Sunday School

[Simon Paynton]

Autumn wrote:

Perhaps for some it alleviates stress or might reduce anxiety, however. I guess that’s a plus if it happens. But then it can also increase stress situationally.

I’ve read that having someone we love nearby reduces our own pain.
So maybe prayer reduces pain.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6689415/

If you look at figure 2, it seems to say that in the non-religious, prayer increases pain severity, while it’s reduced in the religious.

[jeffreypaulbradt]

Hello Everyone,

It’s been a long time since I’ve been around, it’s good to see you all.

In reply, I have read that when we atheists meditate on a god, it is beneficial for us. I do it periodically and it makes me feel more balanced and accepting, more grounded, believe it or not, about my atheism. I am more in touch with others’ and my past Christianity and with what my concept of a god is now. And again, I find it calming.

Thanks for letting me throw in my two cents.

JP

[—]

I don’t begrudge others what works for them, but I feel like I’d have to develop a sense of some sort of god before I could meditate on one. Perhaps there is something in our psychology/ neurology that the idea of a god stimulates. I can’t really say. But if that’s the case, I feel like I could make a substitution.

[_Robert_]

Ford trucks, Joe Biden, rattlesnakes, gravity, music, Nero, and stegosaurs have all managed to register as existent in my brain. Yet none of the oh-so-powerful gods have yet to do so. Not a damn shred of evidence. False comfort is comfort nonetheless, but delusional thinking is dishonest and unfulfilling and not for me.

[jakelafort]

I am partial to the Virgin Mare and the Holy Horse Hoof.

I am sure i will win every photo finish and have every inquiry decided righteously in accordance with my best interests as i genuflect and dissect the equine god with the horsey bod. In my trance of horse romance i take a chance on a steed from France trying dirt for the first time. Arcangues storms by at 99 to 1. This isn’t simply the score of a lifetime. This is life and time stands still. I got my fill, found my thrill, and filled the till with an existential pill. The meditations and consequent exhileration-play it again and again with apologies to Bertrando.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jeffrey Paul Brandt,

Greetings. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you.

Yes, I can agree with you on one thing: it can be great to begin a night’s rest by thinking about nothing. 😉😁

[PopeBeanie]

jeffreypaulbradt wrote:

I do it periodically and it makes me feel more balanced and accepting, more grounded, believe it or not, about my atheism.

That is interesting. If I were to try that, I’d go directly to the source of God, which is, ancient peoples who invented Him. E.g. note that the most obvious traditions made God a Him, reflecting  post-tribal, cultural control of society by male leadership. Before those large, organized societies evolved, there were limited size societies, dealing with day-to-day survival with face-to-face relationships, necessarily more egalitarian by nature as everyone had to learn to understand and cooperate with each other.

So meditating on God, for me, would have to be about the hows and whys of the invention of Him for managing increasingly large, human societies that never existed before in nature. And about humans needing to fit into their society, with “larger purpose”, whatever that is perceived or enforced to be.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by PopeBeanie.

[Simon Paynton]

PopeBeanie wrote:

necessarily more egalitarian by nature as everyone had to learn to understand and cooperate with each other.

I think it’s more the case that everyone had their freedom, and that’s why everyone was equal.  In an absence of power structures, no one person had the power to command another, and therefore they were both free and equal.  That is consistent with saying there was no patriarchy too: women had their geographical and cultural freedom.  Later, after farming started, the couple would have been tied to their homestead, where the man could reassert control over the woman and the means of production.

Not only that, but the reason why egalitarianism was valued in the first place is that each person “matters” to themselves equally: each is equally a person with similar needs.

[Author]

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