Yes, we are repeating ourselves because you are masking accusations as open-minded questions, while refusing to acknowledge the accusation.

Exactly what effect does "I wish you well" have that "I pray for your wellbeing" does not? You are calling the latter meaningless and a platitude and arguing that people should therefore use the former.

I fail to see how either could not potentially be platitudes or meaningless. Feel free to enlighten me.

This post makes me sad, will you pray to god for me to make it never have happened?

Do you believe that god can and will/would change things, on request from us?

You asked what the logic was. Here is one way the logic could run. My own beliefs are irrelevant here.

I think it's fairly clear that I don't see how praying can have any effect, that it doesn't seem logical, but I'm asking questions rather than making assertions. So I'm failing to see where I'm masking anything, but even if you were right and I were being deceptive, so what, does it change the nature of the discussion? Would prayer have meaning, or not, depending on whether I'm 'masking' my true thoughts on the issue? I fail to see what you achieve by the line you're taking, it just seems like a pointless personal attack and isn't advancing the discussion.

As I've said several times now, I think that 'pray' and 'wish' are not equivalent, that prayer consists of something more than simple well wishing. So, I'm looking for an argument that shows how prayer for victims is not meaningless or a platitude, do you know any?

I don't really see how I can elaborate on my position any more than I have.

You have established your view that you think prayer is a meaningless platitude. That is an aggressive and hostile characterization. It is not equivalent to saying you don't think prayer has an effect, you are arguing as if this is the case and giving pretense of asking questions.

I don't think prayer has an effect beyond being communication of words, I don't think it is meaningless and I don't think it is a platitude. It probably can be, but it is certainly not given. To argue as if it is a given shows lack of respect for many religious people.

There is no personal attack here, this is simply the position you have put yourself in.

you started an OP with an overtly contentious cover page that was top ten trending on social media. Completely naturally, that cover page sparked a discussion ITT. And hence, it was again completely appropriate and natural that when they followed up the next week with a response that it also be put here. I'm glad original position posted it and it is FAR not appropriate here than anywhere else. You may not have "intended" that discussion, but it is completely organic and doesn't prevent whatever discussion you want to have and is simply not a problem. This constant badgering from you if a thread isn't going exactly how you intended is ridiculous.

One of these days you should head over to politics where threads run into the thousands and tens of thousands of posts. Do you think this happens because everyone is sticking to the exact topic the OP wants and intends? Of course not. But it is part of an engaged forum culture to go off on tangents people find interesting.

What effect can the act of prayer have? Aside from possibly making the victims feel better knowing that they're being prayed for (which can be achieved without resort to prayer, otherwise you devalue and make meaningless any secular form of support), and maybe making the person offering to pray feel better, what form does the prayer take, what are the expected outcomes and is the practice even logical?

That god has a plan that we simply don't understand, but which is for the good, is offered as a way to resolve the Euthryphro dilemma, but then people pray to god to change the outcome of an event that he allowed to happen? It seems contradictory.

My respect, or lack of it, is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not prayer for victims is meaningful.

My last word on this in the thread. The OP is about prayer, the tabloid was only linked to show why I was asking the question about prayer and only the content of the page linked is relevant to the discussion I'm trying to have, about prayer. Conversations about the nature and motives of tabloid reporting are very off-topic, to the point of being a derail. As the OP, I'm politely asking that we stay on topic.

I have no problem generally with threads evolving, and have said so previously, but the nature of tabloid newspapers is a completely different subject from the OP questions about prayer and I don't think that the OP has been discussed to a point where there's nothing left to say and it's reasonable to just change the subject.

On the contrary, your beliefs are what I'm interested in learning about. Prayer for victims seems contradictory or meaningless to me, but there must be a counter argument? Surely this can be discussed at a level I can barely perceive, which is what usually happens, and yet all I'm getting back ITT is versions of 'it means whatever people think it means'. That doesn't seem a satisfactory answer and in any case, I don't believe it to be true in all cases, perhaps even in the majority of cases.

That is 3 convoluted arguments at once.

a) It does not follow that a praying religious man agrees on your characterization of god or his limitations. It is his beliefs your are arguing against, not your own imagined version thereof.
b) That prayer (or some other action) does not produce the intentional effect, does not mean it is meaningless. If you give to charity, but the money never reaches the intended recipient, it does not mean your charity was given without meaning. You could argue some specific definition of "meaningless", but given that you don't seem intent on criticizing using words in general I find it difficult to see what is left of your case here.
c) A person would only devalue secular support if he argues against like you argue against prayer in this thread, so I find that argument peculiar.

I don't know, I don't get the impression that you are arguing in good faith.

ya sorry bud, but you don't get to dictate exactly what people are and are not allowed to talk about simply because you started the thread. When a natural and organic tangent occurs, you are going to accomplish little beyond looking silly if you keep pestering people who are not having the exact conversation you wish to have. I think the basic confusion going on here is that just because the topic of the OP is not completely exhausted, doesn't mean that no other topic is allowed to be discussed. It is not just possible, but indeed common and part of a lively and engaged forum to have multiple conversations going on simultaneously in threads. You need to stop resisting this.

