The point of praying is known to those who pray, and it is not necessary for those who don’t pray to understand it. Praying will teach you what is the point of praying.
Then I’d probably say scripture also suggests that these spiritual gifts aren’t very helpful… either that, or they’re not actually being used.
Fair enough, i’ll try and take your advice. Bear in mind that coming at all this from an athiest perspective i’m equally trying to understand other religions.
Wouldn’t that suggest that no-one genuinely sees the point of praying the first time they do it?
Lets say theres definitely no god(which in practicality we cant ),various sorts of prayers can be psychologically health promoting.
They can clarify in the prayees mind what they are hoping for,(giving them some sort of objective to aim for ),
what is troubling them deep down(instead of having vague unspecified worries),
things that they should be grateful for that they might otherwise overlook(a roof over their head,job,friends),
appreciate their loved ones ,
remind them of those who are much less fortunate then themselves.
If things are really bad or they are really frightened it can give courage and at least a little hope.
If lonely a modicum of company (even if its illusory).
All of which will probably lessen personal stress to some degree and lengthen your life.
It doesnt cost anything,take up much time,effort or equipment.
It cant do you any harm.
If theres no god,afterlife whatever you you will never find out that you are wrong but if on the other hand it turns out that against all the odds there is something after all, your Quids in for very little outlay.
I do not follow any religion myself but I do pray.
We know there is no God as much as we can know the nonexistence of anything. The laws of physics leave no room for a God, at least of the sort that actually does or perceives anything in this universe. And there’s simply zero evidence for a God, and the people proposing a God contradict each other, and on and on. There’s less reason to believe in God than there is to believe in unicorns.
As for “no harm”, that’s simply wrong. As I said earlier, the more you pray, the less you do something that might actually help. And it helps brainwash you into being more devoted to whatever delusion you are praying to.
Pascal’s Wager, which is ( and has been ) easily demolished. You could be praying to the wrong God, God could be a rationalist who’s offended at your irrationality in acting religious, he could be offended at such a cynical attempt to curry favor, and so on.
It seems a bit egotistical to think one has the only truth and to know for certain what God wants. Jesus despised the Pharisee’s (he letter of the law keepers), so if one believes the Bible then it would seem Jesus wasn’t too fond of people who thought they we the only right thinkers.
A human father can only guess at what is good for his children or how they will re-act…but your God is supposed to know every thing. So as I understand it your version of God is not the loving, kind all knowing Father that some seem to embrace.
A Father that lets his children know for sure of his existence,and doesn’t make them guess is not forcing himself on them, but is making them a part of his existence. If he knows their thoughts he doesn’t need comunication,and his desire is for his Children’s happiness and would protect them against all evil,even without their knowledge. He wouldn’t sort out some children and look for their happiness and punish the one’s who do not know him because he failed to recognize them as his own.
Monavis
Some are more helpful or useful then others (this is scriptural). The gifts are God working His plan through us, and in the end God does ‘win’ but at the same time IMHO humanity proves that if they are left to their own it will lead to destruction and enslavement. As for if they are actually being used, in my experience they are not mentioned in many churches which IMHO is unfortunate. I personally have found the letters (Romans to Revelation) in the Bible to be a excellent guide to faith, not churches and not religions (after all the letters were instruction for followers of Jesus). If you do end up seeking a church in the future my suggestion is learn at least the NT before finding a church (though some would say the Bible should be read in order), understand it and compare it to what they are teaching. God has empowered the common man to find Him.
I wish you well and will pray on your behalf, Christianity does not work well when combined with other religions, though you can learn about all religions on a surface level. You have to be willing to submit your life to Jesus to be His follower, this would automatically exclude following other gods, partially following doesn’t work.
It appears to me that Jesus’ issue with the pharisees was their hyprocracy and they though themselves better then the general population, or in other words they elevated themselves, but yes He also criticized them for knowing what is written in scriptures but not understanding what it means.
Are you saying that you know what the scripture means,and others who dis agree with you do not? That is how it comes across to me. Since I know that humans wrote, interpeted, and named the scriptures the word of God,and claimed they were inspired,it is hard to take it as fact or from God. Plus there are many believers in scriptures who would disagree with yours.
Polycarp comes across as being more like the way Jesus would have people interpet scriptures than many others. His kindness seems to reflect the meaning of what Jesus would have said and how he would have acted.
