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Posted by MutantMandias
I actually really like that comparison. In driving, as in prayer, (as in everything) you have no control over external events. The best you can hope for is to find the right direction and follow it. There is nothing stopping another car from hitting you unexpectedly, but with the right point of view and attitude, you can minimize those situations and try to form the best possible outcome for yourself and those around you.
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And also, when you are driving down the highway in traffic, a best practice would be to take your hands off the wheel, close your eyes and ask the car to take the correct path...
Of course this has the same expectation of success as, say, praying to the jesus for a lost limb to regenerate.
Maybe we would all be a little better off if everyone just steered the cars themselves.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. Robert A. Heinlen | |
Posted by tekriter
And also, when you are driving down the highway in traffic, a best practice would be to take your hands off the wheel, close your eyes and ask the car to take the correct path...
Of course this has the same expectation of success as, say, praying to the jesus for a lost limb to regenerate.
Maybe we would all be a little better off if everyone just steered the cars themselves.
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Right, and I think that assigning any purpose, consciousness, thought, moral absolutism, or intention to an imaginary external God will lead to the same result. But I like to integrate a little bit when possible, to show the religious barbarians how civilized I am.
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias
mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
Tek, your long post, as always, gets lost in semantics. I would expect nothing less from ya though, the science you're on about is all lost in details, lost in information, and lacking a "big picture". Again, you're defining an issue only in a judeo-Christian context, and a limited one at that. Your notions of religious and secular are also too strict. I'd recommend you do acid at a rave or some such "secular" event then get back on those distinctions. Definitions only define themselves, nothing else. It's a finger pointing at a moon and you are only arguing which moon. You've turned prayer into a tautology by not allowing other types of prayer.
If secular mediation produces the placebo effect, why can't it also do that in a religious context? Perhaps you're taking the placebo effect too lightly and perhaps everything is the placebo effect: all reality is created through our thoughts. (that does do away with the need for an external god and the creation of the universe by any mathematical or religious means btw).
I hold that there is no religion and there is no secular (as a rhetorical device), there is only direct experience. To believe in god or not is to believe the ocean or not rather than to swim in it.
I hold that any thought can be a prayer with no external mediator necessary. (in my version of your analogy the driver is the car)
I believe that there are many paths to direct experience of what I'm talking about, each one with a slightly different perspective. To limit discussions to one path is like feeling out a room in the dark.
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. | |
Posted by tekriter
According to Merriam-Webster, prayer is defined:
a (1) : an address (as a petition) to God or a god in word or thought <said a prayer for the success of the voyage> (2) : a set order of words used in praying
b : an earnest request or wish
The word "pray" comes from the Latin word precari, which simply means to entreat or ask.
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I like that you appended your source to fit your argument ;) especially since MW also defines "pray" as including "to address God or a god with adoration, confession, supplication or thanksgiving." but anyhow, Merriam Webster defines the use of the word in the context of contemporary english -- and im sure even you will acknowledge that prayer isn't quite so small as that. After all, a dictionary is not the same thing as a theological or religious text and it is dangerous to use dictionaries in this way. Nor is etymology encyclopedic.
My understanding is shaped by what i have read in the bible, combined with my experiences with shintoism and buddhism in my childhood.
in the case of the bible -- prayer is not used solely as an act of supplication, but also as an act of meditation, an act of reflection, and an act of repentance.
i sense i have no need of explaining prayer in the contexts of buddhism or shintoism... And am sure you properly understand it in buddhism to be almost exclusively an act of meditation, and in shintoism to be an act of seeking oneness with nature...
Freedom breeds war; and Peace, slavery. So it shall be forevermore: Men who love freedom buy it with their lives, and lovers of peace with their freedom. | |
Posted by Aleksandar
in the case of the bible -- prayer is not used solely as an act of supplication, but also as an act of meditation, an act of reflection, and an act of repentance.
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But the majority of those who pray ask for something: please cure dad's cancer, please bring rain to Texas, etc. Saying it is something else is a way of avoiding the issue. Sure, it is all those other things, but most people ask for things. I see it on Facebook all the time: "I'll pray for you;" "pray for the victims of Irene," etc. And these usually aren't people selfishly praying to win the lottery. It's a cosmic ATM only if that ATM only gives money very rarely, and then only in random ways that aren't demonstrably connected to someone actually keying in their PIN.
i sense i have no need of explaining prayer in the contexts of buddhism or shintoism... And am sure you properly understand it in buddhism to be almost exclusively an act of meditation, and in shintoism to be an act of seeking oneness with nature...
