Has prayer ever worked for you?

[Svnla]

Nope.

I prayed and prayed to win the Powerball and MegaMillion and so far, nothing. <sad panda>

 

[Moonbeam]

I agree that you've proven this point.

I also have come to appreciate that your responses are emotionally driven, but you shouldn't presume that mine have been. What you choose to characterize as "that awkward engineer thing going on regarding emotion" may be just rational, unimpassioned, "brain-on" thinking.

No, that is exactly what I do mean. Rational, unimpassioned, brain-on thinking is thought that is disembodied from feeling, thinking that is divorced from the awareness of the motivation that drives it, thought that can be driven by any feeling, thought that does not source in love. This is the kind of thought that can think and believe anything, the mad babble of souls that are lost.

What you call unimpassioned is it's exact opposite. It is thought that is nothing bur emotional but the awareness of what feeling is driving is dead. It is the thought driven not by consciousness of love, but the suppression of feelings that can happen when love is absent. This is how cleaver and well intended people can develop the fine honed ideologies that allow things like the Spanish Inquisition and Nazism to thrive. If you do not feel the source of your being you can think anything. This is why it's engineers that give us Chernobyl and hydrogen bombs. All this is rationalized easily by the unconscious mind because it projects a mirror out there of what it is and what it fears, the terror that there are other thinking minds out there who might do first to you what you wish to do to them. And there's all that money to be made to fill up that hole in the soul that only love can fill.

Another problem with that type of mind, of course, is that when presented with truths about itself like these it retreats in defensiveness, self pity, and reflexive attack. It always responds to knowledge that can inform it as personal attack. And again, that is because it lacks the intuition of feeling because there is numbness where love should be.

PS: In the fourth grade I was thinking, designing, and drawing plans for machines that could kill millions and millions of people, many of which were long after independently implemented and exist today and some that haven't seen the light of day. I know very well what it is to think like an engineer.

 

[PowerEngineer]

No, that is exactly what I do mean. Rational, unimpassioned, brain-on thinking is thought that is disembodied from feeling, thinking that is divorced from the awareness of the motivation that drives it, thought that can be driven by any feeling, thought that does not source in love. This is the kind of thought that can think and believe anything, the mad babble of souls that are lost.

The motivation is to arrive at an understanding of reality that isn't colored by emotional preferences, desires or "attitude".

What you call unimpassioned is it's exact opposite. It is thought that is nothing bur emotional but the awareness of what feeling is driving is dead. It is the thought driven not by consciousness of love, but the suppression of feelings that can happen when love is absent. This is how cleaver and well intended people can develop the fine honed ideologies that allow things like the Spanish Inquisition and Nazism to thrive. If you do not feel the source of your being you can think anything. This is why it's engineers that give us Chernobyl and hydrogen bombs. All this is rationalized easily by the unconscious mind because it projects a mirror out there of what it is and what it fears, the terror that there are other thinking minds out there who might do first to you what you wish to do to them. And there's all that money to be made to fill up that hole in the soul that only love can fill.

Your first sentence seems to directly contradict what you just said above.

It's somewhat ironic that you cite the Spanish Inquisition, as this is clearly a case where their certainty in their beliefs (i.e. attitude) gave them the green light to persecute those they felt were heretics. It's also clear that the Nazi's belief in being the "master race" allowed them to exterminate their inferiors.

I'm guessing you'd respond (and I'd agree) that they were being driven by the wrong emotions (i.e. not "love"). It wouldn't surprise me, however, if these people cited "love" of the Catholic Church and of the Germanic people as the foundational source of their motivations.

Engineers give us Chernobyl and hydrogen bombs because (in most cases) other people decide what they want the technology to do.

Another problem with that type of mind, of course, is that when presented with truths about itself like these it retreats in defensiveness, self pity, and reflexive attack. It always responds to knowledge that can inform it as personal attack. And again, that is because it lacks the intuition of feeling because there is numbness where love should be.

Yes, I see that you are bound to take any rebuttal on my part as further evidence of my "defensiveness, self pity, and reflexive attack". This certainly helps shore up your absolute certainty in your beliefs, and leaves no real room for real discussion.

