The way i see it.

I believe that god has to exist. Not the traditional god in the bible,but one that cares about mankind to a degree. I have personally prayed to god(and that's what i call him)and my prayers have been answered. And i'm not talking petty materialistic prayers,i'm talking about situations that i have gotten into and problems that no one could help me with except a higher power. In a godless world there is no way that a person with my history could be enjoying the success that i have. I'm a high school dropout with no skills and i now supervise over thirty people and make forty eight thousand dollars a year. That might not be alot to some people but ten years ago i was making eleven thousand a year flipping hamburgers. I also was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression a few years ago and the doctor told me that i would have to take medication for the rest of my life. I have now been of the meds for thirteen months and i feel great. Prayer did it. I don't belong to any religion and i don't try to force my belief in a higher power on anyone. I believe everyone should live their live the way they want to,this is just the way i see it.

 

Why can't the higher power be "You"? Why can't it be the Placebo Effect? Why can't it be total coincidence? Just because you pray does not evidence any higher power. It may appear to be the case "to you" but when I pray the the moon, I get the same results, usually about 50% or so. Does that mean the Moon is answering my prayers?

By the way, I too never finished highschool, dropped out in 10th grade. Been in trouble with the law when i was younger, did drugs, blah blah blah and now, after 20 years with the same company, I'm being promoted to Product engineer without ever having a degree. All hail the Moon!

You weren't just "given" your supervisor position, you probably (yes I'm speculating) have been there for a while, had certain people skills your employers liked, had much experience (like me) and are "qualified" to be in your position, all these things YOU did, don't sell yourself short just because you had a lack of education in the book. More often than not, the School of hard Knocks can be the greatest teacher. People of all religions and people of no religions pray all the time and get some prayers answered (or so it seems) but this doesn't mean that whom ever they prayed too actually exists in reality. Coincidence happens every single day and even extreme coincidences happen every day. Much of it depends on whether you choose to accept it as coincidence or if you want to apply it to some deity. I choose the old saying..... Shit happens! and it happens often.

 

What part of the way i see it didn't you understand? Why do atheist get so mad when someone has a belief that they don't share?

 

He wasnt getting mad.. your reason is just really faulty. You dont have faith in yourself. This is part of what makes people believe in higher powers, low belief in themselves. Why would a godless world be ANY different to this world?

I pray as well, and my prayers get answered sometimes. Often what I care about it the most. Or perhaps that is just when I notice it..

However, I pray to myself, not to god. And it does the same thing.

Everyone gets a different roll of the dice. But you can shift the odds by pointing your mind in a certain direction.

Good on you for getting where you are. But I think youre cheating yourself if you dont take the credit for your own success.

 

Now untill recently I wouldv disagreed with you.
I know what your trying to get at. its something out there ... you dunno what it is but its a something. its just easier on you if you call it a something. try reading my topic about them which is just below this topic (its called Fates and Me). There are essentialy 3 looking after you not 1. but its complicated. 1 makes stuff and all the things eventually die like mountains, trees ad people but thats because they had to die. he misses it but then theres supposedto be something else to replace it. 1 of them disagrees and tries to destroy whats being made. hes not evil but his point of view are things should be left the way they are. then theres the 3rd. she guides YOU in whatever you want to do. whtever you were born to do she is there to make sure each event is passed you cant fail with her there. its hard for me to tell you so im going to tell her tell you.

Emmy:
OK when you dropped out of education you met someone didnt you? think back and you will remember someone who wanst majorly important to you but they had an effect on you none the less. Well that was me making sure you completed an event. see each event leads to the other. Unfortunatly your life is written out already and we have control over it. you just do your thing so that the human race can move further. but anyway this person you met did something to you that you either still remember clearly, you may have fortoggon or you were totoally oblivious to it to begin with >_> but either way you did it. you met this person and they effected you. one of your other major events was when you were working at a fast-food store. there something changed you didnt it. I cant look into to much detail as ive got my own boy here to look after but what changed you may have been an accident. Well anyway even if it wasnt, what happened to you happened because it had to. your own guardian looked after (and is doing a great job i see) and they are there to make sure that what your life was made for, what your major event leads to, they are there to make sure you accomplish it. You might not think your very important but if 1 man or women does something great, if EVERY single man,women,child even dogs and animals, if they all do what they were put on earth to do then you have all done your job. and if you think your unimportant then think again.

A message for Rojored:
I know you've done something in the past that you regret. you hurt someone. You might not have realised it but i think you remember. It wasnt really someone you knew - if at all that well to begin with but its now affected them. you were supposed to do that. There life was going the wrong way. They were on Road-A before they met you and now because of you they are on Road-B and thats where they will do their job.

