Apologist explains how to get prayer answered.

[unknown soldier]

If there's one issue that keeps apologists busy, it's the issue of unanswered prayer. Skeptics often point out that the hungry children who pray for food often die of starvation. If God exists, then why don't we see better results from prayer? Christian apologist Kyle Butt answers this question on pages 229-244 of A Christian's Guide to Refuting Modern Atheism. He explains that effective prayer must conform to the following:

1. Prayer must be "in the name of Jesus." That is, prayer must be in accord with Jesus' teachings and authority.
2. It is necessary for prayer to be in accord with God's will. God has a way of doing things that no prayer can change.
3. The person praying must believe she will receive what she requests. Otherwise, she won't receive what she requests!
4. The person praying must be a righteous person. So all you sinners, forget it!
5. Prayer won't work if the petitioner prays with selfish desires.
6. Persistence in prayer is important. One or two prayers might not be enough.

I'm eager to read what other members here have to say about these guidelines, but allow me to start out saying that if 1 is true, then anybody who is not a Christian won't benefit from prayer. I wonder if those non-Christians see that their prayers aren't doing any good.

Guideline 2 seems odd. It's like God saying: "I'll do anything you ask as long as I want to do it."

I'd say that 3 can result in a "snowball effect" which is to say that if a doubter's doubt can lead to a prayer not being answered, then the doubter might doubt even more!

Regarding 4, it seems to me that sinners need answered prayer more than the righteous.

Guideline 5 also seems odd because if you're petitioning God for something you want or need, then you are thinking of yourself, and what's wrong with that?

Finally, 6 doesn't explain why God can't just grant the petition with one prayer request, and neither does it tell us how many prayers it takes to succeed. Could it be that the person praying is praying for something that in time she'll get whether she prays or not?

[unknown soldier]

...what are the better alternatives available for a good God?

He should take away people's will to do evil.

And if he doesn't want to do that then the omnipotent one should take on more responsibility and intervene in ways that prevents evil. Jamming the gun of a potential mass murderer for example. He allegedly created an entire universe, so there should be no problem too big for him to overcome.

As you probably know Tanager would argue that it's best to allow those who want to murder to exercise their will to do so. Freedom, so we are told, is the greatest good! The reason we have murderers and rapists and robbers and Trump supporters in the world is to allow freedom. We'd be "robots" otherwise. God evidently cannot rid the world of human evil and allow us enough freedom to be beings with choices. Personally, I'd rather be "robotic" with limited choices and live in safety rather than be free to do evil while fearing the evil of other people. Besides, I think it's impossible for all of us to have free will because one person's free will might conflict with another person's free will.

[The Tanager]

Bible Gateway used to have an option to see a passage's related context. Unfortunately, I don't see it anymore. It's fair to say that the option was taken out because all you need to do is read the surrounding text to see what the context is. That's what I do.

They still have an "in context" feature, but this does only one verse before and after. That doesn't mean that they think that is the only needed context to understand a passage, it's just what they named that feature. Even if they thought that was all that mattered, we both have argued for more context needed than that, and I still would disagree with them. Why view those five verses as disconnected from the rest of the context I included?

But even in this third attempt there is still a difference between this Christian conception of God and the 9/11-type of Muslim conception of God because of the different wants ascribed to them.

I see. So Biblically inspired killing is based on a good motivation while Islamic killing is based on a bad motivation.

We were talking about whether they were different motivations. You were saying they were the same. If you still think they are the same, then respond to my critique. Whether either is good is another question, which we've been talking about in this thread already.

Tan, nobody is so stupid as to fail to realize that wiping out a whole nation involves killing the kids in those nations. You are deliberately skirting that fact.

You switching what is being talked about and applying what I said there to something else is not me skirting the issue.

Here you are just stating it is bad, not supporting why it is bad.

I don't know how to prove that butchering babies is bad. I don't normally need to explain unless I'm debating a Christian apologist.

That's a caricature of my view; let's have a rational discussion. There would be at least three steps to this conversation. One, my view is that the language of killing children may very well be hyperbole. Why do you think it isn't? Two, if you can show it isn't hyperbole, then we would need to discuss what alternatives would be available to God and make arguments for which one we thought is the better choice. Third, if those parts of the Hebrew scriptures were inaccurate, what would this show about the Christian conception of God and His existence, which is the main thing we were talking about in this thread.