PS: In the fourth grade I was thinking, designing, and drawing plans for machines that could kill millions and millions of people, many of which were long after independently implemented and exist today and some that haven't seen the light of day. I know very well what it is to think like an engineer.

Sketching drawings of death rays in fourth grade may very well say something about your thinking back then, but "engineer" is not the word that comes to mind.

You and I have very different views on what kinds of thinking work best. I understand that you believe that there's a god out there of some nature that responds to the (love motivated?) desires (and attitude), which leads you to believe that "prayer" often works. While unsure, my working hypothesis is that there isn't a god that routinely alters the working of the universe, which means that rational, unimpassioned, brain-on thinking provides the best results. To my way of thinking, we should agree to disagree.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

The motivation is to arrive at an understanding of reality that isn't colored by emotional preferences, desires or "attitude".

Isn't that motivation itself an emotional preference, a desire, or an "attitude"? I realize it sounds like I'm being glib, but I assure you I'm not. I think it is a significant shortcoming of modern academic and intellectual pursuits that those aspects of human experiences are deliberately ignored, when truly controlling for those things is basically impossible.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Isn't that motivation itself an emotional preference, a desire, or an "attitude"? I realize it sounds like I'm being glib, but I assure you I'm not. I think it is a significant shortcoming of modern academic and intellectual pursuits that those aspects of human experiences are deliberately ignored, when truly controlling for those things is basically impossible.

You make a fair point, although I'd frame it somewhat differently. It's been my thinking that reactions to circumstances/events are largely emotional responses and that these help shape our choices on what we decide to (and not to) pursue. I've pretty clearly made a choice (influenced by my emotions) for a "rational, unimpassioned, brain-on" thought process (along the lines of the scientific process) because it seems to be the most useful approach. If you argue that this choice has an emotional component then I have to agree. That said, I don't agree that this means I should (or need to) intentionally involve emotions in my objective thought process. I also agree that complete emotional control is impossible, but the goal to minimize it makes perfect sense (at least to me).

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I've pretty clearly made a choice (influenced by my emotions) for a "rational, unimpassioned, brain-on" thought process (along the lines of the scientific process) because it seems to be the most useful approach.

What if the definition of 'useful' is itself is at its core emotional/aesthetic?

That said, I don't agree that this means I should (or need to) intentionally involve emotions in my objective thought process.

It isn't that you should or must rely on your emotions as part of analytic reasoning lest you minimize local or global optimality, no no: it's that you have no choice at all about it and that you think that you are being un-emotional only means that you have the most implicit bias possible.

I also agree that complete emotional control is impossible, but the goal to minimize it makes perfect sense (at least to me)

Minimizing the role of emotions means minimizing the role of utility; because an austere look at physical reality will tell you there is no judgement of 'utility' to be found.

The value of testing ideas and falsifying through experimentation is that it allows for a laser like focus on some aesthetic goal.

But the methods for going from theory to hypothesis are a matter of socialization and personal aesthetics tempered by the utility those methods in reaching some aesthetic end: And aesthetics are pathos-logical.


Now, if you find raw knowledge about physical properties beautiful (as do I, and I'm sure most here do) then focus on that through science is a wonderful pursuit. But when we turn that toward understanding the existentials of the human condition we must either assume away everything that is human in said condition or we must drop the assumption that the collection of raw knowledge is in anyway 'value free'.

 

[PowerEngineer]

It isn't that you should or must rely on your emotions as part of analytic reasoning lest you minimize local or global optimality, no no: it's that you have no choice at all about it and that you think that you are being un-emotional only means that you have the most implicit bias possible.

As I acknowledged (in my very next sentence), complete emotional control is impossible, but the goal to minimize the bias it adds makes perfect sense (at least to me). It's what the word objective means when applied to thinking.

Minimizing the role of emotions means minimizing the role of utility; because an austere look at physical reality will tell you there is no judgement of 'utility' to be found.

I think you're making a big leap here. My austere look at physical reality suggests that "utility" might be unaesthetically, unemotionally defined as a characteristic or action that enhances survival in a Darwinian sense.

The value of testing ideas and falsifying through experimentation is that it allows for a laser like focus on some aesthetic goal.

