h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I spent enough of my childhood talking to people who weren't there that talking to someone who only might not be there is almost a step up.

Is this a theological thing? Because I had a similar kind of moment when I was about fourteen.

Not that I have any great wisdom or insight to share in the matter, but, I don't know, I like to offer what pitiful help I can to my friends...

I teneded to talk to myself sometimes but atleast I knew it was myself.

-- DoctorMO --

I think I'm myself when I talk to me, but different enough to have a conversation with me...

Yep, theological, that's me. It's a good word. The whole idea isn't something that can be argued about rationally, you can't be persuaded one way or the other by facts, because almost all beliefs make sense within themselves. So I'm kind of seeing if I think I'd be better off if I believed in stuff, and if I decide I would be then I'll try to convince myself. Unless I get a vision or something, which would be very nice. (hint hint)

When I talked to myself the idea was that talking to myself wouldn't do any good, because I already knew what *I* thought, but if I talked to an imaginary person they might have something new to say.

Oh, I thought you might be talking about prayer. It's true, some beliefs just don't seem open to empirical proof or disproof, they're... internal in a way. Take - okay, it's a bad example cos it's a flawed argument - the Ontological Proof of God's existence. It supposedly proves the existence of God via hard logic... but I'd bet it's never persuaded an atheist to change his beliefs.

Have you heard of the French chemist Pascal? He decided to believe in God because if he was wrong, after he died it wouldn't make any difference, but if he was right he'd be in the good books of the Man upstairs. Rather a self-serving approach, I always thought.

Is there a difference between talking to yourself and talking to an imaginary person of your own creation?

I guess it comes down to how strongly you believe in the existence of the other (imaginary person), at least internally it does. To the outsider it makes no difference, they still think you're mad.
Unless you're a CGI character of course, in which case conversations with yourself are to be applauded.

I was talking about prayer, in my last post the first paragraph was explaining why, the second was explaining to other people who had posted why I hadn't (in the past) talked to myself rather than imaginary people.

I wouldn't say I believed unless I really did, because you-know-who would be able to tell, so paying lip-service to the idea achieves nothing.

Right now I'm at a stage where I think it would be quite nice if I believed, so occassionally I have talk inside my head in a way that would be called prayer if I did believe. But currently it still feels like I'm talking to myself.

If God exists, then you are part of Him/Her, and so by talking to yourself, you talk to God, sort of.

My ideas about God are admittedly heavily influenced by Spinoza, but whatever...

Your argument about prayer=talking to yourself is only valid if you believe in a "God is a composite of all of us". I believe in a God external to us, that was there in the beginning. And so with that belief prayer is not talking to yourself, but to another, entirely seperate, person.

but God would still be omniscient, and so able to hear, surely?

And I've always found the 'if God is infinite, then we cannot exist except as a part of Him' argument quite persuasive, too.

If God exists then he/she/it would be able to hear you talking to yourself, but if you were just talking to yourself he's probably listen differently than if you were addressing him. So your intent would change the effect it had.

If God doesn't exist then talking to yourself and talking to him has different intent but the same effect, (people think you're mad).

I'm presenting both possibilities in the same language, but I am now leaning more towards one side than the other.

I'm having a good day, with respect to all of this, and it helps to talk about it, so thank you for listening and contributing.

the upside is that whether or not you talk to yourself, people generally think you're mad - or is that just for me?

If we are a part of God, then we would need at least the semblance of apartness in order to appreciate him.
But is God infinite, or just infinitely... (powerful, wise, etc)

(living in England lets you appreciate a sunny day far more than if you lived in California)

If we are a part of God, then we would need at least the semblance of apartness in order to appreciate him.
But is God infinite, or just infinitely... (powerful, wise, etc)

(living in England lets you appreciate a sunny day far more than if you lived in California)

What's this catwoman? Falling into a beginners trap of posting twice! Tut-tut!

From a view of having a relationship then there needs to be at least 2 separate entities. Therefore if we are to have a relationship with God then he must be seperate and distinct.
Also going back to my point about a creator God, if he was there in the beginning, and then created the universe (which therefore had a start point) doesn't that mean that he created something outside himself?

Mmm, but how can an ominpotent and omniscient God be truly separate? Such a being would have total and immediate knowledge of emotional/intellectual states, total empathy, and therefore total understanding. He would know what you would say before you said it - in fact, would know how the 'conversation' would turn out before it even began. It probably wouldn't even qualify as a conversation under most people's criteria of one.

(De nada, Catwoman, always a pleasure to help a friend and make use of the degree... )

Yes- your point about God knowing what you would say before you said it is true, but that doesn't stop it from being a conversation. If one knows someone really well then one can often tell what they are about to say before they've said it, but you still want to hear it. When someone loves you, and you *know* that they love you, you still like to hear them say so.
Plus as I see it prayer is as important for us to get in the right mind-set as actually asking God for stuff. That by acknowledging before God that we need his help to do stuff we are in the right frame of mind to accept what God wants to give us. Prayer helps us to get the big-picture of our littleness in comparison to God.

Hope none of you see me as ranting on about this, because I'm not, just telling you what I think about things.

No problem, always happy to listen to another person's views.

I'm sort of reminded of one of my exam essay questions from about ten years ago, which went something like 'is submission implicit in the act of worship?' - except it wasn't submission, it was a stronger and more personal concept than that. Wish I'd kept the exam paper, never mind...

And the local vicar, who I know rather well, is fond of saying that God answers all prayers - it's just that most often the answer is 'sorry, but no'.