Just the title of this book is good for a laugh: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer. They’ve certainly got their target audience pegged.
As an added bonus, the reviews are amusing.
Have reviewed a number of books on prayer and they usually get too complicated and bogged down.
“Close your eyes and pretend” is too complicated? Are there rules and regulations and rituals that must be performed for this prayer thing that are baroque and beyond my understanding, or is this reviewer the kind of person who finds swallowing to be an act of will that requires concentration and practice?
I just recently returned to my Christain roots and the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer helped answer a question that many of us are afraid to ask; “How do you pray?” I’ve seen it done hundreds of times but it’s all so mysterious. This book explains a variety of options to mix it so that prayer doesn’t become a chore.
I’ve seen it done, too, and no, it isn’t mysterious. People just talk to themselves, silently or aloud. It isn’t hard. It also doesn’t work. But it’s that last line that I found weird.
These people supposedly believe they have a direct, personal relationship with the Supreme Omnipotent Overlord of the Universe, and not only that, but he loves them and is deeply interested in the tawdry minutia of their personal lives. Yet they can consider having a conversation with such a being a “chore”? If such a being existed, and if I were able to talk with him, ask questions, and get answers, I’d be online with the big guy all the time and asking all kinds of questions. He’d be better than Google!
Of course, if he were a colossal tyrannical jerk who refused to answer any of my questions, then I’d consider it a chore. I’d also stop calling him up.
But then, I’m an atheist, and I’m smarter than they are — the Bible says so.
Grab one for the parties trying to connect with voters through religious events.
“Second Edition”??
What, did they update it to take into account the latest research on prayer, or the most recent advances in religious technology?
More like the latest and greatest complete idiots. Perhaps there are newer reason-resistant complete idiots that have evolved because of too much use of broad skepticism. That’s probably it, huh?
He is Google. Church of Google
Completely off-topic:
“If Darwin was right, future generations will no longer require a tongue because we will no longer converse. Instead, we’ll grow extra fingers with which to type and text.”
Direct quote from part of a response to the question “what’s wrong with society today. Via Fark.
PZ,
Come on, you’re the author of the Courtier’s Reply. You should know how complicated mystics can get.
-jcr
Alibris shows 108 diferent books with the words “how to pray” as part of their title. Who knew you could write over a hundred books on talking to yourself?
Actually, it’s more, because if you just go by topic and not title, Amazon lists 8,926 in their Religion & Spirituality > Books section.
Great, now my Amazon “recommended for you” thing is gonna be screwed up for ages.
Are there rules and regulations and rituals that must be performed for this prayer thing that are baroque and beyond my understanding…
Not only are there, they are so specific that some 20,000 versions of Christianity alone have had to be formed to perform even some of the possibilities, and that’s just for the Christian god. And if you don’t do it right, if you pick the wrong version or technique, you’re not just not getting an answer, you’re damned for eternity.
You’d damned well better read a book on it!
Or take QrazyQat’s Wager, which says that given the liklihood of running into Homer’s Dilemma (“But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we just make God madder and madder.”), the best move is to do nothing and if confronted by god after your death, just say, “I forgot”.
Actually, the page PZ refers to is one of the few sensible things I’ve even seen up on the Net from Christians about atheism.
I thought the same thing when I saw “the complete idiot’s guide to astrology”
I’m waiting for the “Idiots Guide to The Necronomicon”. I need more devotees.
I like the official synopsis too:
I would like to know some of these “informative titbits”.
Hint: Kneel then close your eyes, to avoid injury to yourself or people around you.
?
I just saw the cover and choked on my laughter. :)
I’ve no great concern with God Groupies in their rituals & private verities. It’s when they band together to hijack our secular systems into that Dominionist “truth” of theirs that my ire is switched to “high”.
Just checking on Amazon…there are Idiot’s Guides to Prayer, Mary Magdelene, Eastern Philosophy, Faith(?!), Understanding God, Psychic Communication, Paganism, and every other major world religion including the Mafia. Is there really no Idiot’s Guide to Atheism and Agnosticism? Not even Unitarian Universalism, or Humanism? I’m smelling an untapped niche market here!
Or perhaps it’s all covered in the Idiot’s Guide to Ethics.
Cthulu:
Is this close enough?
