You can clasp your hands and ask your god to tell you how to confront your son about that magazine you found in his backpack, or you can brew some tea and look into the tea leaves for a message from the gods. These are fundamentally the same concept, except the tea leaves method is not blessed by Christians, and presumably the clasp hands method is not blessed by whoever reads tea leaves...

Prayer is functionally indistinguishable from divination.

Divination that is whitelisted by your flavor of Christianity is called "prayer". The sorts that are not whitelisted are called "divination" or "witchcraft." This can be seen clearly within Christianity when you consider the schism between some of the more extreme flavors of Protestantism and Catholicism. I have, on more than one occasion heard protestants describe various aspects of Catholicism as witchcraft and idolatry. Most of the accusations center around the issue of saints and the Virgin Mary, and whether it is acceptable to ask them to pray on your behalf. Many[all?] protestants do not consider this to be a blessed form of divination, thus the less mellow among them consider it to be witchcraft or whatever.

I think you taking it too literally. When religious person says "God blessed me with the gift of children", they rarely mean that the God - as an actual supernatural being - came to them in person and produced their children as a gift. Most probably, they know exactly where the children come from, and were actually present when those were conceived and born, and even though God might have been mentioned on both occasions, rarely they would claim The Almighty was personally present there and did the work. It is a metaphor expressing the idea of the Providence and God's control and responsibility about what happens to people. In the same way, when they say "I prayed and God let me see the solution of my problem", they rarely mean God personally came down to them in a burning bush, spoke to them and gave them detailed step-by-step instruction of how to solve their problems. Etc., etc.

>>> Prayer is functionally indistinguishable from divination.

Prayer is nothing like the divination. Prayer is an expression of certain feelings or formulae about the supernatural. Divination is a mechanistic procedure in which one would, after performing required ritual, receive information about the future or otherwise inaccessible information. Of course, you can pray for success of your divination, or you can try to divine if your prayer would be followed by some event, but those are two functionally very different actions. Note that for prayer, one usually is required to be a believer, while for divination you don't really have to believe in anything as long as you perform the ritual properly. This, btw, is a big different between modern religion and old religions - most of the old religions couldn't care less what you think as long as you do proper procedures. Modern ones rather concerned about morals and feelings and beliefs and all that immaterial stuff.

>>> I have, on more than one occasion heard protestants describe various aspects of Catholicism as witchcraft and idolatry.

I have heard the whole Christianity described as idolatry. So what? The question if Christianity is idolatry or not from the POV of anybody is not the question we were discussing.

>>> whether it is acceptable to ask them to pray on your behalf

I can imagine how it may be a problem for an ostensibly monotheistic religion, but that does not make a prayer a divination. Of course, that does not mean actual Christians never engage in practices which are, in fact, divination - but people violating the premises of their own religion is nothing new. I can give you Jews eating pork, Muslims drinking wine and Christians hating their fellow man. It happens. However, the religion as a belief system and as a social mechanism does not endorse it.

">>> I have, on more than one occasion heard protestants describe various aspects of Catholicism as witchcraft and idolatry. I have heard the whole Christianity described as idolatry. So what? The question if Christianity is idolatry or not from the POV of anybody is not the question we were discussing."

I was making a very specific point here. Christians accuse other christians of practicing witchcraft when they practice forms of prayer that they do not approve of.

Asking the Virgin Mary to pray on your behalf in Catholicism is whitelisted, therefore according to Catholics it is not witchcraft at all. According to tackless hardline protestants, it is not whitelisted, therefore they label it as what it really is, a form of divination.

Furthermore, your definition of divination is steeped in Christian bias. What you are really saying is "prayer is not divination because it is [magical woo] while divination is [magical woo what does not fit the Christian perspective towards relationships between gods and men]".

Whether or not you demand an immediate answer or need to be a "true believer" when you engage in the practice are both completely inconsequential. They are still both blatant magical thinking.

Er, its not divination in any case, and that isn't what hardline Protestants call it. The issue some Protestants have with intercessory prayer isn't that it is "divination" but that it is, as they see it, inconsistent with monotheism (incidentally, this is the same problem that, e.g., many Muslims have with Christian trinitarianism.)

> Furthermore, your definition of divination is steeped in Christian bias.

