Works for me, so why don’t you shut up already?
Well yes, good point I suppose, but I don’t think I’d be able to get them to comply with that, it would probably go like this:
Me: I’d like you not to pray for your fruit garden this year.
Them: Really, Why?
Me: Well, I’m hoping that we can do a controlled study on whether prayer actually works.
Them But of course it works, before we started praying, we used to lose the whole crop.
**Me:**Yes, but…
As a Christian, I support your last point… we should all believe what we choose to believe. We all have that privilege. We just need to be careful what we believe.
I’m interested that often in these threads, Christians are variously positioned as non-thinking, unintelligent morons who have so clearly (to non-Christians) been somehow conned into believing what they believe… even to the point where they ridiculed because they cannot provide an acceptable answer to the non-believers.
Matthew 5:
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
It was predicted 2000 years ago that it would be so…
I know that this is difficult for non-belivers to swallow, but when you have faith (in anything), it is not always possible to prove things to others. I know that I have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. I can’t necessarily prove it to you in a scientific sense, but that doesn’t disprove it!
***1 Corinthians 2
4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,
5 so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.***
I’ve spent most of my life on the non-believers side of the fence… I have personal experience of both approaches to life… I know what I believe, why I believe it and I do not feel conned.
What I do know is that non-believers cannot be persuaded to believe by employing ’…men’s wisdom…'.
Similarly, Christians will not be disuaded by being told that they are somehow , intellectually challenged, or by their beliefs being attacked in an unnecessarily, aggressive manner… quite the reverse… it re-inforces their faith and the Lord’s message that it would be so. After all, he was crucified for speaking out against the ‘non-believers’.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by walor *
**
Let me just modify that… Jesus did not speak out against ‘the sinners’ but against ‘sinful nature’. He loved the sinners and came to save them. He spent his time with ‘sinners’… he walked with them!
But he did speak out against the ‘religious’ authorites who focussed on doctrine and the mechanics of religion. They had lost sight of their responsibilities to ‘do God’s will’ and in that sense were ‘non-believers’.
Sorry for any confusion.
I was not trying to avoid anything other than the topic of this thread branching into unproductive sidetracks, that’s all, I did say that the question of why God should be appear to be interested in trivia deserves an answer, but I’m not sure I can offer that answer personally.
yes, but you did say “I would hope a true believer, if he really insisted on petitioning for something would have loftier goals than a friggin’ canteloupe quota in his back yard”, which I felt was sufficiently similar in thrust to “How could God let babies die and still be interested in soft fruit?”
Do you honestly think that any believer would say something like “I know this is completely false, but it makes me feel better, so I’ll go along with it”, no, they have reasons for believing what they do, just as you have reasons for believing it’s all invented, of course you think your reasons are the true ones, but so do they.
**I think most believers would find this a ridiculous, presumptuous and mistaken summary of their beliefs. I don’t know anyone who would say that prayer is about trying to strike bargains with God, they are asking for ‘stuff’ because they earnestly believe that’s what their deity wants them to do.
Fair enough.
I still don’t see the comparison. I said, it seems trivial to ask for something so, um, trivial. I didn’t say anything about dead babies. I’m not comparing the trivialities of a garden to anything. You are. Besides I wouldn’t make that comparison because as I’ve stated, I don’t believe “God” let’s babies die. I think that sometimes, they just die. It sucks, but it happens
I don’t think we’re on the same page here at all. I don’t get what this response has to do with the section of my post you quoted. I was merely saying that religions serve a purpose. Alleviating fear and ignorance of death, and guiding one’s moral code. Of course for them to be effective they must be “believed”. However I was also saying that that should be enough, and asking a deity for “stuff” is a bastardization of religion.
They may not say, but they do it. Does the Lord really want them to pray that they win the lottery or that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win the Superbowl this year? And if the Lord wants them to pray that thier dog won’t die, why doesn’t just make it so their dog doesn’t die? He won’t give them what they deserve unless they say the magic words?
