All well and good RR, however you really haven't addressed the question.
You gave a Theodore Jaracz response.
Do you still pray? Why?
by gubberningbody 42 Replies latest jw friends
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Butterflyleia85
Not as often and not as long. I pray but when I'm in fear and really need a miracle or at least a comfort. Usually I figure it out on my own or remind myself of positive things. So even if it did no good or not as far as God hearing it... I pray because it gives me ressurance, in myself.
I'm a Dreamer ... I think Martin Luther King said that.
I'm sure he prayed too... I fell prayer helps us think big and accomplish big.
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cult classic
I used to pray several times a day when I thought there was a God who was listening and who cared. Then I realized that I'm nobody special. If there is a God, why is he listening to me and not those who are suffering? Prayer makes absolutely no sense to me.
I like the thoughts on this thread about prayer v meditation. I'll have to investigate that a bit.
Cult Classic
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BackRoomBilly
IMO, I think that people who choose to pray should be allowed to do so without being shamed or likened to a child. What does a person stand to gain by tearing down another's hope?
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passwordprotected
What does a person stand to gain by tearing down another's hope?
They get to try and make themselves feel better. Just because some may wish that God didn't exist, doesn't make it true. And it doesn't make those who choose to pray foolish or childlike.
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peaches
no....
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mindmelda
Well, I call it meditation now, but yes I do.
Very stress relieving mental exercise.
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wobble
Dear Password,
I would not suggest that someone who believes, and therefore prays, is foolish or childlike,far from it, I think that they have blind faith, there is no proof for the existence of god.
Jesus said "unless you become like this child..." do you think he meant that as the WT would have us read it ? that we have to trust what we are told without question ?
Hardly, children question and question and probe and examine, and ask for PROOF, that is the attitude Jesus commended, not blind faith with nothing to back it up.
I pray for enlightenment, will God answer me ?
Wobble
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Lozhasleft
Like it or not I honestly believe and even 'know' my prayers are heard..and answered... Loz x
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passwordprotected
@ wobble - you seem to fall into the classic default position of the majority of ex-JWs; faith is blind and there is no God.
With that position comes all of the fundamentalism of the JWs and their refusal to look at or even consider the evidence that faith isn't blind and there is a God. Factor in a generous dose of typical JW circular reasoning and you're all set to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Since leaving the WTS almost 2 years ago, I accepted without question that God is real and that Jesus is the only way to salvation. But, as you'd expect, I started to question my assumptions and had to face up to the fact that I could easily drift into my old mindset of shelving my doubts and believing things that I'm told to believe without question.
As I'm a product of my environment (i.e. raised as a Jehovah's Witness) I didn't think it was possible to ask the tough questions about my faith and my beliefs without losing the former and having to to abandon the latter. This forum is replete with voluble atheist evangelists, and as this was the main place I went to online for "spiritual" conversation, I started to think that my faith would have to be a sort of blind, ear-covering, shouting "lahlahlahlahlah"-at-the-top-of-my-voice faith.
I started to realise a few things, though. Just because something is said frequently and by seemingly intelligent people doesn't mean that it's true. So, for example, you've just said that faith is blind and there's no evidence for god. You seem like an intelligent person and I've heard those statements countless times on this website before. But does the fact that you seem like an intelligent person mean your presupposition is true? Does the fact that your presupposition is parroted over and over and over again mean that it's true?
And here's where the circular reasoning comes in. Natural materialists demand evidence within the physical universe for God's existence. But Christians don't claim that God exists in the physical universe; we claim that God is immaterial, unchanging and transcendent. As such, there will be no evidence in the material universe to prove God.
"All that exists is the physical universe. So within that physical universe I demand evidence of a god who is immaterial, and that's the only evidence I'll consider," is the usual natural materialist mantra. But asking for such evidence is like asking for evidence that I feel love for my children. How can I prove something immaterial in a material way? And if you were absolutely set in believing that I don't have any love for my children, what would be the point in trying to prove otherwise?
If I could provide hard evidence for God, how would you evaluate that evidence? How would you process it? And how would it become evidence for you? If all that's going on in your brain is neurons firing and chemicals reacting, then how would processing that evidence prove anything to anyone?
The truth is, you'd use logic and reason to process the evidence and by doing that very thing you'd be proving my God. You see, my faith isn't blind. My faith is based on evidence. And my faith - and the evidence - tell me that there is a God.
It's amazing the stuff people come out with online, believing that just because it's essentially 1s and 0s rendered on a web browser that somehow they shouldn't be held to account for what they're saying. One guy posted on a Facebook discussion that there's absolutely no evidence that Jesus ever existed. People just spout stuff like that as if it's fact. That is blind faith. Just because a person wants there to be no evidence for Jesus (or God), doesn't meant that it's true.
Another person posted a ton of info about how Jesus' life was simply a retelling of the Horus myth. Again, this sort of rhetoric is offered without any evidence to support it. Anyone willing to do a few minutes of research into Horus finds out that the claim is completely bogus. But I'm sure enough people have blind faith in it being true.
JWs have blind faith that the Watch Tower Society was chosen in 1919. The Governing Body publish articles that talk about the abundance of evidence to prove their claim. But then neglect to publish the evidence. A JW will use circular reasoning to defend this lack of evidence and will resort to name-calling when their blind faith stance is exposed.
I see similar behaviour here on this forum whenever it's pointed out that atheism is, in fact, a blind leap of faith.
I'll leave you to consider 5 philosophical arguments that prove that God exists (I'll leave you to research them should you wish);
- cosmological argument from contingency
- the kalam cosmological argument based on the beginning of the universe
- the moral argument based on values and duties
- the teleological argument from fine-tuning
- the ontological argument from the possibility of God's existence to his actuality
There are some very bright, intelligent, open-minded Christians out there who offer some incredible evidence for the existence of God. Just because you don't read about them in Hitchen's or Dawkin's books doesn't mean that they're not out there and it doesn't mean that what they have to say isn't important or truthful.
Who really are the free-thinkers? Who really are those with open minds? Those who consider all of the evidence no matter where it leads? Or those who stick to their world view despite the evidence or arguments to the contrary? Which of the two positions requires blind faith?