You’re confusing God with coincidence. The old lady would have been at that spot in time whether you had prayed or not.
Now, let’s say that your praying boosted your spirits and made you go faster, and that if you had maintained your old speed you would have missed the old lady altogether. Was that a benevolent act of God? Well, maybe. But how do you know that the extra zip that your prayer gave you didn’t in fact cause you to miss intersecting with some old farmer with a truck who would have said, “Lebanon? Yeah, I’m heading that way. Just throw your bike in the back, and I’ll give you a ride.” In that case you would have been better off without praying.
Assuming for a moment that you’re serious (what is a ‘placebo prayer’?), I don’t think this would work; I’ve never prayed for anything arbitrarily; may I invite you to say ‘Oh how convenient’
I would like empirical evidence for just one person who miraculously re-gained a lost body part because he or she prayed for it or because loved ones and/or perfect strangers prayed for it to happen. Just one.
To the person who said Diana could not have been helped by prayer because she was already dead: Are you saying God could not have restored her?
Actually, I don’t think I’m confusing God with coincidence. The first time I prayed for something and it happend, I chalked it up to coincidence. 2,3,4,5… it became less and less coincidence and more and more based on faith. I’ve let God take control of my life. So in a way, I don’t need to pray because I know that He will do what’s best for me. But praying for me is basically talking with God. One of the central ideas in Lutheranism is that you should have a personal relationship with God. And just like anyother relationship, you need to communicate.
Normally, when something I pray for doesn’t work out, it turns out for the better. I’m not saying I have a perfect life, but I know that God is in control and that I may have to go through tough times, but in the end it’ll be for the best.
Oh and FTR, I don’t ride with strangers
How many times have you prayed for something, and it didn’t happen? How does this compare with the number of times you’ve prayed and it did happen, i.e. what’s the “batting average” of your prayers? Of the things you prayed for that did happen, what were the odds of such a thing happening by coincidence? Were you praying for truly unusual, specific things, like, “God, please make a purple elephant walk down the street outside my house in the next 5 minutes”, or were you praying for things that might be inclined to happen anyway, such as, “God, please let the mailman arrive on time today”? How many prayers were for things that you had some personal control over, such as, “God, grant me the strength to pedal my bike a little faster”?
So even when God doesn’t answer his prayers, he really is answering his prayers. So the percent of time that God does/doesn’t answer his prayers is 100%.
It’s interesting that cykrider ends up making a round about case (1) for a non-interventionist God and (2) that prayer = meditation.
So in other words, pray all you want for anything you want. God’s going to do whatever he feels like anyway.
In other words, prayer for cykrider is what others call meditation.
It does seem that praying like that is just a meditative technique. If you only believe that god might do it then you don’t have enough faith for the prayer to work.
I don’t understand your mean-spirited post. Were you attempting to paraphrase Cykrider? If so, I think you did a poor job of it. You also seem to know less about meditation than you do about prayer. Meditation is the art of silencing one’s conscious mind in order to hear one’s inner voice. Prayer is petition.
Cykrider was not hedging, as you imply, when he said that “when something I pray for doesn’t work out, it turns out for the better.” Your twisting his words does not change what he said. Clearly, he means, not that God did not answer his prayer, but that God answered his prayer in an unexpected way that turned out better than he’d hoped.
An even more bizarre paraphrase was your second one. Cykrider said nothing like what you offered as “other words”. Honestly, if you don’t understand, say so. If you disagree, say so. But cut out the straw man word-twisting, 'mkay? Cykrider meant that God does always what is right. He always answers the prayers of the faithful.
Hmmm… I really don’t see my post as mean spitited. On the other hand:
Now that may be seen as mean spitited.
It is quite obvious from this thread that prayer and meditation mean different things to different people. One of the issues that has come up in this post is the difference petween prayer as petition (“God, make the hills go away”) vs. prayer as meditation (“God give me the strength to get over those hills”). In fact you can see that starting in the second post. No one is denying the benefit of prayer-as-meditation. We are simply looking for any evidence of prayer-as-petition ever working in a better than chance fashion.
And, yes, Cykrider was hedging when he said “when something I pray for doesn’t work out, it turns out for the better.”
I understand your point and I felt the same way as well. For me, prayer alone doesn’t do a thing but prayer with God, with Jesus, is what is effective. Prayer is an open communication with God. If you go to him as a vulnerable sinner, seeking mercy, He will grant it to you. What prayer is not is a test of God. IMHO God assumes when you come to Him that you have already acknowledged who He is and that you are coming to Him for mercy, guidance, forgiveness, etc. But if you come to Him asking for a miracle that’s like asking Him to prove Himself to you.
“It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” (Matt. 4:7)
We have to prove ourselves to God not God to us. I know what people say to this: it is a weak way out of answering the question. I don’t think so. God has already proved Himself to us (some of us at least) throughout history through the Bible, the prophets, and through Jesus Himself. When I accept Jesus as my Savior, I have already been convinced completely that He is God. And I also know, through the Bible, what it is He wants us to ask Him for in prayer such as forgiveness and mercy. So when I go to Him in prayer I am not going to ask Him to show me evidence of His existence (I have already been convinced) I am going to ask Him to let me have more love in my life, to become more forgiving, to be more charitable. These are the things He wants us to ask for and without a doubt He gives us.
It is important to recognize how insignificant material goods and money are to God. Jesus preached a life of ascetic living. Anything you get over that has been a blessing from God. So when you come to God asking for a Mercedes to fall in your lap, He probably won’t do it. But if you ask Him for spiritual goods then He will give it to you in abundance. Look at what Jesus taught us to pray for while we’re praying: God’s will to be done; forgiveness of sins and the ability to forgive; to be led from temptation. The more you ask for these things, the more you will receive. That’s all I can say.
I’ll second that. Thank you Mambo. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts and find them refreshing from many others in this thread.
I was visiting a Gnostic site today and while some of their beliefs seems pretty foreign to me, I agreed with what they stated about (what we would describe as) nonbelievers. They said that not all humans are spiritual (minded) and those who are not spiritual are earthbound and materialistic beings who recognize only the physical reality. They have little or no awareness of the spiritual world beyond matter and mind. It is little wonder that they demand material proof such as pink elephants flying across the sky or the like. I don’t mean that as a put down, but with the understanding that for them, they need to be dazzled into belief.
But no one can be dazzled into belief no matter what they witnessed. As the rest of us already know, they must first recognize the spirit within themselves. And if they do not know Him, how could they believe in prayer?
Mambo, thanks for the clearest (and kindest) explanation of effective prayer that I’ve come across recently - asking not for anything specific outside the self, but just to make the self better, if I understand correctly.
However, isn’t it equally possible to become a better, more loving, more tolerant and honest person by simply recognizing our shortcomings, wanting to fix them, and working toward that end, not by asking some higher power to do the job for us?
In my limited understanding, I’ve come to believe that this is what God wants us to do. And prayer is a way to facilitate (not replace) Recognizing, Wanting and Working.
