From a psychological point Prayer, you talking and sharing your thoughts with God, is quite acceptable. Prayer works, not only on the well being of the person but in other ways. This is what you meant you found God.

I talk to my dead parents and sons. I do hear sometimes or think I hear answers. (In my head) This is coming from me, not an external source. But believing in the absolute truth in the Holy Bible is not necessary. It contains lies, myths, horror stories, and six day creation, when we know better.

Eastern religions believe that God is within all of us. The instinctive development of kindness, compassion, family life etc. It is a spiritual strength, and present naturally but some people just have not developed it. We have a cosmic connection, the universe and all that evolutionary phases, we in response to our adaption to the natural environment. And now we are ruining it with arguments between religions, atheists and agnostics, but it is a phase. I am a deist, and I believe there is something more than just biological direction, it is part of life on our planet, it loves us, wants us to multiply, and not kill each other, respect other life forms.

Being a hands on Christian is to me, being a Christian. Not repeating parts of the bible to explain oneself, or Opine 2 to point out the dreadful parts of the Bible. You are right, it can't be taken seriously. But don't blame Jesus or God, blame the autobiographers, and those that wish to profit from it.

Quite easily, Not_Now.Soon.

<<It might not be your intent to judge religious couples on their ability to parent, but how can you separate that kind of judgement and still call it abuse.>>

Firstly, because the ability of any given religious couple to parent is not my concern. Secondly, because it still is a form of abuse. I’ve explained why quite a few times now.

Whether my words could be used to examine the fitness of religious couples to be parents is separate to whether that is what I actually want to be doing.

<<Let me tell you my knowledge of faith in family.>>

I don’t doubt any of that. I, too, had a very happy childhood with loving parents. That doesn’t change the fact that teaching children to accept a belief uncritically (for all the reasons I have already noted), and particularly teaching them that something as hideous and immoral as Hell exists, is a form of abuse.

<<… I'm sorry for when there are abuses mixed with a person's faith, but that is not the whole story.>>

At no point have I confused the two. I think I have already demonstrated the ability to distinguish between the two scenarios, and have explained why the difference is beside my point.

<<When as a whole faith promotes more healthy environments for people to come together...>>

This is highly debatable. It is an entire debate in itself. It can depend on what exactly you’re referring to. On a macro level, however, the evidence does not support your assertion:

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf
http://i.imgur.com/WkCW6ok.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdtwTeBPYQA

I don’t see how a world in which people sought to have as many true beliefs and as fewer false beliefs as possible could ever be worse than a world in which large numbers of people are willing to seek comfort in anything.

<<To answer this would you consider waiting to teach your kids about reading, about music, history, woodcarving, fishing, or how to play an instrument, debate, or play chess?>>

“… none of these are unprovable assertions that could have damaging effects if we’re wrong.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=8181#255736)

Continued…

…Continued

<<… my parents were of different religions they both believed in God.>>

What was the non-Christian religion, if you don’t mind me asking?

<<I would never want to deny those wonderful sets of experiences from any other kid.>>

Neither would have I. While I was still a Christian, that was.

It wasn’t until I lost my faith that I started to realise how much better my life could have been had I realised that there was no god looking out for me and that time spent ‘doing’ is so much more constructive than time spent praying.

Like the caller in video I linked Josephus to, I have had to learn at a late age how to deal with issues like death without the false hope of fantasy to help me through it, and it’s harder when you’re older.

Then there’s just the disappointment in the fact that I had spent so much of my life sounding like an idiot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URr0O9aHW38)

One doesn’t have to be a resentful dribbling mess, rocking in the corner with physical scars, to acknowledge that what their parents did could be considered a form of abuse. I think this is the part you’re having trouble getting over. If you think that telling me stories of wonderful religious childhood experiences changes anything I’ve said, then you haven’t been paying attention.

<<I … give to God my worries and have His comfort or have one of His solutions just drop into my lap.>>

How do you know that you didn’t just come up with the solutions yourself after calming down because you believed you had handed your worries over to a celestial father figure?