Monavis
I was questioning your statement about the reason that Jesus had issues with the pharisees based on what I know of scripture. Alternatively I could have asked you for a cite for your statement, which I will admit there is some, but little, support for that reason - and I did point out that there is some support. Then I could post all the other times which seem to indicate that is not the case, and more likely for the reasons I have stated.
I’m fine with it as long as it can be defended scripturally. God does not work in ways predictable by man, but God has drawn a bottom line of truth across the ages. So there is room for other interpretations as long as it doesn’t cross that line.
Polycarp has not posted in this thread and I really don’t have time to go back to other threads. There are posters, maybe polycarp, i’m not sure, that have told me their view of God which I first though was not scriptural, but have looked into it and can’t find any solid refute to it. Scripturally we are suppose to test those who claim to be followers of Christ, there is nothing wrong with that.
Our scientific knowledge of even our local universe is miniscule,dont get me wrong
Im no creationist or the like and I believe that our scientific snapshot of the universe is the best we have at the moment .
But dark matter ,dark energy ,theoretical particles ,string theory ,wormholes,Hoyles Constant etc. things are changing from day to day almost ,even universal constants may not be so constant ,one theory is that the speed of light has slown down since our local Big Bang.
Has anyone ever seen,smelt,heard ,tasted or touched a Physical Law directly ?ever?
We know that they are there but only indirectly as a result of their effects .
Maybe god is the physical laws or maybe god only makes an" instrument adjustment "every trillion years or so working on a mega time cycle compared to our own .
Or maybe god steers things at the sub,sub,sub,sub atomic level or through the actual fabric of space and time itsself .
And its quite likely that there are an infinity of dimensions and local universes that we have no way of detecting but may be impacting on events in our own backyard.
Thats assuming that there is a god of course ,which Im ambivelent about opinion wise but to say we have enough knowledge to virtually rule out the possibility is intellectual arrogance on a grand scale.
As to the worlds religions I believe in none of them so thats not my argument.
No ,thats like saying that because Ive got house insurance I wont bother with fire safety precautions anymore,or because Ive bought a lottery ticket Im not going to work Monday morning.
Ive never met ANYONE, no matter how religous of whatever religion ,whos relied on prayer as an instant fix,“Yep we’re harvesting tomorrow so Ill just pray for good weather and we’ll be alright then”,it never happens.
And on a realistic note I envy those who when they know that they are dying ,sincerely believe that they.re going to some sort of paradise and are going to see their loved ones again.No matter how deluded
As against myself who will probably die knowing that Ive been fucked and thats it
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Pascal’s Wager, which is ( and has been ) easily demolished. You could be praying to the wrong God, God could be a rationalist who’s offended at your irrationality in acting religious, he could be offended at such a cynical attempt to curry favor, and so on.
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Yes that could be so ,but the position is a little like being a goalkeeper in soccer when a penalty kick is being taken by the opposing team.
The striker might kick left,he might kick right but you will not have time to observe the kick AND react so you commit yourself to dive one way or the other .
By your rationale the goalie would do nothing at all because he might make the wrong decision so by standing still hes definitely made the wrong decision.
There are more things in this universe then are dreamed of in your Philosophy Der Trihs.
Or maybe we are all secretly controlled by a superintelligent five dimensional can of Spam; that’s at least as likely. When you are making wild speculations like you are, with zero evidence to back them up, with zero evidence that they are even possible, the chance of you being right is infinitesimal.
No. If they are “impacting on events in our own backyard”, then we can probably detect them.
No, it’s claiming that there is a God that’s arrogant. All the evidence points to there being no God, there’s no rational reason to believe in a God, and the proposed God in itself is typically illogical. Not to mention that most claims of God include a God that cares about us, which is ridiculously arrogant for a bunch of balding apes.
With zero evidence, God has no more likelyhood than any other crazy claim. Like it or not, the Flying Spaghetti Monster really is just as plausible as God. God is a silly idea.
I’d rather be sane. That sort of mentality is what leads to people ramming airplanes into skyscrapers. If you really believe in an afterlife, why care about killing and dying ? Civilization survives to the extent people do not act on their religion.
And how do you know that ? To continue in that vein, there’s no evidence that there is a soccer game, or a ball, or a goal, or that it’s soccer and not basketball or skeet shooting, or nothing at all.There’s no way to know the rules, if there are rules, there’s no evidence of any benefit from the game, or a penalty for losing or not playing.
