If You Don't Believe In God Anymore, Do You Still Say God Bless You or Thank God, etc.?

by minimus 26 Replies latest jw friends

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  Caedes

  Thank Darwin for that!
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  Simon

  Jesus Christ, Good God, Holy Crap, Oh Lordy-Lordy - just some of the expressions you will hear this atheist saying.
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  minimus

  I bet that if some of you who do not believe in God were in a life and death situation, you might pray to God to please intervene.
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  OneEyedJoe

  I bet that if some of you who do not believe in God were in a life and death situation, you might pray to God to please intervene.

  Ahh, the ol' there are no atheists in foxholes argument. I'll admit that I sometimes "pray" but it's only with the purpose to calm my thoughts and focus my mind. I doubt you'll find many ahteists that deny the power that prayer has to calm someone, relieve stress, focus the mind, and accept the things in life that are out of our control. Even as an atheist that is 100% conviced that there's no god in any meaningful sense, I'd be foolish to completely neglect the benifits that can come from talking to yourself in a prayer-like fashion.
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  minimus

  Sorry, one eyed, that is just having your cake and eating too.
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  cofty

  I bet that if some of you who do not believe in God were in a life and death situation, you might pray to God to please intervene. - minimus

  I have been. I didn't.

  I don't just pretend not to believe in god.
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  fulltimestudent

  My father became an athiest (at a time when most people still went to church on sunday) at age 15, because of the brutality of the teachers (mostly priests in those days) at his Catholic school.

  But I still can hear in my mind, his frustration over my mother's nagging about something, and his cry resounding through the whole house:

  JEEEEEZZZZZUZZZZ WEEEEEPT!
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  OneEyedJoe

  Sorry, one eyed, that is just having your cake and eating too.

  How so? I don't pray with any expectation that it will cause any divine intervention, but with the expectation that it will help me not worry about things I can't control and allow me to "talk out" my problems even if there's no one to talk to.

  I suspect most people have observed this, but it happens to me at work quite frequently as I'm trying to solve a problem. If something's not working like I expect, I'll walk over to a colleague and explain the problem that I'm having. Often, before my colleague says so much as a single word, the answer I seek will come to me. Did my colleague solve the problem for me?

  The same goes with prayer. Sometimes I'll essentially talk to an immagined entity that is not present, either out loud or mentally, and the solution to a problem will present itself. The simulation of a conversation often causes you to anticipate questions that a different person might ask (maybe not the questions that you'd ask) and that can often lead you to the solution to a problem.

  Is this somehow proof that god exists? No more so than my other experiences prove that all my work colleagues are telepathic.
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  minimus

  Cofty, I believe you.
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  Theredeemer

  Yeah I say it. So what? I say "oh God yes" alot during the night too

  I dont pray unless you count me wishing stuff out loud like " Come on! Pass this test!" or stuff like that praying. I agree with one eyed Joe. Sometimes talking out loud helps just like reading out loud has been shown to help retain the info.

  If you call us hypocrites for doing stuff like this does that make you a little petty?

  You should worry more about how god doesnt intervene for the ones that mean it.