I am an atheist and I respect religion. However I cannot understand some parts of religion and how people just accept it as their truth while to me it seems so clear that logic, science, and human nature explains the existance of religions and are showing their flaws. Most questions I have are complex and would probably cause lots of debate. Therefore im asking a very simple question, at least I hope I am..

I assume that you believe praying for certain occurences to happen or not to happen has an effect on the outcome sometimes as you will probably assign a good outcome to god and the prayer you made. If so, would't there be any statistical evidence to find for the effectiveness of prayers? As far as I know there is no statistical evidence for prayers to have any effect. for example, theists get sick and die as much as atheists do, don't they? The numbers seem to tell us there is randomness in occurences, so praying for future occurences or thanking god for good things that happened seems pointless to me in terms of the outcome. Do you not believe in statistics? I understand other reasons for praying as it can bring you peace and comfort, but that has nothing to do with the prayer having any effect on the outcome. So im only looking for your thoughts if you believe your prayer has resulted in a certain outcome.

that type of prayer is garbage to god apparently...jesus said this is how you pray "forgive us, give us food, your will be done on e as n h". I dont think god gives a **** about what people want

now do me a favor and go answer my prob. ? in my thread since your logical.

the last three returns to church of mine over the past 2.5 yrs preceded awful immediate life circumstances...i dont intend on returning enough to get a sig sample for u but damn it makes me wonder..maybe getting near that **** is not good but bad.

I dont think I have any struggle with faith, so not sure what your question to me is.

Prayers of petition are certainly part of the Christian (and Jewish) religious traditions, and within those traditions there is the expectation at least of the possibility of prayers being answered in a very direct way. And so it's certainly reasonable to ask questions about the actual efficacy of prayer in that regard.

That said, I think it's a mistake to view prayer as merely this sort of transactional process where something is asked for and then maybe it is given or maybe it's not, and Christian tradition has always viewed prayer as much more than that. The Kingdom of Heaven is not of this world, and the aim of the Christian life is not a fulfillment only of worldly aims or physical outcomes, it is a transcendent union with God. It is a transfiguration of a person's interior life. Jesus told his followers to rejoice in tribulations and to take up their crosses, and he spoke of suffering as something that was inevitable, he did not say to expect to to pray and have everything magically handled.

So I think to reduce prayer to this is an oversimplification, even if it's one that Christians also make themselves sometimes, and one that has some basis in tradition. You can certainly find biblical passages which seem to speak of prayer in this way. But I would offer that a deeper understanding of prayer is one in which petitions, or expressions of gratitude, or meditation, or any other form of prayer is ultimately a practice in being present to God to our full capacity to be so.

I usually don't like answering these kinds of questions, because imo, op is usually competent enough to answer for the theist side for themselves, if they truly wanted to. I'll give you an example, though, of a prayer I expect God to answer in the affirmative, and a prayer that I know even God will have a hard time answering, because of "moral commitments" or what have you.

Friday night. I have a severe toothache. Defcon 4. It's a tooth I should have gotten pulled two years ago but... Going up into my ear and all of that. Antibiotics won't kick in for 48 to 72 hours. I call and leave a message for the dentist, I pop two Tylenol AD. No effect. I pop two advil on top. No effect. I pray some serious prayers begging God to take the pain away until the dentist office opens on monday morning. I expect a good father to step in here.

The more difficult situation might be: I'm renting a room from some crazy girl, and she has a psychic crackup and throws me and the other renter out in the middle of the night. I have no money. No place to go. I have a father with loads of money, however. I go straight to see him and pray to God to put it in his heart to help me out so that I don't have to sleep at a rest area for a few weeks. I show up and he hands me just 20 dollars before I leave.

Situation 2 is more problematic, imo. God doesn't just possess someone and force them to do something. And probably, people pray for things that they really shouldn't be praying for at all. Even my toothache example, really, I'm just lying down in the bed I made. You can make a case, actually, that if God answers the prayer, I might continue to neglect my dentition, and an answered prayer would be bad for me, in the long run.

Anyway, it's never cut and dry. There are so many possible factors and variables that go into each unique situation. I'm not sure what statistical analysis would prove, one way or another.

But I will say this: I get emailed automatically by my church and notified whenever a member dies, and there is going to be a wake or funeral. I hardly ever see anyone die before the age of 60 (70, even, tbh) there. It's almost unheard of in that church. I'd be interested in seeing life span numbers for evangelical, charismatic churches contrasted against the rest of society for sure.

those last two posts are very satisfying answers, thanks. I understand my question is an oversimplification, and cannot be answered easily.
Dogggs first example of the toothache is an example of a prayer that is expected to be heard and taken care of (or lets say the possibility is there). So my question is something like: Do people in the exact same situation that did not pray because they dont believe in god feel more pain then those that did pray? This is something that cannot be tested easily, but there should be examples of occurences that would be more easily quantifiable. If however this transactional process is not how prayers work, I think it can be concluded that alot of prayers are done wrong with too much accent on asking for something to happen phisically.

That last thing about lifespan is exactly what I mean. Still there are other factors that could cause the lifespan of one group to be different from the other ofc, but aside from that..

There are a few statements in here that could be debated at length, but I am going to address the bold question specifically.

I would answer "No".

