Prayer is a waste.

[Tymygy]

The irrational and nonsensical thought of a futuristic greater purpose dilutes us from taking action for what truly matters. An atheist like me, will take action rather then say a prayer and hope for the best. (see my signature)

Maybe for some people it is a last resort, when there is absolutely nothing they can do, they pray. but for those who pray, and who have opportunity to do something yet don't I find troubling. They place everything on a God, who (occording to my experience) has never done anything. I've prayed so much in my life, and maybe 10% got answered..? And of that 10% I can relate to naturual phenomena.

So what are peoples views of prayer here? Any remarks on my OP?

[Angel]

The irrational and nonsensical thought of a futuristic greater purpose dilutes us from taking action for what truly matters. An atheist like me, will take action rather then say a prayer and hope for the best. (see my signature)

Maybe for some people it is a last resort, when there is absolutely nothing they can do, they pray. but for those who pray, and who have opportunity to do something yet don't I find troubling. They place everything on a God, who (occording to my experience) has never done anything. I've prayed so much in my life, and maybe 10% got answered..? And of that 10% I can relate to naturual phenomena.

So what are peoples views of prayer here? Any remarks on my OP?

One thing I'd say is that a natural phenomena occurring that resolved what you were praying about does not exclude God from the picture. When God answers a prayer, it does not necessarily going to always be something GRAND or spectacular or miraculous, it can simply be guiding a natural process along the way. If your purpose is to prove or evidence God through prayer, then of course it would be harder to get much if He answers a prayer in a natural way, and then there's that passage in the Bible about not testing God to begin with.

I'd also ask, what are you praying about? I'm not saying to not pray for things that you probably can handle yourself, but you can also try praying for things that you know you or nature would not be able to accomplish, like curing a sickness that a doctor said it's too late to do anything for, etc.

[McCulloch]

Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.

[font=Georgia]The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. [/font]

If you have been given the righteousness of God through Jesus, you can move mountains, heal the sick, control weather and walk on water. All of it, according to the New Testament, through effective prayer.

[JehovahsWitness]

So what are peoples views of prayer here? Any remarks on my OP?

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me." -- Shadowlands - movie on the life of CS Lewis

For me you might as well as why a husband talks to his wife, why lovers huddled in the dark whisper share heart secrets, why a parent talks to its child... I pray because it is a means to communicate and strengthen my personal relationship with God. My closeness to my Creator is not a "waste of time" because he is a God worth knowing and forging a relationship with. I turn to God in moments of Joy, I thank him for his many gifts, I laugh with him, rant and rave when I am frustrated, beg him for guidance and seek his help, strength, support and blessing.



I think some things are and will always be impossible for an atheist to truly grasp, the privilege and treasure of prayer is one of them; as a believer I cannot understand an existence without it. Some things cannot be fathomed if they cannot be experienced.

For more, please go to other posts related to...

PRAYER, GOD, and ....WORSHIP

[McCulloch]

For me you might as well as why a husband talks to his wife, why lovers huddled in the dark whisper share heart secrets, why a parent talks to its child... I pray because it is a means to communicate and strengthen my personal relationship with God. My closeness to my Creator is not a "waste of time" because he is a God worth knowing and forging a relationship with. I turn to God in moments of Joy, I thank him for his many gifts, I laugh with him, rant and rave when I am frustrated, beg him for guidance and seek his help, strength, support and blessing.

Do you have any verifiable indication that these heartfelt communications you have with this god are bi-directional. When you laugh with God, is God laughing? Or do you just imagine God laughing? When you beg for guidance, does he actually provide guidance, or do you merely imagine that guidance will come? When you ask for help, does he deliver? How do you know? Are the responses you get from God, in any measurable way different from the responses from God to the prayers of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Roman Catholics, Jews, Deists, Wiccans, Anglicans or Evangelicals? How can you describe what you have with God as a personal relationship? You do all the talking, acting, relating and listening. God does nothing except provide a book that has not been revised in over a thousand years. You get to imagine Him giving you guidance, strength, support, blessing, signs, gifts and wisdom.

