Prayer is an illusion

[Exalt]

And if you ask me for a favour, I too can only answer in one of three ways - ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘not now’. Does that mean I don’t exist? That I don’t desire to help people? Or that I don’t want to be asked for help? None of those.

#1 - You’re missing the point. A “favor” isn’t a supernatural act. And you are not being addressed as a deity or wielder of supernatural power.

If you’re a heart surgeon and I ask you to help my friend who had a heart attack, and you do the surgery, it’s pretty clear that YOU did it. Afterwards, you would sit me down and tell me what happened - and we’d communicate like that.

But with a deity, he supposedly answers prayers in a secret way. There is never any clear communication between God and the person recieving the answer. If what you prayed for turns out to be true, then God must have helped you. If what you prayed for doesn’t ever happen, then God must have said no or he’s gonna answer sometime later.

But with you, a non-divine human person, I can get a real answer - I know for certain. We can discuss the issue. The difference between prayer and asking you for a favor is just that - you’re not being addressed as a deity to do something supernatural.

#2) Though, to answer your question directly, you’re right. Let’s say I thought *you *were a deity. Let’s say I prayed to you. You couldn’t lose either. Neither could my stone idol. Neither can God. But you’re not really a deity. You’re a human being.

 

[thechrismyster]

What about prayers for clearly good things? (i.e., God stopping the holocaust)

man has the free will to be evil. God wouldn’t violate the evil persons right to do evil if they choose, otherwise, it wouldn’t really be free will.

 

[Exalt]

man has the free will to be evil. God wouldn’t violate the evil persons right to do evil if they choose, otherwise, it wouldn’t really be free will.

#1: Think carefully about what you’re saying. You are saying that God is unwilling to do anything that would violate an evil person’s “right to do evil.” So:

• A soldier shouldn’t ask for God to help him survive a battle.
• A soon-to-be victim of a murder shouldn’t ask for God to help him survive his assualt.
• A woman walking alone, late at night shouldn’t ask for God to make sure no one attacks her.
• A child being abused shouldn’t ask for God to make the abuser stop.
• A soon-to-be victim of a drunk driver shouldn’t ask for God to save him from the drunk’s car as it slams into his own vehicle.
  All of these prayers are asking God to stop the behavior of evil-doers. But, according to you, God won’t stop the behavior of evil-doers because that would interfere with thier free will.

God, according to you, is powerless, neutered, and incapable of answering the most urgent prayers.

#2: What about natural disasters, like tornadoes, hurricanes, and tsunamis? Thousands have died, though they prayed for survival. Why did God not help them? Wasn’t their prayer worthy enough?

 

[Sixtus]

Exalt said:

Think carefully about what you’re saying. You are saying that God is unwilling to do anything that would violate an evil person’s “right to do evil.” So:
A soldier shouldn’t ask for God to help him survive a battle.
A soon-to-be victim of a murder shouldn’t ask for God to help him survive his assualt.
A woman walking alone, late at night shouldn’t ask for God to make sure no one attacks her.
A child being abused shouldn’t ask for God to make the abuser stop.
A soon-to-be victim of a drunk driver shouldn’t ask for God to save him from the drunk’s car as it slams into his own vehicle.

I have had many prayers answered. But I have never involved a third person in prayer unless they are the subject of the petition.

I think by asking God to intervene in that way is to deny God’s right to be God. He knows our needs before we ask. We do not need to mention others, or petition Him to ‘stop someone doing something’, as that limits the choices we give Him.

Far better to bring a situation to Him and leave Him to use whatever method He choses to bring about a resolution. Treat Him like the Daddy He is and do not try to tell Him how to solve your problem

 

[LilyM]

#1 - You’re missing the point. A “favor” isn’t a supernatural act. And you are not being addressed as a deity or wielder of supernatural power.

If you’re a heart surgeon and I ask you to help my friend who had a heart attack, and you do the surgery, it’s pretty clear that YOU did it. Afterwards, you would sit me down and tell me what happened - and we’d communicate like that.