What reason is there to think that visions would have been better than the Israelites seeing things with their own eyes?

You honestly can't figure that out?

I try not to guess the reasons other people have, allowing them to speak for themselves. So, do you want to answer the question?

So the Israelites would not have trusted God's visions. I'm not sure if I would have trusted them either.

And yet you still think God should choose to tell them in visions?

Any moral adult will use force to pull young children out of the street for the kids' own good. God evidently can't figure that out.

Then you violate his free will to murder. I thought that you think the will to murder is really good.

How is that violating his free will? I am exercising my free will to try to stop his exercise of free will. God, however, is in a different position. God wouldn't just be trying to stop it, but an omnipotent God would stop it. And, according to this logic, a good God would not stop there. God would stop every single bad choice. No longer do we have a being exercising their free will through their limited powers, but a being doing so with unlimited power, making every single choice.

Not all free will, of course. Only the will to murder.

So, a good God allows the other evils, but not murder?

You can't figure out what "help people" means?

I try not to guess the reasons other people have, allowing them to speak for themselves. So, do you want to answer the question?

You are confusing having limits to one's existence and having a free moral will.

Who said anything about "limits to one's existence"? Anyway, I just found a fatal flaw in your idea off free will.

You talked about the concept, in different words. You seemingly believe that having a free will means having no obstacle to your choices being completed. That's not what free will is.

You can't have the want somebody's good without freedom (i.e., the ability to want). Wanting human freedom annihilated is in definitional conflict with love for others.

If it was up to me, I would take away the capacity for people to hate other people or at least the ability to act on that hate.

Which logically takes with it the possibility of love. Why do you think that is a good trade off?

As far as I can tell, there are no good reasons for God, assuming he exists, to deny what I asked for. God never made any of it clear to me. All I got was nothing, and that includes no answer. The results are exactly what I would expect if God doesn't exist. So sensible person that I am, I concluded that there is no God.

I cannot speak to your particular situation, unless you were to give details, which I'm not asking for you to do. I respect your privacy. Even if you did share more details, all I could offer were my thoughts for you to consider; I wouldn't claim any certain knowledge there.

If I was God I would let people just fly to wherever they wanted to go in perfect safety and comfort. I would power this human flight myself so nobody needed to worry about fuel.

See, Tan; it's easy to come up with solutions to problems if you are a real omnipotent God.

How does that defeat my point? To remind you, that point was that God made humans to work in a specific way: with His help. When they don't accept His help, then humans (themselves and others) are damaged.

And why did I make that point? To contrast my worldview with what you think my worldview is. The God of the Bible is not like a young kid who tries to punish another kid who has rejected Him.

I would make people able to do whatever they want in perfect safety. A real God could do that. A God made up by religious conmen, on the other hand, would leave skeptics and believers arguing over why he can't seem to get anything right.

But that phrase, "whatever they want," becomes meaningless. They don't have wants in the usual sense of wanting A over B. A real God could do that; a good God, I don't think, would.

And to avoid begging the question we aren't arguing over why He can't seem to get anything right, we are arguing over why He can't seem from the skeptic's perspective to get anything right. That's a big difference.

[The Tanager]

Moral free will? When did that distinction come about? Is this an example of moving the goal posts? When someone gets impregnated without being asked first or given the opportunity to say no, that is clearly a violation of their free will, moral or otherwise. She becomes an unwitting incubator. It makes me wonder how Christians view surrogacy.

That is what the free will debate is always about. Libertarians don't argue things like that Johnny doesn't have free will because, as a human, he can't fly unaided by things external to him. One person getting pregnant and another person not, one person getting COVID and another not, aren't issues of free will in this debate.

He should take away people's will to do evil.

And if he doesn't want to do that then the omnipotent one should take on more responsibility and intervene in ways that prevents evil. Jamming the gun of a potential mass murderer for example. He allegedly created an entire universe, so there should be no problem too big for him to overcome.

Johnny wants to fly. Does he actually have the freedom to fly? No. In the same way, God intervening to prevent evil is identical to taking their free will away. And you've yet to show a good reason why taking away free will is the better option.

