My little rant. (Main Forum)

by James, Australia, Friday, June 22, 2012, 00:29 (333 days ago) @ Benikira

Well, I didn't think it was a rant, Benikira, more an expression of some firmly held views.

Yet I was disappointed. I wanted him to say more or perhaps something different. I wanted to hear what he thought of that broader concept of prayer that others in the string have explored and spoken about. Never mind.

If Ziegler had turned his mind to this aspect of prayer, I'm sure that he would have made some comment along the lines of Newberg and Waldman. He writes a weekly column, often pointing out the inadequacies of evidence for natural therapies, Mayan calendars, Deepak Chopra and his quantum therapies and frauds of various kinds. And the criticism usually comes down to the same thing - the lack of reliable evidence. However, in the case of the kind of prayer you are talking about, there is some reliable evidence. Likewise there is some reliable evidence for the effects of the type of evidence that he was criticising. But I don't think that was the purpose of the article.

I was further disappointed that Ziegler continued with this narrow understanding of prayer and didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that despite all the nonsense there might be another side to it.

I'll be seeing him soon, (I'm in Colombia at the moment, hence the odd hours at which I seem to be posting) and I will ask him about what he thinks of Newberg and Waldman.

You suggest starting with the Our Father, the prayer that God himself taught us. That God himself taught us? Crikey! Are you serious or like the brother Enda spoke about recently, being sarcastic?

No. I wasn't being sarcastic, maybe indulging in a bit of irony, because I don't really believe it myself. In the Church liturgies there is often an invitation to say the prayer that "The Lord Himself taught us". And Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, isn't He?

Had Jesus really been asked about how to pray I reckon he would have come up with something better than the Our Father.

Maybe. And the Our Father is probably just another myth added on by the Evangelists. But that is not what the Church liturgy says it is. It asserts he really did teach us to pray in this way. I never thought the priest was being in the slighest bit metaphorical when he invites the congregation to say the Our Father, telling us it is the way we have been taught to pray by the Redeemer.

If Ziegler doesn’t believe in the idea of prayer in the sense of asking for favours from a Supreme Being and you don’t believe it and I don’t believe it and Brian doesn’t believe it, hasn’t the problem gone away at least for us? Perhaps we could do a survey!

The vast majority of believing Christians do not accept your narrow definition of prayer, and see the Our Father as the way taught to us by the Second Person of the Trinity. Indeed, I would agree with the Tredentines that you are a bunch of heretics. I think I am even worse than that - or better, depending on your point of view.