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m0l0t0v

praying?

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In another thread someone asked for prayers for his friend. Now that his friend is out of danger I think this could be an appropriate time to debate the concept of praying.

My general question is: why do people believe in prayers?
When I was young I believed in it, but I found the following arguments/ questions against it.

1:
God doesn't help mankind. In the past god has proved himself to be an indifferent, if not harsh and cruel father. 11 Million people died in the nazi death camps. I'm sure a lot of them prayed intensively, yet god did not answer their prayers. They had to be liberated by the atheist soviets. If god didn't help them, then why would he help us with our 'petty' modernday problems?
Isn't it totally arrogant to believe god will help the rich bourgeois in the west, while millions are starving?

2:
God created time so god doesn't excist in this time line. Therefore he cannot act in result of anything we do/ ask.

3:
Why should it matter how many people pray for the same thing. Is it like an american idol contest in which whoever gets the most votes (prayers) recieves divine help and the losers don't? And what about people who grew up in Africa and never heard of god nor prayers. They can't recieve God's help? If you ask me this is an unfair system; not something you'd expect from such 'rightious' being.

4:
If we keep asking god for help, we (humans) will never know what our full potential is. Ask yourself: "Do we really need God?" Can't we just be free and accept the hardships of life?

flame on!

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Hmm...

I despise Hope; a most impractical form of Denial and Falsehood. Sincere Intuition does not accept it, and instead braves to look at the face of Oblivion and Death when they crawl into the World.

Prayer is childish.

Without Mishap the Peculiarities and the Wonder of this World would be gone; I don't want What Is to go away, but to wade through it instead, even if it's Burning Flames or an Acrid Swamp of Decay. Everything Beautiful and Sublime dies if you take the Pain away.

Help is best something shared between Equals, or else you'll be forced to suck Cock for it.

Reward me by Surprise; the Expected isn't worth half as much.

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It's a lie that makes people happy. And as long as it just serves to make people happy, they can do it.

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It had been raining for days and days, and a terrible flood had come over the land. The waters rose so high that one man was forced to climb onto the roof of his house.

As the waters rose higher and higher, a man in a rowboat appeared, and told him to get in. "No," replied the man on the roof. "I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me." So the man in the rowboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters rose higher and higher, and suddenly a speedboat appeared. "Climb in!" shouted a man in the boat. "No," replied the man on the roof. "I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me." So the man in the speedboat went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.


The waters continued to rise. A helicopter appeared and over the loudspeaker, the pilot announced he would lower a rope to the man on the roof. "No," replied the man on the roof. "I have faith in the Lord; the Lord will save me." So the helicopter went away. The man on the roof prayed for God to save him.

The waters rose higher and higher, and eventually they rose so high that the man on the roof was washed away, and alas, the poor man drowned.

Upon arriving in heaven, the man marched straight over to God. "Heavenly Father," he said, "I had faith in you, I prayed to you to save me, and yet you did nothing. Why?" God gave him a puzzled look, and replied "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you expect?"

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Fredrik said:

It's a lie that makes people happy. And as long as it just serves to make people happy, they can do it.


Amen. It makes them feel better that there is a chance a miracle could happen to them, even if it is just a lie. A lot of people don't like the fact they are on their own and often turn to religion and such for comfort.
Why do people buy lottery tickets despite the extremely low odds of winning?

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AAARGH! Religious thread! It shall not exist!!!!
BTW: I believe in God and prayer.

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Illdo said:

AAARGH! Religious thread! It shall not exist!!!!
BTW: I believe in God and prayer.

Die :-)

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Prayer... well, I wouldn't know if it actually helps, but I do know that true faith is a powerful thing. Even in this highly scientific world.

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Illdo:
BTW: I believe in God and prayer.

Do you mind explaining why you believe in prayer?

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Fredrik said:

It's a lie that makes people happy. And as long as it just serves to make people happy, they can do it.


Yes.

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I meditate every day and use Christian prayers to meditate upon. I cant really say that what I do is any different from an actual Christian just praying. I dont believe that what I do has a direct effect upon the world but I believe it gives me a better grip upon my thoughts and hopefully makes me a better person.

I am agnostic.

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I used to pray as a child. Thanks to my upbringing I realy believed in god and praying and all the other stuff. But after years I realised that praying just doesn't help. Like all people I prayed for very selfish things. Like "god, help me pass this test for shool". Sometimes I didn't pass so didn't the praying work? Sometimes I passed the test. does this prove praying works? or did I pass because I studied?
Try passing a test under four different conditions:
1. Don't pray just study
2. Don't study and just pray
3. Don't pray and don't study
4. Pray and Study

You will see that studing is more useful than praying, which does not alter your grade.
If praying really helps, somebody would have proven it by now.

After concluding god didn't help me, I didn't see any point in believing in him anymore. A bit selfish of me I admit, but that's how I became an atheist. And it's made me a happier person :-)

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Another religious thread?

Even before reading the posts, I can still expect the same answers from the same people on the same subject matter.

No, most people here don't believe in prayers because the very act depends on the existence of God, and since the majority of the people here don't believe in the latter, isn't the answer to your question slightly predictable?

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It has been proven that coming into contact with some animals e.g. dolphines can heal someone; it raises hope some how. It has also been proven the in some cases placebos work, hoping for a cure. So isn't the act of prayer, a hope that there is 'God' out there somewhere, enough to cure someone, despite the existance or non-existance of God?

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doomedout:
No, most people here don't believe in prayers because the very act depends on the existence of God, and since the majority of the people here don't believe in the latter, isn't the answer to your question slightly predictable?

I didnot ask whether people prayed or not; I asked why peolpe pray...

