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The Nature of Religion

Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby Lioba » December 12th, 2008, 10:14 pm

Iustitia est ad alterum.
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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby rusmeister » January 12th, 2009, 4:05 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby mitchellmckain » January 12th, 2009, 6:46 pm

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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby Kolbitar » January 13th, 2009, 11:11 am

The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton

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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby friendofbill » January 13th, 2009, 1:10 pm

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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby rusmeister » January 13th, 2009, 5:57 pm

Hi, FOB!
This is why I said "may". I don't pretend to read your mind, I only respond to the word that I see.

However, it seems to me that you have surely identified the exception, rather than the rule, in referencing people who repeat those prayers mindlessly.. All of my experience points to the opposite - that people who bother with such "prepared" prayers at all are actually trying, well or badly - but it is God Who accepts our rags - to address Him. Also, I don't think it would be easy at all to establish that others who recite these prayers are doing so unthinkingly.

Words spoken from the heart are also part of the Catholic, Anglo-Catholic and Orthodox Traditions; they don't get special attention precisely because they are purely individual. However, it is clear that the Protestant world, by and large, has completely lost sight of the purpose of prayers prepared over centuries by saints and godly people who look to the Lord's prayer as an ultimate model. The danger in the Western world is entirely of making prayer an expression of our own thoughts - as they are, rather than as they should be - to God. The threat of rote prayers becoming mindless is entirely miniscule in comparison. Where are we to learn what our prayers SHOULD be like if we do not take models? If we talk ONLY about what is troubling us and what WE want and hope for, if we rarely or ever turn to thankfulness, praising God's greatness, or learning to say "Thy will be done"?

I don't wish that to become a thread derailment - but I do wish to acknowledge what I think you are right on while still maintaining what I see the greatest danger in prayer to be.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby mitchellmckain » January 13th, 2009, 11:28 pm

I was going to make this same point that a prayer of one kind certainly does not preclude another kind of prayer. I was even going to point out what plays an almost identical role in the life of an evangelical Christian but you two have created such a hostile battleground of mutual ridicule that I see only hostility to the idea that actual practice could more comparable, than you would like to imagine, with practices of your denominations enshrined as you have done.
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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby rusmeister » January 14th, 2009, 3:35 am

Last edited by rusmeister on January 15th, 2009, 2:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby mitchellmckain » January 14th, 2009, 7:23 am

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Re: The Nature of Religion

Postby friendofbill » January 14th, 2009, 1:26 pm

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