Reexamination of prayer and worship

[Lacewing]

I didn't expect anyone to notice.

You ought to know that you can't get away with anything here!

[Harbal]

You ought to know that you can't get away with anything here!

I don't know about that. When I first arrived I was frequently amazed at what I got away with.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Not a joke just innovative or reconstructive.

Thigh slappingly funny!!!1

You had me there!

[Jaded Sage]

Until someone addresses the original post, I'm out of all this idiocy.

[Harbal]

Until someone addresses the original post, I'm out of all this idiocy.

Were four pages in, if you had posted something worthy of addressing somebody would have addressed it by now.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Until someone addresses the original post, I'm out of all this idiocy.

No one is going to save you now. You posted it and you have to take responsibility for it.

So stop harping on. Oh wait shall we have to re-examine the verb to "harp" now?
You are flogging a dead-horse - oh wait we gonna af ta reexamine "floggin" now?
SHEEEEEEEET!

[Obvious Leo]

Until someone addresses the original post, I'm out of all this idiocy.

Were four pages in, if you had posted something worthy of addressing somebody would have addressed it by now.

You'll recall the "I am god" thread from the site that dare not speak its name. Simply going by the number of contributions it was easily the most successful topic ever introduced in that forum and in many ways it was also one of the most valuable in terms of thoughtful comment. However to my recollection nobody ever paid much attention to the OP or to the certifiable fruitloop who introduced it and then kept trying to steer the conversation back on topic. Aimless digressions can often lead to useful insights.

[Greta]

Until someone addresses the original post, I'm out of all this idiocy.

Were four pages in, if you had posted something worthy of addressing somebody would have addressed it by now.

You'll recall the "I am god" thread from the site that dare not speak its name. Simply going by the number of contributions it was easily the most successful topic ever introduced in that forum and in many ways it was also one of the most valuable in terms of thoughtful comment. However to my recollection nobody ever paid much attention to the OP or to the certifiable fruitloop who introduced it and then kept trying to steer the conversation back on topic. Aimless digressions can often lead to useful insights.

I can give you a surprise there - the "fruitloop" has done more thinking since and become agnostic, seemingly thoroughly sensible, reasonable and articulate. It's a great thing to see people grow like that. I've also learned plenty and changed my views on a number of questions through others' ideas online.

Now, the subject. Prayer and worship are the religious equivalents of secular practices of meditation and gratitude.

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely — make that miraculously — fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you. (…)

The number of people [and critters? - G] on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived. (…)

We are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.

Bill Bryson, from "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

[Lacewing]

You'll recall the "I am god" thread from the site that dare not speak its name.

That was an exciting and volatile thread. Ended up causing the OP moderator to step down, I think.

The last time I checked that site, it didn't look like people were racking up weekly warnings like they used to.

[Lacewing]

...the "fruitloop" has done more thinking since and become agnostic, seemingly thoroughly sensible, reasonable and articulate. It's a great thing to see people grow like that.

I thought I noticed that last time I checked in! That is wonderful!! It is hopeful and inspiring to see people utilize these discussions for expanding their awareness and well-being. (I do too!) Entrenchment and separation can be ugly, crazy places, and he is a shining example to have moved beyond it. Fellow posters offer the gift of a broad range of perspectives to help expand known boundaries. WE are not the enemy... the enemy is within!

[Obvious Leo]

We are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.

Dawkins makes the same point about the spectacular improbability of one's own existence in his children's book, "The Magic of Reality", although in general Bill Bryson's book is the more entertaining read for the science ingenue.

I hope you can see that precisely the same Goldilocks argument underpins the teleological fallacy that is the weak anthropic principle beloved by many of our more logically challenged brethren in the community of physics. This is the sole argument on which the multiverse nonsense is grounded and I'm dumbfounded as to why no logician has pointed it out, although Smolin has at least managed to come close to it. Do you conclude that because your own existence is an event of such staggering unlikelihood that therefore all the human beings who you are Not must also exist somewhere?

The last time I checked that site, it didn't look like people were racking up weekly warnings like they used to.

I'm still waiting for my apology but it seems that hell rarely freezes over. However I do check in from time to time only to find that most of those with some scientific literacy have fled in dismay as I did.

[Greta]

I hope you can see that precisely the same Goldilocks argument underpins the teleological fallacy that is the weak anthropic principle beloved by many of our more logically challenged brethren in the community of physics. This is the sole argument on which the multiverse nonsense is grounded and I'm dumbfounded as to why no logician has pointed it out, although Smolin has at least managed to come close to it. Do you conclude that because your own existence is an event of such staggering unlikelihood that therefore all the human beings who you are Not must also exist somewhere?

Some may see the weak anthropic argument as connected with your last question, but I don't. It makes no sense to imagine that all eventualities are occurring at once. All eventualities may potentially occur, with particular probabilities depending on place and time. However, that does not mean that those events have occurred, are occurring or will necessarily do so.

The multiverse may yet prove to be "nonsense" in the same way as other galaxies proved to be "nonsense". The fact is that you don't know. Of course, nobody knows for sure (not even you!), although there's plenty of evidence available in the public domain suggesting that parallel universes are possibly real.

However I do check in from time to time only to find that most of those with some scientific literacy have fled in dismay as I did.

Too many crazies, yes. Nearly as many as here! Logically, the curious and didactic are not the only ones attracted to philosophy forums, but also tortured and confused souls seeking either answers, verification or righteous battle.

I only go to philosophy forums because everyone I know gets pissed off if I start getting existential. Many people really do detest philosophical thought with a passion. They consider their natural impulses to be just fine and see no reason to learn more. Finding people who are interested, informed and open minded in regards to examining their existence is not easy. Most will try to give the impression that they have "been there, done that", as though their asinine youthful explorations and idealism covered all important aspects of reality for perpetuity.

Maybe this kind of determined philistinism is just a characteristic of Sydney, Australia or the Anglosphere? My impression is that continental Europeans seem to have more cultural and intellectual depth than the Murdoch-bedevilled Anglosphere.

[Greta]

Fellow posters offer the gift of a broad range of perspectives to help expand known boundaries. WE are not the enemy... the enemy is within!

Certainly can be if you have problem intestinal flora!

I was surprised to see him reconsider because he'd seemed so set. That first moment of doubt - in whatever area - can be a worry, like when you wake at 3am in a cold sweat remembering a neglected task with legal ramifications. Once you become accustomed to the fact that you have barely a clue what's going on in life and neither does anyone else, agnosticism is very pleasant - nothing much to defend, apart from the egregious misinformation perpetrated by religious bigots.

[Lacewing]

Fellow posters offer the gift of a broad range of perspectives to help expand known boundaries. WE are not the enemy... the enemy is within!

Certainly can be if you have problem intestinal flora!

I was surprised to see him reconsider because he'd seemed so set. That first moment of doubt - in whatever area - can be a worry, like when you wake at 3am in a cold sweat remembering a neglected task with legal ramifications. Once you become accustomed to the fact that you have barely a clue what's going on in life and neither does anyone else, agnosticism is very pleasant - nothing much to defend, apart from the egregious misinformation perpetrated by religious bigots.

...like when you wake at 3am in a cold sweat remembering a neglected task with legal ramifications.

This has happened to you TOO?

Once you become accustomed to the fact that you have barely a clue what's going on in life and neither does anyone else...

Ahhh YES! Very freeing!

When we give ourselves some slack... then we can give it to other people too. And possibly, it stops being less about who is right or best, and more about how we can enjoy and connect.

[Jaded Sage]

Don't worry it turns out I'm definitely right. Worship is excessive exalting.