Visited the Grotto this afternoon, and saw this:
Whatever one thinks of the whole We are all Hokies, Orange and Maroon Effect concept, I think that particular mini-tribute is entirely appropriate, as it gets people thinking about those affected by the tragedy just as they’re arriving at an ideal place to be thinking about such things. I bet there have been a lot more prayers said and candles lit for the Virginia Tech victims and their families than otherwise would have been, because of that hat.
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Categories: Notre Dame
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April 28th, 2007 at 1:08:49 am
Brendan,
You and I are in complete agreement.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:04:53 am
How sincere are those prayers though when the story has been shoved down the entire country’s throat 24/7 for the last 2 weeks yet one still needs a VT hat hanging at the Grotto to “remind” them to pray for the victims?
April 28th, 2007 at 5:20:24 am
Timugen,
Maybe not everyone has a memory as sharp as yours. Besides, whoever left the hat didn’t exactly broadcast that they had done so. This is not a case of one’s right hand letting his left hand know what he’s doing. This is simply someone leaving a gentle reminder that there are 33 grieving families in desperate need of our prayers. If you have a problem with that, I suggest that you look inward for the source of that problem.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:58:40 am
I think that was a really thoughtful thing for someone to do. I am sure they would have loved to keep that hat, but they left it there knowing that it would do more good at the grotto than on their head.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:04:08 pm
Timugen,
The coverage has been relentless, but a simple reminder such as that, particularly when people are consumed with their own troubles, serves its purpose well.
Brendan, I am going to miss your Grotto coverage. Thanks for doing such a heartfelt job documenting it these past three years.
April 28th, 2007 at 3:54:31 pm
Patrick,
Apparently you missed the point of my comment. I also think it was very thoughtful for someone to place that hat. My post was referring to the comment in the post about more prayers being said for the victims because of that hat.
And perhaps before suggesting to someone that they need to look inward for the source of a problem, maybe you should look more closely at what you’re reading.
April 28th, 2007 at 6:28:05 pm
Timugen,
You openly questioned the sincerity of prayers for Virginia Tech families and victims after Brendan posted this picture of a Virginia Tech hat at the grotto. Even if I were to construe your criticism of such displays as an inference from what you wrote, I’d respond in the same fashion. That said, it was no inference. Your words are pretty clear. Need ia paste them here to remind you?
April 28th, 2007 at 6:41:49 pm
Patrick,
Let me paste the more relevant part for you.
I bet there have been a lot more prayers said and candles lit for the Virginia Tech victims and their families than otherwise would have been, because of that hat.
This was the only reference to “prayers” in Brendan’s post, so when I referred to “those prayers” it should be painfully obvious to someone who is actually paying attention to what they are reading, as opposed to reacting emotionally (which would be perfectly understandable in this situation,) what my intent was.
My problem with your comment was your immediate assumption that I must obviously have some sort of “problem” that I must “look inward” to to deal with.
I apologize if my comment didn’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but please don’t mischaracterize it and then use that distorted view of it to personally insult me.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:01:04 pm
Timugen,
Your post was insulting. Pure and simple. You questioned the integrity of people praying. Here are your words:
How sincere are those prayers though when the story has been shoved down the entire country’s throat 24/7 for the last 2 weeks yet one still needs a VT hat hanging at the Grotto to “remind” them to pray for the victims?
I can buy your argument that you weren’t questioning the integrity of the person leaving the hat, but that does not excuse your callous and inexplicable criticism of those individuals who, for one reason or another, need a visual reminder to remember to say a prayer for the victims and their families. Does this somehow undermine the strength or validity of their prayers? No, not at all. Does this make them bad people or individuals who have problems? Again, no it does not.
People live busy, frenetic lives and when a tragedy of this nature takes place hundreds of miles away to people we’ve never met, it can be easy to forget to pay those affected the proper amount of respect or to offer for them the amount of prayer that they need. That’s why, I think, Brendan and I appreciate these little reminders … not necessarily because we need them ourselves, but because we recognize that some people do.
Frankly, I’m baffled that you would even make the suggestion that you’ve made, irrespective of your approval of the hat. Prayers are prayers. God doesn’t care if someone reminds you to say one. As long as you mean it, that’s what matters.
I’m sorry that my comment about your need for a self-examination offended you, but quite frankly, if you have a legitimate problem with the individuals who only remember to pray for the VT victims because of the hat, then I’m afraid I stand by the comment.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:15:46 pm
And I stand by comment about the sincerity of the prayers, Patrick.
If what happened at VT is so absolutely horrific (which it is,) and you have had constant reminders of it piped through your TV, computer, radio, newspaper, friends, etc. for almost two weeks and then you go somewhere specifically to pray and you wouldn’t say a prayer for the victims were it not for a baseball cap hanging there, then I would say my comment is 100% legitimate.
I think it’s wonderful that more people are praying for those families; I’m just pointing out that it does mean something if they otherwise wouldn’t have if not for a baseball cap hanging there.
(And you still can’t back off of judging me over an internet blog….wonder if that says something about you?)
April 28th, 2007 at 11:32:13 pm
Is it fair to judge someone who makes an indefensible, sweeping condemnation of people as lacking sincerity for praying only after a gentle reminder? Yes. Get off your moral high horse and quit condemning people who, when reminded, get down on their knees, forget their own troubles, and say a prayer for someone else. Truly, castigating people for this is quite pathetic.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:37:55 pm
…but quite frankly, if you have a legitimate problem with the individuals who only remember to pray for the VT victims because of the hat
I don’t have a problem with them. I was just pointing out that it means something if someone going to the Grotto needs a reminder to pray for those families who so desperately need it. I in no way meant to imply that such prayers were for the worse, or that the person who put the hat there should not have done so.
April 28th, 2007 at 11:39:45 pm
You win Patrick; I’m dismounting my “moral high horse” so you can get back on.
April 29th, 2007 at 3:12:21 am
Why can’t you just admit that you were being unfair. Is it really all that hard? You were doing far more than merely saying that the reminder “means something”. You were questioning the sincerity behind the prayers of the individuals who need it. Need I re-paste the initial comment?
