Thread: Who do you "pray" to?

I agree with this. The man who wrote it happens to be a Unitarian.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at Robert Fulghum, OFFICIAL Website, see NEW stories! ]

Originally Posted by gugi

I say if you can make stuff by praying why not just go for it.
If it works no doubt people will join you sooner rather than later.

I agree! By the way, I get better results praying for turtleshell handles than I do carved ivory - maybe I am praying to the wrong "god"

I think we've gotten off track a bit.

The thread is about who do you pray to?


I pray to God; Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

Works for me!

It is with a sincere apology to the original poster for my part on letting this simple thread get so far off topic that I post a link to a more appropriate thread.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/conve...tml#post432739

X

Originally Posted by xman

ALL studies show that praying makes no difference to the outcome of whatever is being prayed for whatsoever although it may make you feel better to do so anyway. Since I feel better about doing something concrete to achieve results, prayer is a misdirected action. End stop.

Once again, you can't prove the absence of something.


So "you're of the opinion that prayer is a misdirected action".

Something that isn't there can neither be proven nor disproven. Prayer has worked for me in my life. Beyond that which I could do. You can believe I'm a misguided fool (I'm pretty sure you believe the misguided part) but my own experiments have proven to ME that it works.

I'll trust my own experiences before I trust someone else's studies.

http://www.skepdic.com/prayer.html

http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/ctlessons.html

I still don't pray.

Problem is that all those studies are on a personal level. I didn't set out to "prove" anything for anyone but myself. And for me I got it.

I'm convinced that anyone can do the same and get the proof that they're looking for. Offcourse when one has his mind made up before they start them they might as well not bother. But it's like that with anything in life.

My results wouldn't help you in any manner, because they leave no physical evidence. Nothing to measure but an answer. And those who didn't experience it can easily say "your mind made that up" or "you're just smarter than you thought you were" or "it's just luck". But I know it wasn't. I know the difference between the three and this wasn't something my mind made up. They were things coming from an external source. I've gotten to know things about that source since that makes me want to continue trying to communicate with it.

But nothing I can show you can ever convince you.

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

But nothing I can show you can ever convince you.

We have that in common.

I don’t know who or what God is or whether God listens to our prayers. None the less, I believe praying can be a good thing.

Several years ago a co-worker was in the hospital and was not expected to survive. A general-distribution email message was sent throughout the office inviting everyone to attend a brief prayer session for our friend. About 25 of us met in the library and quickly held hands to form a big circle. A quiet prayer was spoken and then without any other words we all walked back to our cubicles. I never imagined that this prayer would affect the outcome, but the ceremony had a very powerful emotional effect on me and the others I think.

They say that funerals are for the living. For me, prayer works in a similar way. It’s just a little ceremony. It enriches and empowers your life by stirring your emotional self in a way that rational or scientific thought cannot. This may seem trivial, but for folks facing absolute despair, prayer can be a life saver. It also performs useful social and cultural functions that are important to families and other organizations.

(By the way, our co-worker made a miraculous recovery.)

Actually I take no offence to the direction that this thread has gone. My intention was to look at the various views that people have. A simple black and white of I pray to him and him and her would not do.

I all I would have to say that this is the most entertaining thread of all.

Thanks guys.