“Day of Prayer.”

[br0k3n 0]

I will admit that this is post verbatim from another forum I read, and in light of all the god talk of late, I thought this raised a good point..

Now can any of the God squad here perhaps help us understand how this praying thing works?

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President Bush has today, September 16th, designated as a “Day of Prayer.”

Why are we waiting till the 16th? Why not everyday? Are we praying ALL DAY or just for a bit in the morning? Should we fast as well? What if some don't pray, will God turn away? Does a certain amount of humans have to pray to satisfy the Hurricane God? What if we are one thoughtful prayer off of the quota? Will God give in? Didn't they Pray BEFORE the storm hit? Did God steer it more easterly into Mississippi to avert a New Orleans direct hit? Why Pray? Who does it help, the person praying, or the intended prayer recipient? Who do we pray to? Bush's God, or the Muslim God, or the Pope's God? Or the Hindu God or the Buddhist – oops – they don't have one, or doesn't it matter, just so we pray? What do the Atheists and Agnostics do that day? Okay, I'll pray if it'll help, but to whom?

What if I pray to the wrong God and the real God gets mad, and throws another hurricane, like a Frisbee, into the Gulf? Is it then MY fault? Forget it. I'm afraid to pray to a deity that would allow this to happen in the first place. He will answer my "after storm" prayers, but would not answer or comfort those at the bottom of this city in their greatest time of need? What are my chances? Is God teaching the USA a lesson by making the poor and impoverished folks who live below sea level, suffer even more?

Bush/LA Gov/ N.O. City Mayor is going to need more than a God to clean and rebuild this mess. Oh, they have it. Good old-fashioned Americans, giving all they got to help.

We're like that, you know. God or no God.

Thank God...or the founding fathers. Your choice

-----------------------------------------------------------
--+ There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.. --+

[Trent 0]

I'll take a stab. How about the author should lighten up. Having a "day of prayer" is a gesture. I'd think pretty much anyone would think of it as a nice gesture. I've known atheists who've been told that someone would pray for them... they didn't have a problem with it, appreciated it, and walked on thinking that it was useless anyway. No big deal. A "day of prayer" also further brings attention to an event where people need help... that can't be bad either. I can't see how anyone would have a problem having a "day of prayer" established since you never hear of them telling people that it is only for Christians or Buddhists or something. If you want to offer your prayers to whoever it is you pray to... join the others who would do the same thing at the same time. If not, go about your business. I don't see how praying to your god could do any harm.

Oh, hello again!

[CornishChris 5]

Pray to me.

CJP

Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people

[Sen.Blutarsky 0]

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Pray to me.

CJP

Yes. But where shall I send the checks or wire transfers?


Blutarsky 2008. No Prisoners!

[EricTheRed 0]

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Pray to me.

CJP

Yes. But where shall I send the checks or wire transfers?


Blutarsky 2008. No Prisoners!

I'd be happy to PM you my paypal ID...

illegible usually

[rwieder 0]

Trent:

It's about time some one of your stature in the sky diving world stepped up on this issue. My hat is off to you, this speaks volumes of your charachter.

-Richard-
"You're Holding The Rope And I'm Taking The Fall"

[kallend 2,027]

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Trent:

It's about time some one of your stature in the sky diving world stepped up on this issue. My hat is off to you, this speaks volumes of your charachter.

Just curious, what does skydiving ability have to do with opinions on politics, religion, guns, etc.? Would you extend the same deference to a movie star's opinions?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Channman 2]

Trent is a skydiving GOD...but we don't pray to him, just bow in respect as he walks by. The girls they just make some sort of cuing sound.

You could say he is part of a trinity.

[jakee 1,489]

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It's about time some one of your stature in the sky diving world stepped up on this issue. My hat is off to you, this speaks volumes of your charachter.

Yes, I too am glad that someone took on the vital issue of whether or not prayer days actually mean anything. I'm sure the nation will rest easy knowing some top minds are at work on this problem.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Trent 0]

Should I be offended by that?