A more accurate understanding of objective reality promotes actions that have "utility". I don't see objective reality as being influenced by an individual's personal aesthetic (referring back to the parachute and train examples) (with the exception of positive thinking/placebo effects which trigger real metabolic changes).

But the methods for going from theory to hypothesis are a matter of socialization and personal aesthetics tempered by the utility those methods in reaching some aesthetic end: And aesthetics are pathos-logical.

I agree that the formulation of hypotheses relies heavily on insights/common sense/intuitions which all have personal emotional/aesthetic content. However, what "tempers" (actually eliminates) most hypotheses is the objective testing (scientific method) that follows. The end result isn't required to be (and is often not) aesthetically pleasing (e.g. Einstein and quantum physics).

Now, if you find raw knowledge about physical properties beautiful (as do I, and I'm sure most here do) then focus on that through science is a wonderful pursuit. But when we turn that toward understanding the existentials of the human condition we must either assume away everything that is human in said condition or we must drop the assumption that the collection of raw knowledge is in anyway 'value free'.

I'm not certain exactly what you mean by "the existentials of the human condition". If this is a reference to existentialism or some other philosophical line of reasoning that is independent from (never intersecting with) objective reality, then I agree that this is outside the bounds of the objective thinking I am trying to describe.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I think you're making a big leap here. My austere look at physical reality suggests that "utility" might be unaesthetically, unemotionally defined as a characteristic or action that enhances survival in a Darwinian sense.

I was going to caveat evolution; but then even evolution is an aesthetic judgment that perpetuating genetic code (or any particular genetic code) is the utilitarian goal. Though I'll agree it is one that is common to most humanity.

I don't see objective reality as being influenced by an individual's personal aesthetic... If this is a reference to existentialism or some other philosophical line of reasoning that is independent from (never intersecting with) objective reality, then I agree that this is outside the bounds of the objective thinking I am trying to describe.

The problem is that the existentialism of what it is to be a person is forever entwined with 'objective knowledge'. This isn't to say that there's nothing that's 'real' (we agree if you step in front of a buss it is you or the buss) but rather that any important 'objective' meaning given to anything is subjectively created.

Did that person suffer a tragic accident? Did the buss end the genetic line of an inferior? Did the brave-and-noble person risk and give their life to mass-transit? Was this person hit by a buss to be despised for interrupting our nations life's-blood: mass-transit?

Nothing 'objective' about reality can tell you how we should value someone being hit by a buss; only that there was once a biological process and now there is none.

When we agree that there's more to life than alive/dead and replicating then a whole different kind of reasoning is needed to navigate the world.

 

[Moonbeam]

PowerEngineer: The motivation is to arrive at an understanding of reality that isn't colored by emotional preferences, desires or "attitude".

M: I understand this, I think, perfectly. I'm not trying to take away this point of view from you, I'm trying to show it to you from a different perspective. The aim of being objective isn't to eliminate emotion from the equation, but emotion that is generated by ego need, needs that are based on a kind of mental illness, the substitution of ego passions when the true human capacity for love has been damaged.

The truth of who we really are, our true human potential, is what the heart seeks. This is the capacity to love as we should be able to were we not damaged in childhood. We can't be objective if we can't feel with our true capacity. The damaged mind fears what it feels because the events that created the damage caused us maximum pain, the pain we could once feel because we had no defenses or armor against it. We were crucified and dies on the cross.

So the bias you seek to be free of is a bias that exists at an unconscious level because we are now fully armored against our pain. We do not know what we feel and we don't want to feel what we actually do and have repressed. So what you are trying to do is to eliminate the illusory beliefs that are substituted for our lack of real self love and that can only be done unless you in fact do love yourself. But we don't and we don't know it and we don't want to know we don't want to know. This is why the pursuit of self understand must occur before any real capacity for objectivity can exist.

PE: Your first sentence seems to directly contradict what you just said above.

M: My point is that any attempt to be objective without self awareness of what we feel is driven by that lack of awareness. We can't be objective if the feelings that drive us to want to eliminate them exist at an unconscious level. We are trying to eliminate emotions for emotional reasons we don't know that we feel. In such a condition we can easily convince ourselves we are objective.

