{"id":645,"date":"2006-04-02T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-02T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=645"},"modified":"2006-04-02T15:30:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-02T15:30:00","slug":"645","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=645","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>When does a polytheist pray?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dave Haxton at MacRaven <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haxton.org\/weblog\/Asatru\/christianPrayerIneffective.html\">reflects on the latest scientific study<\/a> on the power of prayer:<\/p>\n<p><em>If God&#8217;s omniscient than He already knows if the folks are going to pray or not, and if he&#8217;s not, well, then the whole paradigm sort of breaks down, and God&#8217;s no longer in total control of things.<\/p>\n<p>Which is precisely the position my gods and goddesses are in: they&#8217;re within and part of the natural world, and while I believe they have some influence over events in Midgard, they&#8217;re neither omniscient or omnipotent &#8211; and I wouldn&#8217;t want them to be. Because the very existence of such a being would make all other beings essentially slaves, and the universe naught but a clockwork. There can be no free will at all in such a deterministic universe.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Tag: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/polytheism\" rel=\"tag\">Polytheism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When does a polytheist pray? Dave Haxton at MacRaven reflects on the latest scientific study on the power of prayer: If God&#8217;s omniscient than He already knows if the folks are going to pray or not, and if he&#8217;s not, well, then the whole paradigm sort of breaks down, and God&#8217;s no longer in total [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-645","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1160,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1160","url_meta":{"origin":645,"position":0},"title":"Your Prayers, Our Magic&#8211;Do They Always Help?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a common argument among Pagans--Witches in particular--when conversing with monotheists to say something like, \"What you call prayer, we call spells,\" or words to that effect.No doubt we think ours are better. No one is testing them, but there have been a number of studies attempting to quantify the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":621,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=621","url_meta":{"origin":645,"position":1},"title":"Followers of the Peacock AngelTraveler\/blogger\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Followers of the Peacock AngelTraveler\/blogger Michael Totten visits the holiest shrine of the Yezidis.Some quotes:Yezidis are ancient fire-worshippers. They heavily influenced Zoroastrianism, and in turn have been heavily influenced by Sufi Islam. The temple at Lalish is their \u201cMecca.\u201d Hundreds of thousands of remaining Yezidis \u2013 those Kurds who refused\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":449,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=449","url_meta":{"origin":645,"position":2},"title":"Ojo de dios","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 6, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The new issue, no. 65, of Shaman's Drum reprints a portion of Visions of a Huichol Shaman by the anthropologist Peter Furst.Furst has spent much time among the Huicholes, who live in Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental and who are sometimes considered one of the least-Christianized tribes. Their religious use of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6345,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6345","url_meta":{"origin":645,"position":3},"title":"Animist Blog Carnival \u2014\u00a0Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The March Animist Blog Carnival, on the theme of dreams, is hosted at Pray to the Moon. We have a more modest collection of writings for this month. But, being an avid dreamer, I am not at all surprised. I find more often than not, when I begin to prattle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1145,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1145","url_meta":{"origin":645,"position":4},"title":"Jack Chick, the Movie","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have my own collection of Jack Chick pamphlets, but to make collecting more sporting, they have to be found in public places: left inside a library book about Wicca or on a public park bench, that sort of thing.Maybe God's Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick will create\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6667,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6667","url_meta":{"origin":645,"position":5},"title":"Assessing Margot Adler and Moving Toward a Polytheistic Philosophy of Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6\u00a0 Link to National Public Radio audio (14 minutes) of Ronald Hutton and Phyllis Curott talking about Margot Adler's influence on contemporary Paganism. The presenter rather made it sound as though we Pagans were all in the wilderness (no elders?!) until Margot brought us out, but then, as you pointed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}