What Is The Point Of Prayer?

[Minimalist]

Nice kitty.

[Tonus]

Fuck me.

Prayers: ANSWERED! Shit, gotta re-think this atheist thing now...

[Doubting Thomas]

To get the Atheists to talk to you, you need to break down the barriers that you put up. Using ad homs is a bona fide barrier, and you, sir, are full of them. I'm not saying the Atheists don't have their fair share, but they're more justified in using them in reference to you than you are to them.

I think you're misunderstood as to GC's intentions here. He doesn't want to engage us in logical debate or even try to convert lost souls. He's here to feed his own bloated sense of smug righteousness and superiority by belittling us and claiming victory in every argument. He's not hear to win souls, he's here to be a general pain in the ass to those he sees as enemies of Christ.

[Faith No More]

I'm physically handicapped, missing nine of my ten fingers. I was in the store one day, minding my own business, and a pair of young men came up to me. They said, "We saw your handicap and were moved by your plight. Would you like us to pray for you?" I'm like, "No. Fuck off." I didn't say the fuck off part, but I sure thought it. Christians aren't content with themselves unless they're putting their religion in your face. It's why people like GC are here. Do you think GC desires your company because he thinks atheists are good and interesting people? Fuck no, most of the theists on this forum are all about putting their business up in yours. That's all it is.

Well, what good is being superior if you don't get to wave it in everyone's face?

(BTW, you have to love the train of thought on this one. "Gee, I noticed you have a physical handicap. Would it make you feel better if I pointed it out to let you know that I noticed?")

[fr0d0]

To be fair, it's more like your physical handicap is the elephant in your backpack that you didn't know about :p

/steps away from the public stoning party

[Wallaby]

*Channels Drich* Christians don't pray to make formal requests to god or to kiss his ass, they do it change their own minds and will and desires into something in line with god's will. *Channels Drich*

I know you meant this as a joke, but I'm sincerely curious about this idea.

Sometime when faced with hard decisions, theists (my only exposure is to Christians) will "pray about it." I heard it all the time growing up. Since there really isn't a God to tell you exactly what to do, I wonder what the actual process does for a devout person's decision making. My guess would be that the decision would be made in-line with a more conservative, safe-thinking mindset; God is a father-like figure, and even if your biological father isn't, God is presented as a stern, loving, gentle person.

So when we say "pray on it," are we in effect saying "do whatever it is your dad or whoever comes closest to being your dad would do"? I'm curious to hear what people think.

---

<stuff>

Brian, I didn't quote your post because there was a lot of it to go through, but I think you've raised some very interesting points. I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate something. This postulation comes in two parts:

1) God is very powerful, but is not all-powerful, despite what Christians tend to claim. He is really just another term being used to reference the universe in general.
2) When Christians pray, they are not actually praying to God. They are praying to Jesus.

Prayer makes a lot more sense in this context. When you pray to ask God for something, you are not begging an all-powerful, timeless entity to change his eternal plan. Instead, you are praying to an intermediary (Jesus, or one of the saints) to lobby on your behalf to a great being who has his hand on the steering wheel of the universe. God may or may not be impressed with your devotion and may or may not re-steer his course based on your request.

This puts Jesus in an interesting light, because Christians typically describe him as being "one with God," logically interchangeable with Him. But this is not the practice, is it? Christians identify Jesus as a figure separate from God, begotten from Him, but not controlled. This makes for a much more interesting story than the one typically told. What if God's impregnation of Mary was not part of a divine plan, but a whim? Then Jesus' struggle to convince the rest of humanity to worship Him and view Him as a loving entity is partially a way of staving off retribution from a potentially angry and vengeful God, as is shown in the Old Testament. This is the kind of view that sees God as a child squatting over an anthill. She could step on them and squash them all, or she could become amused by their frolicking to and fro. Maybe if enough of the larger ants bring her candy, she'll decide it's better to leave the colony be, or bring them some sugar. Without any intercession, she might decide to go find a magnifying glass and see what entertainment springs from that.

