Prayer Works -- a praise report for my Christian Brethren

And you deal with AIDS.


P.S.

Also deal with unwanted pregnancies, chlamydia, herpes, gonorrhea, etc.

I've been having good nookie for several decades now and never met any of those you name above. Same goes for everybody I personally know. It can happen - much like you can get hit on the head by a falling meteorite, but that doesn't mean people don't have the right to walk out in the open.

I suppose those who have got HIV from from hospital needles don't have the right to be injected?

Sometimes we just get unlucky, but you can't in any way someone has no rights to do something all because shit happens. We face risks all the time - the minute we walk outside we could get splattered by a speeding Honda Civic, but that doesn't mean people do not have the right to walk.
 
I am saying life on earth goes by the rules of cause and effect.

If you do X, consequences C are possible.

But we cannot demand that an activity has the consequences *we* desire. We do not have so much power.

If sex were a right, and if it were our right to determine the consequences, then who is to sanction them? Can you sue someone if the consequences of sex are not those you desired? Of course not.

Sex is merely a privilege, not a right. And once something is a privilege, the responsibility for the consequences is upon the privilege-holder.
 
lets be honest here,YOU havent seen it happen either so you dont have the 1st hand experience too.
(hearsay is not an evidence!)
it wouldnt be the first time someone pretending to be sick,or blind was "healed" by some charlatan/preacher
To what point or end would some homeless person in S. Africa have to make up being blind. (You must also consider his eyes that were glazed over and began to clear up as they prayed for him.) He was such a good actor right? For what its worth, I have seen 1st hand somebody in a wheel chair that couldn't walk was prayed for and could walk again. This was somebody that I knew for a number of years so I knew it wasn't fake.

anyway IF your Faith is so strong,and believe that prayer works,next time you get sick or have a toothache,
why dont you go to the church and pray to God to heal you,instead of going to the doctor,and see how far it will get you.

You don't need to go to church to pray as the church is only a building no better than a courthouse or porn shop. The new testament refers to his church as the body of christ (people are the church, not a building)
Beside the point...
I have prayed for headaches, toothaches, sinus stuff, ect. and God has met me without the use of Doctors. Granted, I have gone to doctors who have helped as well. I am evidence of prayer working as I shouldn't be alive today without the prayers that my parents prayed when I was 3 years old on my way to death.

How far has it gotten me? I am alive today because of it, so....
 
I have prayed for headaches, toothaches, sinus stuff, ect. and God has met me without the use of Doctors. Granted, I have gone to doctors who have helped as well. I am evidence of prayer working as I shouldn't be alive today without the prayers that my parents prayed when I was 3 years old on my way to death.

What about all them other parents who prayed for their kids with a terminal desease and watch them die? I quess god just prefers you over others?. So again one man's prayer is the missery of others.

And talk about been selfish! :eek: You seem to only pray for your benefit, and god comes to you like a good doggie. While other people around the globe pray as well, and are starving, dying, getting raped, murdered and killed in wars, what about them? Pray for them if god listens to you like a good well mastered DOG! :bugeye:

Godless
 
Godless: What about all them other parents who prayed for their kids with a terminal desease and watch them die?

Woody: I guess they prayed to the wrong God. Everybody dies sometime. Look at the bright side, the kid is in heaven now where there is no more sickness, crying, death, or old age.

Phil 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
 
How do you know you are praying to the right God? How do you know the God you are praying to is the one you think it is? Maybe there is only the God of Islam, and for kicks he listens to the Christians and Jews sometimes...

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
That doesn't make sense, is it english?
 
Woody says: Yep, but I already explained -- those jobs were losers. My job is a winner.

You don't know that. You're stating that out of frustration because you weren't chosen for those other jobs. They could have all been far better than the one you got.
 
A person can dispute why, but I think we have seen enough evidence to realize that this is true.

Sorry, but I've seen no evidence whatsoever. In fact, the links you provided stated such.

I responded to someone saying there is no evidence for prayer having an effect, when there is plenty of evidence.

Religious delusions are not evidence.

Being thankful is a hell of a lot more positive than being pissed off.

Of course, but Woody is not thanking the correct people; his employers.
 
Woody:

...my engineering employment...

I'm always amazed at engineers who claim this sort of thing (your thread starter post).

