Hoping to be born again [purpose of prayer -- ed. title]

Great Debates
61

Correct. I had no idea I was being in any way opaque about that.

There has been only one event ever in the entire history of time, and only one thing exists. All else is subsets. We call the event the Big Bang (but it’s still occurring, any line drawn to say “It was the Big Bang up until this point and everything on the other side was caused by the Big Bang” is an artificial division. We can point to individual bits and pieces of universe and call them “tree” or “star” or AHunter3, but it’s still the same singularity, expanded and made complex but still THAT WHICH IS. Nothing else IS. And you and I are part of it. Conscousness is part of it. It is a philosophically valid sense of Self. That is God.

Indeed. I might be wrong.

Religion in the form that I practice it does not provide certainty. In fact, it holds the state of uncertainty to be the cornerstone of spiritual attitude.

This meshes with Taylor’s theory of hermeneutics and communication: when two people have not as of yet reached agreement, all you can do is each of you work towards putting what you mean and what you think you know into a different set of words. (Note the distinction between “meaning” and “words”, and between both of those and “understanding”. Don’t get mad, I’m not being infantile and condescending, there are quite a few theories about people, communication, and epistemology that leave no room for making those distinctions). In hermeneutics, there is no other means towards establishing what is, in fact, true — if the two of you can’t converge on a shared understanding, there’s aught to do but keep trying. You can reference new & additional data or describe yet more experiences, but you cannot “prove”.

Were you somehow under the impression that I believed/agreed with anything Jesus said because Jesus said it or because it was in the Bible? How on earth did you manage to obtain that impression from anything I’ve said? I would omit the word “already” from your paragraph, as I try to leave my mind open to anyone whose work I’m reading (/listening to etc), perhaps being profoundly affected by it or stimulated to think of something in a new way. And yes, that includes Adolf Hitler. It includes you. It includes Jesus of Nazareth.

I happen to hero-worship the latter guy, holding a high opinion of what I think he did and what I think he said, broadly speaking. Given that the dude died a couple millennia ago, spoke in a different language (at a time when ours didn’t exist), is reported on by four later writers who were very much wrapped up in the revisionist theology of Paul, and all of it in a social context of which I’m no professional scholar, yes, that could all be bullshit. You have not convinced me that I’ve got the wrong take on him, but it very well could be.

What of it? The things I think he said and stood for and did, those things are good. I would not like to see one of my heros shown to be unworthy of admiration, but it has no bearing on my theology or anything.

62

:slight_smile:

::waves at Zoe appeciatively::

63

I agree with you on the Big Bang. I do not, however, believe that The Big Bang and God are the same thing. This is what I don’t understand. I can make up definitions for words, but that simply does not help people understand what I’m talking about. God, in the most common definition of the word, is a conscious, controlling, all-knowing, all-seeing “being” that played an active role in the creation of man and our universe. I do not see the Big Bang as anything more than a fluke of the universe. It doesn’t think, plan, control, or care. It was/is an accident of circumstance. I can can ponder our origins, but I simply do not see how the word “god” fits into that thought process.

64

It’s here on purpose :slight_smile:

65

Ah. Ok. :slight_smile:

66

(I believe intentionality is real. I appear to possess it myself. As discussed previously, the universe is one, THAT WHICH IS. For consciousness and intentionality to be, and not be illusions, they can’t be artifacts of strictly mechanical processes. If, therefore, it doesn’t quite follow from that that God, i.e., the universe in its entirety, is conscious and has intent — and I don’t believe God mulls things over on Tuesday and reaches a decision on Wednesday, as I’ve said — then we can at least say consciousness and intent are subsets of something that is at any rate not “less than” those things)

67

That all sounds well and good till the end. Why not just call the universe “the universe?” Why call it “THAT WHICH IS?” Also, it seems you are doing more than just calling the universe god, but also giving the universe theistic qualities, like responding to and answering your prayers or agreeing with the teachings of Jesus. Why do you think that? Are their any other theistic qualities that you give to your god?

