The following advice is from my prayer book:

“Pray as if everything depended upon God, act as if everything depended on you.”

I think that this is consistent with the idea of NOMA, formulated by the biologist Stephen Gould. We exist in the material world; God exists in the spiritual world.

The context in which the idea of NOMA was formulated is summarized in my article about futile conflicts between theists and atheists:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/theo/atheist.html

Hey Ludwik, I am unfamiliar with the term “NOMA” I would appreciate some insight. Also, I read the article, it was a good succinct read. This sounds almost like it could be related to some theories I am working on which illustrate the differences in the way scientists and theologians use deductive and inductive logic.

TheAudience - 02 February 2013 10:39 PM

Hey Ludwik, I am unfamiliar with the term “NOMA” I would appreciate some insight. Also, I read the article, it was a good succinct read. This sounds almost like it could be related to some theories I am working on which illustrate the differences in the way scientists and theologians use deductive and inductive logic.

My familiarity with NOMA is NOMA literature is limited. Google, as usual, brings many references.

Ludwik

First, I have no conflict with theists unless they attempt to impose their beliefs on me or my group.

Second, “We exist in the material world; God exists in the spiritual world” may be your premise, but if you wish to have us believe that, you must offer proof of the existence of a “spiritual world”.  After you convince me of that, then you can start proving the existence of a god that lives there.

Occam

I think Occam is right: there is no spiritual world. If you say there is, even before you prove that it exists, you should explain what you mean by it. Would ‘spiritual entities’ have influence on us? Do they cause effects in our ‘material world’? If they do, why are they not open to scientific investigation? In my opinion there is only a spiritual way to face our life. And being open for scientific facts, and being fascinated by them, is certainly an important part of it.

Further you say:

Theology is like mathematics, not science. Mathematicians start with axioms (initially accepted truths) and use logical derivation to justify consecutive claims, called theorems. Once proven, a theorem cannot be rejected, unless a logical error is found in the derivation.

I think this is completely wrong: you leave out the fact why mathematics is so important for science, and theology is not at all. Mathematical structures are found in all kinds of logical structures in nature. This makes mathematics so useful in science: when I find a group of phenomena that behave like some mathematical structure, I can derive new empirical facts from them according to mathematical rules.

While mathematics does not necessarily has a connection to reality, its usefulness is per definition that many laws of nature can be described with mathematical structures. Theology has nothing similar to offer. It has nothing to do with any reality, except human fantasy.

I agree with this philosophy. In fact, this is why I find religious that focus on actually teaching practical methods to become involved with this to be far more productive.

Let’s see….prayer….. hmmmmm….

A prayer prays to put the onus on god. Generally, the prayer either requests something from god or praises god.
If the prayer gets what they want, then that is what the prayer expected (self fulfilling) and circular logic.
If the prayer doesn’t get what they want, then the matter rests with their god and “his” inscrutable ways.

Either way….praying releases the prayer from any requirement for action - it’s all in god’s hands. Further, it releases the prayer from any responsibility!

Kind of like…..doing evil (“sin” in the prayer’s mind), asking for god’s forgiveness, having absolute faith that they are forgiven, then doing more evil (more sinning), then asking for god’s forgiveness, having absolute faith…..well, you get the idea.

Nice “world” they live in!!