I read about this website in the NYT, checked it out and, via Google, read a few Christian forums responding to it. I have to say, the posters in those forums punted.
I’m not posting this as a snark or a troll. I cannot believe that this issue has not been analyzed and debated to death by theologians in the religions that believe in intercessionary prayer. However, I’m having trouble finding their answers on the web due to the legion of links to, well, amateur answers that come up in my web searches.
Could someone tell me what the “official” position(s) is/are? Once we get that, I think there is a meaty debate to be had here discussing and dissecting those.
It’s an interesting and clever take on the whole idea of whether or not miracle cures happen. But “God moves in mysterious ways”, so I don’t see anyone losing their religion over this. I’m an atheist myself (or agnostic, if you want to be precise), but I think it’s pointless trying to reason someone out of their religious beliefs.
I would pretty much agree with that. Maybe I’ll ask my moms pastor about this when I go home for christmas, it could be interesting to see what he would have to say.
I think it goes beyond that. God may perform miracles at the time and place of his own choosing, but the question is does he perform miracles on demand? My atheism aside, I would argue no, because a prayer of intercession is asking God to change his will. It the amputation was God’s will, it is the height of arrogance to ask him to change it. And if it is his will that the amputation be healed, then no prayer is necessary. Now, if there is a God who is so weak his will can be changed by human supplication, I would say that that warrants a complete rethinking of the omnipotent God paradigm.
Or it may say something about what God considers important.
Maybe what’s in your heart really is, to God, more important than the state of your arm.
Maybe what God wants from us is not to live life in a mechanistic and isolated way, but to interact and build up relationships with Him and each other. Maybe that’s what God sees as the real deal.
Not saying it’s true or not. But it is a long-held hypothesis of mine. (Too bad a certain thread about this same subject from the fall of 1999 has long since been deleted.)
Hard to have a relationship when one of the parties remains silent, relies on blind faith, works in mysterious way and throws you into a lake of fire if you guess wrong about his will.
I’m an atheist, but I find that site kind of offensive. I mean, if you’re going to argue for the scientific method, use the actual scientific method. You can’t just say “If you pray, nothing will happen.” You have to experiment and show that. And you need to have a control group.
On the other hand, if one is not only religious but also a believer in miraculous healings, it’s interesting that God only seems to heal things that might plausibly get better or go into remission on their own. If someone’s tumor shrinks, well that’s one thing; if someone’s arm grows back, even pretty hardened skeptics would have to sit up and take notice. Of course, maybe God once us to have faith–but then why the emphasis (by some believers) in miraculous healings and other divine works as “signs” from God?
And again, that’s a reasonably coherent view; but why differentiate between asking God to heal a cancer and asking God to re-grow a limb? (As at least some believers seem in practice to do.)
No, I’m serious. Feel free to point out that there are a lot of stupid people in organized religion (because there are), but if you’re going to attribute properties to God based on what ‘they’ say (e.g. is “the Lord works in mysterious ways” found in anyone’s holy books?), at least make clear which ‘they’ you’re going with.
While I confess that I’m working from something that I believe to be personal experience, what I’m trying to do from an intellectual standpoint is come up with a possible answer to the question, “could God and reality be configured in such a way that intercessory prayer makes sense?”
I fully agree that if the thing that God values is the physical outcome (i.e. whether a healing takes place) then intercessory prayer makes no sense whatsoever. So let’s try a different tack. Mine is that what’s important is persons (with or without initial caps) and their web of relationships. If that’s the real game, does intercessory prayer make sense in that context - that the ‘favorable outcome,’ if any, of intercessory prayer, is simply a way of encouraging us to interact with the divine? I can’t see why not.
Hey, trying to understand the effing ineffable is hard enough - but asking me to explain the logic, such as it is, of believers is completely beyond my meager abilities.
In order for to parties to interact, both must act. I have seen no evidence that God ever acts as a result of the the actions of men. If God wants to interact with us, he isn’t trying very hard.
The connection was with your position that the purpose of prayer was interaction with God. I pointed out that interaction is a two way street. Until someone can show that God interacts with people in an unambiguous way in response to prayer, I would say the interaction is rather one sided.
I have heard claims regarding miracles of regrown body parts; for example: this man claims that parts of his digestive system (including his stomach) were miraculously restored after having been surgically removed. IIRC, he claims that this has been verified and pronounced unexplainable by doctors.
As far as I know though, there hasn’t actually been a single verified case of miraculous regeneration.
There is another, obvious problem with the site; it overreaches. The author may have a strong argument against the efficacy of intercessionary prayer, but he conflates response to intercessory prayer with the existence of God.