April 29th, 2007 at 10:36:04 am
Patrick, I know what I said and I don’t need it read back to me; I still stand by it. You and I just see this in two completely different ways. I just don’t judge you as you do me.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:54:07 am
I just don’t judge you as you do me.
Um, yes you did. In fact your comment is all about judging the sincerity of people. For you to claim you aren’t judging is utterly ridiculous.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:59:37 pm
David,
For once, you and I completely agree.
April 29th, 2007 at 7:39:13 pm
Actually David, no, I did not judge anyone as a person; I merely made a comment about the sincerity of prayers. I even said in a response to Patrick that I have no problem whatsoever with people saying those prayers and that I indeed thought it was a good thing that they were doing so. Patrick, in his omniscience, divined over the internet that I have some “problem” which requires inner reflection, and then told me I need to get off my “moral high horse.”
April 29th, 2007 at 11:46:01 pm
Timugen,
Your refusal to acknowlege your own actions truly knows no bounds.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:47:02 pm
I’ve had some papers to finish so I haven’t been able to opine on this discussion contemporaneously (dammit, I must get out of paper-speak mode), but now that I have another one done, I feel I can spare a moment to jump in here:
Timugen is being entirely rational, reasonable and non-judgmental in his comments here. Patrick, meanwhile, has demonstrated the same mental faculty with he so often graces us in class, completely missing Timugen’s entirely logical and reasonable point and turning it into some big smear of all good Christians.
It’s no wonder that David pipes in with a similarly off-the-wall comment that bears no basis in the reality of the discussion.
Timugen has made the very basic and unassailable point that when one prays for a person, for whom one would not otherwise pray were it not for a visual reminder, the sincerity of that prayer is necessarily less than the sincerity of the prayer that one internally intends to make, regardless of any reminder.
This is logical, reasonable, obvious, and not at all judgmental regarding the people praying because of the hat. It is simply an observation that prompted prayers are less genuine than unprompted ones.
Specifically:
“individuals who, for one reason or another, need a visual reminder to remember to say a prayer for the victims and their families. Does this somehow undermine the strength or validity of their prayers? No, not at all. ”
Yes, yes it does. This is an elementary logical conclusion. If you need a visual reminder to pray, then you necessarily have less strong feelings about that issue than you do about issues that motivate you to pray without a reminder.
“I’m baffled that you would even make the suggestion that you’ve made, irrespective of your approval of the hat.”
I’m baffled that you continue to raise the red herring of Timugen’s approval or disapproval of the hat, when no fair reading of his comments supports for a nanosecond the idea that he was expressing an opinion on the presence of the hat.
” Prayers are prayers. God doesn’t care if someone reminds you to say one. As long as you mean it, that’s what matters.”
Assuming arguendo that your first and second sentences are true (the second one in particular seems awfully questionable to me, if only because I highly doubt Patrick has a keen insight on what God cares about), the third sentence might be true, but is the direct issue of contention in Timugen’s comment. People who only pray because they see a visual reminder necessarily “mean it” a little bit less than those who pray of their own volition. I have no idea whether this matters to God, and I won’t be so presumptuous as to pretend to know otherwise. But I can recognize the basic and irrefutable truth surrounding the relative insincerity of such prayers. I leave it to God to assign them their proper weight on the prayer scoreboard Patrick evidently assumes exists.
“Get off your moral high horse ”
Patrick. Kettle. Black.
“Why can’t you just admit that you were being unfair. . . You were questioning the sincerity behind the prayers of the individuals who need it.”
It boggles the mind to speculate as to what is “unfair” about pointing out a necessary logical truth about certain individuals — who, it might also be pointed out, only theoretically exist.
“Your refusal to acknowlege your own actions truly knows no bounds”
Your inability to understand basic chains of inference and deduction is similarly flabbergasting.
And finally, just for good measure:
“Um, yes you did. In fact your comment is all about judging the sincerity of people. For you to claim you aren’t judging is utterly ridiculous.”
Of course, the Timugen comment to which David is responding here is one in which he claims not to be judging PATRICK. Timugen never made a claim either way (at this point in the thread) about whether he was judging anyone else. But such subtlties of language are lost on Mr. David. And in any event, observing the necessary truth that visually prompted prayers are less sincere than non-visually prompted ones is hardly “judging the sincereity of people,” it is simply — once again — statint a necessary logical truth. In the face of Timugen’s repeated statements that he has no problem with either the hat-leaver or the visual prayer-givers, for David to claim that Timugen is judging people is, well, utterly ridiculous.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:03:00 pm
Has anyone actually established an intent to create a “reminder” by placing a hat at the Grotto, rather than it merely serving as a token, a memorial, an offering, an atmosphere, a sacrifice, or any one of other innumerable religious devices that could reset this inane discussion?
April 30th, 2007 at 1:56:20 pm
Timugen has made the very basic and unassailable point that when one prays for a person, for whom one would not otherwise pray were it not for a visual reminder, the sincerity of that prayer is necessarily less than the sincerity of the prayer that one internally intends to make, regardless of any reminder.
Um, no its completely and utterly assailable. What evidence do you have that a person prays with less sincerety just because they might not have intended to pray for the person before the reminder. Here’s a hint: YOU DON’T. The sincerety with which a person prays is unmeasurable. The only people who know how sincere the prayers are are the prayer and God.
Do you remember the birthday’s of each and every single one of your friends? I know I don’t, even for people who are my very close friends, hell i can’t even keep straight all my family’s birthdays. Its not out of lack of caring, i’m just bad with remembering dates. And i’m not alone, as literally millions of people use various forms of reminder for birthdays, from calanders, to software programs, to post it notes. Yet when i am reminded that, oh hey my friend Brendan’s birthday is coming up, I do sincerely wish him a happy birthday, no more no less sincere than if for some reason i remembered it on my own.
Basically Timugen’s point is arrogant and judgemental, and completely utterly assailable, as is your own. You can gussy it up all you like with lawyerspeak words like “arguendo” but your basic premise is flawed. Objectively measuring the intent or sincerety of prayers is impossible, and claiming otherwise is well, bull. You, or Timugen, or Patrick or anyone else can make a subjective judgement based on your own opinions, but doing so is by definition being judgemental, and again, in no way unassailable. Seems like you and Timugen both need to get off the high horse.
