I call my Dad who exists every week. My daughter calls me also. I exist too.
As for that other one - I did call, and never got an answer. At this point, God can pray to me. He can start by telling me if P=NP, then I’ll really believe. But I was never one to make calls that never got returned.
BTW, my life improved tremendously after I stopped believing. I don’t think there is a causal relationship, but never having prayed for about 40 years seems not to have affected my happiness, my financial well-being, or my sex life.
Voyager, maybe your situation is exactly right for you. I don’t judge that at all. But I am curious about whether you were ever interested in experimenting with something like meditation, a silent retreat, mindfulness – anything of that nature.
Really? What about clinical trials where there is a positive physical response to the placebo as in some ED studies, hypertension studies, and so on? Don’t you agree that the connection between the mind and the body exists and that they affect each other?
Well the mind is the body–a consequence of physical processes.
I do agree that the placebo effect can cause genuine physical changes. This is not from some sort of magical process that violates natural law, however.
A nonsensical belief in ghosts that causes my heart to race does not mean that ghosts exist. A nonsensical belief that the good fairy will protect me causing my heart to slow down again does not mean the good fairy actually exists.
I meditate while doing jigsaw puzzles. The process of finding pieces and connecting them is totally disconnected from higher mental processes, and I can let my mind run free while not feeling guilty about wasting time. New religion here, sponsored by Springbok.
Still. I have no doubt that meditation can have benefits. The mind is a wonderful thing. I was able to control my heart rate when hooked to a monitor giving feedback. I just don’t think there is anyone on the other end of the line.
It would be absurd to think that our prayers could change God (ie make the Great One do something or hear something previously undone or heard); the purpose of prayer is to bring oneself closer to understanding spiritual reality. There is a great chapter on this topic, “Prayer”, in a book called Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy. Useful regardles of religious affinity. Hope you enjoy it.
Peopel claim credit for prayer when no credit is due…
ie: Person has cancer… people pray for healing and comfort
outcome #1 - person get chemotherapy and lives = prayers anmswered
outcome #2 - person gets chmotherapy and dies = they got comfort through prayer (ignore medical morphine)
Result… if I ever get cancer, give me chemo, but forgo the prayers
FML
No one “knows” what God wants; one only believes that God wants something or was told by some human that is what God wants. Prayer is something to do while what ever is going to happen happens…notice how many more people are healed by prayer since different medicines have been discovered? A few years ago before antibiotics one could pray and have a whole town praying for some one with polio, or Pneumonia and now almost all survive but before that most died.
How do you know this? What certain effect does prayer cause if it doesn’t actually change anything about god, or what it was going to do anyway? How do you know your god wants you to be actively involved in it’s plan?
If your mind is wandering you are not actually meditating. It is a step TOWARD meditation, but not actually meditation. The process of meditation is the process of controlling one’s own thoughts. The first lesson, basically, when you get your ‘yellow belt’ so to speak, is when you can clear your mind of all thought by an act of will. This is one of the main reasons that the earlier levels of meditation require a time limit, because it is a matter of focusing for a specific amount of time. All mystical traditions throughout history have included some form of ‘silence’, as a prerequisite to pure contemplation. This ability leads to the ability to compartmentalize experiences, and focus only on what is relevant at the moment, or simply to have a pure experience of the present moment without multitasking things that are relevant to the past or the future.
Well, you didn’t answer the first question, and didn’t get the second.
You said
That’s more than just ‘a part’. If god created you, and if all of creation is a part of it’s plan, then you are obviously a part of it’s plan. Grains of sand are part of it’s plan. How do you know you’re supposed to be actively involved? What are you supposed to do? And why is prayer a part of this activity if it doesn’t actually do anything? If prayer doesn’t change god, then what does it do? Is this ‘we are part of god’s plan’ thing just derived from logic, or do you have another reason to think it?
I’ve found that this disconnects my body from my mind, and lets me empty my conscious mind to let my subconscious take over. I’ve found that my subconscious will give me answers to whatever is bothering me. I have no desire to empty my mind of all thoughts. Now this may or may not qualify as meditation, but it’s my spirituality and I’ll define what I want to.
It’s just like Tommy, without having to spend any quarters.
I know God wants activaly involved because we are, if God didn’t want it it would not be. The Bible reinforces this over and over. Words are powerful, God said let their was light and there was. We also have this power, not to that extreme, but words are far more powerful then most realize. We can impose blessings and curses, ask anything in My (Jesus’) name is it will be done, we are given authority over all the enemy by Jesus in His name, we are the hands and feet of Christ, Jesus said we will do all the things he has done and more.
I am not trying to dismiss your experience, I am just drawing a technical distinction from my experience. Meditation is a form of exercise where you develop your ability to control your thoughts. Perhaps it’s a form of meditation, though it doesn’t seem to achieve the purpose that meditation is meant to achieve as it has been explained to me.
So, I know that God wants me to not believe in him, because I don’t? You do realize that this line of thought simultanously justifies any action whatsoever, and simultaneously eliminates free will, right?
You can dismiss my experience all you want! I like to do puzzles, but I am not religiously involved with them. I was actually trying to explain to Zoe that I have nothing against meditation, and even will admit it probably is beneficial.
Now, to get back on track, I can imagine that people not so tied into their subconscious can get answers to problems while meditating through prayer, and be convinced that the answers come from a deity, not from within themselves. I’ve had columns write themselves. I can certainly imagine someone in this state considering themselves inspired. Oliver Sachs had an article in last week’s New Yorker about a doctor who was hit by lightning, and afterwards got musically inspired. He started to play the piano, and heard piano music in his head. He wrote pieces and played them, and they were judged very good - not quite Mozart level, but excellent for someone starting from scratch at 40.
It does not do either, you have free will and are responsible for your choices, both on earth and at the time of judgment. Just because you will make some choice does not mean you didn’t have free will.
As for you not believing in God, that is now and many people come to God later in life, some people apparently never do up until the time of their death.
You claimed that we can tell what God’s will is by examining human actions. If that is true, then either
God has free will, and decides what he wants independently. Then we all are forced to comply with his will, otherwise god’s will and human actions would cease to coincide.
or
Humans have free will, and god’s desires are controlled by our changing whims. Thus God doesn’t really have a mind of his own, otherwise the minute he had an independent thought god’s will and human actions would cease to coincide.
Naturally, if both human action and god’s will are independent and free and could diverge at any moment, then you can’t deduce anything about God’s will from human action, becasue they’d be unrelated.
I figured you wouldn’t go for the “God has no mind” approach. Was I wrong about that?
I suppose I could convert at any time, though in my estimation it would probably take a lobotomy to incite it. Still, your position is that God wishes for some people never to convert until the time of their death? That god likes sentencing people to hell? Maybe he laughs joyfully as they scream in agony at their unending torture?
I wouldn’t want this to drift much further off topic than it is, but you really should become aware of the implications of the positions you profess to hold.
