The New York Daily News’s very provocative front page on the San Bernardino shooting


I know we've been round the houses with this one but I'm still not clear on what the point of prayer is in the context of mass shootings or other 'disasters'. If God knows that a mass shooting will occur, and can only occur because he is allowing it to go ahead (i.e. he could stop it but chooses not to, free will, whatever), then is he going to change his mind because we ask him to? Or is there some other point of prayer that I'm missing?

Never mind whether or not prayer can be shown to work (AFAIK it can't), does it even make logical sense? When people 'pray for victims', what exactly are they doing and what do they hope to achieve? Is it anything more than a platitude?

People have different views on what and how God operates, what will is and to what extent it is free as well as what prayer is and how it should be used.

So, there is no one answer to your questions. Someone who believes humans are free willed but potentially influenced by evil could hypothetically pray to God for mercy, but someone who believes there is no free will and that the fate of all humans are already decided might not do so. Someone who is confused might pray for guidance, and so forth.

But for something to actually happen, god would have to change his mind, or decide he preferred one option over an other, which would imply that the previous preference or choice was somehow inferior to the new preference, and god can't make mistakes or realise that something was better than what he previously thought (if there's such a thing as 'previous' for god).

So if god can/would never cause something to happen differently than how he knows it will happen, what can prayer actually change?

When people pray for you they are showing their support and care. I thought it was moving when the colors of the French flag were displayed in different cities all over the world, like at the Sydney opera house, after the shooting in Paris. It showed that people all over the world cared and that people were united in rejecting random violence and hatred. When people pray for victims, they are showing they care and I believe that people can feel that and it makes a difference to them.

I think that prayer is being politicized by anti gun people. When you 'pray' you're not asking God to literally change something you are just showing support and care.

Prayer is like an old school version of supportive Twitter hashtags.

Three relevant perspectives/activities.

Egyptian Book of the Dead:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Dead

Tibetan Book of the Dead:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo_Thodol

Others include Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, and I think more.

Specifically, the Egyptian and Tibetan books are seen as a guide for the departed as he travels through the spiritual world. It is intoning to the dead directly and of course a lot of this is lost in present times due to an abject loss of spiritual perception and understanding. Salient is a "prayer "TO" the dead", or "speaking " to the dead, and of course "FOR".

Prayer can be and is more of an "offering" rather than a "request" but then again with the economic thinking within the entire world it becomes a "request", but not always.

Yeah, while this isn't directly relevant to Mightyboosh's question, I agree with the bolded. Furthermore, I think The Daily News' headline, and the comments of other liberal pundits about prayer, was stupid and reprehensible. It seems to be saying to conservatives: You believe guns should be legal, so you don't deserve to feel sorrow or sympathy for the victims of gun violence.

I don't see how that is either justified or useful.

What I don't think many of them realize is the long term negative effect this is likely to have on their goal. I think their hope is that they will shame people into action, but I suspect they will likely embolden people to refuse to work with them.

Given what I know of America, it seems like a headline designed to upset people.

It did, however, remind me of a Muslim speaker on a TV discussion about the power of prayer. He spoke about a story of Muhammad, in which the prophet was walking through a town where he came across a mule that wasn't tethered like the rest. He looked for the owner and asked him why he didn't tie it up like the other townspeople did, to which the man said something like "Everything is governed by the will of Allah. I have faith that if he wishes that my livestock will not wander off, then my livestock will not wander off.". The prophet replied simply, "First tie up your mule, then have faith in Allah.".

The speaker's point being that his interpretation of prayer was to have a relationship with god, to express your hopes and feelings, and demonstrate the good in humanity, not to hope god would be a substitute for what people ought to do for themselves.

But then again, maybe the only thing that would upset the Christian right in America more than that headline would be to express the same sentiment through an Islamic parable...

I don't know the NY Daily News at all, but I doubt it is either of these. It seems pretty obviously that it is one of those things designed to make anti-gun liberals feel self righteous by mocking leading republicans who will make the praying platitudes during gun tragedies but do nothing legislatively to prevent them. As in, it is selling to their own audience, not trying to upset or shame into action a different one.

This is an even higher level of political cynicism than what I have.

Well, I can't know their purpose, but anyone who can actually write out that headline must be aware enough to know how inflammatory it is.

At the very least, we can all agree it's not a sign of great journalism.

I do know the Daily News fairly well, and I would say that almost certainly part of the motivation was to provoke a reaction. In NYC media the Daily News (left) and the NY Post (right) are news tabloids that, among other things, compete for who can come up with the cleverest and most provocative headlines.

really? You don't think it is sort of media 101 that media pushes narratives their own audiences will lap up?

I'm also sure they are intending to provoke a reaction, but it is one that is going to get liberal audiences thinking "ya, the GOP politicians really should ****ing do something about this opposed to meaningful platitudes".

