Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

The Power of Prayer

I’ve never been convinced that praying produces any results other than assuaging the conscience of those doing the praying. However, Pandemian hits upon a possible reason as to why praying is pretty pointless:  
Maybe, with God being as vain as he is, he can’t be bothered to get out of bed and perform even the most unobtrusive piece of divine intervention unless he can be sure of a certain amount of dedicated worship from people that fully appreciate him. A casual approach to asking for what you want won’t work – he must be persuaded and flattered like an underage girl in a Miss Selfridge boob tube in a provincial disco at closing time.
Hmm, it’s possible, I suppose. Alternatively, he may simply just not exist. Mind you, I was rather taken by Pandemian’s transcript of Jesus and his Dad’s somewhat dysfunctional home life. 

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12 responses to “The Power of Prayer”

  1. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Such diatribe is usually the product of a mediocre mind that lacks the imagination to see that faith has validity for others, and that the nature of God might extend beyond his slobbish anthropomorphic depictions.  If one sees prayer only as a gimmee list, then yes, it’s pretty pointless, but they who hold faith to be a quid pro quo are always bound to be disappointed, because they expect faith to provide them with some kind of product.  I sit in my garden in the evening doing the crossword and am in awe at the wonder of nature and bees and and am grateful that the flowers I planted gave them a source of food.  That is a kind of prayer to me, that I am grateful for the gift of a green thumb and that I can use it to give back to nature.  Prayer is a conversation you have with your own faith, whatever form that takes.  To dismiss it out of hand is to dismiss the validity it has for others, and is frankly narrow.

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  2. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    Interesting Geoff, except – Madeleine McCann was probably dead before the end of the next day. If she is not, she may yet be found, but I guess she is. In this case, the prayers will be helping the people giving them to deal with their emotions, and do no harm.
     I find the tone of this writing: "the child is blonde, middle class and extremely photogenic and as we all know God hates paedophiles almost as much as men with long hair, sodomy and shops opening for more than six hours on a Sunday." is really rather unintelligent to my mind, and has nothing in it that I recognise in my own belief.
    Belief isn’t about any of that – and its wrong to confuse God – with what people make of ‘him’ or reduce ‘him’ to. I suspect Geoff, that God is part of the wonderful stuff that so fascinates you about the universe science and all that we don’t know yet, is bigger and smaller than people make ‘him’ and very far removed from any of that sort of tosh. I have certainly found it so.

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  3. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    It’s humour… maybe not to both of you, but to some. Humour is also a way that some have of dealing with the fact of a pitiless universe. As I’ve said before, I’m a six on the scale of the theist/atheist spectrum. I see no evidence for a god or gods, and have absolutely no time for any of (what seems to me to be) simply spurious mysticism. Sorry, but I’m narrow that way. 

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  4. Brian Avatar
    Brian

     Geoff, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you were narrow.  I just thought the quotation unreasonably dismissive.  I shall repair to my cell for ten How’s Your Fathers and a dozen Bloody Marys.

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  5. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    The 10 How’s Your Fathers is a just penance; a dozen Bloody Marys will probably give you alcohol poisoning, so I’d be careful if I were you… 🙂 

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  6. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    I’d rather dumpt the bloody bit – I hate tomatoes in drinks – they belong on a plate. Geoff – as I once said to Bri – if you have no evidence, then you are absulutely right not to ‘accept’ it. I also know there is a lot of mystic tosh out there, which I try to avoid. I just sometimes feel that its a shame that seems to be that some commentators  seem to see. What does the ‘6’ on your atheism scale mean?  Interested to know, if you don’t mind indulging me. 

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  7. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

     There’s no e in tomatos is there?

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  8. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    Gelert, er, and you teach children? Your subject is? Certainly not English as she is writ I would venture to guess… Yes, the plural of tomato (just like potato) has an ‘e’ in it. 🙂 But then I suspect that you’re just pulling my leg, because I’m easy that way… 
     
    The six comes from the 7-point scale along the theist/atheist spectrum proposed by Dawkins in The God Delusion. It’s clearly a continuous spectrum, but Dawkins proposes the following six milestones along the way:
     
    1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know.’
    2. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’
    3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’
    4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’
    5. Lower than 50 percent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I don’t know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’
    6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’
    7. Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.’
     
    So, where do you put yourself?

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  9. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    Whistles briskly on the subject of English as she is writ….. moves on……
     
    I would say Geoff, that I am a 1 – but perhaps you would not recognise me alongside any regular 1 as they are normally encountered. Interesting though, because there is a bit of the 2 there also – likely due to my healthy scientific scepticism and interest in the human mind and its workings. It could possibly all be nonsense – but I am positive due to the evidences I have had that it is not. Does that make sense to a 6? 

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  10. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    Gelert, it makes sense – but naturally I would be curious as to the nature of your evidence. For my own part, in all my 58 years, I’ve never seen/experienced anything that I would count as reliable evidence to demonstrate anything that would shift me to a lower point on the scale.  

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  11. Gelert Avatar
    Gelert

    Geoff – that would be too long a tale to tell here in your comments section, it is more than one single thing, and over many years.
    On this subject though – and given my interest in the mind and its wonderful workings, I have another question for you – divorced from religion (I believe –  you perhaps may not divorce it if you believe it all stems from the same point which some claim is all neurological I am aware)  – but what do you think of other experiences? It seems to be that some people never experience anything outside the concrete and measureable, and others do, in many ways. My own family contain specimens of both. My mother puts it all down to ‘that part of the family’ and says she has never had any such experiences, the rest have, since childhood.  (having said that, she did the other day).  I won’t yet say what, but I am referring to things outside the accepted norm – while yet not wanting to go down the James Randi path of fakers, table rappers, and recognisable daftness.

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  12. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    Gelert, what do you mean by "other experiences"? It’s a bit difficult to respond to your question without having some idea of what experiences you are thinking of. It could be anything from being able to successfully predict the future, or luck at cards, more than mere chance would allow, or proven telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, dowsing etc. etc. Whatever the nature of the experience, you know that the first thing I will ask is: how good is the evidence for your claim?

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