No I’m under the impression that some reason you like Jesus. When you read him and he says things you agree with already, you call that part of his “fundamental message,” when Jesus says something stupid, cruel or hateful you just ignore it, as evidenced by the Jesus essay you linked.

Also you made what I consider a bold statement regarding the efficacy of your prayers. To which I responded with this:

*“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Can you give some examples of prayers you have made an resulting insights/understandings you have received. Can you tell me how these insights/understandings differ from those of insights/understandings we all have whether we pray or not?

You say that you prayer is superior to reading/thinking with regards to obtaining insights and understanding. Does this mean you think that if we both agreed on a subject in which we were equally ignorant, and one in which our understanding could be objectively measured, that I could go to amazon.com, find books, read about it and think about it, while you spend equal time only praying about it, that you would have a greater improvement in insights/understanding? If yes, would this superiority apply to all topics or just some? If only some, what topics do you think prayer would be superior?”*

One might think you ignored these questions because in answering them it would reveal that the efficacy of your prayers is no better than what I suggested and upon reflection you realized this. Would you like to take answer them now or should I assume my perceptions accurate?

68

And yet again with the “objective”. Things like the rotational speed of Neried, a moon of Neptune, can be treated as “objective”. (They aren’t really, but they reduce to that far beyond the point where it makes sense to treat them as other than). Things like… oh, I dunno ;)… whether or not prayer is a valid process for reaching understanding, let’s say… those are not matters for which an objective answer exists.

You appear to be clinging with fervent determination to a world composed (strictly?) of empirically verifiable facts. Is that a misconception on my part? Before we go any further, would you mind clarifying whether or not you think there are things which really exist but which are not quantifiable, measurable, and/or directly register upon the five senses or upon instrumentation that can measure their existence?

69

OK, after several hours of mental percolation and the eponymous process itself, I have an answer for you. The question didn’t originally seem very answerable as worded, because I could not visualize a situation where I’d be praying for an insight or understanding that would have an “objective” answer about which widespread belief would exist (in something approaching unanimity). It’s an emotional process, which means one has to care with some intensity about the subject, and such things are usually personal and therefore not easily looked up in a reference book. More on that below. BUT…

Just because something today might be a subject about which the species as a whole doesn’t have a generally agreed-upon, compelling, and convincing insight doesn’t mean that could not change. And that implies that I ought to be able to imagine a situation where one might lack an important insight, need that answer for important personal reasons, and yet the answers, reasonably “objective”, could also exist in a book under only slightly modified circumstances.

My hypothetical: I’m trapped with a broken down automobile at a deserted service station on a highway for some reason closed to traffic, and it’s in the middle of the desert so I have to get out of there. There’s a huge toolbox, one of those chest-high models that roll on wheels, but [for purposes of this hypothetical] let’s say I don’t know how cars run except that you put gas in them and turn the key to start them and aim them with the steering wheel. It is possible that someone in that situation could come to comprehend the way a car works by looking at the parts and through prayer gaining insight into what those parts do. (Prayer does not provide additional raw data, but helps the mind develop theories about how the existing raw data meshes together). At the same time, we could say that in the course of rummaging around at the service station I find an introductory text on how automobiles work, and also a Chilton’s Manual covering my specific make and model of car.

Even though the matter at hand is of personal and emotionally compelling importance, the way a car works is going to be the same for me as it would be for anyone else.

Advantage: Chilton’s Manual. By a huge overwhelming margin.

Conclusion: If the subject matter is such that you could read up on it in a book like that, understanding is vastly more accessible through that than through prayer.

It seems glaringly obvious when you frame it like that :o, but I couldn’t figure out how to frame the question so that it would make sense to ask it in the first place.

Most often, [del]people pray[/del] umm, lemme start again, most often, the process of prayer works for people in a situation like these:

• Susan Slocumb has two job offers, one local with decent pay, not quite in the line she wants to work in, but with nice boss & coworkers, and the other far enough away to necessitate a move, better pay, in the field she wants, but with a somewhat abrasive employer to report to. Her relationship with her boyfriend is a bit chancy. Is she going to be happier taking the first job, or the second?

