James 4:3
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
John 20:29
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
So on. You see my point.
JohnClay: have you ever prayed hard for Thor to reveal Himself? If no, aren’t you scared of being struck down with a thunderbolt?
I dont pray, because I don’t believe anyone’s there to listen. I don’t fear, because first of all the religion I was born to doesn’t believe in a punishing hell anyway - it’s not a universal concept even among people who do believe in god(s). I don’t believe hell exists which is consistent with my upbringing. I also believe that if there’s a god who would punish a moral person eternally with agonizing pain, that god is evil and I would definitely not ever want to meet him/her, and certainly not worship him/her.
Btw, you’re not the first to think of practicing “just in case”: it’s called “Pascal’s Wager”
That notion has never occurred to me. Now that it’s been brought to my attention, I can’t imagine a greater waste of time.
Like some others here, I was raised in a Christian household (Catholic), and I bought into it all. I was constantly consumed by guilt for a wide-range of my very normal behaviors (being unable to stop taking the lord’s name in vain, having great difficulty honoring my parents, constantly touching my dick, etc), but perhaps the most guilt was because I had doubts about god.
I was told about Thomas, and how I should believe without proof. I was told that god wouldn’t reveal himself if I asked him to, because he doesn’t respond to challenges like that. Instead, I was told that if I well and truly opened up my heart, mind, and spirit, god’s presence would be made known to me. Well, I tried like hell to open up my heart, mind, and spirit the best my little 12 year old mind could. I wanted to believe, I wanted my family to like me, I wanted to be like my friends, who insisted that god made himself known to them. I wanted to avoid hell, and I wanted to belong. Something must have been wrong with me, and I felt pretty awful about it.
So at some point, I remember, as a 12-year-old mind you, praying to god, “Dear god, I know you’re not allowed to show yourself to me if I ask, but I’m trying really hard here, can you just give me something a sign, a little wink or something that maybe skirts the rules.” And then I’d wait, and I’d hyper-analyze every little thing that happened, thinking maybe that was god. But nothing was very convincing, so I went back and gave him deadlines, saying, “Look god, I know I’m pretty awful for even asking for a sign, but I’m starting not to believe in you, and you’ve failed to give me anything at all. Show me something within the next week or I’m out.”
Which is an absolutely silly demand to make, but that’s how confused and scared I was. After that week, it still took me a few months to finally come to terms with the fact that I was an atheist, although I didn’t have a term for it back then.
The entire Christian philosophy is like a horrible catch-22 designed to make people feel like shit. Every time I doubted, it was a personal failing. My friends didn’t doubt, and they insisted that they prayed and felt god’s presence. The more I doubted, the more it was my fault. Truly an awful thing to do to a kid.
No, I have not prayed for God to appear.
Having said that, there have been a couple times that I wished that God did exist and Christianity is real because it might have offered some comfort.
I’ve prayed to the Heavens a few times, both during and after my time of faith. Oddly, there were a few times my Prayers seemed to be answered…but looking back now, I know that’s untrue – the “entity” who answered me was myself.
As for what I believe nowadays, in lieu of “God” – all I can say is that listening works better than praying. That’s all.
“In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, please give me no sign. [pause] Thy will be done.” – Homer
Yes, I have.
I did. I thought it was an interesting test. If I think a room is empty I might still shout “Hey, anybody in there?” to make sure.
How do you ‘pray really hard’? How is it different than ordinary, run of the mill praying?
My mental image is it’s probably similar to really straining hard on the toilet. Although that is much more likely to have satisfactory result.
Maybe if he prays really hard a poll will appear.
That or hemmorhoids!
OK, you have a being that has always existed, and always will. He (apologies to distaff deities) has created the Universe and could destroy it. He’s responsible for countless stars and planets, and He has overseen the evolution of at least one intelligent and self-aware species. He can create at will, knows everything about everything past, present, and future … is consistently aware of the status of every atom of the Universe simultaneously, our every thought, and everything that will ever occur forever more. And you expect Him to reveal Himself to you, like He has nothing better to do?
Didn’t Spock describe the Organians as, " … as far above us as we are above … the amoeba!" ? If we are to God as germs on a slide, what shall He do to reveal himself? How would you reveal yourself to a drop of water full of microbes? Should he speak to you in your head? Couldn’t that be misinterpreted as schizophrenia? Should He send an Angel in Humanoid form to tell you (in English?) that He is real? How would you know it’s not a Demon lying to you?
Should He send a powerful Prophet into the World? How will you know it’s not a false Prophet? How about if God produces a huge image of an elderly bearded, robed Caucasian in the sky? He could reveal himself to the entire world that way. Couldn’t that be mistaken for a man-made hologram, or an Alien hoax? Remember Star Trek V: The Final Frontier?
Maybe, just maybe, God has already revealed Himself in a way that suits his purpose (whatever they may be), and it requires certain character and intuitive traits to grasp the Revelation. Maybe we all don’t understand it at once. Maybe it can take some people more than one lifetime to achieve full consciousness of God.
Oh, look. One of those loathsome and foul traits of the Abrahamic faiths I mentioned.
But what if you prayed to the wrong God? Wouldn’t that just make the real God madder and madder?
Me too. I didn’t believe, but I was young, so I tried. I tried to “project my thoughts” knowing that if God could hear all thoughts, he could hear mine. I was “thinking really emphatically.” I got absolutely zero answer, naturally.
God had a chance to reveal himself, to make a convert, to save a soul, to do some good in the world. If he exists…and refused…then he’s a bad god.
I don’t want there to be any being with so much power and control over me. It would kind of make a mockery of whatever independence I have, so I’d hardly pray for one.
I am a theist, and I have done this to no avail, and to my atheist friends and acquaintances, I strongly suggest against this. Ultimately, I think it will do far more harm than good, regardless of the results.
Speaking of my own experiences, I was raised with some fairly strict beliefs but I was always frustrated because I never had anything more than my sheer force of will that kept my belief intact. I remeber being told that the actually feeling I sought was not something that was necessary, but without that, it just felt like a burden and it made all of my religious experiences joyless. Without getting into all the details, I came to understand that the reason I failed was because I was looking for something that just wasn’t there, not in the sense that God doesn’t exist, but rather I was looking for that version of God that I was raised to believe in, rather than the way I really perceived him.
So, when I went looking for God, even looking as hard as I could, because I was looking in all the wrong places, I’d never find him. To use a pop culture example, it wasn’t all that unlike Luke on Degoba, knowing Yoda was a great Jedi Master, failing to even consider that the green creature he encountered was who he was searching for.
And this is why I think it’s futile for an atheist to pray to God and hoping that he reveals himself. You’ve already rejected whatever version of God you’re hoping to reveal himself to you because that version is inconsistent with your own experiences. Frankly, if some version of God is inconsistent with your own experiences, I think you should reject that version. That’s also why, even if you did pray and you did get some grand vision or whatever, you now have beliefs that are inconsistent with the rest of your experiences.
Again, speaking only for myself, but I don’t see my belief in God as a burden in any sense of the word, but rather something that only gives me greater joy and experience in every detail in which I experience that belief, and it only increases as I expand it. It was that forced belief that didn’t match my experiences that was brutal, confusing, and really despite being more orthodox in what I believed, it basically resulted in me being the theistic equivalent of the “angry atheist” trope, as in rather than “really” believing but pretending not to because I’m angry at God, I was pretending to believe when I really didn’t because I was unwilling not to.