Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Q: What is it like having strangers ask you if or why you believe in God?
A: You know who asks me the most? It’s children. Children ask, “How can you still believe in God?” In All the Rivers Run to the Sea, I speak about it. There are all the reasons in the world for me to give up on God. I have the same reasons to give up on man, and on culture and on education. And yet … I don’t give up on humanity, I don’t give up on culture, I don’t give up on journalism … I don’t give up on it. I have the reasons. I don’t use them.
I think there is power in prayer even if it's simply just because of the affect we can have on our own mind. Since we create our reality for the most part by what we think, it could be, that if a higher power is not answering, we are directly influencing our prayer outcome simply because it's on our mind. Therefore, in many instances, prayer can work on its own without divine intervention. I think we should view prayer as, at the least, similar to the power of positive thinking, covered in depth by Norman Vincent Peale. God did not respond to requests for interview on this matter so that's all I can come up with.
Q: What is it like having strangers ask you if or why you believe in God?
A: You know who asks me the most? It’s children. Children ask, “How can you still believe in God?” In All the Rivers Run to the Sea, I speak about it. There are all the reasons in the world for me to give up on God. I have the same reasons to give up on man, and on culture and on education. And yet … I don’t give up on humanity, I don’t give up on culture, I don’t give up on journalism … I don’t give up on it. I have the reasons. I don’t use them.
--Elie Wiesel
And that’s fine for Ellie Wiesel and the many survivors who continued to embrace religion. You’re also directly quoting him. What rubs me the wrong way is when people speculate or hypothesize as to what went through the heads of concentration and death camp prisoners. Certainly, dead men tell no tales, but there’s no shortage of survivors who spoke about their own experiences and, to the best of their recollections, the experiences of other prisoners who were not among the lucky few to emerge alive. Praying or not praying had no impact on whether you were sent straight to the gas chambers or deemed useful in one way or another and permitted to try your hand at surviving in the most extreme subhuman conditions. For those inclined to pray, maintaining those rituals probably helped maintain sanity and a sense of hope. But I don’t think that situated them in any better a position from those who never had (and did not otherwise develop) such proclivities.
Note that even among the most staunchly Orthodox Jews, it is not a taboo subject (and, in fact, is an important exercise in critical thinking) to debate whether and to what extent the Holocaust shows that Hashem abandoned the Jews, and the many non-Jewish Holocaust victims, or that Hashem doesn’t exist altogether. Judaism is not martyrdom-focused like Christianity and certain other religions. And while the more fundamentalist strains of Judaism certainly insist, at the end of the day, that Jews should believe, blind obedience is not required and in fact discouraged.
Q: What is it like having strangers ask you if or why you believe in God?
A: You know who asks me the most? It’s children. Children ask, “How can you still believe in God?” In All the Rivers Run to the Sea, I speak about it. There are all the reasons in the world for me to give up on God. I have the same reasons to give up on man, and on culture and on education. And yet … I don’t give up on humanity, I don’t give up on culture, I don’t give up on journalism … I don’t give up on it. I have the reasons. I don’t use them.
--Elie Wiesel
I think we have to question the setting in which those children were asking. I would guess not in any normal setting. Perhaps when he would be a speaker at a school?
The reason I say that is that I was a middle and high school teacher for 13 years and a middle school principal for 20. In all that time I was asked only once about my religion, and not that really in that way.
It was actually a somewhat funny situation. We had a student in our school who was significantly physically handicapped (I don't remember now which muscular condition she had, but it was something like muscular dystrophy). Very nice, very intelligent girl, and also very friendly; often took time to stop and talk to me during class change. One day, after a social studies teacher apparently said to one of her classes that "Mr. Victor is Buddhist" (they were studying Asia at the time), the girl stopped and asked me if it was true. I declined to answer, and over the next several days she peppered me with such questions (her family was VERY christian, so to speak, but also very friendly). I finally said, "Yes, and I don't care to discuss my religion beyond that". And she said, "Why would you want to be in one of those Asian religions?" I smiled and said, "You're a christian. Right?" She affirmed that she was, and I said, "Why would you want to be in one of those Middle Eastern religions?" It was one of those moments when you see a lightbulb in someone's head turning on, and she broke into a broad smile and said, "Oh, I never thought of it that way before". She never brought the topic up again, but continued her frequent stops to chat.
