RE: Why are you an Atheist?
December 20, 2019 at 12:15 pm
(This post was last modified: December 20, 2019 at 12:16 pm by mordant.)
(December 19, 2019 at 12:03 pm)maxolla Wrote: I think anything is possible. We usually think of prayer as something of a request and then some base belief on the “answer” or lack of one. Make me rich make me famous make me well make me strong make me etc etc etc. Solve all of my immediate problems and do it right now or else.
Christianity teaches two broad categories of prayer. One might be called "meditative prayer", of the "not my will but thine be done" variety. The other is making requests. These can be anything from "help me find my car keys" to "spare my spouse this suffering, cancer and death" or anything in between. It generally in practice doesn't have an "or else" element to it or has as its focus "immediate" problems. In my practice back in the day it was mostly vague platitudes asking for grace, wisdom, and protection more generally. I did not attempt to cash in big poker chips like "don't let her die" unless I really, REALLY had to, because I sensed god wasn't as deeply interventionist as he was portrayed.
But he IS portrayed as such. While there IS "meditative prayer" and the Bible arguably has more of that teaching than many [care to] realize, it is also indisputable that the Bible is filled with elaborate, detailed, baroque promises of largesse for the faithful. God blesses the righteous and confounds the wicked. Test me and see if I won't open the storehouses of heaven and rain down blessings on you. You have not because you ask not. If you have enough faith (and you only need an eensy bit, the size of a mustard seed) then you can command a mountain to be cast into the sea and it will be so. And on and on. And on.
It was this "god has you in his back pocket and has adopted you as his beloved child" ethos that led me to have inflated and ridiculous expectations of how my life as a True Believer was destined to play out.
Needless to say, it didn't work out that way.
If there's one single major source of deconversions of devout Christians, it is that the lavish promises of Christianity to its adherents do not at all accurately explain or predict lived experience.