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Me again:
What people dont realise is there is no single god infact there just arnt any gods plain and simple but its easier using the term 'god(s)'. they dont even care if you pray to them or not because they too are doing what they need to do. they make the worlds, they make the nights sky and they make life while the other one thinks should go back to the way they were before. then like i said, the 3 is watching you. its not your fault you were born, its not your fault your parents were born so why should you be alone.
Thats all i need to say really. If you dont believe me thats fine cuz like i said they dont want your worship, they dont ask for you to lay on a mat and pray 4 times a day or go to a chruch that 'god-built' (actally no m8 sorry HGrogerson.Co but your church). all they say is just listen to them. they are sending you hints by the day load trying to get your attention. sometimes you may just think "hmm what was that .... ah nevermind it was just sumthing strange" and other times you think "wow ok that WAS strange O_O hmm oh well". just be on the lookout for signs from them letting you know they're there watching YOU!

 

Are you trying to be psychic or something? I dont know what you are talking about

 

My mistake i got the names the wrong way. just a simple typo Rojored should make more sence from this - soz stoner

 

The way I see it, the mind uses whatever tools handy to make it through hard times and the closest tool the mind has is imagination. It is coincidence if ones prayers are answered but it is no coincidence that the harshest regions of this planet see the highest level of religion and spiritual belief. It is a form of escape. The claims of one answered prayer never meet face with a million unanswered prayers from the dead. Where is true proof of answered prayers in areas where the majority are religious and the majority are also malnourished and poverty stricken?

 

One glaring exception to your overgeneralization is the United States. Why is the industrial superpower, prototype of "the affluent society", also the most religious of major industrial powers, and why does religion seem to be growing in this country? I don't know. I never took sociology. I suspect history had a lot to do with it--the fact that we were founded by religious folks. But how did religiosity survive and thrive, when so many of our Founding Fathers were irreligious? I've heard it said, paradoxically, that the fact we never had an established church somehow helped religion here and/or hurt it in countries that had state-supported churches that nobody goes to. I suspect that there are multiple factors contributing to religiosity. The solace provided by the promise of "pie in the sky when you die" and the feeling of efficacy that can come from having an omnipotent superpower on your side are probably both important, but I think other important factors are the need for meaning in a changing, uncertain world, and the need for something to counter cold, impersonal technocracy.

I spent some time living among homeless hippies, and was fascinated by their unquestioning faith in supernatural forces. Some Hip Forums participants are familiar with Jamba, Lord of the Dumpsters. To many, Jamba is a joke, but to some he is real, while "liberal" believers like me see him as metaphorical (Yes, Virginia, there is a Jamba). In any event, he got us by from day to day, and provided in ways exceeding reasonable expectations. More generally, the band had an abiding faith in "the Spirit",a benevolent force which guided all who submitted to it when cooking meals, heading off to new destinations, etc. And it "worked". How did it work? If I had to provide naturalistic explanations, I'd probably be talking about adrenelin, endorphins, the placebo effect, etc., which probably also account for much of the efficacy of modern medicine. If it works, why fix it? Of course, sometimes irrational beliefs get people into trouble. Snake handling cults often discover that reality literally bites. African tribes relying on maji maji water to protect them from bullets are now extinct. I try to occupy a middle ground between paralyzing skepticism and blind faith.

 

Sorry to blow your "glaring exception" but religion is certainly not growing in America!

 

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It depends on your base period. Over the past three decades, it grew. The United States between 1975-2000 was in one of its periodic religious revivals, from which there has recently been a levelling off. Evangelical churches are still growing, and 81% of the population still claims a religious preference (over three-quarters Christian), although the percentage claiming no religious preference has grown to around 14%--but that is far less than in any other industrial country. (Surveys indicate that the increase in the unaffiliated in the United States is largely a reaction against the excesses of the religious right.) Self-described atheists are still only a small percentage of that population. A Pew global survey in 2002 reported that the United States was the only developed nation in which a majority of the population said religion played a "very important" role in their lives. I think my point about the influence of religion in this country, relative to other industrial countries, is still valid and quite striking. The United States has been and continues to be, per capita, one of the most religious countries in the world, while religion has atrophied in Western Europe and Japan. So do you have different information? Otherwise, the discrepancy is still "glaring".

Actually, empirical research supports both of us. Harvard economists Barrow and McCleary find general support in world economic data for the "secularization hypothesis" that you seem to be advocating: that as nations become more prosperous and economically developed, they become less religious. However, they also note that the United States is an "outlier" ("glaring exception"). For example, 58% of Americans say they attend church at least monthly, where the secularization hypothesis would predict 36%. Eighty-seven percent of Americans say they believe in Heaven, as opposed to 57% predicted by the model. Obviously, something else is going on.

I think a couple of hypotheses are worth exploring for the "something else": (1) the economic hypothesis: freewheeling capitalism. The United States is more capitalistic than the other major industrial countries, with no safety net for people who don't make it in the competitive struggle. This means (a) more reliance on faith-based sources of welfare; (b) more psychological insecurity, heightening the need for a supernatural friend for protection and solace; (c) more need for system legitimacy via Max Weber's "Protestant ethic" (God prospers righteousness). (2) the cultural hypothesis: the United States developed a national culture that included a sense of Divinely ordained destiny, as a result of our abundant resources and geographic separation. Either or both of these factors serve to counteract the tendency toward secularization resulting from prosperity and economic development. Thoughts?

 

misfire.

 

Church attendance in the US is about 44%. 50 years ago was that number higher or lower?

