Born to Do Math 186 – Spirituality, “Thoughts and Prayers,” and Prayer
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/09/22
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we talked a little bit about spirituality. We talked bluntly, in the not too distant past, about traditional religions. What about these practices? Is there any efficacy of prayer?
Rick Rosner: In the current American landscape, everything has been turned to crap because every time a bunch of people get shot up. The only thing they can say, especially politicians who want to say they are for gun control, is that they offer thoughts and prayers. If you live on Twitter, as I do, somebody is like, “Fuck you! Do something concrete because thoughts and prayers don’t do anything.” So, the efficacy of thoughts and prayers in the current American landscape is zero. They don’t do anything. They don’t even get people to do anything concrete in terms of action, except getting pissed off about the “thoughts and prayers” people.
Jacobsen: In this IC model, does prayer work?
Rosner: …No. Although, there is the Oprah model, The Secret, that what you actively wish for will come to you, which is mostly bullshit except if, by actively wishing for something, it causes you to either take action – to get ready to go after this thing – or makes you more able to perceive opportunities to find this thing in the world. So, wishing for things doesn’t make them happen, except that it prepares you to notice and go after these things, there’s the saying, “Chance favours the prepared mind,” or, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
If you work at something, and if wishing helps you change perceptual settings, then, “Yes,” but wishing all by itself doesn’t send a signal out into the world for it to send things to you shit; that it otherwise wouldn’t send you.
Jacobsen: So, there is nothing there to which you are praying. Therefore, there is nothing to help you, outside of changing your own perceptual system.
Rosner: Right. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray. It doesn’t mean you should expect things to happen if you do pray. You could cynically use it. Republican politicians are corrupt and not willing to do anything, and cowardly. People who have been selected via the recent trends in politics have been shitheels.
The deal is, I could imagine heroically cynical politician, of which there aren’t any on the Republican side, going ahead and saying, “Thoughts and prayers,” all the time. This generates tremendous outrage, then something is done, but no one is doing that.
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