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I suppose the question I'm wondering about is:
Is prayer useless or futile if you don't believe (in a God or higher power (that 'answers' prayer))
But before that, I guess we need to wonder what IS the purpose of 'prayer' in general.
I ask because.....I've been all in with Christianity...and I've 'doubted' as well.
I had lunch with friends who are believing Christians, who'd been through some trying times, and said they prayed about it. .....petitioned God to move/resolve the situation. They prayed about it every day. And now give God credit for being out of their situations. (It just so happens these were difficult work situations.
In one case the person who was making a friend's life a nightmare, left the company. In the other case, my friend's health suffered so she quit with no job....and found one 8 months later)
As I'm hearing them say they prayed about it and God took care of it -- I (who am going through my own difficult situation now) found myself thinking..."pray about it? to WHOM, for WHAT?"
Some people think 'prayer' is a kind of 'meditation.' For me -- even when I 'believed' most if not all of my prayers were 'petition-type' prayers...I ASKED for something. It might have been specific -- for a material possession -- or general for God to bless our leaders, or draw my close to him. Regardless...I was still asking for something.
So I'm wondering -- given that I'm in a "doubt phase" would petition kind of prayer serve any purpose? If it's just a general desire type prayer....do I just pray for the universe to send my what I need/desire? If that's the case isn't that just new age "law of attraction" thinking?
What about a sort of "God, if you're out there....kind of prayer?"
Like I've said in some of my previous posts - God seems to be the master at solving 1st World problems.
Having a tough time at work? Why, God will swoop right in help you switch jobs to one better suited to your needs. But if you're one of the unfortunate victims of human trafficking, unsanctioned slavery (African blood diamonds, for instance), or a woman forced into prostitution - where is God then?
Need a bit of cash to help maintain your 1st World suburban lifestyle? God is there depositing money into your bank account yet God seems deaf to the pleas of untold millions living in abject, grinding poverty where even getting a glass of clean water is a luxury beyond compare.
And while God seems keen on curing your 92 year-old grandmother of breast cancer while she sleeps comfortably in one of the world's best hospitals, that 5 year-old child dying of cholera in Namibia will just have to die because God isn't going anywhere near -those- people.
My point here is two-fold:
First, God never really seems to intervene in matters that desperately need his intervention. Finding lost car keys and missing socks, getting people a promotion at work, letting your kid's football team win the championship, the occasional rescue from death in a car accident, and the very rare curing of a disease being suffered by one, singular person - those things are God's speciality.
But in places where God could really make a difference - the Holocaust, for instance, or in Stalin's Russia. Or today in many places in Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. God just isn't there doing much of anything. Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of prayers being prayed; I'm sure people are begging with tearful voices just to find food tomorrow or for the killing to stop or the pain to diminish. But will it? No ... there will be no miracles for those folks.
Secondly, the efficacy of prayer is directly proportional to the amount of resources available to the one praying. In other words, taking two aspirin and praying for the headache to go away will be far more effective than praying alone. Thus, if your mom was driving in a car with seatbelts and airbags and if she had access to a 1st World medical infrastructure, high-tech ambulances, and Life-Flight helicopters, God is apparently much more willing to answer prayers asking that she pulls through her injuries.
Which is why prayer is illusory. It is merely a psychological placebo. Because more times than not, prayers that are answered coincidentally involve the person actually doing something or drawing upon resources to make the prayer come true.
I suppose the question I'm wondering about is:
Is prayer useless or futile if you don't believe (in a God or higher power (that 'answers' prayer))
But before that, I guess we need to wonder what IS the purpose of 'prayer' in general.
I ask because.....I've been all in with Christianity...and I've 'doubted' as well.
I had lunch with friends who are believing Christians, who'd been through some trying times, and said they prayed about it. .....petitioned God to move/resolve the situation. They prayed about it every day. And now give God credit for being out of their situations. (It just so happens these were difficult work situations.
In one case the person who was making a friend's life a nightmare, left the company. In the other case, my friend's health suffered so she quit with no job....and found one 8 months later)
As I'm hearing them say they prayed about it and God took care of it -- I (who am going through my own difficult situation now) found myself thinking..."pray about it? to WHOM, for WHAT?"
