(August 16, 2014 at 10:13 am)Michael Wrote: Brakeman. I think it's entirely appropriate to use praying people to help understand what is going when they pray. That study allows us to say that it is likely that there is more to prayer, for those that do pray, than simply thinking about someone.That sounds a lot like the power of positive thinking. Psychologists are beginning to understand that how we perceive reality has a considerable effect on how we act and react. The person who has a great deal of self-confidence probably has much higher self-esteem than is warranted, but he carries himself in that manner anyway. And people react to his self-confidence by seeing him through the lens he presents himself with, which often provides him with opportunities from people who might otherwise have not given him the time of day.
Prayer is a form of affirmation, a phrase or phrases that create or strengthen a particular mindset. If you believe that god in on your side in your job search, you may be more confident and more proactive in your search and reach for opportunities that you might otherwise have skipped. There is the other side to this, in that a person may consider that prayer is sufficient, and uses it in lieu of action, which can be very harmful in the long run. Especially if it is paired with the sort of "every outcome is proof" rationalization that many believers subscribe to.
"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