What the person who left that hat did is noble and commendable. What you two are doing, well you are being jerks, plain and simple.
April 30th, 2007 at 6:42:29 pm
I apologize at the outset for responding. It’s really not fair of me to engage in debate with someone who is so hopelessly overmatched as David.
“What evidence do you have that a person prays with less sincerety just because they might not have intended to pray for the person before the reminder. ”
The fact that they had no intent do so absent the reminder. If such a person exists, and prays only because they see the hat, and not because they were always planning to but just “forgot about it” until they saw the hat, then that person necessarily and inescapably is less sincere in their prayers than either the person who intended to all along but simply “forgot” until seeing the hat, or the person who intended to all along and did not need the hat to serve as a reminder.
It is absolutely astounding that you are incapable of wrapping your brain around this simple point.
“Its not out of lack of caring, i’m just bad with remembering dates.”
Exactly. You care, you always intend to wish your friends well on their birthday, but you have trouble remembering what date the birthday falls on. That is perfectly normal and understandable and in no way reduces the sincerity of your birthday wishes.
It is not at all like the person who goes to the Grotto to pray — for her grandma, for her brother in Iraq, for suffering in Darfur, for any other number of people — and never once thinks about praying for the VT victims until she sees the hat. This person may well genuinely care about praying for those people once she sees the hat; or maybe she prays out of a vague sense of duty, that she “really ought to add them to the list.” Doesn’t matter. Either way, her prayer for them is less sincere than her prayers for the people she was thinking about before she went to the Grotto, and as she appraoched the Grotto, before she saw the hat.
Forgetting the date of a friend’s birthday is not at all the same as needing to be reminded to care that it’s your friend’s birthday. That’s the distinction here.
For your analogy to work, there would need to be a designated “praying time” that our devout soul keeps forgetting to observe; she sincerely WANTS to send her prayers to Blacksburg, but just keeps forgetting what time the prayer meeting is, and needs someone to remind her.
Quite obviously, that’s worlds away from the situation here.
It is absolutely astounding that you are incapable of wrapping your brain around this simple point.
“Basically Timugen’s point is arrogant and judgemental, and completely utterly assailable, as is your own”
Translation: blah blah blah how dare you blah blah blah you’re mean! blah blah blah
I understand now how Brendan felt in the Obama thread. An actual argument would be nice (and not a children’s toy argument like the birthday thing, but a real honest to goodness piece of thinking).
“Objectively measuring the intent or sincerety of prayers is impossible”
Perhaps, for the simple-minded who do not grasp basic logical reasoning skills, this is true.
“What the person who left that hat did is noble and commendable”
Why are you continuing to beat this dead (high?) horse? NO ONE IN THIS THREAD HAS EVER ONCE CRITICIZED THE PERSON WHO LEFT BEHIND THE HAT. How thick can you possibly be?
“What you two are doing, well you are being jerks, plain and simple.”
Wrong. Timugen made an observation that may be cynical but is no less true for its cynicism. I have pointed out the truth of his comment and further demonstrated how Patrick, and now especially you, are displaying such a profound lack of basic reasoning, reading and thinking skills that it may no longer be safe for either of you to go about your daily business unassisted. Which I guess does make me a jerk, but for a completely different reason than you suggest. Which actually further proves my point rather nicely.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:07:23 pm
Sorry but your assertions still lack any objective evidence. As I have said before you and Timugen are free to make observations as to what you THINK about the sincerety of someones praying, but your attempt to paint it is irrefutable logic are the height arrogance, and frankly stupidity.
Perhaps, for the simple-minded who do not grasp basic logical reasoning skills, this is true.
Um, no. YOu are incapable completely utterly incapable of knowing objectively and being able to prove objectively the sincerity or lack there of of another person. Period. THAT is basic logical reasoning. All you are capable of is making a subjective judgement call based on your own view of the world, but there is not a single test you or anyone else can apply to what is in a persons heart when they are praying. To claim otherwise shows a complete and utterly LACK of understanding of basic logic.
Why are you continuing to beat this dead (high?) horse? NO ONE IN THIS THREAD HAS EVER ONCE CRITICIZED THE PERSON WHO LEFT BEHIND THE HAT. How thick can you possibly be?
For someone who claims to be so smart you sure are stupid. Re-read what I wrote again. Did I at any point say you or Timugen had criticized the person who left the hat? No, i did not. What i did do was compare his actions to your own. I could have easily said, “What Ghandi did was noble and commendable”, i just chose a more related subject.
Wrong. Timugen made an observation that may be cynical but is no less true for its cynicism. I have pointed out the truth of his comment and further demonstrated how Patrick, and now especially you, are displaying such a profound lack of basic reasoning, reading and thinking skills that it may no longer be safe for either of you to go about your daily business unassisted. Which I guess does make me a jerk, but for a completely different reason than you suggest. Which actually further proves my point rather nicely.
Correct, Timugen made an observation. You apparently aggree with his observation. But again, you have no way, none whatsoever, of PROVING it to be true. No amount of logic is going to change the fact that you can’t objectively observe the sincerity of something that is inherently un-observable. Your failure to grasp that single small reality, which IS objective, shows that you are not only arrogant, but stupid as well.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:06:54 am
David, David, David. I hope you have hard plastic covers on all your knives and other sharp kitchen objects. Because if the carelessness and feeblemindedness with which you use your keyboard is at all indicative, you have no business being around anything pointy without adult supervision.
“YOu are incapable completely utterly incapable of knowing objectively and being able to prove objectively the sincerity or lack there of of another person. Period. THAT is basic logical reasoning.”
If that’s all I have as a premise, I agree with you. Unfortunately, there’s another thought running through this discussion: again, the problem as posed involves someone for whom that hat is a but-for cause of their prayers for the VT people. Someone who had no plans to pray for them until they saw the hat. Someone who, AS CONTAINED IN THE PREMISE OF THE SCENARIO, did not “care” about those people until they saw the hat, and only then decided to pray for them.