See, I don’t think a single Christian on this thread has said that prayer involves asking God for those types of things. Christianity tells us to reject the worldly and choose the spiritual. When we pray, we ask God for spiritual things which we cannot show you.
Those who consistently pray to God and develop their relationship with Him are rewarded. That’s why you find the older priests and monks tend to be the ones who pray for the longest periods of time. I personally can’t believe that people can devote that much time of their life to something just because they are afraid of Hell. Rather, these people are gaining something out of these prayers. They all testify that when you truly bare your soul to God, through prayer, He rewards you abundantly.
So what was the most important thing they ever prayed for and did they get it?
It isn’t much of a prediction if people are aware of it. If people are aware of the prediction, then how do you know they aren’t the ones making it come true? If this is the case, then it isn’t a prediction, it’s an instruction. People have been told they will be persecuted for believing, so they see doubt, skepticism and questions as persecution; IOW, they feel persecuted because they have been told to.
One really should not believe in something that cannot be shown to be real.
No, you believe that you do, which is not the same thing.
Victims of cons seldom figure out for themselves that they have been conned. For the rest, it’s not until someone else shows to them that they have been conned do they realize it.
“Lord, please make the birds stop eating my soft fruits - it’s playing hell with my spirtuality. Thanks”
I’ve yet to see proof of that. I can testify that the more I pick my nose the more great mother earth rewards me. Doesn’t make it true, just what I believe.
Listen as far as spirituality goes, as I’ve said before, I think that’s great. If you find peace by getting on your knees and asking the God you believe in for it, peachy-keen. It works for you. But it is not a rule.
And for every Christian who says, “we only pray for spiritual guidance”, there are four others on their knees praying for a new color TV.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jab1 *
**
One really should not believe in something that cannot be shown to be real.
Please :rolleyes:, how many scientific things cannot be shown to be real? Isn’t that a theory? Something that can’t be proven?
No, you believe that you do, which is not the same thing.
Who are you to say whether or not someone has a relationship with God? I know for a fact that I have a relationship with God. Their is both communication and love in the relationship two of the more important ingredients in a successful relationship.
Ok, you two need to get a room.
Jack Batty wrote:
Indeed, one morning as I was listening to my local K-love radio affiliate, they played a recorded call from a listener in which she said, “The Lord just blessed me with a new car.” (What, she just woke up one morning and there it was in her driveway?)
cykrider wrote:
No. A theory, in the sciences, is a statement that makes predictions which are borne out by the evidence. If the evidence contradicts it, it’s not a theory (or at best, it’s a “disproven theory”). If it doesn’t make predictions that can be tested, it’s not a theory. If there is no experiment you could devise wherein a particular result would disprove it, it’s not a theory.
In that sense, the statement “God exists” is not a theory, because it is not testable, any more than the statement “Invisible intangible unicorns exist” is testable. It is not simply that neither God nor invisible intangible unicorns can be seen, it is that neither of them leaves any detectable evidence of its existence. Similarly, the statement “Everyone’s consciousness will continue after their body dies” is not testable if this afterlife-consciousness leaves no verifyable trace of its existence.
On the other hand, the theory that matter is made of submicroscopic atoms is testable, even though the atoms cannot be seen directly. The atomic theory of matter makes certain testable predictions – e.g., the diffraction of short-wavelength light through a crystal, the ideal gas law, etc… Since these various predictions have been verified through experiment and have never been contradicted by the evidence, the atomic theory is considered a useful, working theory, and not just an unsubstantiated hypothesis. (Some experiments have refined our model of what an atom looks like – e.g. Rutherford’s alpha-scattering experiment, which demonstrated the existence of a compact atomic nucleus – but no experiment has yet to yield results demonstrating that matter doesn’t consist of atoms of some type.)
