Sounds reasonable. Prayer as meditation. Works equally well for Christians, Buddhists or atheists. God not required.
Put me in the “completely unacceptable” column, especially regarding the “the answer is no” explanation. This would be evidence of divine wisdom that predestines some children to live, and others to die. Prayer not effective, or only effective if it happens to coincide with God’s will.
Ahh, the “mysterious ways” explanation. So any form of religion is basically a crapshoot, since we really have no frickin’ idea what angers or pleases God. Prayer is irrelevant, because we just don’t know what He wants in order to save our child. Prayers of this nature are also subject to confirmation bias; positive outcomes are seen as supportive to the power of prayer, while negative outcomes are ignored, blamed on lack of faith, or chalked up to “mysterious ways”.
This is the teaching of Jesus on prayer. And yet, how many Christians do not follow this teaching is beyond me. Sigh. Do not pray in church; rather, pray alone and in private, and do not use vain repetitions. This is what Jesus taught.
No, because telling his disciples to spread the good news is NOT the same as forbidding other people to do so. So that line of reasoning simply doesn’t follow.
I’ll say it again… hopefully for the last time. I was addressing your SPECIFIC claim that (a) Jesus prayed for all men to be united, and (b) that this prayer was unanswered. It is abundantly clear that Jesus did NOT pray for unity among all men. Period.
Whether he would have wanted all men to follow him is another matter altogether. Even if he wanted such a thing, there is no evidence that he prayed for it. In fact, I rather doubt that he would have, since Jesus also prophesied that many more would reject him. (See Matthew 25, for example, which contains the parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the sheep and the goats.)
Again, I’m not saying that Plantinga’s argument would convince everyone. Quite the contrary; I’ve explicitly acknowledged that people like you are still not convinced.
However, every single person that I’ve encountered who objects to Plantinga’s argument is (a) a layperson, and (b) has clearly misconstrued it severely. This is evidenced, for example, by objections such as “What about all the natural calamities? Plantinga doesn’t cover that at all!” (In reality, Plantinga discusses that in tremendous detail, as covered in his discussions of “natural evil.”) Objections such as “Plantinga only talks about free will, not natural disasters!” make it clear that the critic is basing his arguments primarily on the title of Plantinga’s work, “The Free Will Defense,” rather than a detailed analysis of its content. (As Plantinga emphasizes quite clearly, his title does NOT mean that it only attempts to explain free will. Rather, it explains why God might allow moral and natural evil to occur in a world where free will exists.)
Jesus did indeed warn against using vain repetitions; however, he did NOT say that we must only pray in private. Rather, he urged people not to pray like the Pharisees, who prayed publicly and ostentatiously in order to draw attention to themselves.
This is not, by any means, meant to be a prohibition against public prayer altogether.
BTW, Luke 3:21 shows that Jesus himself prayed in public. It is therefore fallacious to insist that Jesus was opposed to the notion of public prayer per se.
Okay, earlier in the thread, yBeayf says Christ was referring not to all men, but his followers. This is where I see True Scotsman creeping in, or maybe circular reasoning. I honestly don’t know which (if either) apply, so help me through it.
True Scotsman Example:
Person A: Christ prayed (or whatever) for all of his follower to be one, and it came true.
Person B: What about Bob? He was a follower and now he’s part of some other religious sect.
Person A: Well, no True Follower would stray away from Christ.
Circular reasoning:
According to Christ’s desire, all of of His followers are one. But if you are not “one” with the group you are not a follower, and if you are not a follower, you aren’t “one” with the group.
My objection to Plantinga was not based on “natural evil” but on the premise that free will requires God to create people who he knows will choose evil. He can just as easily choose to create only people who will (FREELY) choose good. This would not deny anyone’s free will because people who would choose evil will never have existed.
But but but… what if the way things are now is vastly different from the way things were? What if there are a few people here on Earth that have been charged with making sure we don’t ever figure out the secrets of the universe?
I would think they’d get us so assbackwards we wouldn’t know what the hell to believe. It’s funny how many people I run into that believe in evolution and the bible. I mean, come on…
Religion is regarded by the common man as true, by the wise man as false, and by rulers as useful. Wise men know what’s up. They didn’t take everything blindly on faith, but asked questions and experimented with the forces of nature until they discovered the secrets of God. Even this guy performs his miracles through physical means.
Whatever great battle took place back in the day, it caused us to forget everything about our history and the reasons for our traditions, and all that’s left is this sad shituation we live in nowadays. A few people have been charged with making sure we never find out the truth, for the obvious reason that we can never be allowed to achieve that which we once imagined to do.
Neither one applies because, contrary to what monavis claimed, Jesus didn’t ask for all men to be united! It’s just that simple.
As for the formulation that you raised, there are two main problems with it. The first is that the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is not a true fallacy, for reasons that I gave earlier. Second, if you claim that Christ’s prayer did not come true, then the burden of proof rests on your shoulders. In other words, you would have to show that Christ was referring to all of his followers, throughout all time, rather than just his band of disciples. You can’t just point to a single possible, unfulfilled interpretation and then use this to “prove” that his prayer fell on deaf ears.
One more thing… The wording of Christ’s prayer makes it abundantly clear that he was specifically referring to his band of followers at the time. Note what verses 6 and 7say:
In other words, Jesus was referring to a group of individuals who had kept God’s Word and who understood that Christ’s teachings came from the Father. Now, one might argue about the fine details (e.g. what it means to “keep God’s Word”), but one thing is abundantly clear – Jesus was NOT referring to all of his followers in all future generations. Rather, he was praying for a much more specific group of individuals.
JThunder - I’ve been willing to stipulate that he was referring to his band of followers all along. My question is, what was the point of saying it at all? Isn’t he really just saying that His followers should be His followers? And if they are not His followers, then they are not His followers?
Also, I read your Wikipedia article, but I still don’t understand how you can say the fallacy doesn’t exist. Is this some kind of logical trap where I’m supposed to say, "Well, no True “True Scotsman Fallacy” would dismiss counter-examples as irrelevant solely because they are counter-examples, but purportedly because they are not what the theory is about? If you thought it doesn’t fit the criteria that would be one thing, but to say it doesn’t exist? Seriously, you mght as well say that the color blue doesn’t exist.
Either way, we’ve really strayed from the OP, so I’m willing to drop it if you are.
Even his closest group of apostles were not united,so even in that sense they were not as one as Jesus and the Father were supposed to be;hense the contradictions