In such a case, which is all that has ever been discussed here since Timugen started the discussion, the sincerity is necessarily less than it is for those prayers originating from previously present caring and intent. It is inescapably true. Indeed, that’s the ENTIRE FREAKING POINT — that the person did not care enough to pray until being reminded by the hat to do so.
Of course this is not a quantifiable assessment — upon being reminded, the person might very well care very much about the VT people and sincerely mean the prayer and all that, and neither I nor Timugen have ever argued otherwise. As Timugen put it though, it definitely, irrefutably does “mean something” that those prayers needed to be prompted instead of emerging without a trigger. That, alone, is sufficient to demonstrate the lessened sincerity of those prayers as compared to prayers that are made without assistance.
You can keep saying “no” until you’re red(der) in the face, but that won’t make it any less true.
“No amount of logic is going to change the fact that you can’t objectively observe the sincerity of something that is inherently un-observable. ”
As I just explained, this objection is negated by the premises of the scenario under discussion. While you are correct that no one can look at two praying people and decide which one is being more sincere, you are completely incorrect if you think the prompted v. unprompted nature of their prayers doesn’t change the analysis. With that additional information, it is absolutely beyond question that the person whose prayer was unreminded is more sincere than the person whose prayer was reminded. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, maybe just a smidge, whatever, that’s not the point. The point, again, ad nauseum, all along, has been those who need to see the hat to remember to pray necessarily are thinking about VT less, are more concerned with thie perosnal lives, etc., and therefore of necessity are less sincere about their prayer for VT than someone who comes to the Grotto specifically because of VT and has been thinking about them all along.
And once again: it doesn’t make the reminded person a bad person or a liar to God or anything else ridiculous like that. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Similarly, just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true.
The rest of your post just repeats the same imbecilic inanity over and over again, so I would be similarly repeating myself if I responded to it point by point. The only other thing is:
“What i did do was compare his actions to your own. I could have easily said, “What Ghandi did was noble and commendable”, i just chose a more related subject.”
Kudos for you in managing to choose an on-topic non sequitur then, which is actually not that easy to do. But non sequitur it remains. If Timugen or I were arguing that we were trying to be noble or commendable, then maybe your comparison of us to Ghandi or the hat-leaver would be a useful comparison. Otherwise, your reference to noble and commendable acts simply serves no point at all, in which case, Ghandi would be the better choice, because it would make it clearer that you are not attempting to make a connection with another thread of argument or disagreement but are instead introducing an external data point. So really, your deision to “[choose] a more related subject” raises the possibility that you were trying to be intentionally misleading. But given the mental display you’ve put on so far, I don’t think anyone would give you enough benefit of the doubt to assume you were actually doing so. It’s much clearer that you just lack basic reasoning skills, which would explain the otherwise misleading comparison.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:14:46 am
“No amount of logic is going to change the fact that you can’t objectively observe the sincerity of something that is inherently un-observable.”
As I just explained, this objection is negated by the premises of the scenario under discussion.
Just to put that in sharper relief for you (even though you’ll probably just poke your eye out with it if I do):
Timugen did NOT observe a particular person’s prayer and declare it to be less sincere. He DID observe that, IF a person prays ONLY because of the hat, THEN that prayer is less sincere than a prayer that was not prompted by the hat.
This is the essential difference between logic and empiricism. As a matter of empirical observation, none was made, and none is necessary, either to make Timugen’s point or to realize the irrefutable truth of it.
So, go on. Keep jumping up and down insisting that you can’t observe someone’s sincerity. That has nothing to do with anything except your own desire to feel good about yourself, which — I suspect — has a lot to do with why you and Patrick took such offense to Timugen’s entirely harmless and unobjectionable point in the first place.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:06:36 pm
He DID observe that, IF a person prays ONLY because of the hat, THEN that prayer is less sincere than a prayer that was not prompted by the hat.
Which is his opinion. Thats about it. There is no objective truth here, just his opinion. It may in fact be a correct on, it may be completely wrong, but to act as if its an unassailable logically based truth is again stupid and arrogant.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:34:04 pm
“to act as if its an unassailable logically based truth is again stupid and arrogant.”
You can keep saying “no” until you’re red(der) in the face, but that won’t make it any less true.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:43:22 pm
Um, sorry but you can’t call something a truth and expect it to be considered as such. Timugen offered an opinion, but again you have made no argument that could even come close to showing it to be “true”. It is nothing but your and his opinion. Period.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:44:22 pm
And before anyone draws the comparison with Angrier from the Obama thread –
I’ve made my argument. David has offered nothing in response except “that’s just your opinion” and “you have no objective evidence.” Even though, as a logical argument, it doesn’t even *depend* on objective evidence.
Oh, well, I guess he offered “I can’t remember my friends’ birthdays but I still care about them,” but as I pointed out, that has nothing to do with anything.
And of course, “how dare you judge,” as if critical thinking instead of blind acceptance is a *bad* thing. (Although I suppose it *is* a bad thing for people incapable of critical thought.)
May 1st, 2007 at 1:50:03 pm
Or perhaps the root of the problem is that David doesn’t recognize argument when he sees it:
“What evidence do you have that a person prays with less sincerety just because they might not have intended to pray for the person before the reminder. ”
The fact that they had no intent do so absent the reminder. If such a person exists, and prays only because they see the hat, and not because they were always planning to but just “forgot about it” until they saw the hat, then that person necessarily and inescapably is less sincere in their prayers than either the person who intended to all along but simply “forgot” until seeing the hat, or the person who intended to all along and did not need the hat to serve as a reminder.
. . . .
“Its not out of lack of caring, i’m just bad with remembering dates.”
Exactly. You care, you always intend to wish your friends well on their birthday, but you have trouble remembering what date the birthday falls on. That is perfectly normal and understandable and in no way reduces the sincerity of your birthday wishes.
It is not at all like the person who goes to the Grotto to pray — for her grandma, for her brother in Iraq, for suffering in Darfur, for any other number of people — and never once thinks about praying for the VT victims until she sees the hat. This person may well genuinely care about praying for those people once she sees the hat; or maybe she prays out of a vague sense of duty, that she “really ought to add them to the list.” Doesn’t matter. Either way, her prayer for them is less sincere than her prayers for the people she was thinking about before she went to the Grotto, and as she appraoched the Grotto, before she saw the hat.
