Again, your fundamental assumption is flawed.
Enjoy your night.
What nuance of meaning does “pray” add in this case that “hope” would not?
If there’s no difference, why not just be clear and say “I hope we’re doing God’s will”? Does it sound less pious?
I can’t tell if you’re whooshing me or not; my apologies if I’m taking a joke seriously. “Pray” has a religious nuance to it that hope doesn’t; it implies, “I hope this is in line with the Big Guy’s plan.” Hope doesn’t have that nuance.
Yes it does. There’s no semantic reason that you can’t “hope” something isn’t in line with God’s will. “Pray” and “hope” are not synonomous. To “pray for” something means to ask God for it. Period. If Palin meant the word to be synonomous with hope, then she used the word incorrectly.
But saying “I hope/pray we’re following God’s will” clearly states that they’re talking about God’s will. Essentially, what everyone here is saying is that when she said pray, she meant precisely the same thing as “hope” would mean - so why not just use “hope” when it’s less ambiguous?
Because it lacks the gravitas and tone of religious pleading that “let us pray we are doing God’s will” has and “we sure do hope that we’re doing God’s will” lacks.
With examples exaggerated a bit to make the point, of course.
I have to admit, Palin has done too much talking about religion, and mixed too much of it in with politics. I decided to do some research, and here’s some quotes I found:
“I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life."
"Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.”
“We’re going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”
Here’s one that explicitly calls for a mix of church and state. This one’s quite frightening:
“Doing the Lord’s work is a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning, and it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life.”
She even backed this up with another similar statement:
“The majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.”
And she doesn’t just believe in an airy-fairy some sort of god like most theists. She thinks Jesus himself will return to earth to usher in the Kingdom of heaven, and she says a prayer to Jesus every night. She says Jesus listens to them, too.
To me, that sounds completely, religious-nut wacko.
Except all those quotes are from Barack Obama.
The point is that you see a person’s action through the filter of your own biases. If Palin said the things above, there would have been threads opened to howl in outrage. Because you want to believe the worst from her.
Obama can say the same thing, and you respond with a shrug. And why? Because you trust the guy. You’re pretty sure he’s just saying that stuff to please the fundies. You know deep down that he doesn’t really believe that stuff, or wouldn’t act on it, so you let it slide.
Two words: Proposition 8.
None of those quotes seem particurly scary to me. Nice try, though. Nothing theocratic or anti-intellectual in any of it. No desire to teach magic as science, no fear of witches, no rapture fantasies, no expressed intent to impose religious sensibilities on others, no desire to force little girls to have rape babies for Jesus. Palin does not get called a religious wacko because she’s a Republican, but because she actually is a religious wacko.
By the way, somebody got banned here once for misattributing quotes in just the manner that you did it.
He posted the quotes as real. left them out there hanging as bait to see if he could ‘catch’ someone before revealing who they really were.
I was merely employing a rhetorical device. There’s a big, big difference.
Incidentally, I actually like the device of using the quotes like that before identifying the source. Relating to my first post in this thread - it’s stupid when someone regards the source of an idea as being more important than the idea when evaluating rightness.
For what it’s worth, in this case, those quotes didn’t strike me as especially egregious. Bad? Definitely. I would think less of a politician for using them. But they weren’t quite the “see, look at these looney quotes, oh wait!” you were going for. They’re fairly close to being standard for politicians - which I think is unfortunate - but it’s nowhere as absurd or damaging as, say, advocating teaching creationism in public schools.
No, I think Barack Obama is genuine and understands American culture. I have never read or heard Barack Obama make a judgmental statement about any social group or individual.
What bothers me about Sarah Palin and others like her is the sanctimony. The hostile, angry, bigoted and judgmental rhetoric is somehow justified as the moral high ground. It’s extremely perverse.
Frankly, the videos documenting people at Palin’s campaign rallies are disturbing. Instead of standing against ignorance, Palin feeds into it. She was obviously comfortable surrounded by all the hate in those crowds. I don’t want to live in Palin’s America.
That is a superlame rhetorical device. I read the first few quotes, furrowed my brow trying to figure out why they were bad, skipped down to the end to see if you’d saved the worst ones for last, and saw the Obama attribution. Except you’ll refuse to believe me, preferring to believe that I’m a hypocrite than to believe that you made an unconvincing argument. Meh.
Dayum! Not only an uppity Muslim nigra but a Wimmen too!
The fact that there are still “mainstream” Republicans like our Canadian Republican Sam Stone who are still so very desperately trying to defend Sarah Palin makes me feel like it may be a generation or more before Republicans even begin to do any self-reflection, soul searching, woods walking, or whatever you want to call it. He’s already had a Drudge flash blow up in his face from the OP, and now he’s resorted to weak rhetorical devices like attributing not-especially scary religious quotes to Palin before jumping up and down, pointing and screaming “AHA!”
Remember, if Republicans would have had their real preference, they would have elected Sarah Palin over John McCain or Barack Obama. The thought of relying on Sarah Palin to dig us out of our present mess scares the shit out of me.
I do hope that it won’t be that long before people like Sam Stone will start thinking of the public good before their preferred political party.
If God is a good father, who knows our very thoughts, then prayer is not necessary. A good father would not give his child anything that would harm it, or hold back anything that was for the child’s own good. Prayer implies that God doesn’t know what is going on,or a lack of trust in God.
It would be no different if one prayed to a turnip ,rock, or statue;if you got what you wanted you could say your prayer was answered, if not you could say,Rock, turnip,or statue said no.
Prayer for some people just help them relax until what is going to happen happens…
There’s nothing wacko about saying that the personal faith of politicians will guide the way that they perform their job. There’s everything wrong with passing legislation that forces others to accept the tenets of that faith (e.g. the teaching of creationism in schools).
I’d be interested in the context of the “we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth” comment - if it was said in a religious context (i.e. church service, prayer breakfast, etc), it’s fine; if it was a campaign speech, it’s not fine - but otherwise the quotes are all about personal faith. Do please stop telling me what I’d be outraged about. I’ll let you know when I’m outraged.
And Dio: I’m agnostic and seriously anti-Palin, and even I think you’re patently wrong about the “pray” thing. It’s just a turn of phrase. I’m sure Palin blesses people when they sneeze but isn’t actively thinking that she’s turning away demons while doing it (at least I hope not).
This post has been decembered by the decembrist!
No, it’s because “hope” doesn’t put any money in the pockets of people like Falwell, et al. Hope doesn’t cost anything. Prayer needs a little juice to give it some impetus.
Hey - Palin 2074! When Stem Cell Research gets underway she will be able to replace all her old cells and still be alive!
When that rule was announced that we could say who was on our ignore lists, I wondered why I’d ever want to make such an announcement. Now I know.
You are a fucking liar. The above statement by you isn’t sleight-of-hand or misdirection. It’s a fucking lie.
I can tolerate stupidity. I can tolerate outright trolling. But since I will never again trust a single word you type, I won’t bother to read them.