Again, what happens when we die is something I can't speak about with any certainty. I've mentioned before I do believe in reincarnation, but I will not pretend to know about any of the specifics on how that actually plays out.

That being said, I do have a theory on your question. I do not think we will be judged...I think we will judge ourselves. Morality is such a grey area. One man's wrong is another man's right, and who is to say who is correct? There is no real right and wrong...only what we make for ourselves. If you die and truly feel you lived life the way you were meant to, then that is how you will judge yourself. Living a life feeling as if you really are doing the "wrong" things will produce a lot of guilt, and I think that will carry over as well.

Come up with original information please, this citing others work stuff is annoying. A little original contribution never hurt anyone. Or at least put it in your own words...

Huh? You too lazy to actually read? I figured it's better to provide the whole, complete argument in its original form than some crappy condensed version of my own.

But just in case...
TLDR: Harvard did an experiment that concluded:
1. Not only that prayer doesn't help sick people
2. But that in some cases, those that knew they were being prayed for actually did worse than those who didn't

God all mighty, you gotta be joking when you call me lazy, see, was it that hard to give the meat and potatoes rather than doing lazy work yourself?...

So now I will ask you personally RVCA, have you had an experiance yourself where you prayed for someone? What was the outcome? If you don't mind (if you did pray) who was it for, or was it for yourself ?? This is what I am getting at. It's not just about the sick or needy people on our planet, it could be for you. Harvard doing a study is fantastic, but we can all agree that sometimes it's just that persons time to go and we all know that somethings cannot be tempted by the mortal likes of human. However when called upon personally, does it do you as a person any good to pray.

The good reverend Carlin was right,
he said "When you pray..."
"Only 50% of the time will you get your way"
If God doesn't listen to our cries when we call
Someone tell me what's the point of praying at all

I don't think so at all.
In my opinion, basic morality functions as an innate counterbalance that serves to stabilize the human species either as a whole, or as large enough factions to remain viable progenitors. Outside of that, I don't see any point in it at all, regardless of the personal meaning morality has to me as a piece of a larger puzzle. It's certainly not required in a balanced animal ecosystem's survival, so from a scientific standpoint, morality applies to us because it has to. Otherwise, we'd be all urge & ability and nothing to keep it in check, and would probably not be here today.

I don't believe in a sentient god-being, but even if I did, I don't think using variants of a basic human need as a comparative to judge worthiness would be fair or useful at all.

My father was diagnosed with a form of brain dementia 5 years ago, while I was a freshman in High School. He's been terminally ill ever since. I have never prayed in my life. I'm sure other people have prayed for him and for my family, but I just don't see the point of asking the big imaginary man in the sky to comfort me. I accept that when my dad dies, which will be within the next 5 years, he will not transcend the mortal world and join the ranks of angels in heaven. He will simply cease to exist as a person, and live on only in our memories.

I thinking prayer is ridiculous and stupid. I think prayer is for the weak.

how is it weak to have a faithful belief in something in the face of popular adversity?

If prayer is for the rediculious and stupid, I ask you this..
Wtf do the sound and smart people do?? Bash the faithful? Sounds pretty dumb to me, let us pray.:bringit:

Popular adversity? What? I'm not sure about other parts of the world, but atheists are a small minority of America.


No, we hold ourselves accountable for our own actions. We understand that not everything happens for a reason. Good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. Nobody out there needs to justify everything for me. Life can suck, but more importantly, life is what YOU make it. Not god.

:confused:

you said prayer was for the weak.

it seems to me the act of praying is shunned, that's the unpopular one. yet people still choose to do it in the face of ridicule and derision because of a choice of faith.

how is that weak?

I get what you're saying, but how in the hell is the act of prayer an unpopular act?

Statistics on Religion in America Report -- Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Since Yukon can't be bothered with reading links, that's a report from the pewforum on the statistics of religion in America. It says that nearly 80% of Americans identify as "Christian" and almost 5% identify as "other religions", with a shockingly low 1.6% identifying as "Atheist".

Prayer is hardly conducted in the "face of ridicule and derision".

well... you've now proven worthless to keep replying to.

have fun trying to keep twisting things around so you can play the victim and push your agenda on people choosing to have a faithful spiritual belief as being somehow more stupid than your own choice to have a faithful denial of spirituality.

there's a big difference between religious association and practicing religion. how often do you see people saying Grace in public? i know a few people who feel they have to hide the fact that they say a quick word towards their beliefs before eating. it's been stripped from school, public office, government (and all appropriately so) but in doing that it's also been removed from socially accepted behavior. while there are some areas where it's still accepted there are far more where it seems only tolerated through political correctness.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all, dismissing me entirely from the outset displays terrible arguing skills. At least tack your lame ad hominen attacks to the end of your argument.

That being said, when have I ever claimed (or even insinuated) that I was being victimized? Furthermore, how am I "pushing my agenda" on anyone? This is a thread about our OPINIONS on PRAYER. I stated exactly that, nothing more, nothing less.

I won't even touch your second paragraph, as it delves into the world of Church and State separation which is a new can of worms entirely.

Dude, I don't know... But with the defensive stance you took here is indicative of somone getting frusterated with people who won't follow your agenda. You can say what you want and feel how you want but understand there will be questions for you to answer on why you feel the way you do as apposed to why we should feel the way you do. All I have noticed in your responses is that you are comfortable finding the biggest bush around and beating the hell out of it.