People in this thread have shown a clear disdain for others who vocalize that they are "praying for them," but I don't think this deserves the vehemence its been given. Prayer, in general, is an incredibly easy thing to do. You just imagine you're talking to God. To be a Christian (who is expected to pray) and to NOT pray for somehow who could potentially benefit from divine intervention is, in the Christian sense, deplorable. Some poor person is dying, and you're not willing to take 15 minutes out of your day to commune with God and beg on behalf of this person's life? Prayer, for the Christian, is like holding a door open for a pregnant women who's carrying two sacks full of groceries. You're of course going to do it, because it's the only decent thing to do. Of course, letting people know that you're doing it is something else altogether, and against the teachings of the J man himself. I think it's fair to categorize that as passive coercion, in the sense of "I'm doing something by praying, maybe you oughta consider it too."

[Tonus]

So when we say "pray on it," are we in effect saying "do whatever it is your dad or whoever comes closest to being your dad would do"? I'm curious to hear what people think.

In my experience, most Christians believe that the Bible can provide sufficient guidance for pretty much any question or situation one may encounter. They may have to find the right passage and figure out the proper interpretation, or simply meditate on what they understand about god, or seek out the counsel of elders or priests or just a fellow Christian whose advice they trust. When I was a believer, I understood that by praying, I was asking god to guide me to that answer. Maybe I'd read a passage and realize that it is what I needed to read. Or maybe the person I asked for advice gave me the advice I needed. The assumption that god was guiding the process made it easier to take action with the confidence that things would turn out as god wanted.

This is susceptible to confirmation bias, in that almost any outcome can be attributed to god's plan. Whether we got what we had hoped for or gotten something different, the believer accepts that it was god's will and that in the end he will set everything right. So even if the outcome caused suffering or grief, there would come a time when god would take care of his own and they'd be happy forever. It makes it much easier to buy into the concept, especially if things seem to go terribly wrong.

[Minimalist]

In my experience, most Christians believe that the Bible can provide sufficient guidance for pretty much any question or situation one may encounter.

Or...even if they face a sudden need to curse a fig tree or drive out a demon or some other such silly shit.

[Terr]

Go me.... Got thuough that thread, granted I was merely scanning at the end but I got there.

[Whateverist]

I know you meant this as a joke, but I'm sincerely curious about this idea.

Sometime when faced with hard decisions, theists (my only exposure is to Christians) will "pray about it." I heard it all the time growing up.

...

I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate something. This postulation comes in two parts:

1) God is very powerful, but is not all-powerful, despite what Christians tend to claim. He is really just another term being used to reference the universe in general.
2) When Christians pray, they are not actually praying to God. They are praying to Jesus.

Prayer makes a lot more sense in this context. When you pray to ask God for something, you are not begging an all-powerful, timeless entity to change his eternal plan. Instead, you are praying to an intermediary (Jesus, or one of the saints) to lobby on your behalf to a great being who has his hand on the steering wheel of the universe.

I can't do anything with God or Jesus or a Creator or an All-Omni power. None of that resonates for me. Pleading doesn't make any sense to me either. Sorry.

But I can attribute a tangible good to prayer if it is done out of an admission that you don't have an answer or perhaps don't even understand a question. If someone prayed for understanding they could be opening themselves to answers from outside themselves. But the outside would only be outside your conscious, rational mind. In the depths of your psyche there is more, and that more may be what can redeem the prayer experience.

Now that wouldn't make sense if what you really wanted was a specific event to occur. But if it were understanding you sought, why not? It could be that God does exist and in the exact same way that "you" exist. In other words, both may be products of our amazing meat brains. Who knows how 3 pounds of neuronal and other sorts of gray matter produce a sense of self, but it does. Perhaps it can also produce a sense of a higher power which can interact with the "you" which it also produces. Could be.

I should warn you that, as an atheist, I hold a lot of wild, unsupportable beliefs which I haven't received from any atheist guild. Take or leave it, but if you take it I recommend you add more than a grain of salt.