[Hawkins]

Finally, 6 doesn't explain why God can't just grant the petition with one prayer request, and neither does it tell us how many prayers it takes to succeed. Could it be that the person praying is praying for something that in time she'll get whether she prays or not?

Because humans are bound to a covenant which demands faith to be saved. It is thus all about faith. Prayer in a nutshell is an establishment to strengthen faith instead of destroying it. So if you pray 100 times and your prayers work 100 times then you no longer need faith which however is required for your own salvation. So the establishment is, as Jesus put, depends on how much faith you have while praying. It is a measurement of how close you are to God at the moment your prayer needs to be granted, plus some other criteria already mentioned in OP. When Jesus put that the faith of His disciples is like the smallest seed, how much faith today's people (including Christians) have? Reasonably it's much smaller than the smallest seed. Let me show you another trend, in 70s last century how many people in the US can have free access to pornography? It is something relatively rare. However in today's world? It is almost 100% guaranteed. You shall see the trend of how sinful humans are in comparsion to half a century ago. And you expect a guaranteed granted prayer? I must say, "you must be kidding me".

On the other hand, God still doesn't give up. He grants prayer requests regularly to use them as a testimony for Christians to build up their faith. Because it is rare and depends rather upon the will of God, it doesn't have a pattern for humans to speculate, it appears more or less to be random to humans. It follows God's agenda and purpose instead of how "well" you say your prayer. One way shall always work better is to say a prayer by group. It is so because in a group of Christians there will always be someone having more faith and more close to God then another, it is bears a better chance for someone being closer to God at a particular moment for his prayer to bare a better chance to be granted (even so it is rare though).

As for covid-19, first your prayers won't be up to that scale to stop such a plague. As Jesus put, your faith can move mountains if strong enough, but don't expect anything when your faith is much smaller than the smallest seed. Second, a prayer won't work against God's will. So if covid19's existence is by God's will, then you don't have a chance to stop it by a prayer.

[brunumb]

When someone gets impregnated without being asked first or given the opportunity to say no, that is clearly a violation of their free will, moral or otherwise.

One person getting pregnant and another person not, one person getting COVID and another not, aren't issues of free will in this debate.

Hold on! We were talking about one particular person getting impregnated without being asked or giving her consent. God violated her free will.

[brunumb]

[Replying to Hawkins in post #84]

Let's face it. With so many excuses and loopholes in the prayer book, the answering of any prayer is no better than coincidence. Prayers for impossible outcomes like regrowing lost limbs just don't succeed. For anything else, there is no way of determining if there has been divine intervention or not. I have found over many years of experimentation that I get the same result from praying to my pet rock that Christians claim to get from praying to their God.

[Clownboat]

Because humans are bound to a covenant which demands faith to be saved. It is thus all about faith.

Want to believe in Bigfoot? Faith is needed.
Want to believe in alien abductions? Faith is needed.
Want to believe in an invisible unicorn? Faith is needed.
Want to believe in Nesse? Faith is needed.
Want to believe in Allah or another god concept? Faith is needed.

It may be possible to arrive at a correct belief via faith, but faith is a requirement in order to believe in things that are false.
Being proud of having faith is like being proud of being ingnorant IMO. And here you seem to be embracing it.

[JehovahsWitness]

Being proud of having faith is like being proud of being ingnorant IMO.

Possible that is because of what you believe "faith" to be. Bibliclly faith is something to be sought after and valued.



JW

For further reading please go to other posts related to...

LOGIC , EVIDENCE and ... FAITH

[The Tanager]

Hold on! We were talking about one particular person getting impregnated without being asked or giving her consent. God violated her free will.

The texts dont say it was against Marys will. Matthew focuses on Josephs response to finding out Mary is pregnant.. Luke portrays a willing Mary. But, even if she didnt want this to happen to her, we have things happen to us all the time that isnt what we want to happen. That doesnt mean our free will is violated. We still have the freedom to morally respond in different ways to the things that come upon us unbidden.

[brunumb]

But, even if she didnt want this to happen to her, we have things happen to us all the time that isnt what we want to happen. That doesnt mean our free will is violated.

(My bold)

Of course it does! This was imposed on her by a conscious agentand she had no choice in the matter. Good grief, it's not the same as getting infected by a disease.