Praying isn’t the hard part. The hard part is motivating yourself to continue praying despite the fact that prayer manifestly does nothing, other than to set the stage for subsequently claiming that whatever happens next must be God’s will, good or bad.
The Almighty Google must fight the adversary, it must resist, and the fallen angel is trying to take over the kingdom. We shall not let that pass.
There is no Google but Google. Google Achbar. Praise be to Google.
Golly, Scott is right. It would be great if all Christians thought like the guy who wrote that page. Lots of people here might still think Christians of that type are idiots; but, I daresay, idiots one doesn’t mind having to share a world with.
Of course, if that’s the way all Christians were, there would be no Robertsons or Dobsons or Ratzingers or Phelpses or Hovinds, and Pharyngula would be the more boring for it.
Intercessory praying is one of the most stupid concepts that exist.
They’ve certainly got their target audience pegged.
First used by one of the reviewers of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Psychic”. Sadly, there are only so many ways to express oneself.
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
A reporter in Israel heard about an old man who had prayed at the Wailing Wall every day for 70 years. The reporter asked the man what he was praying for. “Peace between the Jews and the Palestinians,” was the answer. “What is it like to come here every day for 70 years and repeat that prayer?” The aged man replied, “It’s like talking to the wall.”
There’s one important thing about prayer that the book should cover – “When you talk to God, it’s called prayer. When God talks to you, it’s called schizophrenia”.
Seriously though, for many liberals (who don’t believe in an interventionist God, or sometimes, anything that conservatives or most atheists would recognise as a belief in God at all) there’s community-building value in prayer – after all, it does you good to think about the members of your community who are ill or things like that.
PZ, marry me, please. ;-)
If I pray every day and God never answers, am I supposed to keep praying? That’s a bit too close to stalking for my comfort. I’ve heard that Divine Restraining Orders are powerful things indeed.
IanR,
While praying for members of your community may be good…going out and doing something for them is still better.
Don’t these christians read their bibles?
Luke 11:1-4
And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.
And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom …
and you all know the rest. If it’s good enough for Jesus…
I have never understood the rationale for prayer. If god is suppose to be this all powerful omnipotent entity then surely he (she) knows all too well what will or what will not happen. So what does prayer accomplish? When Christians pray they are in essence asking god to change his or her mind. To think that some god would answer their individual prayer is the epitome of arrogance.
It is getting harder and harder to distinguish satire from real things. One of the commentators at Amazon really believes this stuff, and benefited from it.
“I’ve chosen this book for an Adult Bible School Class on prayer, hoping to attract a number of people who think of themselves as novices or “idiots” on the subject of prayer. I’ll also invite some people known for their prayer lives to participate in the class to help with the discussion and to possibly mentor people who are really struggling with prayer.”
That sounds like a Monty Python sketch.
Maybe they’ve filled the second edition with more tips on making those around you uncomfortable while you pray.
I’m waiting for the Advanced course to come out and work on my wailing and swooning and self-flagellating skills.
Napoleon Dynamite: God only helps guys with skills!
Everybody bow your heads and pretend to be serious.
Of course meditation, introspection, and quiet relaxation are great features that can be connected to the activity of prayer. So in some sense, you might find that it works. Not in the sense of getting messages or favors from a magic dude in the sky, but if it’s the only time a person stops to think about his life, then it’s probably better than nothing.
On the other hand, there’s the type of prayer that people use to avoid personal responsibility, the type that misdirects the urge to improve one’s life, channelling efforts away from practical life changes and toward fairy tales.
Prayer is not only about talking to yourself. Prayer includes mumbling, thinking of speaking while not moving the lips, lecturing people who aren’t there, entertaining imaginary friends, wishing, and wishful thinking. Praying in church includes thinking lustfully about the better looking women in the congregation, imagining what the teenage girls will turn out like, wondering if the rumors you heard were true, and making silent gas attacks on your nearest neighbors. Prayer at bedtime is a way of bringing an end to the day, of telling yourself all the people who’ve been kind to you can go piss off, of wishing for more goodies to sate your greed, and forgiving yourself for all the harm you’ve done others.
My problem in high school was bowing down my head in church and trying not to crack up.
It is easy to criticize a book that you haven’t read, just take a look at some of the nonsense that was written about “The God Delusion”. Has anyone taken a look at what is written in this book?
Of course, they could just read what their Jesus said in their Bible about prayer. He was kind of specific about it. No praying in public, for starters.