My opinion doesn't matter any more or less because of anything my team's done. If someone is glad to hear what I said, let them be glad. I've felt the same way when someone I've known said something that surprised me. Plenty of people here disagree and people get riled up when someone agrees on something?

So does anyone disagree with the idea that a national Day of Prayer isn't a bad thing?

Oh, hello again!

[jakee 1,489]

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Should I be offended by that?

Absolutely not, I thought your post was pretty good and I agreed with it. I was just surprised that rweider attached such significance to the issue. It just didn't seem to me to be an issue that anyone needed to 'step up' to. Not to say no one should discuss it (I know I talk about some right bollocks on here) it is just that its not really important. Have prayer days or don't have 'em, nothing changes. That's all I was getting at.



And your team does kinda rock

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[kallend 2,027]

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Trent is a skydiving GOD...but we don't pray to him, just bow in respect as he walks by. The girls they just make some sort of cuing sound.

You could say he is part of a trinity.

I thought it was an anomaly.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Trent 0]

Hahaha, okay fair enough. I was like... I know I'm not a great mind here... but people don't have to actually SAY that!
Anyway... no one's disagreeing in here... kinda freaks me out. Later!

Oh, hello again!

[immanence 0]

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Having a "day of prayer" is a gesture. I'd think pretty much anyone would think of it as a nice gesture ... A "day of prayer" also further brings attention to an event where people need help... that can't be bad either. I can't see how anyone would have a problem having a "day of prayer" established ... I don't see how praying to your god could do any harm

It is much more than a gesture, but it doesn't do harm: unless, that is, you believe that slavery and silence and the non-accountability of government does harm.

"Day of prayer"? Day Bush and associates hope national attention will be turned away from their gross incompetancy and callous disregard for blacks and the poor, more like. I don't think it's a "nice gesture". It's a classic evasive gesture that states and governments typically pull when there's some kind of crisis and their asses are on the line. Domestic backruptcy? Let's start a war! Natural disaster in which we are culpable by way of the reduced, under-funded defenses we ignored (hell, anyway, it was where the poor live)? I know! Let's get 'em praying!

It doesn't matter who you pray to. That's not the point. In fact, if a little social cohesion could be built up temporarily by all religions pulling together then go for it: beem that live 24-7 on CNN. The point is you're on your knees, while the government catches its breath and lines up the media for a recovery photo-op.

"You may think I'm cynical, but there ain't no ring through this nose." — Edward Abbey

"where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'

[rehmwa 2]

Wow - I'm not religious at all and think it's harmless.

Futile - but good intentions and supportive to those that have similar belief.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Trent 0]

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It is much more than a gesture, but it doesn't do harm: unless, that is, you believe that slavery and silence and the non-accountability of government does harm.

Heeere we go... please, enlighten all of us as to why having a day of prayer can be lightened to being silent during slavery. I'm sure your explanation will be VERY thorough and well thought out... of course, it'll still be a stretch and probably wrong to boot, but whatever.

I don't know where you've lived or where you're from, but if you think that having a day of prayer is a government attempt to get us to all bow our heads so they can do something sneaky... you just might be a little naive. Like we can't pay attention if we spend a few minutes out of a day to give thoughts to those affected by an event.... right.

Pretty much everything the president does is a photo-op somehow or another, he doesn't have to make an event to get in the papers.

But hey, your probably right... we're all sheep and blindly turn our heads when commanded. Only people who think similarly to you can truly SEE the light.

Oh, hello again!

[immanence 0]

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Like we can't pay attention if we spend a few minutes out of a day to give thoughts to those affected by an event .... right

I won't take the bait of your personal comments: please feel free to think and feel as you wish. That's fine by me.

