T. Kincaid: I think that perhaps being in opposition to something – while having little exposure – leads to peculiar presumptions, and none of them positive.

Thanks, Timothy – another thing we are in complete agreement about.

T. Kincaid: the Ex-gay industry and their common belief that sexual orientation identity is but a social construction.

Oh! I get it. This is why people read me as being so hostile. But ex-gay advocates are never subject to their own rules, they weild social construction as a weapon of de-legitimacy that is all one sided. You are all not legitimate, Heterosexual is unquestioned in its self-evident legitimacy.

I am totally against this inequality. Heterosexuality, because of its even more naturalised position, should be first and foremost and mostly the object of critical scrutiny – and this is what feminist discourses do.

Homosexuality should never be more de-legitimised than heterosexuality.

I’m certain that anti-gay activists would say virtually what you said. Actually, I’ve heard them. (Laurie Higgins assures me that she knows and loves gay people.)

Perhaps it is wiser to acknowledge that it takes close familiarity and shared values to make any sort of educated guess about the motivations, thinking, purpose, or intent of a people. Be that gay folk, praying people, or atheists.

I will… but I’d rather wait until I finish reading it. I’m pretty early in the book and may not have given an accurate assessment of where it’s going.

I am thinking of a commentary which would tie in this book, Ritch Savin-Williams, and the Ex-gay industry and their common belief that sexual orientation identity is but a social construction and what that means to each.

I think that would be a pretty poor assumption about atheists. Other than my husband I don’t know any other atheists, everyone else I know is a christian and I am intimately familiar with a large number of them.

Timothy said “The average anti-gay activist knows far more about homosexuality than the average gay person. Peter LaBarbera and Laurie Higgins can quote statistics and incidents that elude both Joe Twink and Billy Bear down at the bar. But they don’t know gay people.”.

If you’re intending to equate that with the typical atheist, its way off the mark. Peter and Laurie probably don’t encounter many gay people but for an atheist in North America, virtually everyone we know is a christian and for me that includes the closest of family members and friends.

I didn’t think that you meant it personally about me. But I did want to bring to your attention that “those who pray about the mundane” may include a bigger demographic than you are imagining. For example, after having frantically searched for my keys with no avail, I’ll pray. That’s pretty mundane.

And it generally works. Whether God pauses in the administration of the universe and through divine inspiration whispers into my mind that in the freezer under the ice tray is a good place to look, or whether simply calming myself and relaxing my mind sparks a subconscious memory of getting ice immediately after entering, is pretty irrelevant. I now have my keys.

I apologize for “your opposition”. I didn’t intend to personalize that idea and had changed it to “one’s opposition”, but evidently not before you read my comment.

I don’t doubt that you have been exposed to religion. Most have. You may even know more about religion in the same way that the anthropologist knows about homosexuality.

But your guesswork as to motivations suggest a lack of intimacy with people of faith. I may be mistaken; it’s possible that a large part of your life and social connection is deeply entrenched in faith communities.

But I suspect that you are making the same mistake that the evangelical anthropologist has made (with the caveat that I’ve not finished her book; I may be misjudging her). Knowing about a subject is far far from knowing about a people.

The average anti-gay activist knows far more about homosexuality than the average gay person. Peter LaBarbera and Laurie Higgins can quote statistics and incidents that elude both Joe Twink and Billy Bear down at the bar.

But they don’t know gay people.

You may be a far better authority on, say, the writings of Paul or the theological positions developed at Trent. But such knowledge should not encourage one to assume that it provides insight into the motivations or inner loneliness of people who pray.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Perhaps you assumed otherwise, but I pray about the mundane. I pray about the mundane far more than I pray about the life-shaping, wildly important, truly big issues. That is probably true for most praying people. Most of life is mundane.—Timothy Kincaid

When you get right down to it, life is just daily.

One of the things that has helped me understand religion and spirituality in general has been time spent understanding different systems of belief. As an amateur student of religion, I saw many parallels between the stories and mythology of the various world religions. By a kind of triangulation, I came to understand the valuable insights one can take away from these traditions without getting bogged down in the orthodoxy and ritual.

One of those notions, at least for me, is that focusing one’s mind on things helps to make one more aware of what motivates one’s will. Prayer is a kind of meditation for some people, and prayer does not have to be to anything or any deity to have an effect on one’s life. If it helps somebody to escape their preconceptions or reactions to being forced into some religious tradition that they now want to reject, then call prayer meditation or concentration of will.