Oh, my gosh. Talk about perception problems. I seriously stared at that cover image thinking “What is that? It looks kind of like Italy, sideways, or maybe a really smooshed India…” It took me honestly almost a full minute to flip my vision and realize that the shadowed part was a person praying.
Heh, I was in the grocery store on the weekend and saw “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Biblical Mysteries”.
I flipped through it a bit, and it just kind of made me chuckle. Some of it seemed to be written as though it was describing mythology, in the same manner that a textbook talks about Egyptian or Greek history.
I’m not horribly familiar with the Complete Idiot’s series, but these kind of topics strike me as similar to the old religious Archie comics or those “paranormal” shows on Discovery Channel – a highjacking of an otherwise enjoyable or respectable series or medium.
Do they mean this to be the the Complete Idiot’s Guide, or the Complete Idiot’s Guide?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I wonder if it answers the question I got in trouble for asking my mother when I was 7…
If god is everywhere and knows everything I do, why do I have to go to church to pray? Can’t he hear me just fine if I pray while in the backyard or during a commercial break?
My guess is, spending that extra hour at home gave me too much time to think up questions she had no answers for.
Actually, the whole prayer thing is rather complicated. One would think that by the time I was a 14-year-old-almost-confirmed-catholic, I would know everything there was to know about it. But to my surprise, on my first retreat I was introduced to a new kind of prayer–passive prayer. You see, most of the time people think prayer is just talking to god, and they forget that you have to listen to him too.
Yes, I am serious, I was actually told completely seriously by the adult leaders that all of us retreat goers were to find a quiet corner to sit in and just listen. There are numerous problems with this. One of the problems is that if you actually come back with something specific, everyone will think you’re crazy. What you’re SUPPOSED to do is go sit in the corner and then come back and say that god wants you to spend more time with him, or pray the rosary or something. But the biggest problem? You know what happens when I go sit in a dark corner and listen to nothing? I fall asleep.
And damn, I’ve rarely had better naps, because it just doesn’t get that quiet in my house, but I really don’t think that is what they were going for.
#22 IanR:
My favorite:
“If someone said they spoke to god through their hair dryer, you would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.” -Sam Harris
If prayer worked, there would be no fugly dumb women like Denyse O’Leary. Women would all be like Scarlet Johanson – beautiful and smart.
Sometimes I wonder if prayer is an example of Skinnerian behaviorism. But I wonder who is running the experiment. Are the humans’ behavior being modified or is it big sky daddy, learning to react to prayer?
On a different note, will there be A complete Idiot’s Guide To Brain Surgery?
Praying is a complicated business, and there’s a real need for good technical manuals.
For instance, you must master the skill of prayer with mouth closed before proceeding to full-immersion baptism.
And – do not skip the chapters on care & management of the rattlesnakes!
Oh yes, how could I forget one of my favorite exchanges for the movie “The Ruling Class”?
How do you know you’re God?
Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself.
God wants you to suck up to him.
Remember the times when people gave their gods gifts for prayer, as in burning animals, etc? Those were good times. Xtians these days are lazy.
People just talk to themselves, silently or aloud. It isn’t hard. It also doesn’t work.
im not so sure about that one.. i have a tendency to talk to myself when working and it seems to help. im aware that no supernatural beings are listening and magically helping me – theres probably a perfect natural reason for it. i wonder if this has been studied at all?
its the companion book to “The Bible for Dummies“.
I like that the second commenter misspelled “christian”. Or maybe they are from that special sect of christains.
“Minutia” being a singular down of the first declension, the proper plural is, of course, “minutiae.”
I found the page from the Atheism vs. Christianity group interesting. If they admit that atheists are likely to be smarter and more familiar with the Bible than they are, how does this not make them question their faith? I don’t think we’re wired the same way.
If you visit the amazon.com page for that book, you will see that 74% of customers buy it, while 26% plump instead for Christian Prayer for Dummies.
Thus we have the ultimate proof: of those who indulge in prayer, 74% are idiots and 26% are dummies.
John Marley,
Cthulu,
Not that you need them, but there are lots of graven images available to your followers, and even a catchy song! I especially like the two-part harmony bit:
When he was a Outer God —
When I was a Outer God!
Easy on the reverb, sport.