On the substance, I don't think it's a stretch — and certainly not naive; on the contrary — to see a close connection between politics and religion. Machiavelli, who was a thoroughgoing secularist, practically an atheist, had great reverence for the disciplining capacities of recourse to thoughts about divine provenance. Giovanno Botero who followed, and who wrote the classic Reason of State, while berating Machiavelli, whom he saw as coniving, was even more specific about the diversionary uses of religion. You believe it's a stretch, but the very foundations of the political systems within which we find ourselves are built on ideas like this. Marx understood these foundations better than most and was unashamed when he called religion the "opiate of the people." Even Voltaire and the fathers of the European enlightenment, while bringing it under yolk of reason, were careful not to dispense with religion completely (e.g., see Voltaire's letters to Frederick II of Prussia in which he exalts the "admirable order" and "immense power" of the divine).

The content of my post may seem extreme to you, but it is outlandish in neither the fields of social psychology or political philosophy. I am not alone in thinking like this. In many ways, the entirety of the modern era has thought in this way about religion ..... but of this you seem unaware. Hegel, who otherwise wrote the secular constitution of the modern state, put it this way:

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It may at first seem strange that people recommend and resort to religion, above all in times of public distress, chaos, and oppression, and that they are referred to it for consolation in the face of wrong and for hope as a compensation for loss. When it is further regarded as a precept of religion that we ought to treat worldly interests and the run of events with indifference [...] this religious advice does not seem calculated to promote the interest and business of the state as an essential and serious end [...] But the essential determinant of the relationship between religion and the state can be discovered only if we recall the concept of religion. The content of religion is absolute truth [...] As intuition, feeling, and representational cognition whose concern is with God as the unlimited foundation and cause on which everything depends, it contains the requirement that everything else should be seen in relation to this and should recieve confirmation, justification, and the assurance of certainty from this source. It is within this relationship that the state, laws, and duties all receive their highest endorsement as far as the consciousness is concerned, and become surpremely binding upon it; for even the state, laws, and duties are in their actuality something determinate which passes over into the higher sphere as that in which its foundation lies ... (The Philosophy of Right § 270)

Hegel marks the firm opening of the modern era. As to now, I'd say we wouldn't be paying attention if we didn't note how firmly this administration — that of George W Bush — is grounded in (or seeks to project the image of being grounded in) religion. Someone praying of their own volition in this instance (relative to the Katrina disaster), I have no problem with. But when a day of prayer is declared, my ears prick up. I think if anyone is naive it is he who thinks, upon hearing this, "Our leaders have compassion!"

I'm not saying you — or I, for that matter — can't pay attention. But clearly the introduction of the divine has supplementary effects: 1) It mobilizes the individual to act, principally in the name of Christian values (hence taking the burden off the government, to which Americans — especially the poor — already pay dearly in taxes); 2) It equalizes the government / state with the citizen before an all-powerful, angry God (again the disaster becomes something that individuals, as much as government-funded emergency agencies, should respond to); 3) It is a reminder of "higher powers", which too often by this administration have been evoked to underline the rightfulness — practically the destiny — of neoconservative policy. The combined effect is to blur into indistinction the question "Who is to blame?" Did Hurricane Katrina cause the disaster, or did people die afterwards, as a result of the levies breaking because of ill repair and ill preparation?

No wonder George W Bush is up there leading the prayer. All of a sudden, he's not the secular president (remember, this administration has no comprehension of the concept of accountability) but the priest. Haven't his speech writers, since that first, rather frightening, "end of days" inaugural back in 2001, tried to cultivate his "wise if clumsy" persona? The poetic hyperbole is past laughable most of the time. A lot of people think he's a good president, however. Why? In part for the same reasons the US has numberless channels of God TV.

So we mark this day of prayer with solemnity and reflection. God, evoked as the ultimate author, is immune to criticism and civil action which might otherwise have targetted nefarious political negligence (the channelling of public funds to an illegal overseas war at the expense of ensuring the basic defence of life at home; which, afterall, is the very basis of the social contract). The state, sworn to protect life, liberty and property certainly failed in two out of three. No, you respond as though my words were those of a lunatic, when in fact I am simply reflecting upon political principles and a history of mentalities of government — dark, perhaps — which, aside from anywhere else, is enshrined in your very constitution.

