Who believes in the POWER OF PRAYER?????
by whereami 56 Replies latest jw friends
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Robdar
I do.
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outofthebox
I don't.
I am sure some of the millions of slaves kids in the world, pray, but there is no answer. So...
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White Dove
Not the prayer of the Bible or Christians. It never worked for me. What worked? I DID! I made my own wishes and dreams come true from the power that was in me all along. The power is in YOU.
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behemot
I don't. Good and bad things just happen to us no matter whether we pray or not. The belief that prayers are answered is just a delusion. From a statistical standpoint, given a large enough sample of prayers, even the improbable is bound to happen occasionally. And, given the existence of confirmation Bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) in our perception, we will notice these coincidences, yet fail to notice and count up the vastly larger number of unanswered prayers.
Behe
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cantleave
I always found that prayer helped to clarify the problem. Seeing as we were told that we had to work in harmony with our prayers I never waited for God to act anyway. I identified the problem and then identified what I could do to help myself leaving anything I couldn't control in God's hands. Funnily enough usually I had done enough for myself so God never felt the need to interfere.
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Mary
I don't anymore. My b-i-l probably had thousands of prayers said for him, pleading----begging for God to save his life. Since he died a terrible death, I can only conclude that God either doesn't listen to prayers, or if he does, he simply doesn't give a shit about us.
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moshe
Six million Jews died in the holocuast- that pretty much showed the Jews the value of prayer. They went to work and created the state of Israel- prayer is not part of their national defense strategy.
100 terminally sick people go into a hospital for surgery- they and their families all pray for healing- 50 die and 50 survive. The 50 who die extoll the healing power of prayer to all who will listen. The 50 who died can hardly complain to anyone that prayer doesn't work. Consequently the feedback loop is biased in favor of the success of prayer. Their is a certain shame factor in society that inhibits anyone who has unsuccessful prayer requests from publicly declaring the failure of his prayer request.
During the Korean war a con man cretaed a scam whereby he guaranteed that for a payment of $1000 he could obtain a deferment from the draft. Many people sent him $1000- he did nothing- the ones who got drafted and complained were given refunds as part of his money-back guarantee. The ones who didn't get drafted, well, ther would not have gotten drafted anyway, but Mr Con Man knew that the law of averages worked in his favor, ie, he would always be able to keep a percentage of the money by just doing nothing. I think prayer works in much the same fashion.
Why does prayer fail to work? I believe it is due to Hesienberg's Uncertainty Principle. It is just not possible for God to be a personal god and that is the essence of total free-will. We are all piloting our own ship and getting to any destination is due to our work, not God's.
There may be some as yet unidentified energy from prayer that has some palliative effect on humans- the book is still open on that aspect.
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behemot
"Look at all these votive gifts," Diagoras the atheist was told in the sanctuary of Samothrace, which houses the great gods who were famous for saving people from the dangers at sea. "There would be many more votives," the atheist unflinchingly retorted, "if all those who were actually drowned at sea had had the chance to set up monuments." - quoted in Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1996, page 141 (source: Diogenes Laertius, Life of the Philosophers, VI, 59)
If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. - Steve Allen, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996
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snowbird
I do; prayer has empowered me to overcome some horrible adversities.
Sylvia