He found that his form lacked a certain appeal,
All his glistening pseudopods made blood congeal.
I’m a sensitive soul! At the end of the day,
It hurt that my friends’ flesh all melted away.
Oh the shame!
What a disgrace!
Till I decided to blame
The whole human race!
The terrible shame!
Falling from grace!
Whose fault is it?
Yeah! What the heck where they doing
hanging around with an acidic mass of
flesh-devouring polyps, anyway?
”
http://www.miskatonic.net/pickman/mythos/resource.htm
http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/cthulhu_fthagn.htm
I gather that a lot of people don’t like to swallow …
It was stuff like this that shot my faith in the foot when I was a youngster.
If God truly loves us and wants us to know him and achieve salvation through him, then why would he make prayer such a complicated endeavour? “I love you and want you to talk to me whenever you need to. That’s why I’ve created a universe in which you can always reach me if you rub your stomach counter-clockwise seven times, then eat a hard-boiled egg without removing the shell, dance the Hora twice around a boiling cauldron of mushroom fat, and finally dial Φ on a touchtone phone and ask the operator to connect you. ‘Cause I love ya, sport. Talk to you soon.”
Thank you for the link to instructions about debating evil atheists. Would you perhaps happen to have a similar link for how we Christians should debate good atheists?
Tulse@47:
Finally I get it. God is an omnipotent being with an inferiority complex leading to low self esteem.
The mice.
Youd’d be surprised how many books and church study programs there are on so-called “prayer guidance”. Truly alarming. It seems so easy and simple, but when you think about it, there is an awful lot more confusion there than meets the eye of the outside observer.
The bible alternatingly tells people that they should pray “in secret” and God will reward them, then tells them that “when many gather together and pray” God will do as is asked.
Jesus also says, ask and you shall receive, meanwhile christians are also taught that “sometimes the answer is ‘no'”.
Not to mention the whole “God has a plan” thing, so how can you get him to change his mind just by asking if it will throw off all of his infinitely wise plans?
There is also the question of whether you should ask for selfish things, specific things, or just pray that God will lead you to whatever is best, which seems like a cop-out to me.
I’d like to share a story about my Christian wife praying for protection that brings up some of these prayer dilemmas. Maybe a “for dummies” book is a good idea.
Man. The Church of Google is awesome.
Frankly, it reads like concern trolling. :-)
LOL! Consider this a Molly nomination. (Yes, I already said that once today. I’ll nominate you both, if I remember.)
Man. The Church of Google is awesome.
Frankly, it reads like concern trolling. :-)
LOL! Consider this a Molly nomination. (Yes, I already said that once today. I’ll nominate you both, if I remember.)
As someone who’s been there: it gets pretty repetitive after a while. How many ways can you say: “Thanks for all the stuff that happened to me today. Sorry for all the times I screwed up and help me be better tomorrow. Oh, and if you have a spare moment, fix all those wars and famines and things, please.”? The people who keep that up day after day, year after year, are either OC or they get “answers” to their prayer — and the latter, I think, are those who are fairly susceptible to auto-suggestion, and not very self-critical about it.
A “Christain” is the opposite of an “athiest” I think. That is, it is somebody who is not athey at all. A total lack of athe. (I find your lack of athe disturbing.)
By a fairly unremarkable coincidence I stumbled across this while looking for a new release on Amazon today:
The Bible for Blockheads.
in. deed.
Finally I get it. God is an omnipotent being with an inferiority complex leading to low self esteem.
Actually, that’s a a very Cathar or Gnostic view of the nature of Jehovah, a fallen peice of the true “godhead” :)
We do all know that “The Complete Idiot’s Guide” (as well as “For Dummies” and “For Blockheads”) is a series that includes many diverse topics, right? It’s a bit of a cheap laugh to use the mere fact that one of their books deals with prayer to poke fun at religion being idiotic. After all, a Creationist might do the same with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Evolution.
@19, 26, 27, 36, 47, others:
I have (almost) always thought that one of the gravest sins Christians commit and can commit is praying. With the possible exceptions of (1) paroxysms of praise and adoration of the great and perfect god, and (2) abject begging of that god’s forgiveness, I don’t see how a xtian can possibly believe in the god they describe and yet still think that they should pray to that god or could pray to that god without being disrespectful.
The xtian god is supposed to be omnipotent, yet they presume to tell him how to dispose of their lives? Their god is supposed to be omniscient, yet they presume to tell him what they want? Their god is supposed to be all loving and benevolent, yet they pray for what they want, rather than what god sees as their need?
As I said: sinful!
This Idiot’s Guide is more topical: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design.
I love the description (particularly the part I bolded):
Apparently the ID field is Divinity.
Any crusty old Doors fans out there?
# 66 partially beet me to this one. For the other flavor of irony, I like: ‘Bioinformatics for Dummies.’
ancient-languages police wrote:
What’s a “singular down”?
MLP @71,
What’s a “singular down”?
In American football, isn’t it what you get for advancing the ball ten yards?
I thought Tom Lehrer had that covered:
“First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries….”
#68:
That’s a hoot. A couple of observations:
1) according to one review, this book makes the “evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics” argument. Little did we know that the “complete idiot” of the title is the author. (Well, okay, maybe I suspected that just a little bit.)
2) Here, in its entirety, is the “most helpful favorable review”:
Well, most people don’t get much response when they pray. Rather than drawing the obvious conclusion, they become convinced they aren’t doing it right. They are then ripe to be fleeced by a long line of hucksters selling books, videos, and prayer aids to help them get the results they want. (Mostly, that warm sense that SomeOne is up there looking out for them.)
Each one assures them that if they pray right, they’ll get results, so for some people it becomes a self-perpetuating scam. After each failure, they are that much more convinced they need another book to correct their technique.
That debating atheists page was hilarious!
I’m smarter.
More moral.
I know your bible better.
I will trounce you in a debate.
I’ve thoroughly thought out my position.
This is countered by one hellofa rallying call:
We have no answers and as a matter of fact, CAN’T have them. All we’re suppose to do is give an answer…… Basically, we have nothing.
(But by the way you are loved by the all powerful creator of the universe, your prayers will be answered, you’ll live forever and all other belief systems are incorrect.)
My mind boggles at the entire inversion of life that happens when christians think about what they believe. Suddenly, the world turns on it’s head so that they can still be allowed to believe bullshit.
It’s a trick! There’s quite clearly an image of Satan on the cover. Just rotate the image 135 degrees counter clockwise. It’s cleverly disguised as someone kneeling in prayer. I mean, look at those horns!
[/sarcasm]
“If Darwin was right, future generations will no longer require a tongue because we will no longer converse. Instead, we’ll grow extra fingers with which to type and text.”
Posted by: Eric | February 5, 2008 9:39 AM
Considering I was in Best Buy the other day and was waited on by a dude without arms, that is entirely possible.
My pitiful internet skills won’t allow me to find and link to it, but the Onion had a story a while back about the quadraplegic who prayed to God to be able to leave his wheelchair. God, deeply impressed by his faith, answered him. “No,” he said.
So, why are the fundies not screaming that this is an anti-xtian polemic because it calls them “dummies”? They got all hot and bothered when RD called them delusional, your man Simons got all upset becaue you said he was ignorant in the debate. Clearly this is a swipe at the intelligence of xtians by calling them dummies. Oh, next it will be the gulags…persecution…Stalin…Hitler…blah blah blah
The other day, a headline in the Washington Post (the Religion section, I presume) caught my eye — it said something like “Retarded Kid Loves to Pray”, although they put it more delicately. I didn’t read it, and I can’t find it now, but here’s a good one from my search:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1330200.html
“Retarded Adults Keep Faith With Jewish Tradition”
Yeah, no kidding.
Any Atheist feeling outgunned by the faithful xian with his fiendish debating guide (cf. PZ’s link above) might be interested in the counter-page – the Atheist’s tips for debating with evil Christians.
http://groups.google.com/group/Atheism-vs-Christianity/web/atheists-tips-for-doing-battle-with-evil-christians?hl=en
Actually, the fun one is the last one :
They make it sound so … reasonable.
Wait.
What?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the WHOLE FRIGGIN’ POINT of the Reformation to do away with the idea that people needed professional mediators to have a relationship with their invisible friend, and to replace it with the idea that people could have a direct, personal, unmediated relationship with said invisible friend?
Are you telling me that the Protestants spurned the Church hierarchy… only to replace it with authors of Idiot’s Guides?
What. The. Hell.
Ooookay. Since the average has risen that much, I retract all of today’s Molly nominations.
