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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][guardian][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]SO what's the point of praying, if God figured everything out at the creation?[/quote]

There's no point to praying at all if you are doing it to ask for something.  But people would pray anyway because there is a natural tendency to believe in something perfect which should be worshiped.  Descartes described God as the sum of all perfections and said that there is a natural urge to believe in such a Being.  Kant said that there is a natural tendency to believe in a Being consisting of solely positive predicates, something of total being. [b] There is a natural urge to worship such a Being.[/b][/quote]

For some people, maybe.  Just because Descartes said it, doesn't make it true.[/quote]

[b]It's not true because Descartes said it, Descartes said it because it's true. So did many other highly regarded theologians[/b], like St. Augustine, St. Boethius, St. Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinus, Immanuel Kant, and the list goes on and on. Furthermore, it doesn't apply to everyone, of course there are atheists who feel no such natural urge. But people will continue to pray. The vast majority of Christians know absolutely nothing about Christianity. Most have never studied any theology. In fact, the vast majority of Christians have never even red the Bible, only snippets of it. But even those few who have read the Bible have read the King James Version, which is basically one big mistranslation. King James wanted an English version of the Bible which incorporated the beautiful poetic sense of the original, which had been lost in the Great Bible of King Henry VIII. It is certainly true that, in my opinion anyway, King James did produce a version with much more beautiful English than King Henry's version. But he did so by grossly mistranslating the original. All English versions are full of mistranslations because the monks who translated it did not know Hebrew very well. But the King James Version is especially bad because the monks purposely mistranslated it so that the English would read better. [/quote]

But how do we know we can trust these people, even though they were highly regarded?   They didn't do any empirical studies to indicate they were correct.  It's simply opinion.   In contrast, what you say about the various translations can be studied and shown to be accurate (or not).

You say that it's pointless to pray to ask for something, but that's exactly the reason a lot of people pray and have been taught to pray and why they say that sometimes their prayers are answered.  Are you saying all those people are wrong to pray that way and that their experience of having their prayers answered is wrong?  
P
It sounds like it, but I doubt that people who feel they have had their prayers answered would agree.[/quote]

Of course many people pray for certain outcomes. They know nothing of theology. Sometimes life turns out the way they prayed for, sometimes not.  The fact that the person prays for a certain outcome has nothing to do with how the outcome turned out. But if the outcome turns out the way they wanted, they will undoubtedly believe that it happened because they prayed. If it doesn't, well, it doesn't. People believe what they want. For example, I am a prominent member of the National Stuttering Association. Science has now shown us that 80% of children who stutter will grow out of it naturally. If the parent sends such a child to a speech therapist and the child naturally grows out of it, the therapist will claim to have cured the child and the grateful parents will believe it, when in fact stuttering cannot be cured. The child was simply one of the 80% who grew out of it naturally. It's the same thing with prayer, if things turn out the way that the person prayed for, he will think it happened because he prayed. If things don't work out, well, that's how it goes. [/quote]

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