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The "TryPraying" UK Campaign: Religion For Atheists & Sceptics

Ermintruder

Ermintruder

The greatest risk is to risk nothing at all...
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
6,201
There appears to be quite a well-funded media campaign (advertising posters and online) centred around the phrase /tagline 'TryPraying' (or 'trypraying').

See http://www.trypraying.co.uk

What I find odd about this it's a Christian religious group's attempt to deliberately-attract atheists and sceptics into religion via a seven-day personal bootcamp of experiencing the purported power of praying to the God of Judeo-Christian tradition.

I'm going to call this movement pseudo-rationalised covert evangelism.

I feel the whole concept is a disturbing blend of self-parody and misdirection.

It uses a deliberately-understated communication style to make what are some outrageously-flawed claims (in addition to the implicit 'miracles in a week or a full refund')

It's Atheist reprogramming background material starts off with a statement that I'm broadly in support of...
Who would want to believe, when the facts are lacking and the results are negative? Q.E.D. It’s nonsense. The whole faith thing is a man-made invention for people who can’t face facts, a fairy tale invented by people who are afraid of the dark.
Click to expand...

.....but it then goes off into some of the most self-indulgent religious circularities ever possible. In particular, I love the last sentence in the paragraph below:
Atheists frequently say much more than ‘I don’t believe’. It’s often a positive assertion: ‘There is no God.’ (Not all atheists would say that, some are less convinced saying just that they don’t belive in God.) But do the ‘convinced’ atheists have a solid factual basis informing their view? What is the evidence for God’s non-existence?
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It continues with an astounding unassailable assertion:
It may be someone’s conviction that God doesn’t exist, but it cannot be their knowledge. In order to be sure there is no God one has to have searched, not just planet earth, but the whole of the universe literally, physically and metaphysically, and with complete certainty say, there is no trace of God anywhere. Clearly such a search is impossible. It requires a knowledge base beyond comprehension for any person or persons.
Click to expand...

I find the whole 'TryPraying' movement humourously horrifying, and would welcome some opinions from the Forum.
 
Ermintruder said:
There appears to be quite a well-funded media campaign (advertising posters and online) centred around the phrase /tagline 'TryPraying' (or 'trypraying').

See http://www.trypraying.co.uk

What I find odd about this it's a Christian religious group's attempt to deliberately-attract atheists and sceptics into religion via a seven-day personal bootcamp of experiencing the purported power of praying to the God of Judeo-Christian tradition.

I'm going to call this movement pseudo-rationalised covert evangelism.

I feel the whole concept is a disturbing blend of self-parody and misdirection.

It uses a deliberately-understated communication style to make what are some outrageously-flawed claims (in addition to the implicit 'miracles in a week or a full refund')

It's Atheist reprogramming background material starts off with a statement that I'm broadly in support of...


.....but it then goes off into some of the most self-indulgent religious circularities ever possible. In particular, I love the last sentence in the paragraph below:


It continues with an astounding unassailable assertion:


I find the whole 'TryPraying' movement humourously horrifying, and would welcome some opinions from the Forum.
Click to expand...

It's likely that everyone DOES pray. Most of us are taught to do it as children. It comes naturally.

Who hasn't muttered 'Please God, let my fuel last another mile!' or 'God, make this cold go away before my holiday!'

Besides which, I've read that 'the desire to pray is a prayer in itself. 'So they've already got us cornered.
 
I can't see how it would work to be honest. I'm now an Old Catholic rather than a Pisky because I tried praying - but I was already in the prayer camp. Can't think of a way to express it.

It's attempting to get people to pull them selves up by their own bootstraps.
 
Ermintruder said:
It continues with an astounding unassailable assertion:

It may be someone’s conviction that God doesn’t exist, but it cannot be their knowledge. In order to be sure there is no God one has to have searched, not just planet earth, but the whole of the universe literally, physically and metaphysically, and with complete certainty say, there is no trace of God anywhere. Clearly such a search is impossible. It requires a knowledge base beyond comprehension for any person or persons.
Click to expand...

That is the gist of a posting I did on another thread - to test empirically whether God exists or not, you have to take a Universe with God in it and compare it to a Universe without God in it. Then apply your observations/measurements to our Universe to get your answer. In other words, the existence of God is simply not a scientific question, you need to use other branches of Natural Philosophy to investigate. To me (not taking a poke at anyone) the danger lies in assuming that if a question cannot be answered by Science, then it isn't worth asking. I believe in Photosynthesis, I don't believe in String theory, I leave religion to the experts.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Except that many atheists (such as myself) went through all of that in their youth and don't wish to do it all over again.
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Yup, you grow out of it.

The ex and I were strongly anti-Church. Can remember my sister telling me how my little nephew had asked her the usual question, 'Can God even see me when I'm on the toilet?'
I felt proud that my own children would never say that!
 
Proving the non existence of something with 100% certainty is pretty much impossible.

So using that as an argument that something unlikely may yet exist has no real merit.

Can I be certain leprechauns don't exist? Folklore accounts exist of encounters with them.

Even if I searched the entire universe and found no leprechauns, maybe I was just searching the wrong places at the wrong time. Or maybe leprechauns can turn invisible. Or disguise themselves as management consultants.

Secondly there's the problem that even if God does exist, they may be nothing like any of the various deities described by our religions.
 
