Comments on: Ignorance is bliss-or is it?

By: Vicki

Vicki — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:35:20 +0000

Well, I think we all want to be happy and free from suffering. If we can achieve this without too much effort so much the better.
So it’s natural to want to pray these “Letters to Santa” type prayers at certain stages and points in our life. If a person is stuck at that stage, getting them to stop praying to some specific deity will have very little practical effect. They will spend just as much time wishing and daydrieaming, and will probably start buying “scientifically proven!” miracle cures on the Internet.
The religious traditions that I am familiar with aim to move people beyond that stage to a point where they take responsibility not only for the mental states that cause their own suffering, but also to take responsibility for reducing the net amount of suffering in the world.
Prayers like “Give me strength to deal with this” or “Make me an instrument of Thy peace” will always have some beneficial effect in reducing suffering, no matter if you imagine that your are addressing them to a dude with a long white beard, to some abstract panentheistic deity (”the universe”) or to your own higher self.

By: Devi

Devi — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 14:58:27 +0000

Vicki, I don’t disagree with the statement that “there are a lot of deeply religious people on the front lines of social change who refute the image of religious belief you portray here.” I’m sure there are many that do not use prayer for the trivial things of life, and after all Joplin’s song was a parody. But after 40 years of religion, I’ve never come into contact with a single person who does NOT use prayer to ask for things, even if it is for continued good health, to be led in the right direction, to ask for blessings for our leaders, etc.

My point is that people use prayer to avoid taking responsibility for themselves.

By: Vicki

Vicki — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:07:27 +0000

The Buddhist tradition would go farther than this to say that most of our experience of the world is based on illusion and that even as we cling to these illusions as a method of self-preservation, we cause ourselves and others a lot of suffering.

It’s mostly Western Christianity that makes such a big deal out of belief anyway and trying to enforce what goes on in other people’s heads. Buddhists say, if a belief or practice helps you to be a better person, then it is a beneficial belief or practice. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t.

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 06:44:58 +0000

I’m fascinated by the topic of useful errors: beliefs we maintain even though we know (or should know) that they can’t be true (or that there is no good evidence for believing them). What is striking to me is that such useful errors are not limited to those with religious beliefs. We all have such beliefs and we all must have such beliefs, or else we’d go insane. http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=181 (in the cited post, notice how far Nietzsche pushes the usefulness of errors).

By: Vicki

Vicki — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 06:04:30 +0000

Aren’t you kind of setting up a strawman here? Making the assumption that prayer = childish whining for toys and that religious faith =wishful thinking.

Personally I agree with Meister Eckhardt’s (14 c. CE Christian mystic): “If the only prayer you ever utter is ‘Thank you,’ it will be enough.”

There are a lot of deeply religious people on the front lines of social change who refute the image of religious belief you portray here.