Forgetting the date of a friend’s birthday is not at all the same as needing to be reminded to care that it’s your friend’s birthday. That’s the distinction here.
For your analogy to work, there would need to be a designated “praying time” that our devout soul keeps forgetting to observe; she sincerely WANTS to send her prayers to Blacksburg, but just keeps forgetting what time the prayer meeting is, and needs someone to remind her.
Quite obviously, that’s worlds away from the situation here.
. . . .
“YOu are incapable completely utterly incapable of knowing objectively and being able to prove objectively the sincerity or lack there of of another person. Period. THAT is basic logical reasoning.”
If that’s all I have as a premise, I agree with you. Unfortunately, there’s another thought running through this discussion: again, the problem as posed involves someone for whom that hat is a but-for cause of their prayers for the VT people. Someone who had no plans to pray for them until they saw the hat. Someone who, AS CONTAINED IN THE PREMISE OF THE SCENARIO, did not “care” about those people until they saw the hat, and only then decided to pray for them.
In such a case, which is all that has ever been discussed here since Timugen started the discussion, the sincerity is necessarily less than it is for those prayers originating from previously present caring and intent. It is inescapably true. Indeed, that’s the ENTIRE FREAKING POINT — that the person did not care enough to pray until being reminded by the hat to do so.
Of course this is not a quantifiable assessment — upon being reminded, the person might very well care very much about the VT people and sincerely mean the prayer and all that, and neither I nor Timugen have ever argued otherwise. As Timugen put it though, it definitely, irrefutably does “mean something” that those prayers needed to be prompted instead of emerging without a trigger. That, alone, is sufficient to demonstrate the lessened sincerity of those prayers as compared to prayers that are made without assistance.
. . . .
“No amount of logic is going to change the fact that you can’t objectively observe the sincerity of something that is inherently un-observable. ”
As I just explained, this objection is negated by the premises of the scenario under discussion. While you are correct that no one can look at two praying people and decide which one is being more sincere, you are completely incorrect if you think the prompted v. unprompted nature of their prayers doesn’t change the analysis. With that additional information, it is absolutely beyond question that the person whose prayer was unreminded is more sincere than the person whose prayer was reminded. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, maybe just a smidge, whatever, that’s not the point. The point, again, ad nauseum, all along, has been those who need to see the hat to remember to pray necessarily are thinking about VT less, are more concerned with thie perosnal lives, etc., and therefore of necessity are less sincere about their prayer for VT than someone who comes to the Grotto specifically because of VT and has been thinking about them all along.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:53:21 pm
Haha, your “logic” is flawed because you base it on a premise that in order for it to be true you would have to concede the argumetn you are making!
He DID observe that, IF a person prays ONLY because of the hat, THEN that prayer is less sincere than a prayer that was not prompted by the hat.
Based on what? What are you basing this on? HOW have you determined that the prayer is less sincere? Your argument has been from the beggining that a persons sincerety is based solely on intial intent, which if we follow it to its logical beginning means that NOTHING you do in life is sincere becuase EVERYTHING we do is prompted by the cues we pick up from the world around us. Simply because i am reminded of a tragedy because of a visual cue and THEN decide to pray for the victims does not in anyway indicate that my prayer, once started is less sincere. You have absolutely no way of showing that a prayer offered up because of one reminder is less sincere than one offered up by another reminder. By your logic, if i was watching a memorial for the victims on T.V. and decided to go pray for the victims the next day when i was at church, then somehow i was reminded to do it by seeing something about it on T.V. You can offer up all the logic based conclusions you want, but the bottom line is your PREMISE is what we are arguing here, the idea that being reminded of something and then taking action makes the action less sincere. Your whole argument is based on that premise being true. You can’t declare “I used logic!!” when your talking about the premise.
May 1st, 2007 at 3:15:55 pm
Wow. I did not realize the depths of your mental handicap. No wonder you’re having such difficulty with this.
It’s a painfully simple proposition:
Devout soul leaves home, heading to the Grotto to pray. She’s been thinking about it for a while, who or what she intends to pray about. She’s been aware of what’s going on at VT, knows those people are out there grieving, etc. But she doesn’t think about praying for them. She thinks about praying for other people, things or events, but not VT. Even as she decides to pray, and after she decides to pray, and when she’s on her way to pray, she never connects up her concern for VT with the fact that she’s about to go talk with God about the things that she cares about, the things that really matter to her. It is not until she arrives right at the Grotto and sees the hat that she decides to mention VT in her prayer as well.
In small words and capital letters, to help you out:
THE. VERY. FACT. THAT. SHE. DID. NOT. INTEND. TO. INCLUDE. VT. IN. HER. PRAYERS. ALONG. WITH. THE. OTHER. THINGS. IN. HER. LIFE. THAT. LED. HER. TO. DECIDE. TO. PRAY. IN. THE. FIRST. PLACE. PROVES. (CONCLUSIVELY). THAT. HER. PRAYER. FOR. VT. IS. LESS. GENUINE. HEARTFELT. AND/OR. SINCERE. THAN. HER. PRAYERS. FOR. THE. THINGS. THAT. MOTIVATED. HER. ORIGINAL. DECISION. TO. PRAY. AND. WERE. THE. ONLY. THINGS. ON. HER. MIND. UNTIL. MERE. MOMENTS. BEFORE. PRAYING.
There are the things that matter to you, and then there are the things that are just afterthoughts. In this example, VT is the latter. Afterthoughts are less important, by definition — that’s why you don’t think of them until after you’ve thought of something else. Ergo.
It’s really not hard, David.
“Your argument has been from the beggining that a persons sincerety is based solely on intial intent”
No, it hasn’t, you illerate and/or dysfunctional simpleton. I have not argued that sincerity is based “solely” on any one thing or the other. My argument has been only that a prayer-plus-prior-intent is more sincere than a prayer without prior intent. It does not measure all prayer sincerity on an absolute scale based on intent; I specifically disclaimed any attmpt to quantify things.
