Don’t you mean “colonized and blessed with the Holy gift of cricket”?
And, just to emphasize the fact that atheists don’t all sing from the same hymn book (so to speak)…
I also manage to recite it just fine and it is neither meaningless, nonsense nor offensive to me. It’s my link to 2000 years of shared history and culture. I don’t believe the words refer to real persons or beings but I enjoy the ceremony of it. It reminds me of home and of my childhood.
It’s a bit like proudly hailing flags. As humans, we all seem to enjoy ceremony and celebrate shared heritage. I don’t think I need to give all that up just because I am an atheist.
I wonder what it’s like to experience this kind of emotion at hearing a prayer. Believe it to be out-of-place, sure. Be slightly uncomfortable, ok, I can imagine that.
But to be highly offended?
What’s that like? How does it manifest itself? What about the prayer causes such strong emotions in you?
Whenever I do inter-denominational services, I stay away from *all *prepared prayers (unless the couple I’m marrying has specific requests.) They’re just all asking for trouble, and people seem much happier if I write something so generic that they all assume I agree with them.
But, since we’re sharing, here’s my favorite Wiccan piece - actually a reverse prayer, written from the POV of the Deity. I suspect the OP will find it as objectionable as I find the Lord’s Prayer (which I don’t like for the same reasons some other posters have already said: patriarchal and sexist assumptions, allusions to sin and guilt, the idea that some other power can absolve me from the consequences of my own actions, etc.)
For what it’s worth, my catholic wife says ‘Allah’ when she is speaking her own language (Maltese) but ‘God’ when she is speaking English.
For me, it is not the prayer itself, but all the baggage that comes with it. If I did not live in a society where believers want to impose their belief on everyone it wouldn’t bother me.
If several states in my country still didn’t have it written into their constitutions that you have to believe in god in order to be elected to office, it wouldn’t bother me.
If I wasn’t looked down on by believers, it wouldn’t bother me.
If I could freely speak my mind about my lack of belief the way believers can speak of their belief, it wouldn’t bother me.
If I could go to a sporting event or even watch my congress in action without having to be subjected to silly religious rituals, it wouldn’t bother me.
As soon as Jesus, Mary, Allah etc. are spoken of like Zeus, Mt. Olympus and Hercules are spoken of today, then I wouldn’t find such prayers as offensive. I might even come to enjoy them the way I can enjoy Christmas music or reading Nortons Anthology.
Me, too. So great.
Ugh. Just found a web site with another translation of the Vakratunda, and it’s not nearly as awesome:
I’ll stick with RNATB’s.
A good friend of mine has set The Charge of the Goddess to music, and it’s even more beautiful when it’s sung. I have her CD and play it in my car often.
I don’t know why you think that. Although I’d be unlikely to utter it myself, given its flowery language, I have no substantive objection to it at all.
I can understand that, in the UK this is, thankfully, not the case. Religion remains a private matter. Very rarely spoken about. I can honestly say that of the dozen or so close colleagues I work with every day I have absolutely no idea what religion they are, if any. It simply never comes up in conversation
I’m glad, since I didn’t post it with the intention to offend, although I did sort of hope it would illustrate, through reciprocity, some of the reasons some non-Christians don’t like The Lord’s Prayer. The proclamation of female deity, the elevation of hedonism to religious rite, etc. doesn’t sit well with most Christians I’ve shared it with.
I heard a Native American prayer very similar to the above, translated is substituted Grandfather for Father and ‘Summerland’ for ‘Thy Kingdom’
There were other changes but those 2 are the only ones I remembered.
It’s like someone telling a racist joke; it makes you fell dirty that someone assumed everyone in the room, you included, shared the same sentiment.
No, thank you I actually don’t think that some guy has a kingdom whose will should be done. We had a revolution to get away from that shit. And no, I don’t think there is some invisible guy that provides me with my daily sustenance or that I should apologize to him over some fictional event that happened 6,000 years ago.
EH really isn’t that sort of Christian, and indeed there aren’t many of them here.
Now i understand even less. Racists jokes are intended to cause offense. Prayers aren’t. Why take offense at someone’s mistaken assumptions? Why not politely correct them?
The kind of Muslim who would insist that “Allah” cannot be translated as “God” would also scoff at the idea that a string of sentences in a language other than Arabic can be considered an Islamic prayer.
Its really just RNATB’s version made politically correct by replacing “fat” with “mighty body” - and some other minor translation details.
From now on, I think I’ll refer to those who are overweight as having a “mighty body.”
I don’t think so. I believe there’s a bit similar but different word for deities other than God/Allah. So, though the Abrahamic god would be properly called Allah, regardless of the specific religion, Appolo wouldn’t.
No they aren’t, they are intended to be funny. You tell them to a group of people that you think share your sentiments.
Public prayer, particularly at large events, shows that the speaker assumes that everyone in the audience shares their sentiment with regard to religion. It’s particularly obnoxious when they preface it with “Let us pray” or say things like “we ask your forgiveness”. Sorry bub, you don’t speak for me. It would be boring, but not offensive for someone to address God directly without trying to pull the audience into the act. The first two words of the Lord’s prayer is “Our Father”, so the speaker is making the assumption that we share a whole host of ideas. Among them, God exists, he is male, and you have the same God as me.
As for politely correcting them, should I stand up in the middle of graduation to politely tell the speaker that I don’t share their world view and please refrain from including me?
It’s not like it should be a surprise to anyone with a pulse that many people object to prayer at public events, they just don’t give a rat’s ass and do it anyway.
No worries. I didn’t intend or claim to speak for you. Was just trying to understand, is all. I still don’t really understand why it’s offensive to you but that’s OK. There are a lot of things I don’t understand.
Thanks for trying to explain.