Do you think that prayers work? Then you are superstitious. It has been shown many times that it has no effect whatsoever. You may try few experiments for yourself. Prayer is equivalent to horseshit. I meant, horseshoe. And horseshit too.
After understanding that prayer is a superstition, do you still pray? What do you pray for? I used to pray too, but now I would feel like an idiot...
What really makes me laugh are the people who pray every morning/night on twitter. It's as if God is now to lazy to watch over everyone and has alerts pop up on his iPhone when someone mentions him.
I prayed for slax to include EXT4 filesystem support and it did not happen. I prayed that it would rain and it did not happen, God is too busy right now. I guess I need to setup an appointment?
"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room (or closet.) and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret..." (Matthew 6:5-6 RSV).
Ever watch these Christians on television and notice how their bowed heads uniformly shake amen while some evangelist goes on and on in prayer for a fucking hour? Well, repetitious and monotonous praying is in violation of Matthew 6:7. “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
Jesus is quoted many times in the Bible saying that a believer can ask for anything through prayer and receive it. He even goes so far as to say that mountains and trees can be thrown into the sea simply by praying for it. This is clearly a lie, and can be proven to be a lie by any believer. Simply pray for me to be converted to Christianity right away. Or better yet ask God to move the mountains behind my house. He could make a lot of converts that way. If I’m converted today, I’ll post a public apology on my web site and devote my life to kissing God’s ass. If I’m not converted it would only be fair for you to apologize and devote your life to kissing my butt.
I am no one to say that every prayer out there is answered, because that might be impossible. But there are many prayers that are indeed answered. Some might be because of destiny, others might be because of casually, or other things. Still if people believe in the power of prayer, Let them. We are no one to judge if the prayers are answered or not.
There are many things that cannot be answered so people also have to be reasonable in what they ask.
I pray for ext4 filesystem support in next slax, and whether God by virtue of the Holy Ghost gets into Tomas' mind, we will have ext4 filesystem support. IT will be great. I think that the probability of slax 7 having ext4 support is a sure event. Tomas will not want to upset many fans because of this, also he will include kde 4.3 at least in next slax, putting in 3.5 will be so ancient too!
You see, you pray for something which is a sure fact. Adoption of ext4 is something which will surely happen, as well as inclusion of KDE4. So after that happens, you will think that your prayer has been answered. Thank you almighty god. But you do not realize that it wouldn't happen anyway... even if you would pray for the opposite.
Yes! and Thank you Almighty Tomas!!! You are DA MAN. I knew you would come through! I am sorry for using "power of prayer", but somethings are hard to believe. Like Guy above with his jesus will return? I am sure many have been waiting for years and he has not come :(, I know religions say he will and they are not sure of this. They just say utter BULLSHIT like you say Tomas. When and if it does happen and I am still alive I will come back to your forum and hope you are alive too and let you know if it really happens :)
"I am no one to say that every prayer out there is answered, because that might be impossible."
That isn't a excuse. God is supposed to be able to do everything, even the "impossible".
I think that Hugh Johnson had a very interesting comment. It should be discussed more in depth. What about the placebo effect?
I do never pray myself, for some reason analog to Tomas. In fact, I prefer putting my energy into problem solving or try to accept that there will be no solution for now.
I just can't understand what Thomas M has against God and christians. If someone likes to pray what is your problem? You believe you are alone, we believe that there is an almighty creator. Can you prove that he doesn't exist? People's prayers are not all to be answered. I could pray a thousand years to win the lottery but I am sure that I am not going to win, but if I pray for inner peace and I trully want that than I a sure that God will give me inner peace and make me happy.
Thomas, you look like a smart person, maybe I can convince you the "rational" way that human beings have powers that are beyond phisical reach and are not limited to this deterministical world. Have you studied the Entscheidungsproblem (Godel)? It has been used to proove the existence of God.
In conclusion, if you believe in God or not, that is in fact your choice (like mine also), but your opinion does not give you the right to criticise others for their choices, especially when you don't know if you are right or wrong.
This is my response to all your "Power of pray", "God does not exist, Face it!" and other campaigns that I sincerely can't understand. What do you have to win with them? And what do you have to lose?
This is only relevant to petitionary prayer which is only one type.
In fact it is only relevant to petitionary prayer that has observable consequences.
How much of the Lord's Prayer is this relevant to? Maybe half a sentence.
Even within its narrow remit, testing cannot reveal that prayers are answered because an omniscient God is able to, and should be expected to, avoid giving us such give away evidence (we can assume that if God exists He does not want us to have an easy proof of His existence or he would have given it to us already).
God always answers prayers based on faith. Period.
For it is impossible to please God without faith. To pray to God without faith is like to expect computer start up when you have disconnectd power cord. You will get NO answer as long as you dont believe.. How interesting, you do not know anything about God and you talking like you know all.. How silly and poor...
