Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
The fact that prayer is what brought you back is really strange to me. Do you think there is any statistical evidence that prayer works? What about other statistical evidence, like people who live on coasts that have earthquakes tend to die more to tsunamis? Completely area-based, unless you make the argument that people who live on coasts are more sinful and thus encounter the wrath of God more often. How many people are mired in addiction that try everything, including prayer, and never make it out? Knowing that statistics has incredible predictive power is enough to dissuade me that prayer does anything at all.
I don't understand why you think someone could believe that prayer sometimes works and not also believe that plate tectonics exists?
It's the idea that absolutely awful things can happen to you for reasons outside of your control at any time for many multitudes of reasons that were decided by seemingly nobody.
I honestly can't tell if this is some kind of gotcha or you are trying to make some profound point that is whooshing right over me haha
I am not really the person to make the point, anyway. I saw @Hoffmeister25 make the point much better than I can, and if @FCfromSSC had any satisfying response to it, he sure didn't seem to post it there.
But it's an old question: the problem of evil, the problem of random things inherent in nature hurting you for no reason. Why are there so many things that are absolutely awful, caused by immutable nature, and are only explainable to us modern humans? To ancient humans, it seemed functionally equivalent to being smitten by God to get tuberculosis and die slowly. They likely thought that prayer had something to do with getting bubonic plague and dying, similar to Tenaz's idea that prayer causes better outcomes. The Aztecs thought that sacrificing people was statistically likely to keep the world from ending. Perhaps they sacrificed something and felt some sign from God twitch within themselves. But they couldn't have been further from the truth. Do you think we modern humans are more pious than ancient humans? Not a chance.
I have seen from some young earth creationists the idea that it's because humans are fallen ever since the Tree of Knowledge was eaten from by Adam and Eve. But that only works in a young earth model of the world. If there is no young earth, there was no Adam and Eve, and we are just animals, and the world was always fucked up, right from the start, before any human was involved at all.
If anyone satisfyingly resolves the problem of evil in a forum post they are clearly misusing their talents.
I also will not solve the problem of evil for you here either. There are lots of books you could read by smarter people than me if that is what you are searching for (including books of the Bible), though it seems like you are just hoping bringing up the problem of evil will somehow magically turn someone atheist again like they've never thought about it in their life?
I'm not asking anyone to become atheist. But the idea that prayer does anything is chafing enough to me to cause me to comment. As I said elsewhere, I think religion is healthy, though I struggle to accept the good with the bad.
What do you mean by "does anything"? If you see the prayer as an ATM, that you put the right card in, type the right code, and the stuff you asked for comes out, that most certainly does not work and can not work - that's called "magic" and you can read about it in any number of fantasy books, but that's not how our world works([citation needed], of course), and even more, as far as I know, most Abrahamic religions at least kinda frown on such things. Clearly, it's not intended to be the ATM.
If you are asking whether a prayer changes anything in the world at all, e.g. if the world post prayer is identical to the world prior, or you can observe something different anywhere at all, then obviously it does, there are multiple people who could testify to that. Is it just a subjective phenomenon? Maybe yes, maybe not. What knowing that would give you? If your answer to this boils down to "magic" again, then maybe that's not the right way to deal with the issue. You won't get magic from it. You can't just pray for winning the Powerball and become a multimillionaire (at least not in the sense that you can get $100 from your bank's ATM). If this issue bothers you, maybe the more productive approach would be to consider what people are getting from it, and what you would want to get from it - i.e. if it "did anything", what kind of anything would you want it to do? Is it magic ATM? Is it Prozac without side effects? Is it imaginary best friend? Is it something else? Maybe that's what people find in it.
Obviously prayer does do something, if you're counting spiritual feeling or literal mouth movements as "something". If you read this far down in the thread, hopefully you remember the original claim causing me to post at all, but since you asked what I meant by "does anything":
It's just plain false that there is undeniable tangible evidence to anyone except the prayermaker themselves. If it wasn't, all kinds of religious organizations would be falling all over themselves commissioning study after study.
I used to pray, and not as a magic ATM, but there's only so much placebo can do for you once you know it's placebo.
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