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God is just a crutch. Dispose of it and trust in yourself and you shall find both happiness and freedom. When you pray to God for help, you are giving up and telling yourself you are to weak to overcome said obstacle. However, if your prayer is more in the form of a mantra than a plea, it could work. For instance, if you pray to God to get you through your crippling depression over and over, you could quite possibly trick your mind out of it, thus saving yourself. On the other hand, it could make things worse. If you use the same prayer and then wonder why you don't wake up the next day in a miraculous state of happiness, you could think that your God has abandonned you, thus throwing you into an even deeper depression.

In the end, it's best to just trust in yourself and not let some God who may or may not exist do everything for you.

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Danarchy said:

When you pray to God for help, you are giving up and telling yourself you are to weak to overcome said obstacle.

Yup, you seen the church prayers? 'We are unworthy to be called your children.' 'We who are imperfect next to your rightious hands.' etc.
Disgusting. And Christians keep telling me they are above my level, I don't degrade myself like I'm perpetual ashamed to be alive.

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When you pray to God for help, you are giving up and telling yourself you are too weak to overcome said obstacle.

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Mmm-- remember that we're talking about divine force versus free will here. God didn't perpetuate the Nazi regime. Some might say it's not my place to assume so, but I believe that anyone who was a victim of the Holocaust was bound(by decisions they themselves made before they were born) to suffer in that way. By asking God to intervene, we may inadvertently be rebelling against some lesson we came to Earth to learn.

Of course, day to day concerns very rarely constitute a "life's lesson", so praying for health, peace of mind, wealth and such shouldn't be a problem. Just remember that God cannot empower you-- that's on your head.

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DEMOn said:

I've prayed for Doom3 to be released

Me to. And probably the only time I did. Nice joke GeekMarine!

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I believe in prayers. The doctors basically considered my mother dead months ago, and after thousands of people prayed for her, she's now back to her old self (yelling at me).

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Why beg for mercy when you can spit in the face of your assailant?

Why pray for the hungry when you can feed a hundred men?

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Fredrik: Oh dear, I have made a typo. What ever shall I do? Maybe I should pray to God for forgiveness!

chilvence said:

Why beg for mercy when you can spit in the face of your assailant?

Why pray for the hungry when you can feed a hundred men?

Exactly. If something needs doing, just go do it.

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Actually, the practice of praying per se is a meditative excercise. Kind of like singing or some sorts of physical excercise (yoga or whatever.) Or taking drugs. Or Warsteiner.

Even entertainment is akin to prayer in its functionality.

But this thread strated out with the premise given by the other thread, where prayer is related to hope and things one would rather have happen. To get together and call out to the Lord Almighty in times of woe.

I must admit that, presently, instead of praying, I'm reading Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom.

Also, I'd rather just contemplate how weird, cruel, unreal, ridiculous, sorrowful, or baffling life and reality are in order to obtain my sense of the world, than strive for some sort of empathy or harmony with some supreme phantasmal fatherly figure.

I feel God is a wee bit too homosexual for my inclinations, and would rather collect figurines of snake-holding Cretan priestesses and not of partly nude Christs impaled to a bloody wooden cross. But that's just me.

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m0l0t0v said:

I didnot ask whether people prayed or not; I asked why peolpe pray...


I pray because I believe in God and I know he will help me. Is that enough?

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Has he helped you?...With what? How come he hasn't helped the starving in Africa or the wounded in wars?

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OK, this is going to be a long post, but I am real pissed about this, so bear with me please.

First of all, god does exist and he has created us all, and sent to us some people to show us the way to light and salvation, but he does not want to inerfere with the free will of his creatures, because that would be worse than any tyranny that any mortal can do.

So he created us, and showed us how to be good, and how to help each other, and believe me if all his subjects had accepted his directions, we could have lived like if we where in the heavens, but we have forgotten his commandments, and people are robbing each other, lying to each other, killing...

Now, some people claim that they are god's representive, but they are as bad as us, maybe even worse, just think, God has created all the world, do you think if someone was his real representive, would this person need anything we mortals could give to him, this one should see, and believe in heaven and hell, would know that after this finite life he is going to somewhere, we can not even dream about it.

Look, all the pleasure you can sense or imagine is flawed and finite, but heaven is undying and infinite and also the pleasures within it, so god's representive should not look at our worldy goods, he should not mind if he lives in a gutter, or we trash him to the bone, he is seeing his destiny and is serving his master with pleasure and even he is waiting for the time that he dies and go to that place.

But look at the people who nowadays claim they are god's representive, they are mostly worse people than you, always asking for your money, they eat so much that the have triple chins, drink so much that they roll on the ground and swer like pigs, they do any sin to gain power or worldy goods, so when people look at these fake representives of the god, they lose their faith in him, and maybe hate him if they still think that there is a god.

So, as currently nobody truely believe in god, no one is good enough to become his true representive, so people have nowhere to go if they want to go toward him, nowhere to face if they want to beg from him, and so, no one truely believes in him, that's mild, because all his subjects are swearing at him as they get robbed, or get hurt, and so on.

Not knowing that if we had not forgotten his words, we were living like in the heaven, and anyone was helping the others on their lives, and as he does not want to interfere with our free will, he is waitng for us to grow so much that we can find ourselves how wrong we were, so we would look for his help, and turn back to him.

So you ask yourselves why are so much evil in the world, why he does not answer your prayers, this is the result of our doings, look, if you see some beggar in a street, and he shouts at you and swear to you and asks for some money, what would you do, or if someone which has not seen you and do not bilieve in you, asks you for food, but he does not believe you exist, or you are good enogh to give it to him, and you know it, what would you do.

So please do not try to blame him for the things that happen to us, because it is our doing.

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