|
An Atheist Who Prays |
|
Anytime you take time out, cast off your pressing concerns, and open yourself to your mind's infinite variety of options, you start breathing more slowly and deeply. Your heart rate and blood pressure settle down. You feel better. Best of all, you set yourself up for taking a more optimistic outlook and for making decisions that align with your purest intentions and most heartfelt hopes. It doesn't matter what you call the object of your attention in this condition, it's the condition that improves your condition.
Sigmund Freud writes in Moses and Monotheism My most tolerant believer friends have told me they believe that all religious people actually address the same god by different names. I simply take it one step further. My most intolerant atheist friends have balked at attending secular meetings in church basements. I refuse to limit myself that way.
So even though I agree with
Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion It's no surprise to me that prayer still works, when it works, no matter how it works. |
|
|
that faith
in God just might help the believer enjoy a richly introspective life. He
argues further that the Jewish religion gave its people the advantage of
intellectual abstraction. The fact that Freud, an unrepentant atheist,
accomplished a whole lot of abstract thinking makes me think that introspection with or without God or
gods might just do the same thing.|
|
|
Don't take my word for it. Dig deeper. |
|
|