What sort of engineering principle leads one to see a world of miracles in one simple coincidence? Would you design one widget, test it and send it out for production based on the certainty that your one instance of success represented "good engineering at its finest"?

Sheesh. I wouldn't hire you.
 
(Q) said:
CG-A person can dispute why, but I think we have seen enough evidence to realize that this is true.

q-Sorry, but I've seen no evidence whatsoever. In fact, the links you provided stated such.
I was talking about the generally accepted effect of positive emotional and mental attitude in relation to illness, acknowledging the link between prayer and that positive attitude (commonly accepted).
Not the "magical" aspect.

Q said:
Religious delusions are not evidence.
Most of the negative aspersions about prayer in most of the discussion regarding studies I have seen, involve the point that they don't see prayer as any more valuable than other forms of positive mental and emotional attitude, which have definitely been shown to affect medical care (don't waste my time trying to argue that point, I was very clear as to which results of prayer were common knowledge and which were religious assumptions).

Q said:
CG -Being thankful is a hell of a lot more positive than being pissed off.
Q -Of course, but Woody is not thanking the correct people; his employers.
Why not let him be thankful to both of his benefactors? Your objectivism leads you into spite in this case. You become that type whom you probably dislike in the religious sector, a pedagogue.
 
Apostle Paul: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

S/G: That doesn't make sense, is it english?

Woody: It makes perfect sense to a believer with eternity in perspective.

------------------------------------------

Q says: You don't know that. You're stating that out of frustration because you weren't chosen for those other jobs.

Woody says: This is a great opportunity, and I am very excited about it! You're just being a sour puss.

--------------------------------------

Q: Of course, but Woody is not thanking the correct people; his employers.

Woody says: I thanked them and they thanked me. I also thanked God for hooking us up. He's a great matchmaker.

What else do you want me to do -- thank you too?

---------------------------------------------

Superluminal says: Sheesh. I wouldn't hire you.

Woody says: You're too late, I'm already taken. Join the rest of the losers. *Tee *Hee
 
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spidergoat: How do you know you are praying to the right God? How do you know the God you are praying to is the one you think it is? Maybe there is only the God of Islam, and for kicks he listens to the Christians and Jews sometimes...

That doesn't make sense, is it english?
*************
M*W: It's incorrect English grammar, spelling and punctuation!
 
Wow.

Nothing spreads like god and sexuality- yesterday, I logged off at 2 pages.
I come back and find five.
So if that is 3 new pages, with a total of 20 average for page, that makes it close to 60 posts in small period of hours. Hours.

God and genitals are forum kudzu.

But that is beside the point, my apologies. Let’s talk about GOD.

Woody sez:
His answer isn't always what I ask for, but it is what is needful. I trust Him to do what's best -- just like this job I got. Wood

There were other employers that turned me down, and I was disappointed at the time. Now, I'm glad they turned me down because I have the job I really wanted. It is a great career move and a super opportunity for me

When god answers, the effects of his assistance are inexplicable. In other words, miracles. Agree?
You say your god answers your petitions.

A god that answers your petitions answers a billion others as well.
A god that answers a billion petitions is able to intrude upon the Explicable World a billion times per second ever day of every week of every year of every eon for as long as a billion mendicants are asking for his assistance.

If a billion intrusions upon the Explicable World were made a billion times per second every day of ever week of every year for every one that you and you and them petition for, then the world would be completely incoherent.

The world would be filled with inexplicable babies, the sick cured inexplicably, herpes, AIDS, Ebola and Kuru obliterated inexplicably, life from death inexplicably, planets and suns stop inexplicably as they did for Joshua, little Woody’s in little suburbs round the world inexplicably getting job offers out of nowhere.
And all because they prayed for it.

In short, the world would be inexplicable
And science, therefore, impossible.
If what you are saying is valid, then it stands to reason that all those attesting the same thing are valid as well.
Yet the world is understandable.
And science possible.
A world full of miracles is one that takes a laboratory in its hand, crushes all its beakers with one blow and with a flick of its other hand throws causality out the window.
And with it throw out all attempts at comprehension and that golden feel of knowing and creating something.