I rest my case! Sorry if I'm too general but I don't have time to examine and focus on every little cultural detail right now.

 

You rest your case on a faulty indicator. I just presented you with a slew of other ones, but you choose one that serves your case, and a dubious indicator at that. What does your figure even mean? That only 44% of Americans ever attend church? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? And how does that compare with 50 years ago? Do you have those figures? And more to the point, how does it compare with Europe? And is church attendance a good indicator of spirituality or religiosity?

The 44% figure, I believe, comes from the University of Michigan Social Research Center, and it refers to weekly attendance. U of M also provides comparative figures for Britain (27%) and Sweden (4%). A Gallup International poll in 2007 reported 41% "regular" church attendance in the United States, compared to 15% in France, 10% in the U.K., and 7.5% in Australia. So why does the most economically developed, prosperous country in the world have weekly church attendance that is more than two or three times that of other industrial countries? If I understand your point, you seem to suggest that religion is fading from the American scene. Why then are politicians making more and more of a deal about it, subjecting themselves to probing by the likes of Rick Warren about their religious convictions? What is the so-called "culture wars", that was supposed to define the Red and Blue states as recently as 2004, all about? Are they over? What fascinates me is that you seem to be completely convinced that your position is correct, when there's so much evidence to the contrary.

If I were answering a poll on church attendance, I'd report that I attend church much less often than I used to. And that God and spiritual issues are far more important to me than they used to be, when I was attending church regularly. Church can play a useful role in people's lives, but I view it as canned spirituality, and if Chrisitians let it absorb them their religious observance can become routinized and robotic. I regularly attend functions at three different churches (Methodist, Unitarian Universalist, and Greek Orthodox) as well as a monthly dinner with a group of atheists (which I missed last time). So does that support or refute your position?

 

Jesus Chris man, and you're not stickling on facts that serve you're purpose? Yes, the US has a serious religion problem that has got the country sliding down a shit hole path right now. But compare the overall level of religion to that in Iran or Afghanistan and it become minuscule. And I don't need to dig up facts on 50 years ago, we all know damn well more people went to church. More and more normal people will stop attending church as anyone with half a brain realizes the bible has no credibility and churches are no more holly than their bathrooms. The only churches in the future will be for the most hard core fanaticals.

Was I ever attempting to compare religion in industrial countries? WTF man! I don't even remember what track this thread started on!

 

Actually, a lot of people manage to pull their lives up. As a society, the West places a lot of pressure and emphasis on education as the event that will define the course of your life, even though it comprises only one third of 12 years of your life. To some degree, the prophecy is self-fulfilling; people feel that they cannot get ahead in life if they do not do well in education. But the truth is, there are many people who do incredibly well in life just by knuckling under. Many college kids will, by contrast, go on to use their degree to flip burgers with, either because they are disillusioned with academia, or because they simply expected their qualification to allow them to coast through life.

Prayer has a function, but I do not know that it proves anything. Prayer puts the mind at ease sometimes, allowing one to relinquish control of their life enough that some development will occur, something which they are preventing through indecision, procrastination and worry. Most people could do with letting go more.

As to the success of prayer, it's simple enough: you notice when prayers work; if they don't, you don't give a shit and likely forget about it before the next time you pray. That's the same psychology that keeps people playing the lottery and which makes guessing someone's star sign a reasonable chat-up technique.

 

Couple of months back someone said the same thing about knife crime in this country, about how it was "obvious" that knife crime had increased and that it wasn't like this in "their day". The person in question was from Glasgow and of about the right age that "their day" would have actually been right slap-bang in the middle of a very well-documented spike in knife crime in that area.

My point in this is that we have statistics specifically because memory, perception and interpretation are highly selective. As another example, a recent study in this country found that the average person surveyed believed the under-16s pregnancy rate to be around 40%. The actual rate is less than 1%. They also believed it was going up, whereas it is actually at a 20-year low (although still higher than the rest of Europe).

So, in summary: just because "we all know" something, doesn't mean it's true.

 

in a godless world children get molested and raped by over-pubescent men every day and poor, defenseless animals get shot with bb guns and horrifically abused.

if god exists, he sure is a swell guy, huh?

 

Right! An interesting thing about the examples of Iran and Afghanistan is that fifty years ago they didn't have anything like the levels of religious fanaticism they had today. They were both under secular governments and appeared to outsiders to be making "progress". So what happened? To the insiders, the secular governments didn't go over. Same in Russia, after eight decades of official atheism. Modernization brought changes to people's lives which weren't altogether welcome, and the secularists weren't providing solutions. On one of the posts on this Forum, someone once included a video of a discussion among Dawkins, Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris in which they acknowledge the need to address the "numinous" in people's lives--and they don't really offer a non-religious solution to that problem. Any atheist proceeding on the basis of Relaxx's simplistic secularization model risks triggering a backlash of religiosity. If religion declines in the United States, it may owe more to child molesting priests, greedy televangelists, and power abusing Republicans like Bush than to the forces of secularization. Seeing the Ayatollahs and the Taliban in action does more to discredit radical Islam than any amount of secularization.