PE: It's somewhat ironic that you cite the Spanish Inquisition, as this is clearly a case where their certainty in their beliefs (i.e. attitude) gave them the green light to persecute those they felt were heretics. It's also clear that the Nazi's belief in being the "master race" allowed them to exterminate their inferiors.

M: That is exactly the point. These folk could not feel the horror of their acts because they did not see the blindness of their so called objectivity. They were not acting out of love but very sick emotional needs they couldn't see they had. They were fanatics why in their own minds were objective to the nth degree.

PE: I'm guessing you'd respond (and I'd agree) that they were being driven by the wrong emotions (i.e. not "love"). It wouldn't surprise me, however, if these people cited "love" of the Catholic Church and of the Germanic people as the foundational source of their motivations.

M: Little doubt about it, I think.

PE: Engineers give us Chernobyl and hydrogen bombs because (in most cases) other people decide what they want the technology to do.

M: You know that's what happens and so did they.

PE: Yes, I see that you are bound to take any rebuttal on my part as further evidence of my "defensiveness, self pity, and reflexive attack". This certainly helps shore up your absolute certainty in your beliefs, and leaves no real room for real discussion.

M: Hehe, Suppose that what you call my belief is actually so. There would have to be some reason or reasons you don't see it. One of them then might be that you would see me shoring up something defensively. So that would mean that you could conclude that I'm the reason we can't have a discussion. But I'm still laying out my case. I try the best I can. I don't need you to believe me.

PE: Sketching drawings of death rays in fourth grade may very well say something about your thinking back then, but "engineer" is not the word that comes to mind.

M: I'll just say, not death rays and leave it at that because this is an issue of my personal level of aptitude for that field and I'm not going to be drawn into a conversation about how talented or intelligent I am or would be in the engineering field. My intention was to express a sympathy for you as an engineer, having criticized the engineering mind set, by trying to say I understand the condition from the inside, and any criticism I made is also true of me. If you wish to reject that I could have any identification with what it means to be a real engineer as compared to some doodling child, that's fine by me.

PE: You and I have very different views on what kinds of thinking work best. I understand that you believe that there's a god out there of some nature that responds to the (love motivated?) desires (and attitude), which leads you to believe that "prayer" often works. While unsure, my working hypothesis is that there isn't a god that routinely alters the working of the universe, which means that rational, unimpassioned, brain-on thinking provides the best results. To my way of thinking, we should agree to disagree.

M: But what you want to do is to agree to disagree with a figment of your imagination. The positions you attribute to me here are not mine. I don't believe in the god you don't believe in either. I have a scientific mind. The God I believe in is the God that is left when everything you believe in is taken away. The funny thing about dying on that cross is that the resurrection only comes when the ego really dies. Don't get me wrong. Some folk find a love of God so strong they actually become Him. They have hearts that radiate his light. Like I said early on in this thread, that can happen when what you pray for is the manifestation of His Will on earth as it is in Heaven.

But because of my need to see thing as natural processes without Supernatural Beings to believe in, I had to discover this the hard way. I know the truth not because I believe, but because I experienced it by it happening to me. The weird part, though, is there was nothing I did or could have planned to do to cause it. I guess, then, I do believe in Grace.

 

[Onceler]

correction to what I posted earlier.
You can go against God's Will however His Plan is unbreakable because it is already known since the beginning of time.

 

[PowerEngineer]

I was going to caveat evolution; but then even evolution is an aesthetic judgment that perpetuating genetic code (or any particular genetic code) is the utilitarian goal. Though I'll agree it is one that is common to most humanity.

And seemingly destined by the obvious consequences of nonperpetuation to be increasingly common.

Nothing 'objective' about reality can tell you how we should value someone being hit by a buss; only that there was once a biological process and now there is none.

When we agree that there's more to life than alive/dead and replicating then a whole different kind of reasoning is needed to navigate the world.

You make a fair point, but I'm not sure this is as black and white as you suggest. An argument can be made that our tribal/societal natures along with the distress and sense of loss we feel after losing someone are tied back to our subconscious (instinctual) concerns over how our survival is affected. Frankly, I wouldn't enjoy pursuing this line of argument any further.