But with a deity, he supposedly answers prayers in a secret way. There is never any clear communication between God and the person recieving the answer. If what you prayed for turns out to be true, then God must have helped you. If what you prayed for doesn’t ever happen, then God must have said no or he’s gonna answer sometime later.

But with you, a non-divine human person, I can get a real answer - I know for certain. We can discuss the issue. The difference between prayer and asking you for a favor is just that - you’re not being addressed as a deity to do something supernatural.

What if I found you unconscious in the middle of the road after you’d been run over, took you to hospital and didn’t stay around for whatever reason - I would have helped you even though you didn’t know it was I. Possibly you wouldn’t even know that you’d been helped by anyone - I may have left you outside the hospita and you may think you’d staggered in on your own.

A person who’s been helped doesn’t always and CAN’T always perceive all the help that they get.

 

[Sixtus]

My definition of answered prayer is often ‘when you have tried to resolve a problem yourself, all efforts have proven fruitless, there is no one who can help you, you are as far away from the solution as you were when you first started’.

When the situation is hopelessly lost. Then turn to God!

The solutions I have received not only solved the problem but did so in such a way that I could see after the solution that I really did not appreciate at the time how complicated the problem really was and how well the solution fitted the problem.

When God acts, He acts in style

 

[tdgesq]

God hasn’t answered thousands of very needy prayers. Why does God pick some prayers to answer, while other people’s prayers go neglected?

The only way you could know is if you knew the mind of God with respect to every prayer that his been granted or denied. God clearly won’t grant some requests. He won’t grant my request that I live to be 500 years old in this body on Earth. But what do these questions have to do with whether prayer is an illusion? Why God grants some prayers and not others has nothing to do with whether God really does grant some requests. If he does, then it doesn’t really matter why he doesn’t grant others.

Why don’t you ask my Stone Idol to answer a prayer? I can assure you that he will. It may not be the answer you want to hear, but he will answer it – with a “yes” “no” or “wait.” Go ahead, ask for anything.

It’s time for the idol analogy to go. It wasn’t a good one to begin with because it doesn’t provide any insight that we don’t already have. We all agree at the outset that the idol doesn’t answer prayers. The question is whether God answers prayers or not; not from the outset that we know God doesn’t answer them. The only similarity that you’ve managed to gain from your odious comparison (one that I would guess most of us already knew without reference to it) is that you can’t confirm to your satisfaction that God answers prayers, just like you can’t confirm that the idol doesn’t answer prayers - which we all knew wasn’t possible to begin with. Therefore, you conclude (erroneously) that God doesn’t answer prayers.

This is a non sequitur. It does not follow that because you can’t confirm to your satisfaction that God answers prayers that he really doesn’t answer any of them. And that is all you’re really saying here, without reference to any idol. Yes, we understand that you can’t confirm to your satisfaction that God answers prayers or ever grants what’s requested. That’s because, as we will see in a moment, you demand that confirmation be established by an evidentiary method that cannot apply to free acts.

The fact is, there is no difference between those who are prayed for and those who are not prayed for. Prayer makes no difference at all – not even a psychological difference (as I said before, those who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse). If there is any difference whatsoever, it is not able to be verified by evidence. However, there *should *be evidence – because what these people prayed for is tangible.

That’s exactly as I would expect it to be. Essentially you are treating this as a behavioral study of God, where a correlation between the prayers of certain groups and heart patient surgery outcomes is supposed to act as a proxy for whether God answers prayers. But statistical studies assume that the cause of the result is going to act in a uniform way just like other things in nature do. But God acts in pure freedom according to Christianity. He is not acted upon by outside forces that allow for consistent and repeatable results. God chooses according to his will.