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Then it's not really prayer in the same context. It's more like classic meditation.
| If secular mediation produces the placebo effect, why can't it also do that in a religious context? Perhaps you're taking the placebo effect too lightly and perhaps everything is the placebo effect: all reality is created through our thoughts. (that does do away with the need for an external god and the creation of the universe by any mathematical or religious means btw). |
It does. If you truly believe God is "healing" you, you can be healed, but only under special circumstances. It's never "tumor today, no tumor tomorrow." It's only things which CAN be cured via placebo.
But all reality is not created by our thoughts. If you close your eyes and imagine I'm about to hit you in the head with a pillow, but I choose to hit you with a hammer, no amount of thought on your part is going to change the fact that I whacked you in the head with a hammer. Certain elements of reality cannot be controlled by your thoughts. Your perception of reality is the only thing your thought processes can control. The hammer I swung wasn't a hammer at all, but a frozen mackerel, and not swung by me, but by a nude Megan Fox!
Still hurt like hell, though. But then, thought processes CAN change how we perceive pain. That's how acupuncture works.
“We are not going to have the kind of cooperation we need if everyone insists on their own narrow version of reality. … the great divide in the world today … is between people who have the courage to listen and those who are convinced that they already know it all.”
-Madeline Albright | |
Posted by splumer
Then it's not really prayer in the same context. It's more like classic meditation.
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you're getting very bogged down in semantics and a very western pop-culture view of prayer that doesn't seem to be based on what core judeo-christian texts actually have to say about it... have you studied these texts? from where do you gather your understanding?
i dare say that the largest segment of our world's population is asian, and asians (in all their various people groups) would scratch their heads at your attempt to differentiate prayer and "classical meditation" -- meditation being what, exactly? the western view isn't the authoritative one, or even the best one.
clearly you have grown up to understand prayer as supplication. i am stating that it is much more. if you can't follow, i don't really know what else to say.
Freedom breeds war; and Peace, slavery. So it shall be forevermore: Men who love freedom buy it with their lives, and lovers of peace with their freedom. | |
Posted by Aleksandar
you're getting very bogged down in semantics and a very western pop-culture view of prayer that doesn't seem to be based on what core judeo-christian texts actually have to say about it... have you studied these texts? from where do you gather your understanding?
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I think he was very clear about where he gets this understanding... from looking around American society and seeing how people talk about prayer.
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias
mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
Posted by MutantMandias
I think he was very clear about where he gets this understanding... from looking around American society and seeing how people talk about prayer.
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Fair enough. There is a lot about the American church that makes my brain hurt, too.
Freedom breeds war; and Peace, slavery. So it shall be forevermore: Men who love freedom buy it with their lives, and lovers of peace with their freedom. | |
Posted by Aleksandar
you're getting very bogged down in semantics... |
I think you are. We're so hung up on the definition of "prayer" that we're losing sight of what the original post was about. Prayer, in the context of asking God for something, hasn't worked in the case of ending drought conditions in Texas.
and a very western pop-culture view of prayer that doesn't seem to be based on what core judeo-christian texts actually have to say about it... have you studied these texts? from where do you gather your understanding?
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From being exposed to Christianity from the day of my birth. Have I "studied these texts?" No. I've read the Bible, but beyond that, I'm not wasting my time studying something so fundamentally useless. The context I mean that in is that studying theology lacks utility. Understanding the nuances of the sermon on the mount, e.g., doesn't fix my car or get my colors their brightest.
i dare say that the largest segment of our world's population is asian, and asians (in all their various people groups) would scratch their heads at your attempt to differentiate prayer and "classical meditation" -- meditation being what, exactly? the western view isn't the authoritative one, or even the best one.
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You're probably right, but who cares? The religious experiences of the various Asian societies don't affect Christianity one whit. How a Buddhist monk in Tibet perceives prayer doesn't change how the vast majority of Christians view it, or how Rick Perry perceives it. And THAT is the point I was trying to make in the original post. Presumably thousands - or perhaps millions - of people prayed for rain in Texas, but the drought worsened. Most Christians view prayer as at least partially asking God for something, and in this case he failed to deliver.
clearly you have grown up to understand prayer as supplication. i am stating that it is much more. if you can't follow, i don't really know what else to say.