• Juan really really wants to know why people are cruel to each other and whether there’s something that can be done about it. Juan intensely desires to participate in doing something about it. Medicine, politics, philosophy, criminal justice, the Peace Corps, … ??

• Something feels wrong to you. It’s not quite like you’re miserably depressed, although you’re certainly not happy, to an extent it’s more like you’re bored. You’ve got a decent job, an OK marriage, seem to be in good health, nothing really stands out as a bad situation and there haven’t been any recent traumatic events or anything. But you feel like chucking the whole thing. Not suicide, not even that, but in some fashion getting out. What’s the problem with your life?
Note that in all three cases, it’s not that no one’s ever written anything on the topic for you to buy at Amazon.com or borrow from the public library. You could fill your house floorboards to attic insulation with books on each subject, if you could even figure out how to search for such nonspecific-sounding subjects. Do you see why reading a book won’t “just give you the insight or understanding”?

70

First off you made the claim that prayer is a valid process for reaching understanding. I asked you if you thought observing reality, thinking, or reading good books would be a far better method at bringing about understanding/insights. You answered my question with a good solid, and I would say objective, NO. So I am looking to see you back up that claim.

For what it’s worth I think that there is an objective answer to whether prayer is a valid process for reaching understanding and that answer is no. Most schools teach by having students read, observe, think not pray. If said schools exclusively used prayer for learning, I dare say their students wouldn’t learn shit. This could be easily studied and verified.

Yes, it’s a misconception on your part.

I would say there probably are said things.

I think you are now going to claim that prayer helps you understand only things that nobody, even you, can verify if your understanding is in the slightest way correct. If so, while I admit that is awful convenient for your argument, it sure weakens the power of prayer you are espousing. It puts your power of prayer on equal footing with wild guesses and gives you no reason to believe any of the understanding/insights you receive are true.

71

Agreed.

I don’t see what prayer adds to this question. She can pray sure, but how will she ever know her choice was correct. If she prays and decided to stay, it probably means she really wanted to stay for other reasons (emotional or logical) and would have come to the same conclusion without the prayers. The same could be said for her decision to leave. Will she be happier in the first job or the second? I don’t know, she doesn’t know, and you don’t know. We all can only speculate and the more facts we base that guess upon the more reason we will have to think our speculation correct. I would offer that making a list of pros and cons for moving or staying, based on observations of reality about her boss, her location, her boyfriend etc. would most likely lead her to the best conclusion.

For the first question Juan should read books on the topic. I would recommend the Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, and Shermer’s The Science of Good and Evil. As for the latter part I think he should observe what his opportunities are, what his strengths are, and what his likes are. Then make a choice based on that. He could do pro and con lists as well to help clarify the issues if he so desired. I don’t see prayer helping in anyway.

For diagnosing what the problem is, in said persons life, it might be worth reading Schopenhauer; life just plain stinks in a lot of ways. For doing something about it, it might be worth reading Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness. Either book might be enough to let you know that “chuckin the whole thing” isn’t likely to fix matters, however if your reasoning makes you think it will improve matters then a change is probably in order. I still don’t see prayer as anything but a useless step, nor do I see you illustrating where it isn’t.

No I see reading a book, in combination with observing reality and thinking about the topic to be very effective at bringing about insights and observations. For the examples you gave can you demonstrate that prayer is superior this or even as good?

72

When I’ve received revelations or insights subsequent to prayer, I’ve made a deliberate attempt to keep an open mind about the possibility of those new perspectives being flawed or wrong. Usually it feels like an academic exercise to do so, as what I get along with the perspective is an emotional clarity about it, a sense of certainty if you will. Which is sufficiently dangerous that any skeptic would quickly realize the importance of going to great lengths to not embrace it as absolute certain truth anyway, even if it does feel like an academic exercise to do so.

Maybe you can help with the research design, I’m having a little trouble operationalizing the variables. All three cases are hypotheticals, but my own life is not a hypothetical.

