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God does listen to prayers but only the prayers of the righteous you may have 10,000 people praying but only a few are truly righteous therefore only a few are heard.
By coincidence, yesterday when I was driving in my general neighborhood I passed a christian church and they had a sign out front that said: "God loves all people equally". Too bad you don't feel the same way.
I do believe that God answers this specific prayer when we ask Him to fill our soul with His Divine Love. For all other prayers, this is the job of His angels and if it is at all possible that a prayer can be answered, it will be. Many years ago, I was going through a rough time and I went down on my knees and committed myself to God. I told Him that I would follow Him and do my best to spread the good news. Because of this action on my part, I’m very blessed.
As I continually post, He loves us all so much and when we acknowledge Him and ask for His Love and begin receiving it, it’s a life-changing experience for the best.
If a child was to have open heart surgery on Friday, was sent home to be with her family before the very serious operation, Grandmother had a prayer service on Sunday afternoon and on Monday a second scan was done before the surgery was to happen but showed no neeed for the surgery any longer, would you then believe prayer made a difference? It was my niece and she is still living today. Yes, I am a firm believer in prayer.
If a child was to have open heart surgery on Friday, was sent home to be with her family before the very serious operation, Grandmother had a prayer service on Sunday afternoon and on Monday a second scan was done before the surgery was to happen but showed no neeed for the surgery any longer, would you then believe prayer made a difference? It was my niece and she is still living today. Yes, I am a firm believer in prayer.
No.
I don't confuse "I don't know why X happened" with "GodDidIt!".
There have been blind studies of the efficacy of prayer. Actually scientific tests, as opposed to vague anecdotes. And? Nothing. We should expect to see higher rates of this sort of magical recovery among the pious, and certainly among believers. Can you point to a greater incidence of inexplicable recoveries in places like Alabama and Romania and Saudi Arabia - with higher rates of belief in God - than in places like Vermont or Sweden or Australia - places with comparatively lower rates of belief? No. They don't exist.
Spontaneous remission/regression of maladies is a thing. Prayer? Why? Just because the two correlated? Maybe there was also a correlation of a visit to Disney World as a final bucket list item. Hey, Mickey cured the affliction! Maybe the victim decided that since they were on their way out they would indulge in the treat that they so desired. Hey, key lime pie cures cancer! How many people, especially in the South, passionately hated Abraham Lincoln during his presidency? Undoubtedly, there were prayers for his demise. And he was murdered! So God was the guiding force behind John Wilkes Booth? See, the correlation between improvement and cause is always very selectively applied.
Of course, the flip side to all of this is that when prayer doesn't result in the desired result - ex: when a child with bone cancer dies a lingering excruciating death - then God apparently decided that an extra dose of pain and suffering was exactly what they child was going to get. But this is invariably ignored or hand-waved away.
Marshall Brain, founder of the website 'How Stuff Works', wrote a book called 'How God Works' (given that he's an atheist, he's using the term 'god' as a rhetorical device in his book title) where he discusses the findings of many studies that analyzed the efficacy of prayer. The conclusion? Results were indistinguishable from chance.
Well, I live in an ecumenical Christian housing development (although I'm an ex Christian who is a Zen practitioner), and sure, a lot of people believe prayers work. People believe all manner of things, Christians or not. Hindus, many of the Buddhist lineages, Muslims etc. A lot of people w/ god or gods based religions believe something like that. The Native Americans too. This seems to be a quite popular thing.
Personally, over 70 years of living has shown me that there is no evidence of this being true. But people still believe it, evidence or not.
God does listen to prayers but only the prayers of the righteous you may have 10,000 people praying but only a few are truly righteous therefore only a few are heard.
Well, there it is, right from the horse’s mouth: if only the Jews had been righteous Christians, the Holocaust might not have happened.
If a child was to have open heart surgery on Friday, was sent home to be with her family before the very serious operation, Grandmother had a prayer service on Sunday afternoon and on Monday a second scan was done before the surgery was to happen but showed no neeed for the surgery any longer, would you then believe prayer made a difference? It was my niece and she is still living today. Yes, I am a firm believer in prayer.
Well here's a testimony. I am managing my wife's medications as she is still tapering down from pain killers after a major surgery, and I somehow misplaced her blood pressure medication. I could not find it, so I called the drug store to verify some details of the prescription (30 vs 90 days, etc) so I could request a new self-pay subscription from the doctor. They told me they had a 2nd active prescription for the same medication that went through as $0 copay and I could pick it up within the hour.
Now IF I had been a theist and a believer in prayer, I might have asked god for some kind of fix for my problem and when this odd / unexpected result happened, would have exulted that it was answered prayer.
Yet, here I am, 30 years an atheist, and worse, an apostate former evangelical, who asked for nothing and still got a "miracle".
So you see, your niece's botched diagnostics test getting corrected by a second look is proof of nothing other than that tests are sometimes wrong and it's wise to try to replicate a test result that is driving a major medical decision. What you are engaging in is confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.
None of this proves or disproves god's existence or anything else, however, you need to learn not to reach for desired outcomes like this, and call them proof or evidence when they are nothing of the sort.
If a child was to have open heart surgery on Friday, was sent home to be with her family before the very serious operation, Grandmother had a prayer service on Sunday afternoon and on Monday a second scan was done before the surgery was to happen but showed no neeed for the surgery any longer, would you then believe prayer made a difference? It was my niece and she is still living today. Yes, I am a firm believer in prayer.
I don't know about you, but I have heard TOO many stories about people being misdiagnosed and/or mistakes made by medical professionals that could easily be construed as "miracles" or the power of prayer if one were inclined that way, but there is enough reason to focus more on the misdiagnoses or mistakes rather than think God is somehow in the mix. Far as I can tell anyway. No one ever goes on about the prayers not answered either. The entire family might pray for a little one to pull through, but the little one doesn't. No one ever uses those stories to suggest prayer doesn't work. Not many believers anyway.
This is an obvious truth, but somehow believers don't seem to understand how confirmation bias works and to what extent they suffer from that problem. Are victim of that dynamic. That's always been a real head-scratcher for me...
Moral of the story? Be sure to get that second opinion before having surgery!!!
There are double blind studies you could look into.
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