@m
You also have to have a specific "need" to pray about. God's not just going to move a mountain because you want him to and have faith that he can do it, because that would be unfair if we got anything we wanted just for asking. It has to be a righteous desire, and you have to do
all you can and THEN He will be happy to help.
For example, if you're in the desert, doing His work (teaching nomads or something), and you come to a mountain and there is no other way for you to get through than for Him to move it, then He will move it.
Very amusing. Prayer is not a magic spell. It is a request to or a conversation with the living Creator. If you refuse to even entertain the existence of God and acknowledge Him or rudely ignore Him and then claim that you "tried the spell and it didn't work, waah waah", you are much more ignorant then you claim others to be. God is not a puppet.
There are many religions that claim and protect the faith of their "fathers". Guess what, Atheism is just another religion, inherited from the "fathers", where people claim and protect the knowledge of the only "true" way. Boring!!!
There are so many people praying and so few believers, if I count the granted ones.
There are so many people boring us with their religion, killing or having killed or ready to kill and they don't even have faith !!!
They don't have faith and they want to force us (or wish for the less fanatics) to live according to the standards of their superstition !
Atheists don't believe in the power of horseshoe, they never molested somebody who does or forced them to believe in the power of trefoil instead. I agree that any idiot is free to pray horseshoe if he likes it or needs it, but I never let nuts rule my life.
Christians are ????,
Large portions of evilbible.com have been considered, dissected and declared
fallacious on very many levels.
Two examples of this fact are as follows:
Whilst besmirching the Bible for allegedly commanding rape evilbible.com,
for some odd reason, neglects to mention the most relevant biblical text
related to the biblical view of and law about rape. Why this omission? Who
knows, but it would certainly have gotten in the way of a good session of
emotive expression of prejudice-it would have discredited evilbible.com to
reference this most important text. Indeed, those annoying little facts have
an annoying way of getting in the way of good fallacious assertions.
Whilst besmirching the Bible for allegedly commanding human sacrifice
evilbible.com, for some odd reason, neglects to mention that the Bible does
not command but condemns human sacrifice. Evilbible.com, for some odd
reason, neglects to mention that when the Bible reports that human
sacrifices did take place they were carried out by Gentile Pagans who were
not worshiping the God of the Bible but various false gods. When "Jews" were
performing human sacrifices it was only when they turned away from the God
of the Bible and joined Gentile Pagans in worshiping various false gods.
Yet, in typical militant activist atheist fashion, evilbible.com does not
condemn Gentile Pagans but only condemns the Jews.
I have admired your excellent work on Slax for years. I did not have the time nor the aptitude to write a distro as competent and capable as you. In fact, when I wrote to you with a question you were also gracious, thank you.
I cannot presume to be a prayer expert as you are a Slax expert, but I would like to challenge your presumption that just because you didn't find prayer to be a reliable connection with God doesn't mean it's impossible.
I pray everyday now and have learned to "hear" God's [inaudible] interpersonal communication reliably.
I really don't offer much to these blogs, but being in ministry before and fallen away from faith. I can't help but to be moved in some way. Please if you can, check out Elevation Church's latest podcast/or screencast by Steven Furtick and he goes through a lot of this has helped me very much.
I wonder why do people put equation mark between if there's an almighty perfect God he does things the way I would do. I know that if I ask my parents to do something, they would do as they choose, and my siblings and friends would do the same way, but if there is a God, he would obviously do as I want. Why would Ultimate Wisdom act as I plan?
I think that prayers and all religious things are more about faith and cooperation.
I once listened to an interesting story.
It was about two horse cart drivers going through a forrest. The road was wet and quaggy and soon they both got stuck in the mud. One of them sat on his box and started to pray to almighty God to get him and his cart out of this trouble. And the other one sweared and cursed aloud, and started to whip his horse and push his cart for some hours.
Now guess who moved ahead and who did not.
If you'd say that the cursing and swearing one helped himself and there was no God in it (he sweared and God loathes swearing) I'd reply I can't tell, but I'm sure that God didn't put the other cart out of mud.
"If you are a normal intelligent person..." (or at least think on your own) please think about it.
P.S.
Example 3 says you won't hear from those who're dead that something didn't help them.
I'm currently browsing some forums about cancer. If you look up for an information about specific treatment, you may find if people treated with it felt better or not or whether they died. Posts about deaths surely aren't input from the dead but from their families, nevertheless you can come across them, what proves that example 3 is based on some overly simplified assumptions.
In my opinion that voice repeating "if you are a normal intelligent person..." and saying "any inteligent person... " seems to be addressed to people who do as you tell them, when you say "if you don't do that, you're not as intelligent/brave/nice/... as you look/as I thought" in this case "if you believe in ... you're not a normal intelligent person".
So don't be afraid to do something just because someone told you that if you do ... you'd be and idiot. Many people hear "if you do ... you'd be more clever than your neighbour" and they catch such chances and after doing so some of them realise what kind of dopes they are (and some don't even understand that they were tricked).
