiths use the rote repetition of specific phrases to strengthen belief. The runner positioned at the starting line, who keeps mentally repeating "I can do this. I can do this. I can do this" is saying a 'prayer' of sorts.
I don't beseech a deity but do cultivate the capacity to disengage from discursive thought. Especially when problem solving or designing I look to the problem/challenge to see/understand it clearly but without a lot of patter. In this way I think I am opening myself to capacities that are not at my conscious disposal. In my subjective life I aim to be a better listener than speaker.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
