Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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thedoc
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by thedoc »

langdune wrote:
For the sensation they generate as a group doing the same thing at the same time . ?
Many societies preform group activities in order to bond the group into a tighter society.
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Harbal
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by Harbal »

thedoc wrote:I have a real wood burning fireplace in my house, if you have one or have access to one, try it and let me know the results
Your builder should have explained how it works when he installed it. Have you tried filling it with wood and setting it alight?
ForCruxSake
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

langdune wrote:For the sensation they generate as a group doing the same thing at the same time . ?

Anyways

We ( life forms ) and everything and one else IS god or gods doings

Everything and everyone is god . But as God ( the sigularity ) hates living in infinite eternity ( forever) ALONE , he's got us as his play things ( toys ) you and me and everything and one .

God aka life simply " not knows " he's running the show . Much like a child who has dolls that chat back and forth , the child excludes itself from the three to only be aware of the two dolls and not self .
Ok, I get the whole God thing, He's pretty, He's meaningful, He gives man a reason to accept his existence. What grabs my goat by the horns and has him kicking out, is how we attribute Him, with thinking and feeling THE WAY WE DO. Why would a 'singularity' necessarily be determined as such? Why would an all encompassing being be limited by thought, or feelings of "hate", or even need "play things?

There is a vanity to man that makes him profess to know the way God 'thinks' and 'feels'. It's not so much that we were made in God's image but that we seem to have made Him in ours.

"Oh, but we know, because we have His direct word passed down to us through Moses, Jesus, the Prophet Muhammed..." Yeah, right! Whatever 'God' is, we cannot possibly understand or profess to know His/Her/It's 'mechanics' or 'game plan'. We can only wonder.

I don't mind the God talk. (It's the rigid religious and unforgiving atheists, I can't stomach.) I'd just prefer that those of a 'religious bent' be honest in musing about what God could be, rather than hit people over the head with stuff they can't possibly 'know' or understand, given our human limitations.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

Because man plays better in teams, he possibly prays better in teams?
Walker
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by Walker »

ForCruxSake wrote:Because man plays better in teams, he possibly prays better in teams?
Because folks only exist in relationship.
WendyDarling
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by WendyDarling »

Man is God's company. True believers do not need to be organized or gather together with anybody else, they have a direct pipeline to God so that gathering together is for money and pretense, sometimes a bit of hope, desire to believe, but no pipeline has been established. Everybody prays informally, everywhere, on/off, all the damn time. Any energy one directs is an informal prayer for good, bad, whatever. So there are no true atheists cause everybody directs there energy towards goals, wishes, hopes, curses, blah, blah...Everybody prays informally.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by Dontaskme »

ForCruxSake wrote:
There is a vanity to man that makes him profess to know the way God 'thinks' and 'feels'. It's not so much that we were made in God's image but that we seem to have made Him in ours.
What you essentially are has no image of itself except what it and only it thinks it is.

All human consciousness is vanity and entertainment, just try being human without including those factors.

Oh the irony of being human.

He says, it is vanity to profess to know God and yet man thinks himself to be the doer and knower of his actions....kind of ironic is it not?

We can't escape from this nonsense, it's all mental madness, but then at least there are those that know they are mad. It's the ones who think they are sane that are the ones who suffer their self claimed sanity .. :mrgreen:
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

Dontaskme wrote:All human consciousness is vanity and entertainment, just try being human without including those factors.
I don't know about that... Babies and simpletons are conscious, but aren't vain, nor is life about entertainment, but engagement.

Toddlers seem not to know so much and spend their time in learning, and that learning is done through 'play', 'suck it and see'. I think the problems start when we think we know... Not when we think... but when 'we think we know'. All of a sudden everything becomes serious, we stop playing, and cast ourselves as a superior lot because we know such a lot.

With the religious, they start justifying how marvellous we are by inventing these/this fictitious parents/parent, which we call gods/God. We are the favoured child. We are special... and we all know how that story progresses.

With philosophers... well, they just become serious and stop playing, and are incredibly vain because they are uber-KNOWERS. There is nothing their intellect can't take apart. It doesn't matter what they break in the process... They will replace it with something better! It may well be something no one else can understand but that just proves how high up they are on the Olympus of the Mind. They need no divinities. They themselves are Gods of the Mind! :lol:
Last edited by ForCruxSake on Fri Mar 31, 2017 12:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

WendyDarling wrote:Man is God's company. True believers do not need to be organized or gather together with anybody else, they have a direct pipeline to God so that gathering together is for money and pretense, sometimes a bit of hope, desire to believe, but no pipeline has been established. Everybody prays informally, everywhere, on/off, all the damn time. Any energy one directs is an informal prayer for good, bad, whatever. So there are no true atheists cause everybody directs there energy towards goals, wishes, hopes, curses, blah, blah...Everybody prays informally.
Yesssss... but the question was "why congregate to pray?"

Do you really think it's about money and pretence, and by pretence, I'm assuming you mean "to appear to be someone of sound religious practise" to others? I think it's more than that. There's power in the collective, possibly comfort, a way to stave off loneliness, to share one's feelings about one's faith and have them confirmed by like minded people... All sorts of reasons. It's all about connection.

Atheists hopes are not the same as a believer's prayers. An atheist's hope, redundant or otherwise, can only lead him to follow a path that might tend towards that which he hopes for. He is dependent on circumstance and making the right choice. He's not dependent on, nor requesting of, an external force to 'make it happen' for him.
Last edited by ForCruxSake on Fri Mar 31, 2017 12:22 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by WendyDarling »

Whether he realizes it or not, an atheist is asking for help from a force greater than his own.