At this point in the thread, I would think the more extraordinary claim would be the one that holds that prayer, as I’ve described it, has no benefits, insofar as I’ve stated that I have personally found that it does, so consider falsifiable premises on both sides.

Meanwhile, not to change the subject or anything, but is anyone else reading this thread any more, or is this just our own little party at this point?

73

To clarify, I have, in the course of this thread, said that there are mental processes by which people can obtain insights and comprehensions of things, processes that do not reduce to rational conscious “thinking about” the specified subject matter but rather feel as if they arrive “full-blown”, like a “gift”.

You appear to be asking me to demonstrate that such processes ever have anything to offer that could not be obtained at least as well by researching and thinking about the specified subject matter.

I feel this has been asked and answered many times over in the course of this thread.

I have noted previously that this is a hermeneutic process; you can continue to say “I don’t see it” and I can continue to put it differently in hopes of making it more accessible to you, but I cannot “prove” that the process I’m describing is something you’ve experienced for yourself and already know to be useful, or something that you’ve observed in others or read about in biolgraphies and autobiographies, whether labeled “prayer” or given another name or given no name at all but only a general process description. Nor, if none of that is in fact true for you, can I “prove” that it is, nevertheless, true for other people. Any and all such descriptions would be open to interpretation, which would bring us back to the distinct possibility of you saying “But I don’t see that as being the same” or “But I don’t see that it was helpful or useful” or “But I don’t see it as accomplishing anything that could not have been accomplished some other way, through some other process”.

And I have attempted several times in the course of this thread to explain that, to explain that “proof” will not be forthcoming and that “objectivity” is not a viable or valid parameter here.

And yet still & once again you would seem to be challenging me, in a “put up or shut up” fashion, to provide evidence that the process is valid and pragmatically useful to the people who deploy it.

That is, of course, my interpretation of what you are saying, and you can, of course, say “No, that is not what I am saying”. Which dumps us right back into hermeneutics. We can continue to try to communicate, but for the moment that’s become for me a pretty compelling interpretation of your posts. I think you are trying to structure this into a challenge whereby I am either supposed to put forth concrete empirical evidence that measures the efficacy of prayer, or I am supposed to back down in some fashion, withdrawing my claims.

I am disposed to do neither.

Shall we continue, or do you feel you understand my perspective, and I yours, fairly well at this point?

74

This clarity you describe sounds like the known psychological principle (which name escapes me) which states that once a person makes a decision on a topic, the surety he feels afterwards that his decision is correct increases. The example often given is of a gambler betting on a horse. He is uncertain at first but once he bets his money he certainty that he is correct increases, in spite of the fact that his probability of being right remains unchanged. This is a principle common to people in general, not merely to people who pray. I see nothing in your statement that supports supernatural intervention or guidance by god, the universe, THAT WHICH IS, anything.

I think for research design you will have to come up with inputs and outputs that can be measured. You fixing a car example would be great, but you have already conceded my secular means of obtaining understanding superior in that regard. I would suggest that if your god can not guide you on how to fix your car, then there is no reason to suggest he can tell you how to do something more complex, like live your life.

So now your argument rests on shifting the burden of proof. I don’t know if I would say your prayer has no benefits. It seems self pleasing to you, which if we count that as a benefit, and is as much as can be stated. I deny that your type of prayer leads to any understanding anywhere close to on par with that which can be obtained by observing/thinking/reading, which you did in fact claim. If I were you I would just retract that statement.

I don’t know.

75

I think you said, or at least implied, that these insights don’t just feel like they are a gift but actually are gifts from god/the universe/THAT WHICH IS, and that praying is a differential way of reaching these gifts for which secular study can not do as well or better job of obtaining.

Yes.

It has been asked several times, you answered that your prayer does have something extra to offer but you have not demonstrated your answer true to even the slightest degree. There is absolutely no reason why I, or anyone else, should just take your word for it.

Or more succinctly put, you made a claim you can not back up.

