A little while back, someone asked me ‘Why don’t you pray for goal X?’ and I said that there were theological difficulties with that and since we were about to go into the cinema, it was hardly the place for a proper theological discussion.
But that got me thinking, if there weren’t any theological problems with praying for things, would I do it? Well, maybe. The problem being that there’s a whole host of deities, with many requiring different approaches.
For example, If I learnt that the God of the Old Testament was right, I would probably change my set of acceptable actions very, very quickly. Perhaps another reasonable response would be to try and very carefully convince this God to change its mind about a couple of things, as though the God of the Old Testament is capable of change if I remember rightly.
On the other end of the spectrum, what about the Greek gods? Well, I think it would still be a good idea to try and convince them not be, you know, egotistical tyrants. Or failing that, humanity should probably try and contain them in some fashion, because who’d want someone like Zeus going about as they pleased?
And if Aristotle’s Prime mover were real… Well, I guess you’d just ignore it.
Anyway, I think Its a pretty interesting topic, if not a very useful one.
Any thoughts on how you’d react to any of humanities collection of deities?
A little while back, someone asked me ‘Why don’t you pray for goal X?’ and I said that there were theological difficulties with that and since we were about to go into the cinema, it was hardly the place for a proper theological discussion.
But that got me thinking, if there weren’t any theological problems with praying for things, would I do it? Well, maybe. The problem being that there’s a whole host of deities, with many requiring different approaches.
For example, If I learnt that the God of the Old Testament was right, I would probably change my set of acceptable actions very, very quickly. Perhaps another reasonable response would be to try and very carefully convince this God to change its mind about a couple of things, as though the God of the Old Testament is capable of change if I remember rightly.
On the other end of the spectrum, what about the Greek gods? Well, I think it would still be a good idea to try and convince them not be, you know, egotistical tyrants. Or failing that, humanity should probably try and contain them in some fashion, because who’d want someone like Zeus going about as they pleased?
And if Aristotle’s Prime mover were real… Well, I guess you’d just ignore it.
Anyway, I think Its a pretty interesting topic, if not a very useful one.
Any thoughts on how you’d react to any of humanities collection of deities?