I have never understood the idea that we should pray to God. This is like requiring an infant to pray to their parents about needing food, or even that they've crapped their diaper, rather than simply crying about it.
Why does the most powerful being imaginable, a being that infinitely exceeds our ability to imagine in fact, need or even want us to "pray" to it?
Muslims pray 5 times a day, for example, and have to do it facing Mecca (that we live on a globe means that every direction faces Mecca, of course). And NOT doing this apparently angers God to the point that it could land people in an eternal torture chamber.
My mother prays with her friends once a week. People pray for all kinds of things, all the time. They pray for a cure to diseases their good God has, in His divine providence, seen fit to inflict on them.
Don't get me wrong, like mediating, praying may have some benefit to the person doing the praying, but the whole idea that we should or must pray to God for things makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
As George Carlin pointed out, praying is just messing with God's plan, in a way. I mean, how can God's plan include our need to constantly beseech him to cure diseases, stop war and violence and murder, feed the hungry, and so much more?
It just makes NO sense. But somehow, to people who have been classically conditioned their entire life to pray, it seems to make perfect sense.
It always comes down to the fact that the most powerful God ever, happens to need us to pray like crazy in order for Him to be able to do anything to help us in a world He created, where there is so much need for help.
But in the end, we all die anyway. We just have to pray that, after suffering that horrible and often degrading experience, we're not roasted alive for having failed to live up to a "belief" and a Bible that no one can make any sense of anyway, or emulate a man-God whose shoes everyone understands we could never fill.
Oh, just shut up already and pray!
Why does the most powerful being imaginable, a being that infinitely exceeds our ability to imagine in fact, need or even want us to "pray" to it?
Muslims pray 5 times a day, for example, and have to do it facing Mecca (that we live on a globe means that every direction faces Mecca, of course). And NOT doing this apparently angers God to the point that it could land people in an eternal torture chamber.
My mother prays with her friends once a week. People pray for all kinds of things, all the time. They pray for a cure to diseases their good God has, in His divine providence, seen fit to inflict on them.
Don't get me wrong, like mediating, praying may have some benefit to the person doing the praying, but the whole idea that we should or must pray to God for things makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
As George Carlin pointed out, praying is just messing with God's plan, in a way. I mean, how can God's plan include our need to constantly beseech him to cure diseases, stop war and violence and murder, feed the hungry, and so much more?
It just makes NO sense. But somehow, to people who have been classically conditioned their entire life to pray, it seems to make perfect sense.
It always comes down to the fact that the most powerful God ever, happens to need us to pray like crazy in order for Him to be able to do anything to help us in a world He created, where there is so much need for help.
But in the end, we all die anyway. We just have to pray that, after suffering that horrible and often degrading experience, we're not roasted alive for having failed to live up to a "belief" and a Bible that no one can make any sense of anyway, or emulate a man-God whose shoes everyone understands we could never fill.
Oh, just shut up already and pray!
Comments
Post a Comment