I think some things are and will always be impossible for an atheist to truly grasp, the privilege and treasure of prayer is one of them; as a believer I cannot understand an existence without it. Some things cannot be fathomed if they cannot be experienced.

You neglect to acknowledge that many of the non-theists here, myself included, were once Christians. I prayed. I believed. I really thought that there was a real god on the other end, listening and responding. But eventually, I realized that the god is more silent and uncommunicative than even the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Although the character never speaks in the story, Scrooge understands him, usually rough assumptions from his previous experiences and rhetorical questions.

[stlekee]

I've heard it said that God answers all prayer, but often he says "NO". God is not Santa Claus, he's not going to give you everything you want.

Jesus taught us to pray the Lord's prayer, asking for God's will to be done and our needs of food to be met, along with healing relationships through forgiveness.

God enters your life through the spirit, not the material world. Its in your heart, not in your hand.

[flitzerbiest]

If you have been given the righteousness of God through Jesus, you can move mountains, heal the sick, control weather and walk on water. All of it, according to the New Testament, through effective prayer.

The observation that these grandiose promises were demonstrably false was one of the factors that moved me away from Christianity.

[Tymygy]

okay, let me put this statement that god answers prayers with "yes, no and maybe".

When I was a Christian I didn't pray for everything I wanted. I prayed when thankful and I prayed when sad. I prayed for hours and hours when my family members were sick. They ended up dying. What I discovered as my intelligence level increased was, the prayers God supposedly "answered" could have been labeled as natural phenomena. I've never witnessed a Miracle through prayer. Just coincidences.

A few experiments were done which you can see here. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html

and here.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12082681/

These give evidence that God's prayers aren't relevant to anyone. I've tried to show this to a religious person I know, and his response was "Of course God didn't answer their prayers was because he knew we were testing him". But My response was "God really wanted let these people die, simply because he knew we were testing him?" If God knew we were testing him, why not prove to us his power?

Heres and example : If I pray to a magical fruit and say he answers all prayer with 3 simple answers. Yes, No and Wait. Now, imagine I prayed to this fruit for 100 dollars. The next day I find a crisp 100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk. Was this proof that the magical fruit answered my prayer? Or was it just coinsidence? Now I pray to the fruit for a girlfriend, but no girl comes into my life. Maybe he was telling me to wait, maybe he was telling me no. It doesn't matter. If we get what we want, God answered our prayers, if we don't get what we want, it wasn't Gods plan.

Oh, and about Gods plan... If God already has it all planned out, why should we ask for anything? obviously if we ask for the wrong thing, and the answer is no, it wasn't part of his plan so it was a worthless question. So when we do get a yes to the prayer, was it just a lucky guess? Because God already had the foreknowledge of its happening?

Lastly I'd like to share a conversation I had with a man on youtube. First he begins by saying that he had a tumor, and he had a very small chance of living. But then he says, "everyone I knew prayed for me" and "without Gods help I wouldn't be alive" and I answered back. "I'm glad your cancer free, but what does surviving cancer have to do with God? What about the doctors with hundreds and thousands of hours of experience? No thanks to them? And how do you explain all the people with cancer, who had even more people then you praying for them, died? Does God pick and choose people out of a hat?"

[Tymygy]

lk

[JehovahsWitness]

You neglect to acknowledge that many of the non-theists here, myself included, were once Christians. I prayed. I believed.

To put it bluntly, the bible indicates that those that are in false religions are actually not worshipping God but demons (1 Cor 10:20). God ignores or blanks the prayers of the wicked so it is not surprising that many in this position do not have any genuine prayful experience and eventually lose heart (since they are effectively praying to thin air) and become atheists. In short, those without a good heart condition are off of God's "radar" their prayers are a useless waste of time. Some get the message in the end and a) seek the true God or b) don't. Isaiah 1:15

http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/article_17.htm