As a schizophrenic, am always witness to things that would dictate I stay true to faith, but also as a schizophrenic, I find all things faith to be simply delusions from the schizophrenic state of reason.
Basically I said being a christian or muslim is like being a schizophrenic who listens to his hallucinations and delusions (what’s a schizophrenic who listens to his delusions and hallucinations? a mental hospital patient or something like that)
Anyways, I use to pray almost everyday to try win the lottery, but so far I haven’t prayed at all for like 2 weeks, and I don’t intend to pray again anytime soon… I told myself, look at the children who believe in santa… their parents drop a few gifts under the christmas tree and they whole heartedly believe in santa, so I said like the parent who dresses up like santa, life dresses up like god and adults are like the children jumping to praise over things give by life and credit it to god just like the children credit their gifts to santa instead of their parents. Now by life I mean, everyone has his life, for some people like the amazons, life is the village in the amazon jungle and all the things that come with jungle life… and for someone in america, life is mark zuckerburg being lucky enough to see potential in the idea of a few rich boys and stealing it… and say Africa? life is entering the new world alongside the old forgotten european peasants. but what do all these people have in common, their parents/life lives a present under the tree, they’ll jump in joy and believe it was santa/god or think they in the naughty list if they find no present.
Basically what am saying is believing in religion makes you no different from that child believing in santa clause… like what would be your judgment on that kid who thinks santa clause is real? so I said, this logic is whats behind people like the romans and their zeus and poseidons and the christians with their jesus or the jews with their god. End of the day, maybe it’s just the santa clause phenomenon; people attributing life and it’s joys and troubles coming from from magical place called faith or santa instead of just seeing it’s their parents in santas case or life in gods case; like the Romans in their roman cities crediting their war victories to their god of war or the peasant roman lady praying to zeus or poseidon or dynasys… basically, those were there santa claus, but in the end, as any christian would tell you, it was just vain prayers and the things they credited to their prayers were just their life and the randomness around it
The proper religious mindset isn’t the one that prays for things, it’s the one that prays for the wisdom and strength to handle what life throws at them.
It’s not prudent to pray for stuff, unless you really need it, like survival-wise.
Regardless, if religion is a stressor for you, then you can tone it down to the bare minimum. Schizophrenia tends to make a person too religious, like unreasonably so. Normal people don’t usually pray that constantly!
you are exactly what am trying to explain… you want to attribute -whatever- to be coming from prayer, rather than it just being what’s around the corner from you
@naturallycured yes, that’s the word… ‘pure randomness’ called the life around you. What I mean is people always want to credit that randomness to something else other than it’s literal self - randomness
reached my max replies… can’t talk until tomorrow… until then
@Ooorgle the harm is you are that sad kid who thinks santa is real. 
If you really believe the pure randomness of the universe is sustaining you, then you don’t need to pray. It’s always a personal belief, you can’t objectively say there is a greater intelligence driving reality.
I’ve seen things in my life that lead me to believe there is, but I can’t share them objectively.
Chaos with a measure of guidance, in my mind. Random luck for the most part. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying to better your situation.
To me, prayer is a mind game, a focus, a meditation. If it helps people try to come to a mindful place and focus on the problem, than what’s the harm?