Graylien said:
Secondly there's the problem that even if God does exist, they may be nothing like any of the various deities described by our religions.
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The 'old' deities seemed more interesting than the Methodist God of my childhood who could see me in my most private moments but couldn't stop me being bullied or prevent my beloved Gran's death.
 
escargot said:
The 'old' deities seemed more interesting than the Methodist God of my childhood who could see me in my most private moments but couldn't stop me being bullied or prevent my beloved Gran's death.
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What I find deplorable, is the notion that should faith in your personal God be challenged, by an event which causes great suffering - perhaps the tragic death of a child - it can be interpreted as a test from your God.

What an appalling accepance of such a perverse act, just so you can still believe a reward in heaven awaits.

We wouldn't inflect such pain on someone, merely to test their adoration.

Doesn't that mean we are consequently more loving than any God, especially one acting like a despotic dictator.
 
Comfortably Numb said:
What I find deplorable, is the notion that should faith in your personal God be challenged, by an event which causes great suffering - perhaps the tragic death of a child - it can be interpreted as a test from your God.

What an appalling accepance of such a perverse act, just so you can still believe a reward in heaven awaits.

We wouldn't inflect such pain on someone, merely to test their adoration.

Doesn't that mean we are consequently more loving than any God, especially one acting like a despotic dictator.
Click to expand...

Depends on how you interpret God. He may know what would have happened if the child hadn't died (I raise that only as an example).
 
Comfortably Numb said:
What I find deplorable, is the notion that should faith in your personal God be challenged, by an event which causes great suffering - perhaps the tragic death of a child - it can be interpreted as a test from your God.
What an appalling accepance of such a perverse act, just so you can still believe a reward in heaven awaits. ...
Click to expand...

I agree ... There's hardly any way to deconstruct the basis for this attitude without somehow presuming:

- It's all about you (implying others are merely stage props in your own personal play);

- An almighty deity is concerned about re-certifying your faith via stress testing; and ...

- You don't mind your deepest faith being vested in a deity given to doing awful things in support of such testing.

However ...

I'm not sure this "Why me? Did I pass the test?" attitude is worse than the attitude of blowing off tragedies as "God's will."
 
A praying course for atheists ?

Got to be the oxymoron of the century.
 
escargot said:
The way I see it, it's all infantile. Surrendering your destiny and free will to a god is like trusting your parents to fill the fridge and launder your clothes when you're a kid. Comes a time when you realise it's all down to yourself.
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Yep.

As old Billy watched his departed mother lowered into the ground, he burst into tears.

'Come, Billy, it's hard. We understand'.

But Aunty, who's going to do my laundry ?
 
EnolaGaia said:
I'm not sure this "Why me? Did I pass the test?" attitude is worse than the attitude of blowing off tragedies as "God's will."
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Precisely, could not concur more.

One aspect is when we see news footage of a natural cataclysm - earthquake or tornado, etc. - and there's some remnants of a church still standing, especially a cross.

'God spared the church...'.

Do me a favour...
 
Comfortably Numb said:
Precisely, could not concur more.

One aspect is when we see news footage of a natural cataclysm - earthquake or tornado, etc. - and there's some remnants of a church still standing, especially a cross.

'God spared the church...'.

Do me a favour...
Click to expand...
Probably because the church was of a better quality construction.
 
Cochise said:
Depends on how you interpret God. He may know what would have happened if the child hadn't died (I raise that only as an example).
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Thought provoking input. :thought:

Surely God already knows what he would be circumventing, by any such intervention.

After all, he wrote the script.

Why not simply alter it from the outset?

God must have seen this coming, no?
 
INT21 said:
'It is His will'.

Has this God nothing better to do ? Maybe create a more equable Universe and start over.
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Aye, back to the drawing board.

Hmmm.... you have triggered an idea.

What if we start a movement, whose sole intention is to rally that very cause.

We could organise gatherings to hold protests and march on the earthly HQ of organised religion, calling for an end to suffering, more equality and a better share of information re how the universe works.

Imagine a million people marching on the Vatican, demanding change.
 
It took them two hundred years to admit the Earth goes around the Sun. How long do you expect to wait before they admit God got it wrong ?

:)
 
Back to the original theme.

Although not religious myself, I have no problem with believing that prayer 'works' for some people - at least on some levels (and emphasising that 'works' can be taken in different ways). I also have absolutely no problem believing that the act of ritualised contemplative meditation might benefit an awful lot of people who have never tried it.

However, I would advise anyone taking such a path to also watch one of the the most important religious self-help videos ever made:



Those words should be forcibly tattooed on the tongues of virtually every TV evangelist, and prosperity gospel pastor, and their sub-witchdoctor/snake-oil salesman ilk, just before their own personal demon shoves a fiery poker up their fundament and pushes them into the pit.
 
Comfortably Numb said:
Thought provoking input. :thought:

Surely God already knows what he would be circumventing, by any such intervention.

After all, he wrote the script.

Why not simply alter it from the outset?

God must have seen this coming, no?
Click to expand...

God can't have written the script since he granted humans free will. At least the C of E version of God.

Other versions of God of course do specify one with all the cruelty built in. (What is written is written).

Maybe God is more like a scientist who puts certain ingredients in a petri dish and waits to see what happens. He may make interventions from time to time to try and nudge the experiment back on course, Christ being one such intervention.

The next petri dish along might be going better, so lets hope He doesn't decide to sterilise our dish and start again.

There's a Simpsons episode along these lines :)
 
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