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It can be much more, but that doesn't negate the fact that most view it as asking God for something: guidance, wisdom, or something more tangible.
[last edit 9/12/2011 1:21 PM by splumer - edited 1 times]
“We are not going to have the kind of cooperation we need if everyone insists on their own narrow version of reality. … the great divide in the world today … is between people who have the courage to listen and those who are convinced that they already know it all.”
-Madeline Albright | |
So if I am following you Splume, if I got to Burger King and orger a McRib and do not get it, then Burger King must not exist?
Ezekiel 25:17 | |
No, he's saying that if you go to an empty clearing in the woods, and make up an imaginary fast food restaurant in your head that exists there, and order something from it, then you should not be surprised when you don't get anything.
mutantMandias may cause dizziness, sexual nightmares, and sleep crime. ++++ mutantMandias has to return some videotapes ++++ Do not taunt mutantMandias
mutantMandias is something more than human, more than a computer. mutantMandias is a murderously intelligent, sensually self-programmed, non-being | |
All comes down to point of view MM. Just cause you can't see the Burger King doesn't mean I don't enjoy the Whopper. 
Ezekiel 25:17 | |
Posted by jeepdave
So if I am following you Splume, if I got to Burger King and orger a McRib and do not get it, then Burger King must not exist?
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No, because BK doesn't serve McRibs, but it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to serve you something they actually have on their menu. Are you saying making rain isn't on God's menu? I understand the idea that praying to God for you to win the lottery generally won't work for a number of reasons (theologically speaking), such as: you're a sinner and don't deserve the money; God helps those that help themselves, so maybe instead of making you win the lottery, he'll cause you to get a new job or something even more subtle like have the bill collectors extend your grace period; greed is sinful, yada yada yada.
That's the kind of stuff I think of when people say that God is not a cosmic ATM. You're making selfish, unreasonable requests. How many people pray for a loved one to survive an illness, that loved one doesn't, and the person who prayed say something like "it was God's will?" I know a whole bunch, because my wife's sister died of cancer last month, and a bunch of her friends prayed for her and she still died. The excuse that is usually offered is that we aren't able to understand God's reasons for not wanting her to survive, or something similarly evasive.
We're all making valid points, but I think this discussion is really going nowhere.
“We are not going to have the kind of cooperation we need if everyone insists on their own narrow version of reality. … the great divide in the world today … is between people who have the courage to listen and those who are convinced that they already know it all.”
-Madeline Albright | |
I'd like to respond to your pillow/ hammer scenario.
First, my position is that reality is created by our thoughts, not entirely by the observer's. We'd both be in willful agreement that we are in a room and that the scenario is happening. Your first request, for me to close my eyes, is a submission of will on my part. You would then suggest that I am about to be hit on the head with a pillow. With this we would both be forming a reality in which I would be hit on the head. I would allow it, because it's a pillow, and this is kind of homoerotic. Somehow you produce a hammer, unseen to me before I closed my eyes. I had no part in willing this to happen; you or an accomplice had concealed it, someone unknown to me had manufactured it, another had transported it and another had sold it. The hammer is far beyond my will, so no matter how much I expect to be hit with a pillow and gay sex is about to happen, there are other wills at play here.
But hey, this is going nowhere. Most Christians in Texas don't have an understanding of the nuances of willful manifestation and are stupid. They can't make it rain, but can influence millions of people and promote specific political idealogies. That's completely different and has no bearing on discussions of willful manifestation through popular understandings of Christian prayer.
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. | |
Posted by earthworm
I'd like to respond to your pillow/ hammer scenario.
...The hammer is far beyond my will, so no matter how much I expect to be hit with a pillow and gay sex is about to happen, there are other wills at play here.
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Who's to say the gay sex won't happen after I hit you with a hammer?
“We are not going to have the kind of cooperation we need if everyone insists on their own narrow version of reality. … the great divide in the world today … is between people who have the courage to listen and those who are convinced that they already know it all.”
-Madeline Albright | |
Posted by splumer
Who's to say the gay sex won't happen after I hit you with a hammer?
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You can't rape the willing.
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. | |
All this drought and hurricane terror and such just proves to me that God hates the south. Especially Texas.
"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
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