Its what the word means. Whether or not that fact is a result of a history of Christian bias is, really, beside the point; if you want a generalized term for superstition modern English has one; abusing a term with a different and clear definition for that purpose just obstructs communication.

>>> therefore they label it as what it really is, a form of divination.

Could you quote any reputable source that expresses it like that, that calling to Virgin Mary is not just wrong or prohibited for a protestant, but is actually a form of divination?

You argument seems to suggest that if some Christian faiths disagree on some specific account, then there can be no agreement between them on any account. This is of course false.

>>> Furthermore, your definition of divination is steeped in Christian bias

That's a funny accusation, given that I am not a Christian and never felt a desire to be one. I gave specific criteria on the difference. You did not show any flaw in my argument, you just labeled it "magical woo" and dismissed it.

>>> They are still both blatant magical thinking.

I'm not sure what you mean by "magical thinking" - does saying "magical woo" and expecting this to win an argument qualify? Divination and prayer are completely different practices, and while different religions could endorse both, dominant religions in relevant demographics endorse one and do not endorse the other. If you want to change your argument by conceding prayer is not divination and instead claiming prayer is "magical thinking" - be my guest, but then I'd recommend to actually learn what prayer means for people that actually pray and for religions that practice it. I'm pretty sure magic plays very little role there.

Prayer is not divination primarily in that receiving a 'voice form God' would by met with extreme suspicion and would not be shared. In Lutheran theology, we expect to find God's word written in the Bible.

http://cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=D&word=DIVINATION

Yeah, I get that you deny what you call divination. The point I am making here is that all the non-endorsed forms of magic get called what they are, while the endorsed forms of magic get endless circular arguments of "well you see this stuff is different..."

Not at all. For example, if God would like you to have free will then return communication would be rather scant.

For example - if God made himself obviously known then your will to love perhaps would not be as genuine.

Your premise that Gods would come forms that you expect isn't logical.

The only difference is that mainstream Christianity blesses one method, and derogatorily refers to the other methods as witchcraft or divination.

Different religions all have their own forms of blessed divination, and forbidden divination, and they all assert that their blessed methods are fundamentally different from the others, but it is all the same stuff.

You don't need the Ouija board for one of them, but you are just listing your personal whitelist criteria to me. Either one is still magical thinking.

"I'll pray on it" and "I'll talk to the Father" are really no different than what happened here.

>>> they only frown on those which aren't approved by the religion.

That's a vacuous statement - of course religions approve only things that they approve, and disapprove things that they disapprove. But among the things many religions - including Avraamic ones most common in Western world - disapprove, directly in their scripture and in many other sources - is divination, fortune telling and seeking omens.

My point about "aren't approved" is that many religions explicitly recommend divination, fortune telling, seeking omens, and the like, but only in a manner approved by that religion i.e. by doing so through their God, rather than through cards or animal bones or whatever. They do not universally discourage such behavior, though.

Receiving direct messages from God is commonly called prophecy, and, depending on the religion, prophets are extinct since hundreds to thousands years. I don't think any mainstream religion claims to have prophets today - there are, of course, various freaks, but mainstream religious communities never make such claims.

So your description - unless, of course, you can back it up with some sources that contradict what I said - appears inadequate.

http://today.yougov.com/news/2013/10/25/god-told-me/

Prayer is absolutely "telepathic communication to God" in at least one direction. Prayer is something you can do in complete silence, and God is still supposed to be able to hear you. In any other context we would call that "telepathy".

The other direction is not quite as clear, but clearly a lot of people believe it. Beyond telepathic responses, there are physical replies to telepathic requests, for example:

http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/if-a-person-asks-in-p...

http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/why-werent-my-prayers...

Note that the answers are not "this is bad and you should definitely not do it", but rather a simple command to trust that God or the lesser beings will do what's best.

Which one would that be? If the prayer were God reading your mind, you didn't need to pray - God is omniscient, so He already knows what you're praying about. Moreover, He already knew what you would be praying about before you started. Why they are praying then, you ask? Try to answer this question (honestly, not jumping to the convenient conclusion of "all of them are idiots that couldn't see such a simple thing") and you'll get closer to understanding what prayer is. If they prayer would be you reading God's mind - I don't think any Avraamic religion would adopt such blasphemy as a human reading God's mind and understanding it.

>>> and God is still supposed to be able to hear you

You realize you just assumed God is a human which needs sounds to communicate, right?