Now for my reasoning. I am structuring this under the assumption that the effects of prayer would be due to the action of a God responding to that prayerful request. What can we deduce about God under the assumption that He exists? I think it is very reasonable to assume that God does not want us to have clear evidence that He does exist. If He did given His postulated capability, then we would surely have that evidence. I could speculate on reasons for concealment, but a definite reason is not required to support the conclusion. The next question then becomes: Could God answer prayers in such a manner as to be undetectable? Given that we are considering a Being that has virtually complete control over both the universe and our attempts to measure it, the answer has to be "Yes".

So combining the postulated existence of a Being who wishes to remain concealed with the capability to manipulate the universe on a level that we cannot perceive, I conclude that I would not expect to be able to measure a statistical effect of prayer, whether or not it actually had an effect.

Thats a very interesting answer, because that would mean god is is limited in his actions on the level that we can perceive because he also doesnt want to give us clear evidence of his existence.

Well, yes. If He wishes to remain undetected, then He cannot do things that we can detect. That is self-evident. How is it interesting?

[IMG]http://s22.************/omf05g175/i_see_what_you_did_there_futurama_fry_sneaky_sne.j pg[/IMG]

Christian petition: "Not my will but Thy Will Be Done". Two armies pray for victory but only one wins; one farmer prays for rain while another prays for clear season; it would be ridiculous to go further with this.

The ultimate aim of the Christian exegesis is a selfless prayer but none the less a petition is asked within the framework of the above.

The "Lord's Prayer", containing reference to the Will is the greatest of prayers and can bring the individual man to a contextual feeling into the spiritual world.

The throes of selflessness and egoism will always be present for if one prays for the curing of a friend is there not some portion of egoistic satisfaction present? the balance between the two is the work of the individual man. this is the Christ Way.

Your post makes no sense to me. What did I "do there" that I did not explicitly state?

Why do you respect religion? Or are you just saying that because you're afraid to appear disrespectful?

You're basically saying that even if all statistical evidence points to prayers not being answered, god can change the universe in such a way, that he can answer prayers, while only making it look like he's not. Isn't that just a little too convenient?

Im saying that because I think its important to respect people no matter what they believe in or whatever makes them different from me. I dont need everyone to agree on what I think. I posted this question out of curiousity. For me this was an example of something that proves that there is no god and I was wondering what theist's theory is to "make it plausible". That being said, yea, I am a little afraid to appear disrespectfull and making it seem I was posting this to mock their faith too

I have several comments.

You are correct, that is what I was saying. My objection to his post was that he implied that he had detected some clever sleight of hand. I was trying to state the above explicitly.

Your point about convenience is irrelevant. We are speculating about evidence for the existence of a God with essentially unlimited power. We must also consider the possibility that He does not wish us to possess proof of His existence. From those two elements I would conclude that a failure to obtain statistical evidence of His presence is not a reliable test of His existence. Whether it is convenient or not is irrelevant. Whether I want it to be true or not is irrelevant. The question is: Is the logic correct?

If it is, then it is. End of subject. What you do with that is your business. I am not trying to lead you to some final conclusion, because I do not know the final answer. All I want is to get the elements correct, for both of us.

What is the scriptural (or barring that, non-scriptural) reason to think God wants to remain undetected? The idea seems rather ad hoc, given the many miracles claimed in the Bible, some of which were for the express purpose of revealing Himself to humans, along with statements about seeking and finding.

I'm also curious if you have any ideas about how God might manipulate the universe to perform miracles while remaining hidden. A possible solution would that for every prayer God answers to cure a certain type of cancer within a religious group, God has to afflict a different person of that group with the same cancer so as to keep the numbers undetectable. Or maybe He also cures someone of every other group so there will never be a statistical footprint? My friend who proposes hiddenness rejects those possibilities out of hand but doesn't have an alternate explanation.

[Edit regarding the cancer scenario: Actually, He wouldn't have to afflict a healthy person; He could also miraculously cause a person who was going to survive the cancer to die from it so the mortality rate of believers still matches the population as a whole.]

I think this is almost self-evident. It seems clear to me that we do not possess clear mutually verifiable evidence that God exists. Therefore, either He does not exist or He does not want us to have such evidence. Presumably if He wanted us to have it and existed, then He could arrange it so that we did.

The characterization as "ad hoc" is probably fair to some extent, but that does not mean it is incorrect. From my point of view, miracles claimed in the Bible are not actually evidence, given my inability to verify them.

There really is no way to know what the mechanism might be. We are talking about a Being able to completely manipulate our reality. Why should He have to inflict cancers at all? In theory He could simply alter our perceptions so that we actually never count cancers correctly and never realize our errors. You have seen the Matrix I assume. Maybe the statistics of cancer can never be really defined because that is not the answer. The answer is that there is no cancer. I am not being flippant. It is important to recognize what you truly know and what you simply think you observe when thinking about questions like this.

Bah! That's a good answer, and one that I and my friend shouldn't have missed so easily.

"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." 1 John 4:12

"No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him." John 1:18

"And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Exodus 33:19-20

Well named, surely you aren't being serious?

Obviously there is a difference between "no one has seen God" and "God does not want to be detectable" but they are the closest scriptural support and are often referenced by Christian writers talking about the unknowability of God so they felt relevant.

And don't call me Shirley