And by the way, if this were really a proper behavioral study of a person, it would require all kinds of additional information and controls that are not present here. It simply doesn’t qualify in its current form. You are also incorrect that this demonstrates God doesn’t answer prayers even if the study was legit. God could have chosen to save one person in the group prayed for and it would not affect the statistical results at all consider the relatively large size of the sample group.

There is a reason why so many people in that article deny the usefulness of the study in the context of God answering prayers. So, are you still going to tenaciously hold to your conclusion that this study shows God doesn’t answer prayers in spite of all of it’s glaring deficiencies?

 

[Sixtus]

Why don’t you ask my Stone Idol to answer a prayer? I can assure you that he will. It may not be the answer you want to hear, but he will answer it - with a “yes” “no” or “wait.” Go ahead, ask for anything.

WHO POSTED THIS TRASH!!!

How DARE YOU. How dare you equate the infinite love of ALMIGHTY GOD with a worthless stone idle!!! HOW DARE YOU!

Did your lump of stone give all it had to give for a sin sodden disobedient race? Did your lump of stone risk its own extinction? Could it?

The Almighty infiniate omnipotent God against YOUR LUMP OF weathered decaying stone! Cheek!!

 

[down_under]

If God does care about us, I asked, why doesn’t he talk to us directly?

In response, Keikiolu said that, “He does ‘talk’ to us directly. That’s what prayer is. As well as ‘living prayer’, which is discerning God in one’s actions and choices of everyday life.”

I dont know anything about this yes no wait business. I know a lot about miricles. I have seen lame man walk while the doctors who spent 4 years working to that effect shook there head. That is just the most obvious and most easy to explain. God answers prayers with the still small voice. I have recieved definate No’s. Not because the thing did not happen. Because God in his own ways before the fact made it clear what I should do.

I won night prayed I would get home saftely then got into a stupendous car wrech. There was not a single quarter panel on that car that was not seriously damaged, except the driver side door. The passenger side was pushed in all the way to where I was sitting. I was not wearing a seat belt. I was hit by an 18 wheeler who was going 35-40 while I was going 70 mph. I walked out of that car. I opened the door under my own power and walked away from the accident. I was told I should have been dead but I was not injured at all. God answers prayers sir. You just have to take the time to listen. He speaks to us if you bother to stop long enough to hear him. Most people dont anymore.

 

[down_under]

WHO POSTED THIS TRASH!!!

How DARE YOU. How dare you equate the infinite love of ALMIGHTY GOD with a worthless stone idle!!! HOW DARE YOU!

Did your lump of stone give all it had to give for a sin sodden disobedient race? Did your lump of stone risk its own extinction? Could it?

The Almighty infiniate omnipotent God against YOUR LUMP OF weathered decaying stone! Cheek!!

Okay this is a logical discussion. If you are going to respond emotionally please dont particapate. He is asking a good question. He deservers a good answer.

Technicikly God did not risk his own extincition. He died for us. His extincition is not possible. He is alpha and omega.
You do raise an interesting point in that you can say jesus christ is a person who entered history, and the lump of clay did not. Which suggested quite strongly that Jesus Christ has ground work for answering prayer that allows us to assume that he exists and is capable of things like hearing and answering. the stone idol has not the same preexisting critera going for it I’m afraid. The stone idol did not promise to be with us till the end of time. So there is no presumption on our part that the stone idol will do what it said because it never spoke.
So he is emotional but not without a real good point. I think most people would find it difficult to contain themselves forgive him.

 

[JFT]

As best as I can answer Exalt’s question, God does answer us. He simply does not answer us in the way some of us might presume He would answer us.

Additionally, if we were to pray to the “stone idol” to which you refer, we would simply be wasting our time and energy. That kind of prayer really is an illusion.:twocents:

 

[stewandbrew777]

In my many years of life I know for certain that God exists. I have been spared in a prison riot where others were killed but not me. Why? I was in a head on collision and survived that instead of being killed. There are many other instances where is was saved. Even my doctors have said to find peace and keep praying. Prayer is an experience to delve into daily. In the middle of my PTSD crisis I pray and find the way to find peace.