 

[PowerEngineer]

M: But what you want to do is to agree to disagree with a figment of your imagination. The positions you attribute to me here are not mine. I don't believe in the god you don't believe in either. I have a scientific mind. The God I believe in is the God that is left when everything you believe in is taken away. The funny thing about dying on that cross is that the resurrection only comes when the ego really dies. Don't get me wrong. Some folk find a love of God so strong they actually become Him. They have hearts that radiate his light. Like I said early on in this thread, that can happen when what you pray for is the manifestation of His Will on earth as it is in Heaven.

But because of my need to see thing as natural processes without Supernatural Beings to believe in, I had to discover this the hard way. I know the truth not because I believe, but because I experienced it by it happening to me. The weird part, though, is there was nothing I did or could have planned to do to cause it. I guess, then, I do believe in Grace.

Believe it or not, what I described as your beliefs was based on what I gleaned from your previous posts. I wouldn't call them figments of my imagination, although they may be misinterpretations of what you meant.

What you say here about discovering your truth the hard way makes me wonder if you think it's possible for you to convincingly convey it through a discussion like this. Perhaps I'll just have to experience something like the shaft of light that knocked Paul off his ass onto his ass. While we're waiting for that to happen, we will continue to disagree regardless of whether or not you agree.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

You make a fair point, but I'm not sure this is as black and white as you suggest. An argument can be made that our tribal/societal natures along with the distress and sense of loss we feel after losing someone are tied back to our subconscious (instinctual) concerns over how our survival is affected.

I agree, that argument can and has been reasonably made by evolutionary psychologists. I don't agree with them, but they agree with them and that's good enough for them.

Frankly, I wouldn't enjoy pursuing this line of argument any further.

I respect that.

 

[Moonbeam]

Believe it or not, what I described as your beliefs was based on what I gleaned from your previous posts. I wouldn't call them figments of my imagination, although they may be misinterpretations of what you meant.

What you say here about discovering your truth the hard way makes me wonder if you think it's possible for you to convincingly convey it through a discussion like this. Perhaps I'll just have to experience something like the shaft of light that knocked Paul off his ass onto his ass. While we're waiting for that to happen, we will continue to disagree regardless of whether or not you agree.

So I have seen a light and you have not, and I can guarantee you I've been profoundly convincing, but you have remained unconvinced, yet somehow I have to live with this situation whether or not I agree? Perhaps the humor here will sustain me through this tragedy.

 

[richaron]

Mental illness is a hell of a drug.

Of course you think it's real; It's nice to blame/thank a fantasy for everything.

 

[JD50]

correction to what I posted earlier.
You can go against God's Will however His Plan is unbreakable because it is already known since the beginning of time.

Exactly. Which means prayer is pointless because it doesn't change a thing. It also proves free will is an illusion.

 

[EagleKeeper]

correction to what I posted earlier.
You can go against God's Will however His Plan is unbreakable because it is already known since the beginning of time.

sounds like a typical child's excuse

I did not know what I was doing so I can not be held responsible.

you do not know what the heck you are doing, but need to quickly come up with a rational for it.

 

[Juddog]

Exactly. Which means prayer is pointless because it doesn't change a thing. It also proves free will is an illusion.

Yeah if you pray, you're basically going against His Will, in other words you're saying your own limited mortal knowledge is somehow greater than His Divine Plan, Which He Thought Of In His Divineness While Dreaming Up The Universe.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Yeah if you pray, you're basically going against His Will, in other words you're saying your own limited mortal knowledge is somehow greater than His Divine Plan, Which He Thought Of In His Divineness While Dreaming Up The Universe.

If you are praying for the future, that makes sense
If you are praying to acknowledge the past; it is different.

Prayer makes a person feel good - which is the point of religion - to pass problems onto someone/thing else.

 

[Moonbeam]

If you are praying for the future, that makes sense
If you are praying to acknowledge the past; it is different.

Prayer makes a person feel good - which is the point of religion - to pass problems onto someone/thing else.

To me religion exists because it has to. With the invention and evolution of language man gained that power to reason and lost the capacity just to be. With language we learned to think of ourselves as evil. You could say we developed a bad attitude toward our own potential but invented instead a method, the world of ideas, on which to project what we used to be, a Being out of time with an infinite capacity to love. What we could no longer be we turned into a graven image, an ideal, one that promises us we can have real being again if we are real.