Some people think 'prayer' is a kind of 'meditation.' For me -- even when I 'believed' most if not all of my prayers were 'petition-type' prayers...I ASKED for something. It might have been specific -- for a material possession -- or general for God to bless our leaders, or draw my close to him. Regardless...I was still asking for something.
So I'm wondering -- given that I'm in a "doubt phase" would petition kind of prayer serve any purpose? If it's just a general desire type prayer....do I just pray for the universe to send my what I need/desire? If that's the case isn't that just new age "law of attraction" thinking?
What about a sort of "God, if you're out there....kind of prayer?"
Not sure why you're asking on this forum. Do you really not know what answers you will get here?
Praying to an imaginary being might make you feel better in some situations, might calm your mind so that you can think straighter, but prayers, however they are addressed, do not actually have any effects outside your own mind.
"..What about a sort of "God, if you're out there....kind of prayer?"
That (as an atheist) is the one I get asked to make more than any other. It is what we call brainwashing ones'self and the purpose is to knock the brain over into buying into Godfaith.
After that, all the prayers will miraculously begin to be answered...and never mind the ones that aren't.
Prayer is useless AND futile if to you it is an exercise in petitioning an imaginary being to do things on your behalf, or just to pay attention to you.
There is an approach to prayer even in Christianity that treats prayer as a kind of meditative discipline, whose primary purpose is to change the perspectives of the one doing the praying. I see this as a pointless elaboration upon standard Eastern meditation practices, which are at least straightforward enough to admit that they are about directing the mind inward for the purpose of self-awareness and acceptance and detachment from particular outcomes, and not in any way about talking to some externalized deity or to "the universe" or "something larger than yourself". The closest a real Buddhist comes to prayer is to express a wish, such as, "may there be ever increasing peace and equanimity in this situation". It is a side show to turn that into a petition to another entity. Inherently, that detracts from whatever role you can usefully play in increasing peace and equanimity for yourself and others. Because the ONLY person who CAN do anything AND who you have any right to direct to do anything, is YOU.
Prayer may be useful to some people as long as they do not attempt to keep track of its results.
Lots of people take comfort in ritual, the specifics and origins subordinate to the benefit of familiarity. My mother was convinced that praying to Saint Anthony enhanced her chances of finding a parking space. In that she prayed every time, but was rewarded with the space she desired only some of the time, her belief could not be founded in verified experimentation. However, reciting her plea to Anthony may have been a stress reducer when frustrated over lack of available parking, and in that limited sense, prayer worked.
The actual value of going through the ceremony, is the distractive nature of the ceremony.
No it's not a waste of time even if you do not believe. At the bottom, most trivial level, of "I am it and all there is" there are many basic things that reparative words can do to help a person slow down and think.
The next level of understanding, using experimental evidence that space is something, A group of people can align themselves through repetitive thinking and actions. It has also been shown that happy people make others happy. That is real even if god is not.
I don't believe in magic, but I do believe in probability. Based on "space being something" If you don't "prey" or use positive thinking about someone then it has no chance of working.
But anti religious types don't care about truth any more that literal religious people. So unless you are talking to a reasonable person it doesn't matter. Before anybody calls me names, I don't care. Only address the ideas.
The actual value of going through the ceremony, is the distractive nature of the ceremony.
Yes. Or as a locus of attention or fulcrum of discipline. Ritual has great power, and not simply as a distraction. Our mind deals in symbols, and anything that a ritual is symbolic of, can render one's intentions concrete rather than abstract. That is for instance why people do things like write a letter to someone who has wronged them but who is dead, or for some such practical reason they would never actually mail it. If you can't confront something in reality, confront it symbolically. Often your brain won't know the difference.
Similarly, for some, prayer is a way to vocalize or to systematically think about something. It's not my bag when it's directed at an entity I know is imagined and who isn't going to meaningfully answer even if he's not. But for people whose lives are sufficiently fortunate and their problems sufficiently trivial, I can see where they derive comfort from it and confuse dumb luck with divine intervention. As our own Shirina has ably pointed out, god specializes in first world problems. Although in my experience, he does a crummy job of even that.
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