Reply to Thank God I’m an Atheist

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Thank God I’m an Atheist "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can't imagine a person of faith saying similarly hateful and often untrue things about atheism on DCUM.[/quote]

What are you referring to?  The last few posts were about how us atheists just don’t understand the leap of faith it takes to pray to a God that seems to us to be pretty capricious about his interventions.  Clearly it makes sense to those who believe (otherwise why would you pray) but not to those who don’t.  Surely you can see that is one of the big dividers between us?  [/quote]

There are other reasons to pray besides believing that God will intervene on your behalf.  
If your child is sick, for example, you might pray for all sorts of reasons that don’t include curing your child.

I mean, even if you don’t believe in God, you would still reach out to people (family, friends, etc) who wouldn’t be able to cure your child.

Prayer is about filling a spiritual need, not a pragmatic one.  The reason you would pray is more like the reason you would call your sister or your mom when your child is sick and less like the reason you would call your pediatrician when your child is sick.

Does that make more sense?  [/quote]

Wow, respectfully, I could not disagree more.[/quote]

Person this PP was responding to.  I thought what she said made sense.  Why do you disagree.  [/quote]

I'm not the pp you're asking, but I thought it made little sense also. I thought prayer was to seek something from God, not to fill a "spiritual need" as the pp said. If you're praying to someone who's not there, it's like talking on the phone when no one is on the other end of the line to hear you.  As far as "spiritual need" I think that pp is saying you should do it just to make yourself feel better?  Ok, if that works for you fine, but that's not not why I tjink most people pray.  Whether there's such a thing as "spiritual need" is perhaps left for a different thread.[/quote]
DP - As a person of faith (no, not Christian), I think PP made perfect sense. God can be like a friend who is always there to listen. If everyone was "seeking something from God" when they prayed, then their prayers not being fulfilled would certainly be cause for the cynicism and sense of hypocrisy that most atheists attribute to God on this thread (allowing natural disasters, diseases, war and general bad things). I would argue that [i]most[/i] people who pray to God are [i]not[/i] praying to get something from God in a transactional way, but for exactly the "spiritual need" that PP described. When I pray, it's often a similar conversation that I would have with my husband or my mom, but I don't have to be self-conscious with God in ways that I might be with real people. I can express my fears, hopes, etc without having them fully formed or needing to worry about follow up questions.

When my daughter was in the hospital recently, I prayed for the strength to get through it, I prayed for her doctors, gave thanks for modern medicine that could help her, cried to God that there wasn't more I could do for her myself. Obviously, the doctors were the ones who healed her (props to INOVA Children's), but talking to God helped me and gave me spiritual strength. Other people find that strength in other ways and that's fine too. If prayer or God don't make sense to you, you don't need to do it.[/quote]

^ Yes, I guess it gives comfort if you believe "God can be like a friend who is always there to listen."  It does makes sense that praying helped you cope with that ordeal. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics