Public Prayer

Say what you want about Jesus, but He certainly did produce some good quotes. This is one of my favorites, and I thought you might like it too. I took the time to look it up to be sure that I got it right:
"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." - Matthew, chapter 6, verses 5-6

I don't think I ever did get the hang of praying. I kind of envied the Catholics in that respect because they had prayers for every occasion all memorized and at their disposal. It didn't matter if they understood them, so long as they could say them from memory really fast. We Protestants were supposed to pray from the heart and mean what we said. The thing is, God already knows what's in our hearts and minds, so why tell Him something that He already knows? As far as asking Him for favors, well that seems kind of petty, like a little kid begging his Mommy for a candy bar in the supermarket. Studies have been done that suggest praying for sick people helps then get better, even when they don't know that anybody's praying for them. Well, maybe, but I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it. Maybe praying helps us access the inner reaches of our consciousness where we may unlock powers that we don't even know we have. Maybe praying is kind of like ESP, but you don't believe in that either, do you.

I didn't look this up, but I think the Unitarians believe in God, they just don't believe in the Trinity. I've always had a problem with that one too. I understand that the Trinity is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned separately from time to time, but not all together like they say in church, "The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost". Jesus did say, "I and the Father are one.", and "He who has seen me has seen the Father",  but that could have just meant "Like Father, like Son."

Okay, back to Deist logic: If God can do anything He wants to do, it follows that He doesn't have to do anything He doesn't want to do. God could have made us perfect, but He obviously didn't, so that must mean He didn't want to. That doesn't necessarily mean that God wants us to stay the way we are forever. If He didn't want us to improve ourselves, it seems that He wouldn't have given us the desire and ability to do so. I like the Zoroastrian version of this, which may have inspired the Deist version: God deliberately set us down in an incomplete creation, and He expects us to finish the job. It's like God wrote the software and gave us the job of de-bugging it. If we ever finally get this thing out of beta, then God will know that we are ready for bigger and better things.

I was kind of kidding about both the majority and minority being too stupid to govern themselves. It does seem that way sometimes, but that's only because people like you and I are so far ahead of the curve and we are impatiently waiting for everyone else to catch up with us. I'm sure that other people feel the same way about us but, of course, that doesn't make them right. Seriously though, a well organized group working together can usually accomplish more than a bunch of individuals trying to do everything themselves. It's the "well organized" and the "working together" parts that we can't seem to get the hang of.