Your thoughts on prayer 2

I looked hard, but I'm afraid I wasn't able to find anything like that. Could you give me an example of the kind of information you mean.

That's like me asking you, John, to give me some information that virtually proves evolution to be true. But I will go back and find a few some interesting information for you.

The universe was full of matter long before life came on the scene.

John, I would like you to tell me where this matter came from.

I would ask everyone, who perhaps just has a curious look into this thread, to click on the links that John has provided.

Are your eyes swivelling like mine?  Has your brain gone into meltdown like mine?

Who is the sum of this mind boggling investigation? 

I think, John, you were trying to 'blind me with science'.  But as my brain melted and I clicked back to POE within about twenty seconds, I felt slightly vindicated. The sheer mathematics  and 'beyond my comprehension'  analysis only proves to me,even more, that there is a God

So, you have no answer as to where this matter originated..

Whoa!  Whoa!  Get a grip everybody!!!  This is getting a little heated and I think we need to go back to our unwritten ground rules - most especially respect for others' beliefs, no matter how much we disagree.  To the believers among us, I would say there's nothing the enemy would delight in more than for us to allow our "seeking" to drag us down.  God doesn't need us to defend Him or His existence.

I think it's fairly safe to say that everybody who's posted to this thread has stated their position, and I no longer see this as a useful or even interesting discussion if we let it deteriorate.  There is no sense trying to change one another's minds, that's God's job. 

Going back to the original concept of the thread - your thoughts on prayer - John, you joined in the discussion as the resident atheist expressing your thoughts about finding the concept of God fascinating.  We have already established many things throughout the discussion - what faith is, why people believe, creationism vs. evolutionism, is there a creator, if there is, why does he allow suffering, is the Bible really God's word, the wonders of scientific discovery etc, etc. etc.  John, faith can't be proven, God can't be proven, and compelling scientific evidence of a person's theory, using the scientific method cannot disprove God, so I think we're beating a dead horse here.  But the results of belief in God can no more be denied than can looking at the rock layers of the Grand Canyon to detemine that the earth is billions of years old.

Of all the thoughts expressed, I would zero in on two.  First yours, Andy.  Yes, plenty of murder and mayhem went on in the name of the Lord, especially in your fair land, throughout the centuries, but the past is to be learned from, not dwelt upon.  Anyone who calls himself a Christian today would and should roundly condemn the thinking that went on in all that chaos.  But remember that all that murder was carried out by people struggling for power, under the mask of religion.  God had nothing to do with it and, in my humble opinion, no one should allow themselves to be separated from God because of the actions of other people, no matter how heinous.

The other that strikes me is the link you posted, John.  This one:

http://ask.metafilter.com/79801/How-do-secularists-deal-without-the-comfort-of-religion

To me, that crystallizes this whole argument.  It's one thing to not pray, or to not go to church, or to simply not have God as part of your life.  But it's completely another when you determine there is no God and then spend so much of your energy trying to justify, to everyone else, why you believe what you believe.  The arguments for atheism can be just as dogmatic as the bible thumpers are, if some of the links you've posted are anything to go by.  And the person who wrote that essay - one act of humble submission, one little leap of faith might just get them what they're longing for.  That need for God, that we're all seeking is as loud and as clear in that essay as anything I've ever seen written from any Christian saint.  That's what I meant when I told you, John, that atheism seems so cold and clinical to me, so closed to even the possibility of a creator.

I think this is a good prayer for both sides of this argument:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Sir Francis Drake, 1577

I love this debate! I tried to simplify the point I was making, so perhaps it sounded harsh Sue and Ruth. I apologise for not keeping to the subject, which of course is prayer...but to me prayer is everything to do with religion. Praying for peace just seems like such a contradiction to me (I know I'm generalising, if I don't this will end up like war and peace-the book of course). The point I try to make is that believers of whatever faith or God, shouldn't be harming others, because it goes against everything they stand for, that's all.

Sue, you don't have to go to church to pray, it makes you no less christian to pray at home if you ask me.

Ruth, that prayer from Sir Francis Drake is very interesting........but to me, like history, it's lost with time and may no longer be relevant. The last paragraph is poignant, the hopes and dreams of Drake seem to have been ignored by mankind and in fact the opposite may well be true. Strength, courage, hope and love are lacking in the world these days.

Sue, you said: John, I would like you to tell me where this matter came from.

I said we don't yet have a full answer, but we are working on the problem - and I gave you a few website links that discuss, in detail, the answer to your question. 

The content of those links is complicated, and because you want a simple answer you say I'm trying to blind you with science, and you say I have no answer to your question.

But Sue, the origin of matter is not a simple affair. I wish it was. I wish it didn't take so much effort to really understand how the universe operates. Sadly, it does.

as my brain melted and I clicked back to POE within about twenty seconds 

Perhaps it takes longer than 20 seconds to explore questions like how did the universe begin.

I'm still looking forward to seeing your examples from answers in Genesis.