<<Knowing God does not stop our ability to think critically.>>

Of course not. But if you are unwilling to entertain the possibility that your god does not exist (as with the above), then you are being selective with your critical thinking. And if you think that it’s alright for a being to dish out infinite punishment for finite crimes, just because they’re more powerful than you, then your thoughts have been polluted.

To Bush Bunny.

I found God through prayer, before I accepted one religion over another. Various kinds of prayers that God responded to. I later sought to see if one of the main religions was from God, and to also see my if more then one was from God. Either way, I'm not going to fight over these words or the wording. In my life I found God first.

Is evolution a good enough reason to step away from a knowledge of God? Think like a detective on this. If you find two conflicting pieces of evidence what do you do? Do you take half if the evidence to make a theory of what happened and ignore the other half? I would hope not. But this is essentially what many non-Christians do when presented with events and experiences that have a supernatural origin. They try to reclassify it to see why it doesn't count, or that the other person was mistaken and that it never happened at all. After all to you you never witnessed the things the Christian says they witnessed, so it's easier to dismiss without careful thought.

For me I have to look at it as if I'm a detective. I have my first hand witness from my own life, and I hear the testimony of the lives around me. I come in contact with the physical evidence of the world, and with the studies of the world that cross multiple subjects. As a detective you need to account for each reliable source you have available, and to not dismiss the unreliable ones too quickly to favor a favorite conclusion.

(Continued)

(Continued)

Would you like one element to consider. Evolution is a conclusion not a piece of the puzzle. If it is right or wrong it does not change anything. You can add it or remove it from our understanding and the world stays the same regardless. God on the other hand is both a conclusion based on other pieces of the puzzle, as well as a giant piece of the puzzle itself. You have to examine if that piece is real or not. If it is not real then prayer is not answered, miracles don't happen, religious texts don't have divine authority, and millions of people who say they were saved from traumatic events because of God or angels are either delusional or liars. There is no other conclusion except to dismiss way too much to be counted as truthfully seeking what is true or not. If on the other hand, God is real then there is the both the conclusion of God fitting all the other pieces of evidence, as well as the interactive part where He plays a part of our lives and is a puzzle piece on it's own.

Don't let a half cocked conclusion be the means to dismiss other pieces of the puzzle. For instance prayer is not just a mediative practice. There are solutions that occur after a prayer that are not part of what the person rating does. It would be like talking to a neighbor and instead of later feeling better after expressing yourself and working out the solution on your own; instead of that the neighbor in their sympathy goes to work to help you out without your knowledge. That's how some prayer experiences pan out. A person strives for solutions but doesn't actually accomplish any, but then there's one that just drops in front of you. Like the heavens just opened up and the world work for you instead of against you. There are other examples of answered prayers but make no mistake. The claims of prayer are not the same that can be addressed by psychology self help theories.

Not_Now.Soon,

I feel the need to respond to some of your post to Bush bunny, because It appears to respond directly to a question of mine in my last response.

<<… prayer is not just a mediative practice. There are solutions that occur after a prayer that are not part of what the person rating [praying?] does.>>

How did you control for co-incidence and confirmation bias? Especially with a sample size of one!

<<A person strives for solutions but doesn't actually accomplish any, but then there's one that just drops in front of you. Like the heavens just opened up and the world work for you instead of against you.>>

That’s quite a claim. Do you have any examples of these?

<<The claims of prayer are not the same that can be addressed by psychology self help theories.>>

How did you rule out basic psychology? Or are you just alluding to the unexpected post-prayer solutions? Because they’re a new development since we last discussed the efficacy of prayer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer

On another note, why does intercessory prayer not work (it has the same success rate as flipping a coin)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer

Does God only answer prayers when they’re for the benefit of the one praying?

Even if God is answering your prayers, though, what does that say for a god who spends his time intervening in the life of some dude in a wealthy country like America, with his relatively trivial problems, while allowing millions of children around the world starve to death?

If all the starving children of the world prayed for themselves, would they receive food? And even if they did, why would an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god need to wait for them all to pray for themselves?

I don’t think you’ve thought this through properly.