 

[Bennie_P]

Someone talked about C.S. Lewis and how he said that for some people, it doesn’t matter how much evidence God throws, they will keep saying that God doesn’t exist. First of all, that just might be true for some people (though I highly doubt it). But second of all, I’m willing to be convinced. If God wants to communicate with me in a direct way – something that can’t reasonably be attributed to emotion – I am more than willing to listen.

God answers my prayers each day you come back to this forum and ask questions.
And he answered them: Fear not: can we resist the will of God?
PAX

 

[Exalt]

What if I found you unconscious in the middle of the road after you’d been run over, took you to hospital and didn’t stay around for whatever reason - I would have helped you even though you didn’t know it was I. Possibly you wouldn’t even know that you’d been helped by anyone - I may have left you outside the hospita and you may think you’d staggered in on your own.

A person who’s been helped doesn’t always and CAN’T always perceive all the help that they get.

Fair enough. But was it a supernatural act? Did I pray to you as a deity?

 

[whatevergirl]

Exalt…is this thread still going on? ha Just pray already.

Ok–kidding. I think that prayer is a very personal thing. I’m not sure you addressed by post about Jesus praying.

 

[Nick]

#1: Think carefully about what you’re saying. You are saying that God is unwilling to do anything that would violate an evil person’s “right to do evil.” So:

• A soldier shouldn’t ask for God to help him survive a battle.
• A soon-to-be victim of a murder shouldn’t ask for God to help him survive his assualt.
• A woman walking alone, late at night shouldn’t ask for God to make sure no one attacks her.
• A child being abused shouldn’t ask for God to make the abuser stop.
• A soon-to-be victim of a drunk driver shouldn’t ask for God to save him from the drunk’s car as it slams into his own vehicle.
  All of these prayers are asking God to stop the behavior of evil-doers. But, according to you, God won’t stop the behavior of evil-doers because that would interfere with thier free will.

God, according to you, is powerless, neutered, and incapable of answering the most urgent prayers.

God does not violate man’s free will. He created it so it is therefore good. But He does pour out his grace upon us in order to help us to freely choose Him. So it certainly not unreasonable for people to pray that God help them be delivered from evil, but God will never destroy anyone’s free will to save others from evil. But God will always bring a greater good out of the evil that he allows exist, so good always wins out, even if it not immediately apparent to us.

#2: What about natural disasters, like tornadoes, hurricanes, and tsunamis? Thousands have died, though they prayed for survival. Why did God not help them? Wasn’t their prayer worthy enough?

It is not a matter of their prayer not being worthy enough. Just because you pray for a good (in this case continued life on this earth) in good faith does not mean that God then has to grant you that request. But you can rest assure that God gave them exactly what they needed, though it may not have been what they wanted at the moment. In addition to this think of the great good that comes out of these disasters. Think of the massive outpouring of love and support from around the world whenever these things happen. Many people have profound life changing experiences by witnessing the power of love that is brought about by these disasters.

 

[Exalt]

It’s time for the idol analogy to go. It wasn’t a good one to begin with because it doesn’t provide any insight that we don’t already have. We all agree at the outset that the idol doesn’t answer prayers. The question is whether God answers prayers or not; not from the outset that we know God doesn’t answer them. The only similarity that you’ve managed to gain from your odious comparison (one that I would guess most of us already knew without reference to it) is that you can’t confirm to your satisfaction that God answers prayers, just like you can’t confirm that the idol doesn’t answer prayers - which we all knew wasn’t possible to begin with. Therefore, you conclude (erroneously) that God doesn’t answer prayers.

Before I respond, I want to thank you for your well-thought-out response. It was articulate and clear. You hit on a couple of points that are indeed behind my original post - you are perceptive.

However, I have one big problem with your response, which I do not feel you have addressed sufficiently: You said that “We all agree at the outset that the idol doesn’t answer prayers.” Of course, that’s true. Now, my question is this: can you show that God answers prayers while the stone idol doesn’t?

