zodiac17 Oct 2005

Firstly, something like "I hope I can poop today, it's been so long" is not a prayer. Nor is it necessarily related to faith in some higher power. Nor is it true or even remotely supportable that "Any human being has prayed for help at least once in his life", nor is it true that the structure of every hope is essentially a prayer, "Please, let X happen". Nor is it true or proveable that an animal leaving its den doesn't think, to the extent it's capable of thinking, "I hope a hawk doesn't eat me."

It is, however, probably true that faith developed as a result of hope. When life or death depended on, say, rain falling at a certain time or there not being a drought, people made up physical manifestations of their hopes of not dying, with backstories and other semiunrelated powers. All of this and all of the preceding conversation, of course, hinge on there not having been at any point in history a voice from the sky telling people to have faith. Given that this doesn't even come under discussion here unless I, the best atheist of all of you, drag it in, I proclaim us all spectacularly unqualified to discuss any of this.

In addition, the inevitable next phase of this conversation, "Don't atheists really have FAITH that God DOESN'T EXIST?", should be avoided at all costs, lest we all actually do go blind from stupidity.