In other words religion is the natural act of health projected by the sick. It exists only because what it promises to achieve is our real potential. God created us in His image because we created Him in ours and we would have never created him if He weren't real. You don't project what can't be achieved. For Christians Jesus was the proof of that.

So the real purpose of prayer, in my opinion, is to flip a switch, to turn back on our capacity to love. There is this thing called God who loves us like we were meant to love ourselves and can't. God becomes more and more real the more one loves as He does. This is the power and the glory. Man did not fall by actions but by believing in lies, the lie that the self is worthless.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

To me religion exists because it has to. With the invention and evolution of language man gained that power to reason and lost the capacity just to be. With language we learned to think of ourselves as evil. You could say we developed a bad attitude toward our own potential but invented instead a method, the world of ideas, on which to project what we used to be, a Being out of time with an infinite capacity to love. What we could no longer be we turned into a graven image, an ideal, one that promises us we can have real being again if we are real.

In other words religion is the natural act of health projected by the sick. It exists only because what it promises to achieve is our real potential. God created us in His image because we created Him in ours and we would have never created him if He weren't real. You don't project what can't be achieved. For Christians Jesus was the proof of that.

So the real purpose of prayer, in my opinion, is to flip a switch, to turn back on our capacity to love. There is this thing called God who loves us like we were meant to love ourselves and can't. God becomes more and more real the more one loves as He does. This is the power and the glory. Man did not fall by actions but by believing in lies, the lie that the self is worthless.

This acknowledgement of our own depravity and allowing of God to intervene to change us my no means of our own (as our means are depraved) is the heart of Christianity.

This is why Christians start off explaining that YOU are evil and in need of salvation, they are explaining that THEY are evil. The problem, of course, is that misapplication of this become self-hate-inducing instead of liberation from self hate by the grace of God.

 

[brandonb]

My catholic priest once told me that praying is not for God. God already know everything and what will happen and that will never change based on praying. You can't tell God how to do his job. Praying is actually for the person. It helps put their minds at ease and takes the burden of worry off the person. The point in prayer is to gain clarity from God and to put your life and it's events into focus. It's to gain perspective on yourself, not to demand action from God.

Wrong Prayer:
"Heal my family member. They are sick."

What you should get from Prayer:
"My family member is sick. What was God's plan or reason in that?"

Once you truly explore it, chances are, you will feel more peace than you had going into it. That is the point of praying.

 

[Moonbeam]

...........

Yes, I understand that. Unfortunately, I lost my Christian faith as a youth when I began to search for meaning. I was alone in my faith and knew nothing. I had no Christian teachers, much less ones with profound understanding who might have answered my questions satisfactorily. Thus, I have come to understand Christian faith indirectly and from a distance from the point of view of my own understanding. Thus, while you probably think of God as something out there I believe that God is only found within. For me then whether there is a God out there is unknowable to me. All I know is that the suffering I went through by the loss of my faith ended suddenly in a curious event, some kind of flash of insight or jump in perspective.

For me then, the folk I feel most comfortable trying to reach about what I see aren't religious folk who have what I think is a better way to offer, but folk who, like me, have come not to believe or never have believed.

So what I do them is interpret religion from my perspective, try to understand it philosophically or rationally as a psychological phenomenon. So here is my take on your words which, because you have a better way to see things, I hope you will ignore. I will state them for others who like me aren't people of faith:

DC: This acknowledgement of our own depravity and allowing of God to intervene to change us my no means of our own (as our means are depraved) is the heart of Christianity.

M: This is true from my perspective because we identify ourselves as the ego. The ego is the defense we had to create to suppress the traumatic events we have all been through that caused us to feel that we are the worst in the world. It is a mask we can't take off without remembering. It is our armor and out denial and the cause of our separation from out true selves, or awareness and unity with God. It is our hell and our suffering because it was built by fear. It is arrogance and pride and certainty, the false creation of an alternate self worth, a self worth of pretense because our real feelings about ourselves are self hate.