Mightyboosh,

1) Some people believe doing A has effect B
2) They want effect B
3) Therefore they do A

You think believing 1) isn't rational. What you seem to have difficulty grasping is that if you accept 1) as true then 3) is perfectly rational. You can argue they shouldn't believe in 1) but you can't argue that once they accepted 1) doing 3) is irrational/meaningless/adjective of your choice.

This. A thread doesn't "belong" to the OP alone but everyone who participates in it.

How can there be a counterargument? You haven't made the argument to counter yet.

I find the bolded a satisfactory answer. If you don't then please explain why.

The prayer is just saying that they hope the victim's souls end up happy in heaven with God, if it exists.

Well put. To shorten the crucial Christian invocation: Attribute all things to a descendant.

I don't consider changing the subject to be participating and I'm not claiming that it 'belongs' to me, I'm simply trying to keep the thread on topic until the subject has had a decent chance to be discussed. If the thread fizzles out by all means change the subject, of it gets talked out until no one has anything left to say, change the subject, but don't waltz in after a handful of posts and change the subject. The etiquette is well established and this forum is normally pretty good at observing it.

Or, of course, you could simply start your own thread if you really want to talk about how tabloid newspapers work or whether or not prayer is being politicised.

Even replying to these posts is off topic which is why I'm trying to only do it with each person once and then stop.

You don't think that god already knows, or has decided exactly what is going to happen to that soul? So what can you do by talking to god, change his mind? Change nothing because it was going to happen anyway?

The simple fact is that having multiple conversations within a thread is very common, not a problem, and, indeed, a sign of an engaged and active forum! It is a good thing! We don't have to sit and wait our turn until the exact conversation you want to have pans out to its last breaths before we can say something without the framing you want. Just look at forums like politics with a far healthier amount of posting and engagement than this one...threads go on for tens of thousands of posts with all sorts of tangents and multiple conversations going on. People come back for their particular sub thread, then get engaged in the others, and it builds. This is good!

If you want to keep talking about exactly whatever it is you want to talk about, great! If Original Position wants to follow up with the follow up of the cover page you posted, great! The one doesnt eliminated the other. Stop trying to police the conversation with your "polite" requests for other people to stop speaking about what they are interested in.

You told us the previous post was your last word on this topic ITT. Why have you posted again? And now you switched "last word on this" to "each person once and then stop". These are different, and smacks of you trying to change your condition so you can indeed get one more reply in on this topic. Besides, this is clearly a pattern with you, so it is unlikely to be resolved, only delayed.

A question like "When did you stop beating your wife?" is just a question and not an assertion from a grammatical point of view. But there's an underlying assertion that is implied in the question itself.

So the mere fact that you're asking a question doesn't shield you from making an assertion.

Edit: Actually, if I wanted to look around, I'm pretty sure that there are some explicit assertions you've made about how other people should think about things. Those assertions are often false. Your tactic at that point is to then say things like "I'm only applying it to the subset of people who think this way" but then continue to make broad generalizations.

Maybe it was a mistake to ask questions and I should have just waded in with an assertion, taken all the inevitable flak, but at least got some useful answers. Can't really win can I

Ok, I'm going to go with this; 'Those who simply want to comfort the relatives of victims could do so without mentioning prayer, so they specifically mention prayer, and maybe even actually pray, for some other reason. Since prayer cannot change anything because you cannot change god's mind, they are either being selfish in that it benefits them to pray by making them feel like they are doing something useful, or they have reasons for for promoting their own beliefs publicly (the latter is more likely with politicians)'.

If I need to take a position to get a response then that'll do for now.

Because it explains nothing, it's not Useful. Why do you find it satisfactory?

(1) Yes, they can. But that doesn't suggest that they either should or should not. All you get from this is the factual claim that they do.

(2) Okay. Most often, that reason is to communicate to those people that they're intending to pray for them. This is an effort to express comfort and support.

(3) This is your explicit assumption regarding your point of view, which is not relevant to their internal thought processes

(4) This is just a bad faith argument.

Incidentally, if you look at your whole argument, everything rests on (3). And the jump from (3) to (4) can be made independent of (1) and (2). And all it comes down to is you making negative assertions about religious people.

Why not just skip (1)-(3) and just say the following: "Religious people are all selfish."

That way, we can skip all of the nonsense and just get to the heart of the matter, which is that you think religious people are selfish. All of this other argumentation is post-hoc justifications for the claim you want to support.

And this is also common with your argumentation style. You have conclusions that are always in search of reasons to support them.

No, I understand that, but let's now put that into a real context, such as praying for the relatives of the victims of a tragedy (that god allowed to happen).

Now if that is A, what is the desired effect B? (There is more than one, but let's see which, if any, are meaningful and require that prayer be the context, rather than comforting people in some other way)

Wow. Did mightyboosh really just conclude that any religious person offering to pray after a tragedy is either selfish or promoting something? Seriously?

All of these extra parentheticals only show how hard it is that you need to push back against what people actually believe in order for you to make your point.

Person X: "I believe prayer will help bring you comfort, so I will pray for you."
MB: "I don't believe prayer changes anything, so you're being selfish."

One of these two is logical.