I think there is power in prayer even if it's simply just because of the affect we can have on our own mind. Since we create our reality for the most part by what we think, it could be, that if a higher power is not answering, we are directly influencing our prayer outcome simply because it's on our mind. Therefore, in many instances, prayer can work on its own without divine intervention. I think we should view prayer as, at the least, similar to the power of positive thinking, covered in depth by Norman Vincent Peale. God did not respond to requests for interview on this matter so that's all I can come up with.
I used to really like Norman Vincent Peale when he appeared on Robert Schuller's "Hour Of Power".
That is one of the ways to express a ratio. The typical format uses colons but the slash is sometimes used.
I know how a slash is used in math, but I still don't have any idea what that poster is saying.
"What is God divided by man" and "What is man divided by amoeba." ??????
I may be projecting how my former belief when I was a believer worked but I like to think that many believers put hope in prayer working, but still do operate enough in reality that they take actions in reality to take care of themselves and others under their care.
I like to think that, but recently I have been exposed to far more deeply religious people and they worry me deeply. Even among them there is a spectrum, but there are some who refuse to go to get medical care under the idea that God is their healer and that is very depressing. I have lost a family member to this. But I also see it regularly, and it's so sad. It's far, far worse when children are involved. Religious parents who refuse to take their children for medical care and those children die is downright awful and cruel. Something needs to be done, those children should have the right to live despite their parents' detached beliefs.
This is one of the biggest dangers I see in religious belief, and that's why I want to think that most religious believers I like I was, and seek prayer merely for additional comfort and not for taking care of issues altogether.
Also amongst these deeper believers who put too much weight on prayer is falling for faith healing and prosperity gospel scams. It's the very same thing with these people. They donate themselves out of all of their money to these vile, greedy scam artists because they've been told that donating money to these scams will not ensure but entitle them to their prayers being answered.
Oops, sorry, went off on a rant. This is a pet subject of mine that I feel extremely strongly about after my experiences with losing my family member and also being a bit inside these circles so to speak. (I'm not, but I am... Hard to explain without divulging too much personal info). If I could stop these scam artists I would. I have no desire in stopping people from praying for comfort. I don't think that there is anyone to answer their prayers, but I do understand being in helpless situations and wanting comfort. I just want people who can be helped to value their lives and the lives of those under their care more. Life is so precious, too precious to throw away like that.
I know how a slash is used in math, but I still don't have any idea what that poster is saying.
"What is God divided by man" and "What is man divided by amoeba." ??????
The slash expresses division in math but as a ratio, it would be read as "God is in the same relation to man as man is to an amoeba."
I may be projecting how my former belief when I was a believer worked but I like to think that many believers put hope in prayer working, but still do operate enough in reality that they take actions in reality to take care of themselves and others under their care.
I think this is a fair assessment, although as you point out, it's hard to remember this when personally impacted by more extreme views.
My wife recently got a pretty confident diagnosis of advanced-stage cancer. Both she and I are WAY beyond even thinking of praying about such things -- my wife doesn't even have a past in theism like I do -- and yet she got a rare "get out of jail free" card, in that she ended up having a rare benign tumor that exactly mimics the cancerous version.
Now of course if we had been believers, we would have prayed, and would probably "give god the glory" for "delivering" her from the cancer ... yet it would in reality be no more miraculous than it was for us as godless heathens. Sometimes things just work out.
And yet, even if we had been believers praying for healing, I have zero doubt we would have still gone and had the surgery and if it had turned out to be necessary, the chemotherapy and so forth ... we would have expected God to work through the doctors, etc.
I agree this is how most Christians operate, not expecting a true miracle. Many Christians don't even believe that miracles are "for today".
The slash expresses division in math but as a ratio, it would be read as "God is in the same relation to man as man is to an amoeba."
Ah, thank you.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
