Posted: Jul 29, 2017 12:46 pm
DavidMcC wrote:The strange case of SoS aside, most people who pray presumably think they are actually communicating with some magic man in the sky. Obviously, that is, on the face of it, delusional behaviour. However, it does seem to provide many people with some kind of much-needed hope, even though it is false hope.
I keep saying, you do not need to have any belief about what it is you are praying to. If you go there you will have stopped actually praying.
I remember something in the bibble about that. Haven't found it again but it's something about false idols and presuming to 'know god'. Someone smart must of written part of that literature.
It's a meditative technique that resembles self-hypnosis.
Consider. If I have a math problem, I work on it for twenty minutes and something im my brain records many things about the problem and that work. My brain has changed physical state. Now if I go off and do something without any occurrent thoughts about the problem, when I run into a matching pattern, that same area of the brain lights up again and a solution presents itself.
This too is prayer.