DC: This is why Christians start off explaining that YOU are evil and in need of salvation, they are explaining that THEY are evil. The problem, of course, is that misapplication of this become self-hate-inducing instead of liberation from self hate by the grace of God.

M: And Christians are right about this. The ego can't die of it's on volition. It plays an endless series of games. It keeps inventing reasons why we are really OK, that we now have the truth, that we have changed, and on and on and on. We are our own worst enemy. We do not want to feel our own self contempt. We do not want to open our hearts to Gods love or our own self acceptance because we were destroyed in that state. To love is to die all over again.

And here the Christian has the advantage. It is terribly difficult but more easily possible for a person who hates himself to imagine that a Supreme Being who loves all of us maximally and the same might actually really love him, than that worthless piece of shit he feels himself to be to love him. Just about anything is more possible than that. There is a tremendous advantage to having the perspective that God is out there because in here there is only the feeling of worthlessness and self loathing. Furthermore, there is not the slightest way to tell if the God that actually is within isn't also out there because the eye with which we can see God is the same one with which He sees us and it is impossible to tell where that eye is. I know there is this great love thingi that can happen to anybody. I just marvel and the hows and wheres and whys of it all. It is mystery itself. Awesome, so to speak.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

You can go against God's Will...

How?? Are you more powerful than God? When it is your will versus God's will, how is it that God's will loses?

 

[BudAshes]

Yes, I understand that. Unfortunately, I lost my Christian faith as a youth when I began to search for meaning. I was alone in my faith and knew nothing. I had no Christian teachers, much less ones with profound understanding who might have answered my questions satisfactorily. Thus, I have come to understand Christian faith indirectly and from a distance from the point of view of my own understanding. Thus, while you probably think of God as something out there I believe that God is only found within. For me then whether there is a God out there is unknowable to me. All I know is that the suffering I went through by the loss of my faith ended suddenly in a curious event, some kind of flash of insight or jump in perspective.

For me then, the folk I feel most comfortable trying to reach about what I see aren't religious folk who have what I think is a better way to offer, but folk who, like me, have come not to believe or never have believed.

So what I do them is interpret religion from my perspective, try to understand it philosophically or rationally as a psychological phenomenon. So here is my take on your words which, because you have a better way to see things, I hope you will ignore. I will state them for others who like me aren't people of faith:

DC: This acknowledgement of our own depravity and allowing of God to intervene to change us my no means of our own (as our means are depraved) is the heart of Christianity.

M: This is true from my perspective because we identify ourselves as the ego. The ego is the defense we had to create to suppress the traumatic events we have all been through that caused us to feel that we are the worst in the world. It is a mask we can't take off without remembering. It is our armor and out denial and the cause of our separation from out true selves, or awareness and unity with God. It is our hell and our suffering because it was built by fear. It is arrogance and pride and certainty, the false creation of an alternate self worth, a self worth of pretense because our real feelings about ourselves are self hate.

DC: This is why Christians start off explaining that YOU are evil and in need of salvation, they are explaining that THEY are evil. The problem, of course, is that misapplication of this become self-hate-inducing instead of liberation from self hate by the grace of God.

M: And Christians are right about this. The ego can't die of it's on volition. It plays an endless series of games. It keeps inventing reasons why we are really OK, that we now have the truth, that we have changed, and on and on and on. We are our own worst enemy. We do not want to feel our own self contempt. We do not want to open our hearts to Gods love or our own self acceptance because we were destroyed in that state. To love is to die all over again.

And here the Christian has the advantage. It is terribly difficult but more easily possible for a person who hates himself to imagine that a Supreme Being who loves all of us maximally and the same might actually really love him, than that worthless piece of shit he feels himself to be to love him. Just about anything is more possible than that. There is a tremendous advantage to having the perspective that God is out there because in here there is only the feeling of worthlessness and self loathing. Furthermore, there is not the slightest way to tell if the God that actually is within isn't also out there because the eye with which we can see God is the same one with which He sees us and it is impossible to tell where that eye is. I know there is this great love thingi that can happen to anybody. I just marvel and the hows and wheres and whys of it all. It is mystery itself. Awesome, so to speak.

God is the reflection of Man's ego.