Your *non sequitur *is quite right. I can’t show that God doesn’t answer prayers with “yes” “no” or “wait”. The parameters are set up in such a way that God can’t lose. The point, however, is this: God can’t lose - and niether can any other object, idea, or person that is prayed to as a diety. No matter what you pray to, that deity cannot lose, so long as the parameters are the same (that is, “yes” “no” and “wait”). So, **can you prove that my stone rock doesn’t answer your prayer? I don’t think you can, or I can, so long as the parameters exist the way they do.

Now, the difference between the Christian God and every other thing-addressed-as-a-deity is that the Christian God *actually *answers prayers and those other deities do not, right?

But, can you show that the Christian God truly answers prayers? This is leading to the point which you hit on: “we understand that you can’t confirm to your satisfaction that God answers prayers or ever grants what’s requested.” My question is this: **why can’t we confirm, in a substantial and conclusive way, that God does indeed perform miracles in response to prayer?

There are two possibilities:

1. God wants to remain hidden.
2. God doesn’t exist.

But, God has no good reason to remain hidden. Therefore, the most reasonable conclusion is that he doesn’t exist.

That’s exactly as I would expect it to be. Essentially you are treating this as a behavioral study of God, where a correlation between the prayers of certain groups and heart patient surgery outcomes is supposed to act as a proxy for whether God answers prayers.

Yes, exactly.

But statistical studies assume that the cause of the result is going to act in a uniform way just like other things in nature do.

Of course. Here’s the idea, that I’m sure you understand:

(1) God wants people to be healthy.

(2) Heart patients are not healthy.

(3) God grants the requests of Christians in prayer: (“Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 18:19).)

(4) People prayed for hundreds of heart attack patients specifically, by name.

(5) Those heart attack patients should get better.

Indeed, if all the heart attack patients that were prayed for got better - and it was verifiable and scientific - I would be a Christian right now, asking God for forgiveness.

But God acts in pure freedom according to Christianity. He is not acted upon by outside forces that allow for consistent and repeatable results. God chooses according to his will.

But when God declares something true, it should be true, right?

Then why isn’t Matthew 18:19 true? Why weren’t those patients healed?

And by the way, if this were really a proper behavioral study of a person, it would require all kinds of additional information and controls that are not present here. It simply doesn’t qualify in its current form.

Could you list some of those pieces of information? It appears we have everything we need.

You are also incorrect that this demonstrates God doesn’t answer prayers even if the study was legit. God could have chosen to save one person in the group prayed for and it would not affect the statistical results at all consider the relatively large size of the sample group.

Actually, that’s not really true. God should have healed everyone that was prayed for, if Matthew 18:19 was true.

 

[Exalt]

It is not a matter of their prayer not being worthy enough. Just because you pray for a good (in this case continued life on this earth) in good faith does not mean that God then has to grant you that request.

This is a clear contradiction of scripture:

“Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 18:19).

 

[Exalt]

Exalt…is this thread still going on? ha Just pray already.

Ok–kidding. I think that prayer is a very personal thing. I’m not sure you addressed by post about Jesus praying.

I actually prayed twice today, and a couple times the day before. God didn’t answer – yet!! Still hopin’ though!

If you see him, tell him that I’m ready to chat. He has my number.

 

[LilyM]

This is a clear contradiction of scripture:

“Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 18:19).

Doesn’t say when, doesn’t say it’s got to be in the precise instant or precise manner for which it is prayed. As an example, if you and I agree to pray for healing for someone, we’re really praying for their total wellbeing, aren’t we? We don’t want them to be well physically but stuffed in any other way, or at least I hope not.

God knows our deep down needs AND desires better than we do, and knows that physical healing may not be what they really need. For example with the paralysed man - the first thing Jesus did was forgive him. Why? Because he knew the man REALLY needed spiritual healing - more so even than physical.