Posted: Aug 06, 2017 11:46 am
GrahamH wrote:Matthew Shute wrote:SpeedOfSound wrote: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.
If you want to point at a process that doesn't involve any noticeable praying, and just call it "prayer", sure.
Unless you're working on the maths problem and you say, "this is just too hard; I don't have a prayer." But then you go away and have your Eureka moment, and you finally work it out. "Oh. I must've had a prayer after all."
Beyond that, we seem to be talking about the prayer of the gaps.
I read SoS as saying not that thinking about maths problem is prayer, but that thinking about something, anything, has physical effects in the brain that can modify how it later performs in finding solutions, and praying might also do that.
It doesn't seem unreasonable that just putting things into words of a prayer might do that. Talking a problem through to yourself aloud might do that. Getting to an answer is complex and not principally conscious. We have to prime ourselves to allow the solution to come, and when it comes it often seems a little bit miraculous. Voice your problems and desires aloud as if to God and it could help you find solutions for yourself that will surprise you.
Exactly. The important point for me is that if we are such beings as this self talk works for us then it's easy to see how religion has become such a thing. I think religion has become a Great Problem. We need to take a deeper look, rather than just discounting everything about it as nonsense. We need to Secularize this Shit.