I saw an article on the BBC website today about an online prayer service. Prayer is one of those aspects of religion that I never really understood. Even if you believe there is an omnipresent, omniscient supernatural being out there, how can you possibly believe that this being would change the natural laws of the universe just because you put in a special plea? If two sets of parents are worrying over the beds of their sick children, would a god choose to spare one just because the parents asked nicely? The whole concept is bizarre and a just a bit obscene.
This is related to one of my main gripes with organized religion. Why would anyone want to worship a supernatural power that demands to be worshipped in order to get special treatment? Shouldn't it be enough that you live a 'good' life ('good' obviously having different values depending on your flavour of religion). You would think that something powerful to create an entire universe wouldn't have this problem of low self-esteem with a constant need to have its postition confirmed.
I wonder if all the followers of a particular religion would be happy if the world followed the teachings of their religion apart from the bits that were 'religious', i.e. the morality and 'lifestyle' aspects, but explicitly rejected any supernatural beings?
[...] to my earlier post about praying, does this nurse actually believe that a prayer for one of her patients would [...]
ReplyDeleteDepending on the religion, one may not be able to separate the supernatural diety from the morality. Following from Nietzsche it's fairly easy to see how dieties come about and from dieties/kings, morality. So at least in the west, I don't know that one can separate it out.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this statment - "You would think that something powerful to create an entire universe wouldn’t have this problem of low self-esteem with a constant need to have its postition confirmed." - is a little silly. I mean a person with a self esteem problem often will create great things in an effort to prove their worth - think of the abused wife who constantly creates a clean house in an effort to prove that she's worthy of love and praise. So I'd assume a diety isn't really any different - especially if we're to believe that dieties are just created from our own likenesses.