“if we follow it to its logical beginning means that NOTHING you do in life is sincere becuase EVERYTHING we do is prompted by the cues we pick up from the world around us.”
No, on several levels. First, as I just discussed, you were not working with an accurate statement of my argument. Second, even if the argument you stated were my own, this statement of yours is not the logical beginning of it, because “intent” is not equivalent to “unprompted intent.” You’re suggesting that this argument, which no one is actually making, reduces to utter insincerity because nobody intends anyhting on their own but instead we are responding to exteral cues. This is just silly. Of course people respond to external cues in forming their intents and deciding what actions to take. I’ve never suggested otherwise. What I have suggested is that when one responds to a particular tragedy or bad event with a decision to pray, the resulting prayer is more sincere than a prayer that results from a person being aware of the tragedy or bad event, but NOT deciding to pray about it, even though she HAS decided to pray about other things, until she sees a visual reminder mere moments before beginning her prayer. It has nothing at all to do with how or why she formed her original intent to pray; it has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that the particular tragedy about which she needed reminding was NOT part of her initial decision, even though it temporally could have been.
“Simply because i am reminded of a tragedy because of a visual cue and THEN decide to pray for the victims does not in anyway indicate that my prayer, once started is less sincere. ”
Not in isolation, no. But you keep chopping off the other half of the argument, in order to pathetically attempt to comabt it. The prayer IS less sincere than a prayer you decided to make without the aid of a visual cue. All we’re doing here are comparisons, as your use of the word “less” indicates. Do not keep trying to turn my argument into some global absolute statement about objective sincerity, because as I have already explained ad nauseum, that is not my argument. My argument is that visualy reminded prayers are necessarily less sincere than the prayers you came in intending to make, beause those other topics were on your mind and in your heart when you formed your intent to pray, and the last-second topic was not, even though you were aware of it and could have included it in your initial intent. (or even subsequently, at almost any moment, prior to actually getting to the sacred ground and responding ONLY to the poignantly placed visual cue at the moment of offering.)
“You have absolutely no way of showing that a prayer offered up because of one reminder is less sincere than one offered up by another reminder. ”
I have already done this, so many times, in so many messages, including this one. But fine. One more time:
“By your logic, if i was watching a memorial for the victims on T.V. and decided to go pray for the victims the next day when i was at church, then somehow i was reminded to do it by seeing something about it on T.V. ”
No. This is the result of your ridiculously wrong and incomplete reformulation of my argument, not of my actual argument. As I already noted above, of course you need an initial stimulus to which to react with a decision to pray. To say otherwise is utter lunacy. So, fine, you get your stimulus from the TV. You see the victims, you feel bad for them, you decide to pray for them, great. Go to church the next day. You’re intending, fully sincerely, to pray for these victims. But just as you’re about to pray, you see a sign or display or ribbon or something having to do with some OTHER tragedy that hapepned a few weeks ago. You’ve seen all the news reports and read a bunch of the stories about that tragedy, you had them in your mind right along with the first group of victims — heck, the talking heads during the memorial service you watched even MENTIONED this other tragedy while you were watching. But you didn’t think about praying for them until just seconds before hte prayer, upon your visual cue.
Everything about this scenario painfully makes demonstrably clear that your prayer for the victims of Tragey #2 is less isncere than you rprayer for the victims of tragedy #1. Again, it doesn’t matter how you formed your initial intent to pray; what matters is that you had NO intent to pray for these other people until just before dropping to your knees.
Even if, upon seeing the reminder, you feel just as bad for those people as you do for the people in tragedy #1, the mere fact that you made your plans based on tragedy #1, even with full knowledge and awareness of tragedy #2, shows that your decision to pray for tragedy #2 is an afterthought, and therefore your actual prayer for tragedy #2 less sincere, than that for tragedy #1.
“your PREMISE is what we are arguing here, the idea that being reminded of something and then taking action makes the action less sincere”
One last time. First, that is neither my premise nor my conclusion, but rather some odd combination of the two. Second, that is not a correct and complete statement of my “premise,” because it leaves unanswered the critical question, which is “less sincere” than what? And the answer is: ACTIONS TAKEN WITHOUT NEEDING TO BE REMINDED OF THEM. And even then,third, the statement is incomplete because it fails to capture the intent dimension — which, again, is not the sole concern but does play a critical role. Where, as here, an intent was formed to pray for some things, during a time when there was full knowledge and awareness of this other thing for which prayer would be a good response, but that thing is not included on the list of items motivating the decision to pray, then the prayers that result from that pre-determined motivation or intent to pray are more sincere than a tacked-on-at-the-end postscript to God about that other thing, about which the prayer-maker knew all along, but never felt sufficiently moved about it to pray until the last second, upon seeing a visual cue that finally, at long last, gets past all the other concerns on her mind and causes her to think praying for that thing might be a good idea too. The lack of forethought and reflection on the topic, as compared to the other things she is praying about, is what causes her prayer for that topic to be less sincere. And said lack of forethought and reflection is fully proven based on the fact that the topic in question was not part of her initial decision to pray.
If you want to “argue” against this, go right ahead. But you will lose.
I cannot make this any clearer or simpler without building a spatial model out of Play Doh and sending you a picture. If you don’t get it yet, I doubt Aristotle himself could succeed in making you understand.
May 1st, 2007 at 3:50:08 pm
The fact that you need to continously insult me demonstrates that you really have nothing to add to any discussion on this. You can hold whatever opinion you like on the sincerety of people, thats fine i have no problem with that, but nothing you say or assert can change the fact that you can’t objectively know the sincerety of people’s prayers. Its really that simple. YOu can continue to hurl ad hominem attacks but it doesn’t change anything. Your asserting your whole argument based on an assumed premise that is in fact the very argument itself.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:16:09 pm
The insults and ad hominems were just for entertainment’s sake, on the off-chance that anyone besides you and me is still reading this. Regardless of how nicely or meanly I phrase it, it remains true that a huge part of the problem we’re having here is your apparent inability to follow a rational, logical argument. I have laid it out in painfully clear detail at least four or five times now, and all you can come back with is this nonsense about my conflating premise with argument/conclusion, when I am doing no such thing; and repeating that “you can’t objectively know the sincerity of people’s prayers,” when I have never claimed that I can.