"where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'

[rehmwa 2]

So you speak to perceived government authority having a normalizing effect for certain positions. At least for those that are dependent on that authority to define themselves - on a large population scale. It is only perceived, since the reflection is purely voluntary, but still, I concede the analysis although consider it possibly powerful a few generations ago, that today's world these attempts (if intentional rather than just well meaning) are largely going unnoticed by the populace as a whole.

Even so does this analysis have an analogy to when the president designates a hypothetical "National African American Day" or a "National Enviromental Day" or a "National Handicap Day" etc? I'd think the attempts are similar - what makes one better than the other?

Or is it just bad when it's religion?

Edit: The other point, is whether it's intentional to try to create the effect you wish, or is the potential effects you claim just incidental from what's really just a well intentioned gesture by people who consider their perspective as normal. Listening to the Congressment (r and d) in the Roberts review - I don't think that politicians are that subtle. I do think most have good intentions just not a clear ability to link to long term results. In the end, it's always about conflicting culture trying to normalize itself using government as a mirror. It's neither beneficial nor nefarious, just a reflection of the various culture basis we have.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Trent 0]

On the eve of yet another hurricane that will be most likely blamed on the government... I simply don't have the time to respond to your academically oriented post. However, I would ask if you have ever actually lived in the US, or even been here. It really sounds like you don't grasp the true nature of what people are like here, let alone the tax burdens that we bear. It is nice that you will back your arguments with Hegel, Machiavelli and others... but it doesn't make it so. Sure, great thinkers have their points, but for you to apply misdirection and manipulation because of a day of prayer is ludicrous at best and paranoid at worst. Making an intelligent argument for what amounts to a tin-hat conspiracy theory doesn't change what it really is.

But nice post! Very thoughtful.

Oh, hello again!

[immanence 0]

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But nice post! Very thoughtful

Thanks for replying. Yes, I did live in the US, for two years. I lived in Providence, Phoenix and New York City. I have visited a great number of other American cities and towns, both during those years and at other times.

You win. I was simply trying to better outline my differing viewpoint, which seemingly to you is worthless. In a way, I hope you're right. I suspect you're wrong. The lines of force that I try in my work to decipher in detailed ways — the genealogy of modern governmental rationalities — affect me as much as you. But I will speak of it no further: I sense that your mind is decided on these issues. Fair enough.

Just for my own sake, however, and to put meat on the bones of her retort, kindly elaborate on how I misdirect and manipulate the great thinkers I referenced in my post. Just a few indicators would suffice.

Thanks again

"where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'

[Trent 0]

I think I meant "IMPLY" not "apply". Sorry, I'm packing up at the DZ to get out of the way of Nature's wraith, so I was in a hurry.

I never said your view was worthless, I just think it's far fetched and wrong... just as you think the same of my views. From many of your posts, I have a feeling we will disagree on almost everything, but since when did that ever stop anyone from posting?

Oh, hello again!

[immanence 0]

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I never said your view was worthless, I just think it's far fetched and wrong ...

Truly and quite honesty I hope that you are right. I sense, though (and I may be wrong) that the history of the evolution of techniques of political control is only ever upward: same as the law, every loophole is eventually closed. Arundhati Roy has a powerful metaphor and I believe her. She says, "They are sealing all the exits." I guess a lot depends, perhaps, on where one stands; what one's vantage is. Living in the Middle East for four years certainly brought certain things out into relief. Believe me, Trent, holding up a Halloween mask to the mirror (or anyone else) is not of interest to me. I just can't lose sight of the fact that we're only 60 years on from the vast social experiment of fascism, and other experiments including clinical psychiatry and cybernetics as originally understood. I just try to keep an eye on things. I'm not alone: wouldn't claim to be. I agree that paranoia is a real risk. I run that gauntlet continually and let me say, the real world as I have experienced it is far beyond anything that Chomsky or Howard Zinn can encapsulate. Both are important, but they're scratching the surface. The depth underneath is both far more mundane (i.e., often nothing to do with conspiracies or cabals) but all the more powerful, automatic and curious because of it.

best regards,
ian

"where danger is appears also that which saves ..." Friedrich Holderlin, 'Patmos'