(September 17, 2014 at 11:37 am)Exian Wrote: I should say, I never performed those preformed prayers that you'd hear at church. Instead, I asked questions and I stated my intentions for myself or stated things that would satisfy me to happen to others (think Get well soon).What you're describing has many names. I guess "affirmations" or "self-talk" are among them. We talk to ourselves all the time, and that talk shapes our subconscious mind. Even when we're talking to others. "I want to ask that girl out, but I know I'll mess it up" is a form of self-talk, and it reinforces how you view yourself, and how you act. Prayer can work this way, in that we may be more likely to work towards a goal or outcome if we think that god is quietly removing obstacles or giving us the necessary strength.
Many successful people have learned to use that to reinforce positive opinions about themselves and even to dismiss negative ones. It doesn't matter how you come to believe that you can succeed-- as long as you are convinced, you are more likely to make every effort to do so, and more likely to brush aside failures and setbacks.
"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
