This is on the nature of prayer. It is almost a universal given that people pray, whether or not they admit to it. As since it is a veritable certainty that they do, let us propose at the outset to deny the contention that they don’t. It can be called different things, but the idea that it is among the most natural and common occurrences for the human mind to reflect on itself in a manner that, we are compelled to admit, falls under the term, prayer, cannot really be denied. The only issue is, really, the nature of the internal mental dialogue by which persons do what gets called prayer.

In our cosmopolitan culture, and especially in the neighborhoods where rationality is most highly valued, like around the nation’s capital, the claim that reason and so-called common sense eclipse the apparently irrational notion of prayer, of prayer to a higher being, to a God who listens in particular, does not change the equation that in times of crisis, such realities do exist. The notion that such a rational, listening God is out there, or in there, fully transcends what many concede ought to be otherwise. As the graduate theological seminarian I was back in the 1960s, my faith was grounded at the time in an admittedly irrational conviction that God was real and my faith was based on the claims of the founders of my chosen religion, namely, Christianity, where a personal deity and testaments to His existence are it its center.

How could I, on the one hand, affirm the tenets of my chosen faith and, on the other hand, equally affirm a solid belief in the laws of science and nature, when the two are so clearly in conflict? This, of course, was the basis of many of the dilemmas and dialogues of my fellow seminarians that often kept us up in heated and passionate discussions all night long. My arguments usually took on the nature of how it is impossible not to contend that there is a higher intelligence than man when that contention asserts that man is the apex of creation. In other words, how can mankind affirm a reality greater than its most advanced component?

In recent years, a lof of this argument has gotten confused when put in the context of creation. We didn’t use to assign superior attributes to aspects of creation that were not centered on the capacity of humans to engage in rational thought. Reason was the veritable given measuring advancement in development. Now this is not as universal a criterion as it once was, and I guess I haven’t really gotten over that, personally. Is there a moral or intellectual equivalent for measuring development or advancement of a species as there once was now that it is OK to argue that feelings, alone, or some equivalent, are appreciated as a valid measure of things? Can we now argue that an octopus, for example, is the moral equivalent of humans even if they don’t have the same capacity for intellectual thought? Many more people today are likely to contend that.

The reader will recognize a component of sarcasm in this, surely, even as we carry on this conversation, because the very notion that something is deemed by some measure of advancement superior to something without reference to the attributes of rational thought is considered veritably nonsensical. Now, dogs don’t have the same propensity for violence than cats, but that is subject to arguments either way. Or parakeets.  

One angle is why it is that people generally consider snakes more inherently evil. It is more of a visceral reaction than usually recognized, so making a case more than in the most generic sense can be risky. 

There is the retelling of the account of a snake who was rendered impotent by a holy man because the holy man saw the pain behind his angry demeanor. It is one of the few accounts where a snake was not the bad guy. (To be continued).