Does praying have any positive effect on the person doing it? How about on the person being prayed for? Since praying is considered a form of meditation, I am curious about the actual benefits that one can get out of it and if there are atheists who also practice it. Furthermore, can believing in the Law of Attraction be considered a superstition (I'm talking about the one that is being talked about in the book "The Secret", which is attracting one's predominant thoughts)?
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There should be a placebo effect, like taking a pill which has no actual medical effect. If you don't know you're being prayed for it would have no effect.
That makes sense.
Lily - "Furthermore, can believing in the Law of Attraction be considered a superstition"
Oh I certainly think so. I think that as we see the major formal religions decline, we will see a marked increase in this kind of non-sense. As a species, we seem to want to live in a magical world; where we are special snowflakes. According, as we spit the pacifier of mainstream religion out, we seek to quickly replace it with the first pacifier we can get our hands on, caring not that it came from a pile of shit.
Dear Lily,
The most important effect praying had on me is that I found my way of talking to God and asking from God and realizing that there is someone who deserves to be worship and be thanked for the blessings. It's a gift of God. While you stand in respect and bow in respect to your Lord you are free from worldly problems and associations for a while and you think about hereafter and you go through your life and promise to obey the commandments of Almighty that are for our own benefit in this life and the hereafter. Its has many spiritual benefits too. Its a mean of relaxing your soul and nourishing it with peace and satisfaction. It makes you humble and strong at the same time. You know you only bow down to your creator. You only ask from your creator. And when you're praying you know there is nothing between you and your creator. Atleast I feel so whenever I pray. I pray 5 times a day. I wait for the prayer time. Sometimes I just want to stand in the prayer for hours n hours. Because its so simple yet so meaningful. Praying refreshed your mind. It forbids wrongdoing and immorality. Praying gives you purpose. A purpose you would not find anywhere else.
I'll end it with this beautiful verse of the beautiful Holy Quran and saying of beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
[98:5] And they have been commanded no more than this: To worship Allah, offering Him sincere devotion, being true (in faith); to establish regular prayer; and to practise regular charity; and that is the Religion Right and Straight.
The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him and his progeny) said: “Whenever the time of each prayer arrives, an Angel announces to the people: (O’ People
Stand up and extinguish, with prayers, the fire which you have set alight for yourselves.”
The Prophet used to stand (in the prayer) or pray till both his feet or legs swelled. He was asked why (he offered such an unbearable prayer) and he said, “should I not be a thankful slave.”
The last sentence is really disturbing. A "thankful slave"? Why would anyone want to be a slave?
It is the wish to be a slave, the main doctrine and objective of a theistic religion.
Originally created by the roman empire to control the slave population from revolting with the Jews against Rome, copied and improved upon by the church and later empires.
Like Constantine, Charlemagne, Roman Chatolic Church, Pre-Islamic leaders, etc...
Jamal is just a perfect example of a successful product of this process called theistic religion.
There was a thought in the scientific community that prayer did, perhaps, impart some kind of placebo effect in the user, with the idea being that if people wished them well, it would impart a sense of togetherness and wishful optimism. What happened was that after the controls were considered and the dust settled, it turned out that the people being prayed for did statistically worse than those who had a basic placebo treatment. Some speculated that the idea of people wishing you well imparted a sense of guilt that you were obligated to get better to answer the prayers of the hopeful, which created stress. I won't speculate to the specifics on that, but I will paraphrase George Carlin when he brought up the idea of the divine plan.
Most people who believe in a god believe that this being has some sort of divine plan created ostensibly at the creation of all things. Such is the length of time that such a being can have for a blueprint. The problem with prayer is that what does it matter if you pray? If it's the divine's will that be done in seeing your family member die of some miserable cancer, then who are you as a creation to judge or attempt to alter the will of the creator? And supposing that's a known fact and that 'Deus Vult', then why bother praying in the first place?
That's actually an interesting study. And George Carlin is a genius! Everytime I ask the same questions from religious people, I usually just get a shrug, an awkward silence, or a deflective answer that's irrelevant.
the attention of prayer and its abdication of responsibility could feed a sense of hopelessness. i forget the study but a clinical trial of prayer found it had a negative effect on the mood of the terminaly ill.