A world full of miracles is therefore not understandable.
Yet this one is- you and I know that rubbing two hands together is warmth and you and I know that putting a hand in fire burns skin as well. We think in terms of causality.
Yet your world expanded makes that very thinking impossible.


Now, here you have a billion some odd people being answered in their prayers which if true would upset the very fabric of coherence.
It would be a threat to the simple act of knowing anything.

And since its quite possible to know something as soon as one is ready to, and since this has been possible ever since life became obligated to maneuver its way through the planet in an anxious need to survive,
and since all living things are guided by a program learned from the vicious challenges of its universe- this leads one to conclude that supernatural intrusion on the natural is, quite simply, human narcissism.


Here’s a toast to anyone that’s read this long post. (highly doubt)(Excellent)

Lastly, funny thing about these experiments performed to test God.
Using causality to look for what completely obliterates its existence is like trying to find if the bulb really lights up by opening the refrigerator door.
 
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Not only does prayer work but it’s also a very efficient way of accomplishing things.

For instance, a few months ago I prayed for my neighbour’s death, because he was using the lawnmower at 8 o’clock in the morning.
A week later he gets killed in a car accident.

Voila. Case closed.
I can sleep in now.

Then a week ago I pray for a sports car, a million dollars and a supermodel in my bed and …whamo!
A friend of mine introduces me to cocaine.

I also know that many people pray for world peace and an end to hunger and human suffering, so I pray for war, more hunger and more human suffering just to create a counter effect.
Guess whose prayer gets answered people.
Mine!

That’s right. Mine!!!

It’s not only what you pray for but how you pray that counts.
You got to know the big guys weaknesses, the phrases that catch his ear and make him pay notice.

My buddy John has been praying for a larger dick and a cure for his haemorrhoids for years now but I haven’t told him the secret yet.
 
G says, "Lastly, funny thing about these experiments performed to test God.
Using causality to look for what completely obliterates its existence is like trying to find if the bulb really lights up by opening the refrigerator door."

Unless prayer is an explicable, natural, factor of causation, which has not been studied enough or in the proper way to figure this out yet.
I don't know.

EDIT- but I don't think God is waiting around tied to strings, to be puppeted about at our whim.
 
I was talking about the generally accepted effect of positive emotional and mental attitude in relation to illness, acknowledging the link between prayer and that positive attitude (commonly accepted).

One could have as equivalent effect by crossing their fingers. In other words, prayer is useless where action is required.

the point that they don't see prayer as any more valuable than other forms of positive mental and emotional attitude, which have definitely been shown to affect medical care

...so do crossing your fingers, according to your line of logic.

Why not let him be thankful to both of his benefactors?

He's not - he's thanking his imaginary friend and giving him all the credit. Ingrate?
 
CG-I was talking about the generally accepted effect of positive emotional and mental attitude in relation to illness, acknowledging the link between prayer and that positive attitude (commonly accepted).

Q-One could have as equivalent effect by crossing their fingers.

Ok, pray however you want to.


I do think there is an element of voodoo magic in many religious understandings of prayer, which I think is a bit prehistoric anyway. (sorry woody)
(I appreciate the thought that God cares and acts, woody, even though you apply it in an exclusionary manner which I detest tremendously)

There is even a common understanding in christianity that if you donate money, it will come back multiplied, just like shaking water from a certain type of branch would help bring rain, as prayer was not sufficient, according to some earlier cultures. It is somewhat like the imitative magic described in "The Golden Bough", by frazer.

Whatever.
 
Good for you Woody, glad things are working out.

Not very engineerish of you to go assigning random causes to events though.

I suppose god hates indonesians?
 
When god answers, the effects of his assistance are inexplicable. In other words, miracles. Agree?

No.
And that is the thing.
Prayer, so often, "doesn't work" because people are superstitious, expect magic. As if God were their personal slot machine.
Or people are praying to someone or something else, not to God. Expecting that God will be what they want Him to be.

God answers in ways the person understands, and in ways they can accept. This means God's works are mostly mundane and simple.



Why need or want God then at all, one could ask ...
 
wesmorris said:
Good for you Woody, glad things are working out.

Not very engineerish of you to go assigning random causes to events though.

I suppose god hates indonesians?

Jesus loves good ol' South Alabama and Mississippi boys! They beat those damn slaves with their Bibles just like ever' good massa should.
 
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