I understand that no one can objectively know the sincerity of a person’s prayer. One can, however, compare a prayer that someone set out to give with a prayer that the same person had no intention of giving, despite full awareness of the circumstances giving rise to the need for prayer, until the very last moment before praying, at which point a visual reminder succeeds in getting the person to pray where all the other information about the event failed, and know with certainty that the former prayer is less sincere than the latter. We do not (indeed, cannot) objectively know “how sincere” the latter prayer is; we *do* objectively know that it is “less” sincere than the formal prayer, because of the circumstances under which it arose.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:22:24 pm
Sorry, I mistyped, twice:
“the former prayer is less sincere than the latter”
should be “the former prayer is more sincere than the latter”
And “we *do* objectively know that it is “less” sincere than the formal prayer”
should be “we *do* objectively know that it is “less” sincere than the former prayer”
May 1st, 2007 at 4:25:32 pm
Sorry but again, thats based on the premise that the sincerety of an action is based on how soon you decided to undertake the action. You may feel that to be true, but it is not an objective reality, just an opinion. Once two people are praying, no matter what caused them to decide to do so, there is no observable objective way to logically conclude that one is more sincere than the other. You can believe that one is more sincere than the other, but its not something that is a logical conclusion. Your fault lies in assuming something that again is the heart of the argument, as a basic premise of your logic.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:44:54 pm
Oh for the love of –
It’s not “how soon,” it’s a combination of timeing, opportunity, and the quality of the motivational input.
It’s not two different people, it’s ONE AND THE SAME person. Of course you can’t make the comparison across people, for bascially the reasons you state. But the SAME person’s previously meditated prayer is, by virtue of that meditation, more sincere than the spontaneous prayer that she didn’t think about at all, even though she had every opportunity and motivation and even reminder, to do so, until seeing the reminder at the praying place.
You really are a brick wall. And that is neither an insult or an ad hominem attack.
May 1st, 2007 at 5:33:57 pm
Just becuase i don’t buy your arugment doesn’t mean i’m a brick wall. Even if we assume the same person, your premise is still an opinion and the basis of anything else you draw from. Your opinion is that whether a person had a long term intent to pray for someone or whether a reminder made them pray somehow denotes their sincerety. Ok, fine, we get that you and Timugen agree on that. No one is disputing that you feel that way. That does not however carry over into some sort of universal truth that if i pray because i’m reminded by something or if i pray because i had been reminded to do it sooner by something else that that matters towards the sincerety with which i pray. Its an opinion, thats it. No matter how many times you explain it its not going to change that it remains an opinion. I’m not even arguing whether that opinion is right or wrong, which you seem to be doing, all i am pointing out, one more time for emphasis, ITS AN OPINION.
May 1st, 2007 at 6:36:08 pm
And so we reach the last refuge of the feeble-minded when faced with an argument they cannot refute: “well, that’s just your opinion.”
No. It’s not. It’s a demonstrable fact, as I have demonstrably demonstrated through several demonstrations. Demonstrably. No amount of sticking your fingers in your ears while saying “nuh-uh, nuh-uh!” over and over again in the loudest, most obnoxious voice you possess will change that.
The relativist tendencies of your “position” have been evident almost from the very beginning. If that’s how you want to approach life, fine, I’ve no problem with that, but that doesn’t give you license to tell those of us working in the real world where logic and truth and absolute necessities exist that the basic tools we use to understand and make sense of the world, and the constructs we build upon them, are nothing more than our “opinions” that need not be accepted as true by the likes of you.
If you really and truly believe that we are only “capable of . . . making a subjective [sic] judgement call”, you cannot, by definition, appeal to logic in a debate, since that would be external to yourself. In fact, if we’re to believe you on this point, you’re essentially a nihilist and should just check out of social endeavors like “discussion” and “exchange of ideas” altogether.
If you don’t want to accept the truth, fine. If you don’t want to apply the same definitions to the words you use that the rest of the world does, fine. (One is reminded of your insistence on having your own personal definition of “neo-con.” Now you seem to want to do the same with “sincerity.”) Just understand that by doing so, you effectively remove yourself from any capability of having a rational discussion with anybody else who does not believe as you do.
Yet that didn’t stop you from telling me that something “IS objective” and purporting to use logical reasoning yourself in attempting to prove that my argument rests on a false premise. So on the one hand, you’re prepared to make unsupported generalizations about what is objective fact and what is not, and yet on the other hand, you declare repeatedly in the face of iron-clad reasoning that there are no facts, there are only opinions. Note: I realize you did not say it this generally, but it’s hard to see what qualifies as a “fact” in your world, when you’ve rejected every factual demonstration I’ve given you without even an attempt at refutation, and instead have declared exactly two facts, which are, first, that the fact in question is unprovable, and second, that objectivity is beyond our capabilities, leaving us only with subjective judgment calls, i.e., opinions.
What hopeless confusion.
Oh, but that’s just my opinion. Right?
Well, I have exams to start studying for. It was fun. Sort of.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:03:00 pm
I’d planned on avoiding this, but I don’t think either one of your are right, at least if this hat is truly a reminder used in the Christian, and the Catholic, tradition.
First, in the Christian tradition, the Bible is filled with examples of “reminders” to prayer or to meditate upon God, without any indication that the prayer is “lesser” because one did not arrive at the motivation to pray independent of the reminder. See, e.g., Exodus 13:9 (calling the Passover a “reminder” for what God had done in Egypt); Numbers 21:8 (placing a bronze serpent on a pole, by the LORD’s command, so that those who look upon it might live); Luke 22:19, I Corinthians 11:24-25 (recalling Christ calling the Last Supper a “remembrance” of His body and His blood shed for the forgiveness of sins); John 14:26 (promising that the Holy Spirit would remind the disciples of Christ’s words); Hebrews 10:3 (noting that the sacrifices of the Old Testament are a “reminder” for the sins of Israel); 2 Peter 3:1 (calling his own letter a “reminder” that believers would be spurred on to “wholesome thinking”).
