Praying

Its been awhile since ive done this.
Last night, I prayed. I got on my two knees and closed my eyes, folded my hands. I was at the foot of my bed thinking and thinking, about well, everything. As I made the sign of the cross these words came to my lips “Fuck you man. Amen.”

A big difference then what I would of said 2 years ago.

Peace

I love you.

Amen.

Praying not only has be toward a GOD. You can pray for yourself.

Wtf does that have to with anything. So I could pray for my self, YAY!

Such an insightful peace of shit.

Tonight, I will abuse this new discovery and pray for you rex.

Now come along now, try and make fun of me.

I’m flattered to have at least A fan.

Praying doesn’t make sense when you are supposedly praying to an infinite god without any needs. Therefore whenever you pray you do it for your own good. Cursing at a “suposedly” all good god without needs simply produces the opposite effect. In short harms only yourself.

hehe, nice

so praying is now selfish?

maybe because even if you pray for another person/world peace it’s still quite selfish as it’s still only a desire (something you want) and therefore it still has an element of selfishness about it.

what about when you pray for others to get better. Even when you don’t know them.

Not that I am argueing altruism b/c I don’t believe in it I still think you can pray for something that doesn’t give you any benefit.

the benefit of helping someone you care enough about to pray for would mean that you wish to get rid of what ails them but you also want to end your sadness when you think of their pain/problem. their happiness would bring about your happiness/end to your sadness so therefore there is a beneficial gain to praying. i’m not saying that this is bad but i would argue on this basis that all prayers (the ‘request’ sort to the christian, catholic etc god) have a sense of selfishness about them.

i can’t imagine many people just do random praying i.e. go through the telelphone book praying for whoever they land on. each time someone prays for god, they have a ‘request’ for god and it is fundamentally for the benefit of their own happiness/sadness in the matter/person at hand because if you didn’t care about it, then you wouldn’t pray for it.

i think there’s a difference btw a want and a hope, as a hope rests on a belief. a want doesn’t.

to not do something in vain is the ultimate goal of all religions and spiritualities, because the result is to humble you. prayer is the common method of practicing this, in most religions.

you can get it other ways, like meditation. to discountinue this pursuit simply because one does not want ‘to be a slave to organized religion’ is to skip over an important part of being human, using a reason that essentially makes you a slave to such religion. rather stupid.

as well as sins and the confessions of them to God as well as thanking God for food and blaiming heresy and the devil on the world’s evils etc. increasing the dependency on God and increasing the narrow-mindedness of primitive notions of Good and Evil.

this way of thinking relates a lot to what Nietzsche says about humbling yourself before the priest/God in such ideas as the master/slave morality etc.

just thought you might want to know that

well I guess if you don’t pray for yourself then who will?

Do not assume that being for oneself is bad. Your exactly right rex if you are not then who will be.

If I may borrow bens quote which I love:

“If I am not for myself, who is for me? When I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” - Rabbi Hillel

Religion and Prayer are both most definitly self-serving. You only surrender yourself to god because it brings you the maximum amount of pleasure in doing so. According to Judaism gods purpose in creating you is to give you the maximum amount of pleasure so everything is done for you. Prayer included.

The methods of achieving the most pleasure are ironic however because one feels the most when one trys hardest to be for someone else.

When do you feel love most? Is it not when you love? Cannot one be loved and yet at the same time feel un-loved?

crafedog wrote:

just thought you’d like to know that above all, neitzsche valued thinking for oneself, and NOT using other’s theories as a substitution (f.y.i. this includes those who’s avartar’s match said thinker). my statement, which you are refering to, was that any action (either in the negative or positive) is performed rather stupidly if done only in response to external perceptions, and not on internal decisions. am i using too big words here, especailly by not throwing in some, ‘anti-christ’ ‘ubermench’ and (my favourite) ‘horizons’ ? well, too bad. i could have given you further justification, if you asked for it, and i will, if you ask sans the ‘but neitzsche says this…’ crap, because buddy, neitzsche probably doesn’t say that and they only make your arguement laughably weak.

Prayer, meditation and magick are all basically the same thing:
Self Hypnotism
A Catholic saying the roasary on their knees, a buddhist counting prayer beads, a Wiccan swingin’ their atheme around and chanting its all the same.

That being said, I don’t think their is anything inherently wrong or selfish in that, untill you get to the point where you rely on prayers to solve problems.
To take an old Christian parabol: "There was a man who prayed to god every night that he would win the lottery. For years this man prayed for god to let him win the lottery. Finally god spoke to him and said, “Alright, you can win the lottery! Just buy a friggin’ ticket!”

Prayers gave the man hope, and a positive outlook on life, but in themselves didn’t actually occomplish anything externally.

I just prayed for all the Andy Bigowlskis of the world, being stuck with that name they’ll need all the divine intervention they can get.

Praying has got to be the most ridiculous idea ever to occur in christian mythology. The absolute arrogance that you know better than this omniscient deity what he should and should not do with his powers. Or the idea that he actually needs to be told what people want when he knows everything.

If someone is sick and can be cured by God, then why on earth would he need thousands of people begging on their knees before he intercedes? I’d challenge anyone here to give a logical reason why people should pray.

— Dear God, please look after the Andy Bigowlskis of this world. Amen —

Praying sends spiritual energy to the man or more likely to those that are praying for the man. It has nothing to do with god. Think about what prayer is. Its focusing the mind on a benevolent, ominipotent, omincent god. To focus the mind on such a postive thought produces effects in the internal world of the person praying and sometimes the effects may even manefest in the external world. Praying is powerful. Just as meditation is powerful. I’ll garantee the persons saritonin increases when they pray.

Praying is a way of expressing hope and optimism both of which are powerful. It also gives a person a hope and feeling that the world is not all chaos, not all out of control, but guided by a larger then life force that they cannot comprehend but may believe in.

As Phythagriseslave wrote in another thread: Either love god(nature, fate) or hate him.

^^^Like I said, Self Hypnotism and Suggestion.

It’s like the old axiom that says something about how your attitude has the most effect on your actions. You can pray the world will be a better place and you will see the world as a better place. Take for example a technique in Buddhist meditation to build up metta(sp) or general good will toward others, the point is to meditate on how much you love your family, then how much you love your friends, eventually you will be able to meditate on how much you love those who hate you and because of this you will naturally give off more positive and loving ‘vibes’ and because people are mirrors you will recieve more positive and loving feedback.