Oh, that's not where I think the cynicism lies. I believe that Fox News is pushing a narrative that they know the right will drink up. But there's a level at which they believe what they're doing is good for the country. I don't believe that they see themselves as merely pushing a product for profit.

Similarly, I don't think that the headline is merely meant to sell more copies without some fundamental sense that they're really trying to do something to change the situation. Using "innocent Americans" that are "lying in pools of blood" simply to sell papers would cause the cynicism meter through the roof.

You really don't think there's an ounce of an attempt at public shame in this at all? That they really and truly believe that the message they're sending is only for the liberal audiences in order to make a profit and not some sort of attempt to try to improve the situation?

That's why I think your cynicism level is higher than mine.

It typically is a mix. I suspect the editors do indeed believe that the GOP should pass gun legislation instead of empty platitudes, but that they are also very, very aware of exactly who their audience is and how a headline like this is going to go over. In fact I think they carefully craft it with internal debates over precisely whether things like "lying in pools of blood" is or is not sufficiently punchy to grab attention. I think they know they are pushing a narrative and this narrative among all those they could choose is specifically designed to promote specific reactions from their core audience. It is sort of like saying that Bill O'Reily probably holds a range of pretty genuinely conservative opinions and might believe his show is doing a great service to america...but he is also acutely aware of how he crafts his narratives tailored to his audience. But sure, guilty as charged on being a cynic.

So ya original position definitely nailed the back and forth with ny post which leads with an even bigger font of MUSLIM KILLERS. And I say they know exactly what they are doing and who their audience is too.

I don't think this quite captures the dynamic here. The Daily News and Post headlines are not directed at their core audience in the same way that Bill O'Reilly shows are. To watch O'Reilly's show you have put in some effort, turn on the show, sit down, etc.

But the Daily News and the Post are tabloids that are prominently displayed in the bodegas and streets of NYC. If you live in New York City you can't really avoid them regardless of your ideological views. Thus, there is much more of an attempt to grab the attention even of those outside their core audience than you'll get with TV shows like O'Reilly's. A good headline can stop anyone and get them to buy the paper, even if they wouldn't normally or are ideologically non-aligned with the paper.

If you had read it, you would see that this was answered in the post you responded to.

Basically you are taking a premise from one religious view ("the world is pre-determined"), a premise from a conflicting religious view ("the world is not pre-determined") and then you proceed to ask why this religious view ("the world is is pre-determined and not-predetermined") is wrong.

Presumably people who pray for change, think that God can change things. People who ask for mercy probably think God can give it. So why on earth are you assuming they think he can't?

I have an aggregated news feed with nothing filtered out, which I do deliberately to try to avoid confirmation bias, and that's how I saw this article. When I linked it I was viewing it as evidence of how the religious debate is heating up in the US (and it prompted my OP question). This morning though I'm seeing it as if it were one of our own awful tabloids, trying hard to appeal to it's target demographic and sell more copies, and I'm a little embarrassed that I linked it.

However, you'll get no argument from me about most 'news' sources which I think are just cleverly designed products, I'm more interested in your views on the topic than the vehicle through which it was raised? Do you pray?

This could be achieved by using completely different words, such as 'our thoughts are with the victims', or by calling, or writing, for example. There is no need to 'pray' to a god if your sole intent is to show support and sympathy. So there must be another reason why people pray for victims, something that is happening in that prayer that makes the pray purposeful, that there's a point to do doing it. What is it?

I can't see a circumstance under which god would change his mind. He's god, he's either determined what is the best thing to happen, or he's foreseen what will happen and allowed it. Is it possible he would allow something to happen even if it's not the best thing that could happen? (and what implications does that have for the 'god moves in mysterious ways' explanation for things that seem to us not to be the best way they could have happened?)

I'm not. It seems to me that he can't and so I'm questioning the point of intercessory prayer, or for intervention, and I'm also asking about what it is people are doing when they pray for victims?

You are speaking of a specific view of God and a specific view on prayer, but your question is towards prayer in general.

People who believe in a omniscient God who intervenes, also likely believes God is not bound by laws of nature, or at the very least not bound by determinism. As such your objection here is moot to them.

I don't think I would call it "carefully crafted" to "grab attention." I would agree that they're trying to "grab attention" but I seriously doubt some editorial board had long, difficult conversations about whether "lying in pools of blood" was going to grab attention.

I don't really see there being as much of a "core audience" to pander to like this. I don't think liberals wake up each morning to flock to the newsstands to get their Daily News in any way that remotely resembles the way that conservatives huddle around their TV when O'Reilly comes on.

While this is definitely a step one might take to attempt to do that, I question the level of success it is having with you. I think it's feeding into an overconfidence effect, where because you're exposing yourself to such things, you're overestimating your ability to avoid bias.

This shows through in the ways you argue your positions. You get things wrong with a high frequency and yet are very slow to admit error.