Comments on Epiphenom: Does prayer make you more forgiving... and why?

James: yes, I think it must be. meaning something ...

2010-02-09T09:38:03.474Z

James: yes, I think it must be. meaning something between "fair enough" and "let's be fair".

"fair doos", that's an expression I&...

2010-02-08T17:09:43.332Z

"fair doos", that's an expression I've never heard before. Is that a British thing?

Absolutelty. There's a huge volume of research...

2010-02-07T09:13:38.957Z

Absolutelty. There's a huge volume of research into meditation (much more than into prayer), none of which I cover on this blog. Mostly that's because it's only tangentially related to religon, and partly because if I tried to get on top of it all I would never get out :) but the bottom line is that it has substantial effects on brain function and psychology.

Ah, I think I follow. I think you will agree that ...

2010-02-07T09:01:45.715Z

Ah, I think I follow.
I think you will agree that when a person says they are "meditating", they can be doing any number of very different things with their brain. Likewise if someone says they are praying. Or even if they say they are praying for a specific person.

And we know that internal mental exercises can change a person, no?

Sabio, if they were arguing that prayer in general...

2010-02-07T08:54:49.777Z

Sabio, if they were arguing that prayer in general, or buddhist meditation in particular, had this effect, well that would make sense.

But in fact they are arguing that praying for a specific person (but not prayer in general) increases generalised selflessness, and that this explains the increase in reported forgiveness towards that specific individual. It's that chain of logic that seems implausible to me.

You said, They suggest that the reason for this...

2010-02-07T08:44:31.184Z
You said,
They suggest that the reason for this is that prayer creates a generalised feeling of selflessness, although this seems theoretically unlikely to me

Why is it "theoretically" unlikely? One method of Buddhist meditation is to generalize feelings of compassion and love. It is a highly useful technique. So I am curious for your theoretical basis of rejection.

Replicating an emotion and then trying to generalize its targets seems to me (experientially) as very effective -- both for positive and negative emotions.