I'll pray for you. I'm not perfect but I'm a Christian. I won't respond to trolls or engage in this becoming a debate thread. If you feel too intimidated to post here, feel free to pm me for prayer.

God bless!

I'm familiar with the "giving thanks" variety for food before you eat it, but is there a theory, theological or otherwise, behind what you are doing or what you aim to accomplish with these prayers?

Provided Dr. Meh is:
-genuine and
-doesn't, at any point, ask for money
i don't perceive a single negative aspect to his proposal.

The only effect on the recipient, if any, would be a positive one.

As to a theory about why he'd bother doing this- it's widely know that **** sapiens derive a sense of satisfaction in helping others.

Perhaps I worded it poorly. I am curious about the purpose of the prayer, and what informs his views about that. Not his motivation for starting the thread.

Yes I could use some prayer and guidance. Been wrestling with this as a career choice and with my faith in Jesus Christ. Any advice? Thanks for your thoughts.

Prayed for you to have guidance and strength in your faith.

Thanks brother! I will be praying for you as well!

Also Dr. Meh do you find peace being a Christian poker player? Do you think it honors God? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks!

I'm a rec player and work for a living. I play very little compared to what I used to play and part of that was the conundrum you're touching on. I didn't feel that it honored God nor was it necessarily a wise use of my financial gifts. So now I only play one or two times a year and with money earmarked for entertainment purposes. In addition, I play for the fun and challenge of the game rather than the financial rewards. Money isn't sinful but the love and lust for it is. So if you're playing strictly to try to get rich, you might want to reevaluate some things. I mostly play with money I would normally spend on movies or eating out. I forgo those things to play instead.

I see your points. I am not looking to get rich but would be using it to create a salary. The bonuses of the lifestyle have been seeing friends/family a lot more often than at any other job. On top of that, I can whole heartedly serve the church in a particular ministry. So in this way I feel it can honor God plus bring the light of Christ to the casino industry. I am a winning player over a large sample of time but trying to see if I am good enough to create a consistent salary. I will say it doesn't seem like it would be a lifetime career but where I am at this point in my walk with Jesus.

Instead of praying, which has repeatedly been shown to have no effect other than in some cases where it had a harmful placebo effect because of the pressure felt by the people who thought that they were being prayed for, and taking into account that mean well, why don't you do something useful with that time? Like Charity work or something.

I can see why your feeling that you can go onto a forum full of complete strangers, and offer up some divinely sourced power, to do something truly magical for them, to speak to a god on their behalf and create good in their lives with this power, would be a compelling and highly satisfying belief. It's also kinda like Homeopathy in that it's proven to be completely useless and in some cases can cause genuine harm.

God already knows everything that has, does and will happen right? And it's logically valid to suggest that an action might occur, or have occurred, only because of your intervention, and that therefore there is a 'result' of your prayer. But I don't believe that a truly loving god would allow something bad to occur, because the prayer that would have created the 'good' situation, isn't offered. Such a god would be cruel and uncaring, and you don't think your god is those things, right? In this situation, where such results are possible, but only if we ask for them, we should pray for every conceivable 'good' result in case that prayer happens to trigger the desired response. Not to do so would be uncaring on our part. But that's not only not possible since we don't have the necessary resources, it would also create virtually limitless conflicts and contradictory requests, and so God would still have to decide which result he would allow to occur.

The idea of prayer makes no sense.

Why only harmful placebo effects?

As far as I know, Einstein also believed in the power of prayers. How do they work? It's a different story. Placebo effect? Maybe. Negative placebo effect (nocebo)? I don't think that applies here.

Because the group that knew that they were being prayed for showed slower rates of recovery and a greater amount of post operative problems than the group that didn't know that they were being prayed for and the control group. The inference is that it was the prayer that caused the negative effect and since I think that prayer is a placebo (and I think the study supports that), I called it a 'harmful placebo'.

The conclusion of long-waited medical study about the power of prayers was inconclusive.

The authors, led by Dr Benson, said at the end that their findings were not the final word and might have been result of chance.

Others have called endeavors like this are bad for science and religion as well.

Myself, I have no idea if prayers do work or not. Or if they do what might be the mechanism of action. But I happen to believe that if (and it's a big if) they really do, in order for them to have some impact, they have to be very personal.

Or if they are delivered by others, the person who is going to do this has to be very close to the person who needs it. In other words, to mean it, to feel it, to have been affected by the situation and also not immune by the either way results of his/her trying.

Look at it from a different angle. There are 2 Billion Muslims, and 2.6 Billion Christians who are praying to two, mutually exclusive, different gods. At least one of those groups is praying to a god that doesn't exist, and possibly both are.

If you are a Christian, how would you try to convince a Muslim that their prayers are achieving nothing, or vice versa?

I look at the prayers more as a neutral, universal, desperate act of humankind to talk to a higher entity during a "crisis situation". I don't look at them from an organized religion point of view.

You know that are many from all sides who think that the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, basically worship the same God but that's not the point of this thread.

Again, all of this might be a futile/fictional exercise.

It is certainly possible that they are both praying to the same god - that is a fairly common theological view. The fact that they disagree about the nature of god in various ways doesn't mean they are, or think they are, talking about different things.

Bolded: I don't think this is an accurate rendering of the results. Here's what the researchers actually suggested:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html

There's irony in MB's position because he's trying to claim both that there's not really an impact of prayer while simultaneously trying to point to negative impacts of prayer as evidence of his beliefs about prayer.

Underlined: This is definitely a misreading of the results. The article does not conclude anything about placebos, so claiming that the study supports a claim about placebos is more than a stretch.

If you want to read the actual report, the link is below. I recommend taking a look at the study design to understand the experimental set-up in its entirety and particularly the randomization process (and compare it with how prayer might "normally" happen -- or how it might be happening as a result of this thread).

https://www.bioestadistica.uma.es/ba...soryPrayer.pdf

Do you pray for animals?

Without at all meaning to sound insincere, would you please:

pray for the unfortunate chickens housed in chicken farms over South Auckland, NZ?

They are subjected to unimaginably horrible conditions. Forced to live out their miserable existence (I don't think the term "life" is warranted) in small cages without exposure to the sunlight they crucially need. These chickens' lives are cut short to fill supermarket aisles with "$5 Specials !" for the self-regarding species that is **** sapiens.

The NZ government refuse to introduce regulations on this issue and I feel like the situation is hopeless. It's plaguing my mind despite the fact I can't do anything about it.

I prayed for the people raising the chickens to have wisdom and mercy on how they raise their animals as well as for you to have peace of mind.

Thank-you!

Hi OP nice thread and great idea,

can you please pray for me to have the strength to work hard studying these next two months and keep me and my family in good health.

thankyou brother

Prayed for you

thanks I will pray for you too