…or he knows he does and you believe he can’t, and so on… 
Jack Batty - I see where you’re coming from now, but I’d go along with what others have said since about materialism, however, for believers to pray to God (that they believe is real, not just a nice idea to make us feel better about death) about things that concern them may be completely internally consistent with those beliefs.
It doesn’t seem to make sense to say that you reject the usefulness/validity of prayer, but if people must pray, then it should be about X and not Y.
For a believer to draw a line between things that are and aren’t worthy of prayer is impossible, it’s not black/white, serious/trivial rather a continuum of greys, therefore it really has to be all or nothing.
Now I know that you think it should be nothing, because I know that you assert that God/Religion is an artificial construct, but the believers don’t agree with you, therefore it’s reasonable to expect them to act in a way consistent with their beliefs, isn’t it?
Shown to whom?
Despite numerous attempts, I’ve never been able to grasp calculus, it simply doesn’t make sense to me at all, no matter how hard I try, I’m not sure if it could be proven to be real to me, although of course I accept that it can be demonstrated, but proof and demonstration aren’t the same thing.
So who must we convince before we believe something? everybody? - you’ll have a hard time showing that anything is real if you hope to convince absolutely everybody - the moon landing is a good example of this.
I think that people will tend to believe what has been sufficiently shown to be real to them
sometimes this is because it’s universally true (if there is such a thing)
other times it’s because they’ve been duped
but (IMHO) sometimes, we just can’t say for sure.
Many believers would say that they have received within themselves all the proof they ever need, but because it takes the form of experiences, it’s thrown out as evidence because it’s subjective, but so what?
That doesn’t make it any more palatable to me. I still say that praying for something within yourself makes sense to me, because I do the same thing, only it’s not prayer, more like a meditation. Believing that in asking a deity for something, laws of physics and/or probability will skew in your favor, is deluding yourself.
**
That’s kind of apples and oranges. One is a statement on a belief that I hold true. The other is comment on others’ priorities. It would be like saying, “I think eight track players are useless, but if you’re going to use one, at least play some Hendrix.”
Yes it is.
But I still think it’s silly.
You know, all in all, I really don’t have that much against religion per se, as I do in how modern society has taken it, pissed on it, turned it into an infomercial and spit it back out for the unwashed masses to swallow like pablum. If Christians acted more like Christ I probably wouldn’t be railing against Christianity so much.
I’m also not too keen on being told which religion is the one true religion.
Maybe that should be another thread, but when a member of any religion makes that claim, isn’t he tacitly proclaiming every other religion to be false? Where does one get that kind of pomposity. There are so many different religions on this planet, each with dozens of denominations, and sects offshooting like Jiffy-Pop, that I find it impossible for any one of them to be anything more than man-made hocus-pocus.
On a side note: I’m not sure how I’ve come off in this thread the last few days, but I’m really not intentionally trying to irk anyone. This is something I feel strongly about, and I’ve rather enjoyed the conversation.
At any rate. I was in a crappy mood these last few days so if I came of more gruff than was warrented, chalk it up to that.
**
Fair enough, The Christ bit sounds like a good idea to me.
really? I hadn’t noticed
To reasonable people.
They aren’t?
You mean in spite of the fact that calculus is used to determine many useful things, like the orbits of planets and the paths of rockets in flight and the acceleration of falling objects in a gravity well, you think it’s possible they’re all just making it up just because you can’t understand it?
Hoo, boy.
It isn’t the same thing as refusing to believe prayers work because prayers cannot be shown to be the only explanation for a given phenomenon. For example, cancers sometimes go into remission. We’re not sure why. But they have been known to go into remission even for cancer patients who never prayed for themselves or had anyone else pray for them or who prayed to some deity other than the Biblical God. This indicates that there must be a biological reason why that cancer went into remission. That we may not know why the cancer went into remission does not prove that the reason was Divine Intervention. It could be a natural cause which we have yet to discover. There’s nothing wrong in waiting until that reason is discovered. There’s nothing wrong in saying, “We don’t know at this time.”