>>> In any other context we would call that "telepathy".

Really? I just communicated with you in complete silence, yet it wasn't telepathy ;) Moreover, I simultaneously communicated with thousand other people, and didn't have to shout very hard either. Obviously, I'm some kind of wizard or something :)

I think you'd not get very far if you anthropomorphize God and imagine it's just some bearded dude sitting on a cloud. I, of course, far from prescribing a religion to you - if you want to believe this is how the God is, feel free to. I'm just saying it's probably not what most of the Christians believe in.

>>> a simple command to trust that God or the lesser beings will do what's best.

So where's a divination in that? Where is the fortune telling? I'd say if one of the fortune tellers would tell you "hope for the best and eventually something good would happen" you'd not pay much for that. That's why actual fortune tellers are much more verbose. I wouldn't vouch for the value of any of the verbs, but at least you get what you paid for.

The second answer, btw, explicitly says prayers are not magic - they are not supposed to force God (or any other supernatural being) into doing your bidding (that's basically what magic is about). It says it is a statement of trust, instead.

1. Most if not all Abrahamic religions hold that you can effectively pray in silence and without doing anything besides thinking your prayer.

2. Prayer is communicating with God and communicating by pure thought is telepathy.

3. God is expected to reply in some way, and you're encouraged to look for and interpret the reply.

Can you elaborate exactly which one(s) you have trouble with, and why?

2. Not really.

3. Not at all.

The idea that you can make God do things by thinking about some stuff sounds strange to me. However, nothing I know about Avraamic religions suggests you can do that. Of course, the scripture contains examples of people - called prophets or Holy Ones, etc. - communicating directly with God and even causing change is God's behavior (the latter is exceedingly rare, but you could find some examples) - but a normal regular person is not expected to do that.

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."

(Note: don't take my quoting of Sam Harris as an endorsement of him in general. I have no idea whether he's worth endorsing or not, having read essentially nothing of his beyond that quote.)

Looking at it from the outside, there's no serious difference.

As for the questions of greed, the Catholic church is not one of the poorest establishments on Earth, and has various episodes in its history which do not look very good to modern eye. However, such is the nature of men - it is natural to expect people to deviate from high morals and sometimes be greedy even if their religion rejects greed, and sometimes be hateful even if their religion opposes hate. That, however, does not make greed or hate religious institutions, and does not make them property of a particular religion.

If you go around looking for signs, you will find them. Who/what was it that sent him that sign?

Stay classy, HN.

Then you've either not been paying close enough attention, or not reading the same discussion threads I have.

The stay classy thing is overused.

You're also generalizing all religions, when in fact there are some religions which actively warn against superstition and miracles (Buddhism, for example). So I can see why someone might think your comment was ill-informed (and I say that as an atheist).

What he did not actually say (though we can certainly infer) is that all religious thinking (or all deeply religious thinking) is necessarily irrational thinking.

If we merely grant that much deeply religious thinking is irrational, then I see nothing inherently wrong with suggesting that people who engage in one form of irrational reasoning might be susceptible to other forms.

Instead of commenting on religion, I will wager that people who claim to be superstitious tend to buy into horoscopes and homeopathy more often then the general population. That's not an offensive statement, is it? Yet what really is the difference between astrology and other things that we describe as religions?

You realize that's what superstitions are made of, right? Fancy science words don't make you rational.

I wasn't aware that "correlation" is a fancy science word, I guess it depends on your personal background.

Of course, some people only notice data that fit their preconceived perspective, and some people have received superstitions based entirely on the words of others. I'm sure there are other exceptions too. But in my mind, the conceptual framework for understanding irrational thought is that we have these brains that are amazing pattern matching machines and we don't know how to turn them off. Once we've noticed a pattern, most of us assume it's a real correlation, and no matter how many exceptions to the pattern we see, we don't know how to stop believing.

Superstitions are generally formed when two things are correlated, but the causative variable fails to be correctly isolated, resulting in the mistaken impression that one event causes another despite being either independent or actually dependent on a third variable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_and_dependence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...

Also, I take a slight offense at that last part...

Being able to implement mixed strategies is actually a game theoretic requirement for rationality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_%28game_theory%29#Pur...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Winkler

I agree with your general premise, hardship probably does drive people to attempt the irrational, but I think gambling isn't necessarily a great example of this since there is likely more going on there.