While I believe you that proof will not be forthcoming, I deny that “objectivity” as you asked me to define it, is neither viable nor valid. It seems you are trying to defend your earlier statements by making all outcomes as subjective as possible so as to hide them from rational scrutiny.

Yes.

That is fine.

I am content to rest on the strength of my previous statements if you are.

76

I’m still reading the thread if anyone cares.

AHunter3, I can think of at least one instance where the answer comes to you "full-blown, " such as when a person suddenly remembers a detail or point or what have you, that makes the answer apparent. You could vascillate between the two choices until you remember that point. It isn’t a supernatural “gift”, but a physiological but mysterious example of the brain and memory working as designed.

And I’d have to ask…why is god bothering with relatively inconsequential prayers when there are such urgent needs for intervention all over the planet? I mean, someone…somewhere…must be praying for the situation in Darfur to resolve without further rape and bloodshed. This prayer must have gone out a million times in recent years. But the situation is getting worse; not better. It’s a selfless prayer that many people are concerned with. Why would god tie up his time with answering a prayer about which job Susan should take, seeing as either one would put her in a much better position than the millions of people being slaughtered in Darfur. It’s not even remotely a life-and-death situation. Wouldn’t an all-knowing, all-powerful god prioritize the incoming prayers?

77

I care.

78

Thank you! That’s “one.” :wink:

79

I am very much enjoying reading badchad’s posts. AHunter…comparing the relationship of Issac Newton and Gravity with the relationship of Jesus and God? HA! badchad, you are shooting fish in a barrell practically (Fish being Mayo, Ahunter etc.)

I agree that Christians all rationalize. They have to, the Bible has some massive contradictions and it just doesnt square with reality. The mind of a christian has to be sharp and in great shape, what with all the mental gymnastics.

80

I think it was a Secretary of Agriculture (Butz?) who, with regards to the Pope of the time and something the Pope said about sex, got in hot water by saying “He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules”.
You’re conceptualizing God as an entity, a supposedly all-powerful dude nevertheless stumbling along mulling over the situation in Darfur on Tuesday before reaching a decision on Wednesday involving intervention on Thursday, and too harried and harassed with all this administrative shit to have much time to attend to Susan and her freakin’ job.

The people on every conceivable side of what’s going on in Darfur? Every one of them is God in disguise. Some — perhaps most of them — may not know that, but it’s true.

For that matter: the species human, in the incredible social turmoils and upheavals of the early 10th millennium following the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture, during the transition to post-agrarian civ? Every one of those individual people? God in disguise.

The waves comprising the tsunami, the high-velocity winds making up the hurricane? That’s God, too.

So where is the “good”, you may ask, and/or why is God creating (or being or whatever) all these evil things?

Well, they aren’t objectively evil. Insight and comprehension are available to those who pray, and, having prayed, those in various situations can address situations, perhaps change how things are for their people, their culture, — heck, their species.

But context determines perspective. Becoming one with God, as the all-encompassing sense of Self that being God is, is by definition obtaining a different perspective. That’s how, as a process, it is able to provide insights and understandings.

I myself have on occasion started out with concerns like “Why can’t we humans live in a less adversarial relationship with each other, when all this competitive fighting causes so much misery?” and ended up with understandings like

a) “Well, it is in the best survival-interests of the species as a whole to implement as organizational principles things such as trust, forgiveness, sharing, lack of punishment, lack of coercion, and doing good for each other, and the current structures don’t do so; so if you’re volunteering, here are some of the things you could do…”

b) “…meanwhile, don’t sweat it, if homo sap on this planet doesn’t get its act together as an individually intelligent & free, socially integrated species whose members are not at each other’s throats, the underlying rules favoring such a species will still prevail in the long run and it will still ultimately be the defining characteristic of future creatures of this general ilk”

Oddly enough, that was far more comforting than it probably sounds.

God isn’t a heroic guy in a fireman’s costume climbing trees and rescuing kittens, any more than God is Santa Claus to whom you pray for nice goodies.