Unanswerable Prayers

[dgriffin]

Good piece.





Unanswerable Prayers


What’s an atheist to think when thousands of believers (including prominent rabbis and priests) are praying for his survival and salvation—while others believe his cancer was divinely inspired, and hope that he burns in hell? Related: The first in the series, “Topic of Cancer,” by Christopher Hitchens.

www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/10/hitchens-201010

Wiki: Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949) is an English-born author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.[2] He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual.

[Clipper]

I guess I would have to number myself among the "believers" that he speaks about and be happy that I am not so damned intelligent as to have to analyze every thought and break down every theory that passes through my mind in an average day.

While not a religious person, I have had events take place in my life that can only be attributed to divine intervention. I honestly believe that, and it brings me comfort to believe in a divine being that holds our "fate" in his, or it's, hands.

How sad my life would be if I thought that I had to come to some sort of intellectual deduction and earthly justification for every thing that occurs in my life, or passes through my mind in a day.

How grief stricken I would be if I didn't have the comfort of believing that I would once again be united with my loved ones when this life on earth is done.

It was my recovery from alcoholism that brought me to "God". I had come to a point in my life where drinking dominated my days and nights and I was hopelessly addicted to the stuff. It had devastated my life and I had tried to quit on several occasions. I was convinced that I was a hopeless alcoholic and would die at a young age as a result of it. I did manage to try one more time, and attended a church service and did that "silly Christian thing" and answered the alter call and accepted Christ. One can say what they like, but it was the very next morning when I awoke with a new hope in my heart, and checked myself into a rehab and was able to start down a successful road to recovery that began a new and more successful life which has lasted for over 30 years now. THAT to me is "divine intervention" and to me, it can only be attributed to a supreme being or deity beyond any earthly being.

How sad life must be thinking that there is no God and that "love, hope, and faith" are all figments of the human imagination.

I guess along with no desire to subscribe to atheism, I also don't care to subscribe to the intellectual necessity to see physical proof for every thing that happens in my life. To be so highly intellectual also brings a life of skepticism and pessimism. I will thankfully live out MY days as a "foolish believer" and wait and see if the proof becomes evident when I am reunited with my loved ones in a place where us "believers" will spend eternity. It gives me much more comfort than to slog through life simply waiting for that one event that will knock us down dead, and to be buried in the ground to rot, as our final end.

I guess some are given more brains, and less soul than others, but then, to those "intellectually superior" folks, the soul is another figment of the imagination because it doesn't appear on any anatomical charts. The intellectuals and atheists can have their "superior intelligence and powers of deduction" and the atheists can diss my God and ridicule my faith, but in the end, I am a much happier being than they could ever possibly be. I WILL pray for them, although they think it futile.

[dgriffin]

I've come to the conclusion that some people get it and some don't. That's about all I've learned about the spirit that I can say for sure.

I've always enjoyed Hitchens' writing and he does have a fine mind. I'm not troubled by his or anyone's lack of belief, for their sake or mine. There are enough problems brought to us by people who want to press their particular beliefs on the rest of us.

[Clipper]

[/quote]There are enough problems brought to us by people who want to press their particular beliefs on the rest of us.[/quote]

I agree, and there is one person in particular that comes to mind. He is the present President of the United States.

[stoney]

Sept 5, 2010 13:14:32 GMT -5 Clipper said:

There are enough problems brought to us by people who want to press their particular beliefs on the rest of us.[/quote]

I agree, and there is one person in particular that comes to mind. He is the present President of the United States. [/quote]

HUH?

[Clipper]

What do ya mean "Huh?" What didn't you understand in that simple statement dear?