The “goalie” in that case shouldn’t “do nothing at all because he might make the wrong decision”; he should walk away and ignore the whole affair as the nonsense it is.
I know you accept the word of humans that scripture is God’s word, but that does not help a person who does not believe that; it may be fine for people who believe it the same way, but then there are so many versions and so contradictory as to what the meaning is, it diminishes it to just another humans way of thinking, like expecting a mathematician
to find many meanings to what 2=2 equals, with out an agreement it is nothing but chaos.
No one can say for sure what God said or wants as one takes the word of another human and there is little or no agreement on the subject so it amounts to what human and how we interpet that human’s explaination.
monavis
"The wild speculations"as you put it, were merely to demonstrate that there are many more possibilities in the universe then offered in your somewhat limited world view.
Infinitely more in fact,so THAT even an infitisimal chance is still a realistic option.
Even within our local universe there are presumably gravitational,light and other physical forces that originate from beyond the universal horizon and that due to cosmic expansion we will never ever be able to detect but if my presumption is correct it is reasonable that they are still impacting on all parts of the L.U.
What is sanity?Not too long ago anyone who believed that the earth went around the sun and not vice versa would be considered a raving nutcase.
And until very recently who would ever have believed that the speed of universal expansion INCREASED rather then slowed down the further away from the centre?
As to religous beliefs as I said before thats not within my brief.
Im arguing that the existance of a god is a very real possibility,I am not saying that there definitly is or is not one.
And Ill thank you D.T. not to blab about the all powerful 5 dimensional can of Spam
'that knowledge should be restricted to those of the inner circle of elders only,the masses couldnt handle it if they found out.
monavis I agree with what you are saying, I feel we need God’s help with it, without it it appears exactly how you describe.
I’m afraid not. The more possibilities there are, the less likely that any one is true, lacking evidence.
No, it’s not. If it’s affecting us, we can in principle detect it. If it’s out of the observable universe, then it can’t affect us; it’s too far away to interact with us.
Execpt that neither of those ideas is nearly as silly as God. “They laughed at Einstein, but they laughed at Bozo the Clown too.” Except in this case it’s “Bozo” that gets taken dead seriously, no matter how silly he acts.
Religious ideas and scientific ideas are simply nowhere near each other in terms of plausibility. Science is the best way known to discover the truth; religion is the worst.
And do you have any evidence that it’s a “possibility” to be taken any more seriously than the idea that we were all created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster ? If we ignore the laws of physics, ignore the lack of evidence, and don’t care if the idea makes sense, is God possible ? Sure, but with standards that low any irrational idea is possible; omnipotent bicycles, dogs with neutron stars for eyes, a square Earth that is triangular. Even one as irrational as God. That doesn’t make it less irrational.
I trust you don’t bet that way in a casino. But in science anyone can come up with any odd hypothesis, but it isn’t considered a realistic option until there is evidence.
Incorrect by definition. We assume there are parts of the universe beyond our event horizon, but they cannot impact us - or they would not be beyond our event horizon.
Not a nutcase - a heretic, someone to be burned, since they didn’t look at evidence that contradicted their holy book. In the latter case, anyone with this hypothesis would be asked for evidence. When the evidence turned up, it got accepted and people changed their theories to incorporate it.
Which god? Got any reason at all to give any of the possible gods even a second of your time?
Insert mandatory Python reference here.
It would seem that God is helping people see what they want to see.hence,so many different translations.
In an earlier post I tried to mention why Jesus despised the Pharisee’s It wasn’t because they didn’t understand (which would have been a poor reason to despise some one) But they kept the letter of the law and not the spirit. They made public display of their religion. Indeed they thought they were holier than thou.
monavis
Not sure what you mean here, God shows us what He wants us to know, which may or may not be what we want. It’s all about God, not us.
The letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law is something they didn’t understand and by your own admission is a poor reason to be ‘despised’. The reason I do agree with your second statement (which you did not make in your earlier post), they elevated themselves and made a public display of their faith.
But how do we know for sure what God wants us to know? Certain political leaders may think they were ordained by God to do what they are doing, because they prayed and then say that God guided their thoughts and actions. How could they or anyone possibly know this?
God will provide that for you on a personal level.
God is in control and can turn evil into good, so even if the leaders are lying or deceived God can still turn that to His advantage.
How can the leaders know, it’s a personal issue between them and God, how can you know about the leaders, well unless you are told by God you most likely can’t know, as it is between God and themselves.