A singular noun that was mistyped and spellchecked. Spellcheckers are an abomination.
Ooookay. Since the average has risen that much, I retract all of today’s Molly nominations.
A singular noun that was mistyped and spellchecked. Spellcheckers are an abomination.
After a couple of years of enjoying the humor, integrity, humanity, and spot-on cutting-through-the-bullshit in his comments, I’m nominating Pierce R. Butler on the basis of that rattlesnake mention above.
I apologize in advance, Pierce, since, based on history, a nomination by me is clearly the kiss of death for actually *getting* a Molly*, but at least it’s a heartfelt nomination.
(* I’ve got a perfect record! Woo-hoo!)
They sure are–I know a biologist who still hasn’t lived down her typo in her article on “exotic wildlife”. The spell-checker didn’t catch the typo, and she submitted her article with a mention in one place of “erotic wildlife”. It’s been almost twenty years now, and some childish people still won’t let her forget it!
Well, one childish person, anyway…
–Tom Lehrer
aka The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Complete Idiot . . .
Truly, I fear for these people. Indeed, I fear for all of us.
thalarctos @ 85 –
Thanks a lot!
Now I gotta attend next month’s award ceremonies. And the tux is going to need re-fitting, and I don’t know when I’m even going to see my writers again, and…
Oh, and as I was about to say:
Can anybody here figure out what 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 is trying to say, if anything, beyond “Nyah nyah you eggheads think you’re so smart!”?
#15 & #55- WHEW!…Thanks…I was getting worried.
Speaking of childish, I still tell a story I first heard years ago from a friend, about a co-worker of hers who circulated a memo about speeding up program compilation. Spelled “copulation” – which, IIRC, was the spelling recommended by her spell-checker.
I don’t think this quite qualifies as graven, but UPS just delivered my “My Little Cthulhu” today, and I’ve set it up on my window sill for convenient daily prostration. I couldn’t resist: I also bought a packet of “My Little Victims”.
Or, in the original Klingon:
monado@86:
You left out the best part, and one of my favorite rhymes of all time:
I looked at that Atheism vs. Christianity page, and I looked up the Bible passage that supposedly says that non-Christians are smarter than Christians: “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” This passage is saying that God on his bad days is still smarter than the smartest non-believer. Of course, this raises the question of how a perfect being can have bad days…but the point is, atheists have a strong enough case without twisting words of the Bible to say things the Bible doesn’t really say. Let’s leave that to the believers, eh?
Talking of spelling checkers, I remember Microsoft Word (and no, I don’t use that anymore) offering suggestions for “f***ing” (which I had deliberately spelt with stars for the sake of my audience) which included “fact-finding”!
By further experimentation I was able to determine that while “fucking” was accepted as a correct spelling, it was never offered as a suggestion. Leading me to suppose that Word’s spelling checker includes some concept of the appropriateness or not for offering a word as a suggestion.
Also, on my last day at my previous job, I was left alone with my boss’s PC for just long enough to type a whole bunch of mis-spelled drivel into Word, and add every single word to the dictionary. Perhaps not the most phun you can have without taking your clothes off, but it certainly wasn’t going to do anything to help his reputation as a bad speller.
@#94: “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” This passage is saying that God on his bad days is still smarter than the smartest non-believer.
From my recollection of the context of that passage, St. Paul is basically saying: Yeah, we know this whole story about Jesus dying and rising and how that makes it possible for us to go to Heaven, sounds totally whacked-out — but really it’s the profoundest wisdom of all time! See how subtle God is!
“Credo, quia absurdum est”
HA! I found “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Faith” in a kroger once. It was so funny, I had to buy it to show all of my friends.
Which still boils down to, “My daddy can beat up your daddy!”
You’d think that an omni-potent/scient being who gave a flip could, even a millennium before algebra, teach his sales reps the difference between a constant and a variable.
In trying to decipher the (particularly opaque rendition in the King Jim version of that) cited passage from Corinthians, I still see little more than a clever anti-intellectual spinning words to rally the tribal loyalties of his uneducated followers in the face of jeers from one of his successors calls “the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.”
(ahem) that last sentence should end, “… jeers from what one of his successors calls “the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.”
Definitely beware the spell-checker. I once sent an email to my entire division apologizing “for the incontinence.” (I was going for “inconvenience.”) :o