Reading back a little it appears you assume rather than know and rely on Harvard to do your studies for you. Harvard is a great school but when it comes down to it there study to figure out whether prayers are answered shows us what exacty?? There must be question in this field of study. The study could have many variables that compromise it such as it not having anything to do with the people there praying for, thus having no real feeling for the experiment in the first place but hey, I didn't read it so I'm only assuming myself,

i know we don't normally see eye to eye - and i doubt we do on the issue of prayer too, but i can definitely agree with this.

ultimately the act of praying revolves around a belief based on a personal spiritual choice, so to me personal anecdotal evidence seems far more worthwhile than any clinical study. apparently that makes me stupid and weak.

I think the Harvard experiment, along with the many others of it's type, would count as proof of the failings of prayer on a physical level, but it doesn't touch the issue on a psychological level, because no amount of positive thinking can, say, cure cancer, or get $1000 into their bank account.

I am an atheist, but I do think the act of prayer can sometimes help motivate a person, as some people said earlier in the thread - it is the acknowledgement of the problem which helps people, not a supernatural being, and once a problem has been vocalised, the person will feel more motivated to solve the problem.

Not following an organized religion doesn't have to mean everything spiritual is stupid. In my own way I find myself praying all the time by just hoping to myself. That's like a prayer. I'm always asking something out there to help me out when I need it. I may not expect any help to actually come from it, but it makes me feel better about my situation anyway. I would be surprised if there was someone who didn't do this from time to time, honestly.

Isn't that really just personal reflection? To me prayers to God are much different even if they can have the same reflective qualities at times.

Here's my video talkin' 'bout prayer...well.....if I got the code correct.

Well that didn't work.
Here's the URL.
It's quite a lill' atheistic parody.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m6qC6FCiY0

This might help:

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/7...tgoesthere.jpg

Prayers do nothing.

I don't believe in a God, but I can see why some people do. But even if you believe in a higher power that created everything, I have no idea how anyone can believe in prayers.

Prayer is the manifestation of reality through the setting forth of intention. You do it all day every day, whether you're consciously aware of it or not.

hard work makes its own luck.

A young blind boy is being tucked into bed by his mother. The mom says, "Now Billy, pray really hard tonight and tomorrow your wish will come true!". Billy says, "Ok mommy" and goes to sleep. The next morning Billy wakes up and screams, "MOMMY! I'm still blind, my wish didn't come true!" The mom answered, "That's because there is no God."

Prayer is just another way to focus. There doesn't have to be a god involved.

She should have told him God is an opthamologist with a really bad meth habit and a shoddy sense of civil duty. Really kick that kid's ass into reality.

:laughing:

Sometimes you find brilliance in the strangest of places. Some of the best commentary on God I've seen has been from Animated Television.

Lois from Family Guy: "Making fun of Organized Religion is one thing, but we believe in God in this house."

I thought that was something of a bold statement for a show who's base is largely anti-god, and who routinely bashes religion which I'm sure would be often conflated with mean God.

The other (and the best) was from Futurama. I tuned in late so I'm not hip to the details, but Bender somehow ends up floating out in space and ends up stopping at God. God was depicted as what we might typically consider a "galaxy" or at least the image of one. When it spoke different star-like things would enlarge but it was devoid of gender or human features. Its overall point in the show was that doing the right thing means no one notices you've done anything at all. Say what you will, but I loved this representation, and heres my overall position.

With the joke above (which I did laugh at), I think it represents the sentiment many anti-religious folks feel. "If there was a God, why Cancer?"

The assumption here is that if there were a God, and he did love us, why would there be cancer. Well I'm not a Christian, so I don't go with the belief that God necessarily loves us, or that God would have emotions at all, but even if you're Christian, Cancer is just one struggle in a pile of millions. It just seems worse because it can happen to young people and we have walks for it, and idiot celebrities have charities decrying it, but Cancer is inherently no better or worse than a handicap or poverty.

To quote an old folk ballad "Never knew there were worse things than dying."

Niels Bohr once said that "if you can't see God in Science then your definition of God is too small." Its in these fringe comments, to which we can find the large image of things that I came to understand my own position on faith. If you think of Christianity when you think of God, thats your problem, but with all I know, I can't reasonably say that we become dirt when we're dead.

Whether is ****enson's idea that church is found easier in the woods, surrounded by nature, or Churchills ""The destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals. Theres something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, that, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

I'm not alone in the hatred of organized religion. Inherently, centralized power in an authority that turns lucrative will always be corrupted. But this is most gross because theres something honorable there to be corrupted. I think Christianity if a fraud. I think reading a book to find religion is the essence of anti-religion.

Are prayers answered? Who's to say? I'm sorry if you thought God was a Genie who created you to feed you grapes. Such is not life. To the religions, I'm sure this position is too coarse and unforgivably barren, to the atheists I'm sure I sound brainwashed. Either way, we need to come to grips with a reality that if there were a god up there, he wouldn't be a cartoon, and he wouldn't be our butler.

I don't believe in Hell, or that our actions mean a damn thing on the other side. We can't know anything about it until we get there. Like Northern Vermont. You kinda have to go before you can talk about it.

That's all beautifully stated and I agree, especially about Northern Vermont.

PRAYER changes things, trusting in GOD changes things. God is a wonder man who die for all our sin so that one day we all will be saved. When you put all your faith and god and submit to him daily he is a god who answers paryers. He might not answer them right at that moment but he is always on time. Sometimes we may pray for things that might not be good for us so god would not answer those prayers, because he knows what's best. A lot of people ask the question why do bad things happen to good people? Will jesus was a good man and everything under the sun happened to him;he suffer for us. And also because of sin bad things happen to good people. And in some circumstances good things happen to bad people.
As a woman im learning to give myself away to god and where he lead me i will go.. Know that's hope for the soul.
Jesus is coming soon we might watch and pray that all of our sins will be blotted out before the day of refreshing, and pray for the outpouring of the holy spirit in our lives.