No one asked about what God's motivations might be or his thought process behind prayer. No one asked about the complex nature of prayer or relationship between God and the person praying. The answer to the question of "does God grant individual requests made in prayer" is a simple yes or no. The reasons behind why God may or may not grant such requests are likely highly varied and complicated. No one is disputing that part. People are only asking for your opinion on the first part. Given your response in the previous thread, it appears your belief is yes.

Of course, it's a yes.

But atheists like to argue over outcomes. When people don't get their on the surface desired outcome they think God didn't answer.

its not abut the outcomes praying in that sense shows your distrust of god and or you have a better idea of how to run things than god, or you think his decisions are wrong etc..

Just got a Schwinn from God.

Can't really afford one right now and about a month ago I asked God to help me find a bike. My daughter has been asking me to go bike riding and it's something I have wanted to get into anyways to keep myself in good shape. I was in no hurry I just said God when the time is right please put it in my path.

Got a call from my neighbor about a half hour ago and he said the guy he works for (dude has way too much money) had two Schwinn beach cruisers and he just gave my neighbor one of them. My neighbor doesn't ride bikes but thought I might want it to ride with my daughter. Walked over looked at it and said **** yeah I'll take it! It's in the garage now.

Thanks God I'm trying to teach these people maybe this will help. Prolly not though .

EDIT:

.. guitar..

goodnight sleeps..

bikes..

poops..

Lol, so god rewards people in the rich west who pray because they cant afford a bike, but for some reason lets people in the third world starve because they cant afford food?

He does make sure they get extra portions of Aids tho. Then again we cant give god all the credit as the Catholic church is actively helping with that.

Well the way I see it in all of my answered prayers is that God works THROUGH people. It's been about a month since I prayed for a bike and it took this long for the right things to happen in order for God to put that bike in my hands. When you blame God for not feeding the hungry people maybe you should really be blaming yourself because the only way those people are going to be full is when your sorry ass starts sending them a can of soup!

Then, similarly, if you didn't get a bike then it would have been because no one got off their ass and gave you a bike. So what exactly does God have to do with any of this?

Come on Janabis, God makes the bikes! How do you think they got there in first place?

Your prayers all seem kinda selfish.

So... no outcome is evidence of...?

I like how God is proven equally by magical bicycles and absence of intervention.

If only engineering was this easy. We'd be at hoverboards ages ago.

Maybe if BigErf prays for one...

Even if he does he can't tell us. It won't come true!

Well, ok, I guess..

My dads girlfriends daughter knew this guy who's trailer got repossessed (whatever ) and she had a chance to go in and get whatever she wanted out. She grabbed a microwave, washer and dryer, a mountain bike and a few other things. She didn't want the bike and ended up giving it to my dads girlfriend who gave it to my dad who gave it to me. Do you see what just happened there?

I wish I could have made that up for you.

haha

I wonder why this is..? I mean, I am dedicated. I've stood up for God in front of a judge before. I've knelt down and kissed the ground under a full moon with no fear of recognition from my neighbors who face my backyard.

But that's not it. Do you want to know what it is? Yes, you do. Because you have it too.

WUT?

If the Christian God exists, it would be SO incredibly easy to prove, in a way that would make everyone believers. How?

Take a 50,000 sample of people in the hospital. Each is around the same age, was in the same health for most of his/her life, in the hospital for the same condition, and in the hospital for the same amount of time. Randomly assign each to a control and experimental group, so roughly half are in each group. Don't tell them which group they are in.

In another location, completely isolated 10000 miles away, have a group of religious leaders and highly religious leaders pray for the experimental group only. Then see if there's a statistical significant (probability less than 5% that different recovery rates between groups are due to chance). If there is, there's evidence in favor of God. Poof, scientific proof. Would likely instantly convert most, or all, atheists or agnostics into theists. It would definitely convert me.

Yet experiments like this have been done (though maybe not with as large of a sample size). NONE have showed any significant difference between groups...except for experiments published ONLY in maybe religious newspapers by religious groups using bad, uncontrolled experiments. Prayer does nothing...

It depends on the illness they have. If it was something terminal then the study would work. If it was something else then the placebo effect of prayer etc could have a positive effect and skew the results.

We've always heard the saying "Why won't God heal amputees?" Would a single instance of an amputee growing back a limb convince you there's a God? I'm not so sure. If there was a single verified instance of a christian slowly growing back his missing arm, I'm not sure I would view it as anything but a physical anomaly (or possibly a well done fraud).

If a single instance wouldn't do it, what's the magic number?