You think a collective prayer carries more weight? Why?

If people are not tuned in, they have no power because while they may be connecting with each other as "believers," they are not connecting their belief with God which is a whole other ballgame. The number of actual believers is what 36-72 on Earth at any given time, The Righteous 36? So most are in congregations to simply socialize, but that doesn't lead to belief. Establishing a solid relationship with God and walking His path when called is belief.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

Walker wrote:
ForCruxSake wrote:Because man plays better in teams, he possibly prays better in teams?
Because folks only exist in relationship.
I was watching a Storyville documentary, last night, about the use of solitary confinement in prisons in the U.S. The practice started with the Quakers, two centuries ago. In the programme, the makers kept referring to it as 'a noble experiment'. The belief was that the sinner/ or criminal, kept away from others would come closer to his inner self and possibly God, commune with himself in contemplation, to correct himself. In the late 1800's they realised that prolonged periods of solitary confinement just drove people nuts, irreparably damaging them, and possibly making them a greater danger to society at large. It was abandoned as a practice by the early 1900's, only to be resurrected in the 1970's,as prisons began to overcrowd and the more difficult inmates had to be removed from the general population, for the safety of others and to prevent the sort of chaos that could lead to wholesale riot. It's taken forty years to realise again, that no one benefits from inmates who experience prolonged bouts of solitary confinement. On release they are paranoid and jumpy, the real world feels like a sensory overload to which they can react, by cocooning themselves away from it, or lashing out in fear and frustration from the sense of disorder, hurting themselves or others physically in the process, either way.

Why the long winded diatribe on solitary confinement?

We need connection with others in order to navigate reality. Without reference points and the ability to engage we turn into crazed individuals who find normal living an absolute sensory overload with which we could not cope.

There's a safety in congregation and complete joy when they can all sing in tune!
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by WendyDarling »

ForCruxSake,

Why do you keep editing your post above my answer as if to circumvent my already given answer? A believer would not do that in a discussion.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

WendyDarling wrote:Whether he realizes it or not, an atheist is asking for help from a force greater than his own.
I disagree. His hope is a reflection of a dialogue with himself, not a superior, exterior force.

WendyDarling wrote:You think a collective prayer carries more weight? Why?
I didn't say that. I said there is a power in congregation that can benefit an individual, psychologically. As to the efficacy of prayer, I have no idea.

Never really worked for me, growing up, as so many prayers went unanswered, but it brought a sense of peace just to say to be able to say what I wanted to say and how I felt. In the days I used to pray, I realised I was just telling myself things will be alright. It works. Even now, its part comfort (of the habit I grew up with) and part self-reassurance. I have no idea if God is listening to me, or if there even is a God, I just know self-acknowledgment can be a good thing sometimes.
WendyDarling wrote: If people are not tuned in, they have no power because while they may be connecting with each other as "believers," they are not connecting their belief with God which is a whole other ballgame. The number of actual believers is what 36-72 on Earth at any given time, The Righteous 36? So most are in congregations to simply socialize, but that doesn't lead to belief. Establishing a solid relationship with God and walking His path when called is belief.
Apart from that first sentence, which is just plainly wrong. I have no idea what you are talking about.

If they are connecting with each other "as believers" how on earth can they NOT be connecting with their belief God??! What are they believing in when they congregate to praise? I know white, middle class, church practise is a bit dry, and formal, but the joy of congregation, and communion with God, in some baptist and evangelical orders makes me feel jealous that I don't believe!

I see nothing wrong in socialising. It's how we establish order in the community, it safeguards mental health and encourages the growth of a caring attitude towards one another. I was under the impression that was what God wants. Or has religion moved on since I believed?

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Clearly you know something, I don't... but, unlike my fascination with the joy I've witnessed with baptists and evangelists, I really don't care to know what it is, you do know. No doubt, it's just another flavour of Christian belief I've lost the taste for.

Disclaimer: I am not now, nor ever have been a baptist, or evangelist, nor do I wish to be. I just want to tap into a little bit of their juicy joy in worship.
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by ForCruxSake »

WendyDarling wrote:ForCruxSake,

Why do you keep editing your post above my answer as if to circumvent my already given answer? A believer would not do that in a discussion.
I keep noticing spelling mistakes and grammatical errors (-mine, I wouldn't dare to change yours!). I haven't removed anything, if anything I've added. Oh, and I hadn't seen that you had written a reply, I was so enjoying writing my earlier reply that I kept re-editing.

Clearly we are cross posting in our enthusiasm to disagree!

Did I say I was a believer? Not something I would deliberately change, not unless I misspelled it!

(Crikey, now I've edited this one three times... No, four... No, FIVE!)
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Re: Since God is omnipresent, why congregate to pray?

Post by WendyDarling »

FCS,

Haha, your an atheist with a yen for joie de vivre! Nothing wrong with that. True, you could be talking to yourself in a healthy way, but do that again and get back to me with the Who is going to handle those hopes/wishes. You don't need to talk to yourself to know what they are, so you are voicing it aloud to garner the attention of cosmic forces or God, whatever. Keep disagreeing with me while God listens to you.

Praise doesn't necessarily mean belief. Congregations do all kinds of activities in church-like settings that are more for the people than for their God.

Just admit, you never believed that's why it's no longer apart of your life. Once you believe, once you and God have tested one another, there's no take backs, you never stop believing for that is impossible. You may grow weary in your relationship with God, but disbelief becomes simply a word that cannot be applied to you.
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