Now, in each of these Biblical instances (and there are certainly more), “reminders” are a good things. There’s no qualitative measurement of the fact that it’s better for individuals to be reminded of their own sin, or of Christ’s words, or of the crucifixion, or whatever it may be, without that reminder. The words of Scripture are more than sufficient, in my view, to deny that there’s a qualitative difference in unreminded v. reminded meditation, particularly given that some of the reminders are instructed by God Himself for His people to use to worship Him.
Second, there is a long Catholic tradition of iconography, in which a token remembrance of a massacre is entirely consistent with, say, looking at an image of Mary and being reminded to offer prayers through her. I can’t recall anyone in the Catholic or Orthodox traditions who would consider the use of iconography a less meaningful method of worship than the lack thereof.
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:12:47 am
Interesting stuff, Derek, but not really responsive to my point. As I tried (probably not very well, I admit) to acknowledge to David, I don’t dispute that reminders and cues exist with a purpose to encourage people to pray. And I don’t think it cheapens or lessens one’s prayer simply because it is prompted by such a reminder in the manner you describe. Of course religions use symbols as reminders of past events and sacrifices. And of course people rely on them so as not to forget that past, and so as to properly honor it. And again, as I acknowledged to David, in order to pray for something, you need to know about that something, which means you will have received an external stimulus communicating that something to youa t some point. (In fact, this is basically the birthday thing again — you’re describing devout, religiously observant people, familiar with the text of the Bible, who want to offer their prayers and just need to know where and when to do so. Different case.) I never suggested that these things do not occur, nor did I suggest that their occurrence in and of themselves lessened the prayer experience. And I certainly never suggested, in fact went out of my way to make clear I was not in any way suggesting, that God actually cares one way or the other what motivated you to offer a prayer to Him. I don’t pretend to know such things.
In the here-and-now of the corporeal world, though, I do know a little bit. And one of the things I know is that a person develops an intent to undertake a particular activity for a particular purpose, and then at the last moment, due to the coincidence of an external stimulus, adds another purpose for the activity, that late-added purpose is of necessity less central to her overall intent in having decided to engage in the activity in the first place. If that purpose were more important to her, it would have become part of her intent or plans for the activity before the external stimulus.
In other words, there is nothing about my argument here that is inherent to praying. It applies generally, and it’s an uncontroversial example of how people order things in their lives, express preferences, prioritize, etc.
It is not, and never has been, a suggestion that they lack faith or partake of a “less meaningful method of worship” or that there is a “qualitative difference in . . . meditation.” In fact I specifically acknowledged that one who prays for the VT victims only upon seeing the hat may very well feel just as bad and offer up the same prayer as somebody with a previously formed intent to pray. The difference — which may well be negligible, as I also acknowledged — is in the internal sincerity of the one who prays for some things because she made an informed, deliberate, conscious, rational decision to do so, and put forth effort to implement that decision; and prays for other things because, having implemented her decision for the first things, decides based on something she sees at the sacred ground to add to her list something else that could just as easily have been there from the beginning — but wasn’t.
My point all along has been the entirely secular one, that the person who sets out in advance based on exernal stimulus A to engage in activity X with respect to purpose Y, all the while being aware of purpose Z and the appropriateness of engaging in activity X with respect to that purpose as well, but who only actually chooses to engage in activity X with respect to purpose Z upon encountering external stimulus B mere moments before engaging in the activity X, cannot reasonably be understood to be as committed to her activity X with respect to purpose Z as she is with respect to purpose Y.
Again — this does NOT mean that she is not committed to purpose Z. THis does NOT mean that her activity X for purpose Z is somehow less valuable to herself, to those associated with purpose Z, or those who receive or benefit from activity X. THis does NOT mean that she is being disingenuous in engaging in activity X with respect to purpose Z.
All it means is that in her mind and in her heart, she is more committed to purpose Y. If she’s honest and rational, she’ll freely admit it. If she just wants to feel good about herself, she’ll say it’s objectively unprovable and anyway it’s just my opinion.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:51:50 pm
All it means is that in her mind and in her heart, she is more committed to purpose Y. If she’s honest and rational, she’ll freely admit it. If she just wants to feel good about herself, she’ll say it’s objectively unprovable and anyway it’s just my opinion.
Wow, ok everyone stop what your doing, 3L knows exactly what you think and what your intents are, no need to think for yourself or even admit that different people behave in different ways. 3L has got us pegged! We all must live by her truths now!
Guess what? As interesting as your theory is, its just that, a theory. Its based on YOUR assumptions, and yes it is just an opinion. You can use a million different ways of explaining it but it will never ever be an objective truth. No amount of logic or fancy lawyering can change that, becuase the bottom line is sincerety of an action can not be measured based on some set of scientific rules. Whether the stimulus occured sooner rather than later, in YOUR opinion determines which is more sincere, but basing your entire argument on that premise, when again that is what we are arguing to begin with is pointless. Unless you get people to accept that as a basic premise of your argument, none of the conclusions you draw from it are logically valid. I don’t know how you can’t see this but there it is. Your whole flaw in this whole argument has been that you take that as a given, but while you may feel that way, its not a given. You make an argumetn above about why one should agree with that opinion and thats great, and it may even be convincing, but it still doesn’t change the fact that neither Patrick or myself accept your basic premise that long term intent to do something versus short term intent to do the same something necessarilly means that the action is more or less sincere.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:57:52 pm
I’ve no more time to waste pointing out your mistakes in detail, but my track record above certainly establishes sufficient credibility to be brief:
You’re slipping, David. At least in previous posts you managed to get a few things half-right here and there. But in your latest you couldn’t even manage that. Every single thing you said in your most recent comment, from your complete and blatant mischaracterization and misunderstanding of my position and argument, to your repeated insistence that my logical deductions from empirical observations about human actions is just my “opinion,” is simply wrong. Flat-out, unreservedly, irredeemably wrong. Your comment is not responsive to anything I’ve been saying in the slightest. It’s like you’re having an entirely different conversation with someone in your head whom you’ve named “3L No. 56″ and conflated with me, but you’re clearly not reading, comprehending, or responding to anything I’ve actually said.
It’s just amazing.