this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Personally I don't find big issue with praying but kids should not be exposed to this sort of mentality. It's frankly insane that we allow religious indoctrination for children.
If you stopped the indoctrination of children, religions would die within a generation. You'd just be left with fringe cults here and there that we'd laugh at.
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Yep. And yet the same people who squawk about the "LGBT religion indoctrinating kids" have no issues indoctrinating kids in actual religions.
To be fair cancel religion is a thing. Or Twitter religion. Many names, same stuff.
Trust me, when they suggest using your superior intellect to get back at the angry oversized bully, they don't really mean it.
I think prayer is practice deferring to authority and resignation to one's fate as an obedient peon.
Fun fact: You can actually tell if someone is religious by an mri.
The part of the brain that deals with critical thinking shrinks due to lack of use.
Is this real? Anywhere I can read more about this?
This is easier to digest: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/religious-experiences-shrink-part-of-brain/
'Greater hippocampal atrophy over time was predicted by baseline identification as born-again Protestants, Catholics, or no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants who were not born-again. Greater hippocampal atrophy was also predicted by reports at baseline of having had life-changing religious experiences'
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i'm not religious and i'm not doing it, but i think praying also has a psychological aspect that should not be underestimated. you take some dedicated time to reflect on your current problems, what you want in life and the people around you, possibly just before going to sleep so your subconscious can digest everything over night and might give you a different angle.
typing all of that, i realise i should start doing my own form of non-religious praying o_O
As a former pastor, I you're pretty close to understanding prayer.
God isn't Santa and doesn't grant wishes. Prayer is more about contemplation. It's seeking courage, strength, and acceptance.
Praying for healing isn't about literal miracles. It's about accepting that something is out of your hands.
meditation and journaling?
Meditation IS certain religions. Such as Buddhism and Hinduism. They know that their stories are fables to teach morality to the youth. In fact most tribal religions know this as well. Only in Christianity do these fables take on a literal interpretation.
The existence of a diety is different than the tales surrounding a religion. Many religions are very aware of how far fetched most tales are.
Just to be crystal clear, the major branches of Buddhism and Hinduism do believe in supernatural entities and many if not most believe metaphysical nonsense. The idea that "Buddhists don't actually believe this" is mistaken. Many or most absolutely believe it.
i realise i should start doing my own form of non-religious praying o_O
It's called sysadmin's tambourine.
I was first thinking meditation as a form of non-religious praying, but that is more clear your mind or be in the moment. It's not really reflecting which I think is an important part of praying. At least it was for me when I was religious.
Why do you think meditation is not this ? Just like prayer, there isn't one "proper" way of meditating, you are free to do it just the way you want it.
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To me praying looks like a way to pretend that you did something while actually you didn't do anything. Very convinient but it won't do anything.
Or you could just say “prayers flowing” and never even pretend to do it.
While I don't believe in any religion, there is a relevant story in the christian bible. I'll be writing from memory, because I cannot be bothered to search for it:
There where two coachman travelling on an old bumpy road. Both of them broke their axle an could not continue to the next market. One of them was a firm believer, so he sunk to his knees and started to pray to god to fix his axle so he could reach the market in time. The other coachman jumped of his cart while cursing like a sailor. He copped down a small tree from the nearby woods and made an improvised axle, all while shouting and yelling indiscriminately about his bad luck. Who do you think received more help from god?
That first man is a fool!
Prayer only works if there are two or more people doing it!
Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.
Matthew 18:19
This implies that there has never been two christians gathered together and praying for world peace or to end world hunger
This implies that there has never been two christians gathered together and praying for world peace or to end world hunger
Or that there are two christians that want wars and starve people.
Looks more likely.
Okay, I'll bite. Which one received more help? I'm guessing the one who got off his knees and did something about his situation?
But then what help was actually provided if the guy did it himself?
I don't really want to argue for religion here. The way I comprehended the story was basically telling people to not be the ones described by OP.
But if you really want to go into the interpretation stuff: I guess if you wanted to argue for a god, god made sure the cart broke down next to a wood with a tree roughly the right dimensions? Here we are with the part where religion can't really be proven or disproven. Was it luck, was the whole road just forest..?
You're not arguing for religion, don't worry. I don't believe in gods but I was raised by religious people and the whole point of most faiths, the way I was thought, was to pray for help, for strength, inspiration, etc. not for the problem to magically go away.
Any day now, magical sky man will solve all my problems!
Give up control so others can take it.
Ramen!
I asked it before when this got posted on lemmy.ml and I'll ask it again now that it's here: how is this a meme?