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The Power of Prayer.
In a recent thread I made this comment in a post:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9349790&postcount=161
Now I was being tongue in cheek as well as realizing that some find the word ‘Prayer’ to be ‘wooish’ and are easily offended by such expressions, so it felt appropriate to use it.
But what I was really saying was that I was hoping that a particular outcome would evolve and when it did, I was grateful for it.
So I was wondering about my use of the word in relation to hoping for a certain outcome and this got me thinking more about the ‘Power of Prayer’ in relation to individual Consciousness – that mindful thing – and the mindless environment which individual Consciousness exists within.
Prayer in relation to the individual is itself a ‘personal request’ which involves the manipulation of events outside of ones own ability to effect in a way which ‘makes it happen’.
I have personally used it throughout the greater proportion of my life and have come to recognise the different ways it can be expressed – verbally, in the thoughts, through the emotions, and I have never been disappointed at the results although I can also say that the prayer may not have been answered in any specific way that I may have personally visualised, it does nonetheless show itself to be connected to my request and always shows itself to be a better – more well adjusted and useful – unfolding than any I may have imagined.
In relation to wooism and the Sceptical Atheist Meme which would like to see all forms of wooism dumped from every Human Meme, even for the sake of Humanity, I find it difficult to understand how SAM is going to achieve this dream and make it real, given the Power of Prayer, which to me is perhaps the most significant obstacle to remove from the various Memes which use Prayer...and swear by its authenticity.
This observation is based on the fact that, regardless of what branch of the Religious Meme, from Catholic, to Spiritualist, From Islam to the Gypsy Fortune Teller, all operate with some form of Prayer – making requests and seeing them unfold in reality as if the mindless physical universe has a mind, can hear, understands, is intelligent and able to interact with the individual mind in relation to the outside influences of nature and circumstance to which the mind has no direct control over.
This is Mighty Big Power, and as such might need to be addressed more fully that a viable understandable explanation regarding the Science of Prayer might evolve and prosper.
Now personally I haven’t really analysed it too scientifically. But as I understand it for what it does, and that it works – even be that it is a subjective realisation – it nonetheless is a shared subjective realisation which amounts to millions and maybe billions of individuals using it with varying degrees of perpetual success and in this such Power is more convincing than Scientists, Skeptics, or even Magicians.
What is Prayer, how come it works and is it even necessarily 'wooish'?
In a recent thread I made this comment in a post:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9349790&postcount=161
Now I was being tongue in cheek as well as realizing that some find the word ‘Prayer’ to be ‘wooish’ and are easily offended by such expressions, so it felt appropriate to use it.
But what I was really saying was that I was hoping that a particular outcome would evolve and when it did, I was grateful for it.
So I was wondering about my use of the word in relation to hoping for a certain outcome and this got me thinking more about the ‘Power of Prayer’ in relation to individual Consciousness – that mindful thing – and the mindless environment which individual Consciousness exists within.
Prayer in relation to the individual is itself a ‘personal request’ which involves the manipulation of events outside of ones own ability to effect in a way which ‘makes it happen’.
I have personally used it throughout the greater proportion of my life and have come to recognise the different ways it can be expressed – verbally, in the thoughts, through the emotions, and I have never been disappointed at the results although I can also say that the prayer may not have been answered in any specific way that I may have personally visualised, it does nonetheless show itself to be connected to my request and always shows itself to be a better – more well adjusted and useful – unfolding than any I may have imagined.
In relation to wooism and the Sceptical Atheist Meme which would like to see all forms of wooism dumped from every Human Meme, even for the sake of Humanity, I find it difficult to understand how SAM is going to achieve this dream and make it real, given the Power of Prayer, which to me is perhaps the most significant obstacle to remove from the various Memes which use Prayer...and swear by its authenticity.
This observation is based on the fact that, regardless of what branch of the Religious Meme, from Catholic, to Spiritualist, From Islam to the Gypsy Fortune Teller, all operate with some form of Prayer – making requests and seeing them unfold in reality as if the mindless physical universe has a mind, can hear, understands, is intelligent and able to interact with the individual mind in relation to the outside influences of nature and circumstance to which the mind has no direct control over.
This is Mighty Big Power, and as such might need to be addressed more fully that a viable understandable explanation regarding the Science of Prayer might evolve and prosper.
Now personally I haven’t really analysed it too scientifically. But as I understand it for what it does, and that it works – even be that it is a subjective realisation – it nonetheless is a shared subjective realisation which amounts to millions and maybe billions of individuals using it with varying degrees of perpetual success and in this such Power is more convincing than Scientists, Skeptics, or even Magicians.
What is Prayer, how come it works and is it even necessarily 'wooish'?
