Image by Zömßiè Inc. Wholesale zombies for over 20 years via FlickrYouTube - 2.1 Deconversion: Prayer
The video is interesting. To be honest I know a lot of Christians who think or have thought about prayer the same way and the only way out was a better understanding of scripture. To be honest, I can relate a lot to the question. It boils down to: If God is omniscient and knows what we want before we even ask, then why do we need to pray? Well scripture deals with this very question head on. I begin to wonder if apostates like this guy ever really read the scriptures and asked that question. Scripture knocks out the conclusion that we don't need to pray when we need something. Jesus said:
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. - Matthew 7:7-11
As a Christian who says he/she believes in the Bible, you can't just ignore this passage. There are too many scripture passages telling us to pray. So I know this bring up questions especially in light of what Jesus says:
21Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. 22If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." - Matthew 21:21-22
So how does this work. Anyone who has ever prayed consistently knows that you don't get everything you pray for. Is Jesus contradicting Himself? No Way! You have to look at the context of all the scriptures and in 1 John we get the point plainly made:
13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. 1 John 5:13-15
The skeptic will look at this answer as convenient because it seems so pat but one needs to remember the video's author's comment that he reached the place that prayer stopped being about trying to get something from God and more about deepening his relationship with God. I agree. But one of the reasons we pray and ask God for what we need is so that we can learn how to depend on God and trust God. Look at the analogy I quoted that Jesus used in equating with a believer asking God for something he needs with a child asking his father for what he needs. A child does not necessarily have to tell their parent to feed them every time they need to eat, but in asking and then the need being fulfilled there is a deepening in the relationship - a trust is built. So it is with us and God. Just like a child may ask for something they want that is not good for them (say a motorcycle without lessons) and the parent says "No" so does God say "NO" to us.
I must also point out that the video's author makes a fundamentally flawed mistake equating intercessory prayer with praying for frivolous things that to be honest it is good God says No. Intercessory prayer is not about you it is about praying for the needs of others. Praying for your raise or for a want is not the same as praying for the healing of a sick person. I do agree that God has every right to answer any prayer as he sees fit. However he promises to do what is best for everyone he has called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28)
One final point is that citing one study showing that intercessory prayer does did not have a measurable effect is disingenuous. The video author did not explain who was being prayed too or if those being prayed for were believers or not. There are other studies that show that prayer does work. Go ahead and research it. You can find experiments validating prayer just like you can find experiments disproving prayers. I really didn't like the example of prayer at the end of the video - makes no sense. Praying for a thousand dollars and having it answered by a raise or a tax return is not what I think of as a valid example validating prayer. The prayer is question should be so big...so at odds with anything nsturally occurring that no one but God could have done it for you. For example someone who gets shot in the head with three bullets, and being in a coma for 2 years and waking up and being ablt to be a functioning human being. All the while people praying for him. I? know of such a case. A couple of years ago, in another case, my cousin was shot multiple times on the freeway and the doctors gave him up but people kept praying for him but he is alive and doing better than any of his doctors ever thought. And there are other cases.
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So you're saying that prayers really are answered. That God intervenes and causes the things we're asking for to come true. Clearly He doesn't make *all* our prayers come true. Only some of them. How does He decide which prayers to answer and which ones not to? Or, more importantly, how do *we* know which things came true because of prayer? I think most of us who have prayed have noticed that when we pray for things, those things come true with roughly the same frequency that they would have without prayer. God seems to, on rare occasions, heal people of cancer (at roughly the same rate as spontaneous remissions without prayer). But He never seems to regrow limbs that have been lost. Or, on the other end, He helps people pass their school exams quite often, although people pass their exams without prayer quite often as well.
ReplyDeleteThere are occasional anecdotes about prayer doing fantastic things. But on the other hand there are truck loads of anecdotes of people praying for things and not getting them. Anecdotes aren't that useful. If you know of a well-controlled experiment showing that prayer works at a rate higher than would be expected from chance, at a statistically significant level, I would be overjoyed to read it.
Also, I think you missed the point about the milk jug example in the video. The point is that when you pray and it doesn't come true, you can always rationalize and come up with an excuse for why God didn't answer this one. Even if there were no God, some prayers would come true, some wouldn't, and you'd be able to tell yourself a story about how it wasn't in God's plan, or whatever. In other words, as far as prayer goes, it's hard to tell the difference between a world with no God and a world in which God answers some prayers, but only at about the same rate as you would expect by chance.
I'm saying that God intervenes in our lives and does things that He WANTS to do! I've had more prayers answered "NO" then "Yes". I answered your question for how God knows which prayers to answer yes and which to answer no. His will. I understood the point of milk jug example the problem is that you can't have a relationship with a milk jug but you can have a relationship with God.
ReplyDeleteSo it sounds to me like you are saying that, yes, the pattern of God's answering of prayer is indistinguishable, evidence-wise, from no God at all. But the difference is that you have a personal relationship with God, and this gives you faith that when your prayers are answered it really was God and not routine chance. And in addition the act of prayer deepens this relationship with God.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to knock your personal relationship with God, I'm just commenting on the prayer-is-answered evidence. Because if from an evidence standpoint, there's no difference between God answering prayers and no God answering prayers, surely you could excuse an outsider (who doesn't have a personal relationship with God) for simply concluding that God doesn't answer prayers.
I'm saying that prayers that result in "No" are just as valid answers to the act of prayers as "Yes" answers. And you can have a personal a relationship with God so you have no excuse for concluding that God doesn't answer prayer. You are settling and not taking full advantage of all that is available to you.
ReplyDeleteYou still don't seem to be grasping the point of the milk jug illustration, Marcus. The question is:
ReplyDelete"How do we know that God has answered prayer?"
So before you say anything about God and what he is doing, you need to return and focus on yourself and what you know.
Let's refer back to your story about someone getting shot in the head and being in a coma. Let's say people continue to pray for him.
If he gets better, we say that God is saying "Yes" to our prayers.
If he dies, we say that God is saying "No" to our prayers.
If he stays in the coma, we say that God is saying "Wait" to our prayers.
So literally, no matter WHAT happens, even if he just straight up DIES the day after we start praying for him, we can assume God still heard our prayers. Even if the *worst possible scenario* happens, we can assume God was in charge the whole time and that he just said "No". So there is no way to lose. Heads we win, tales we win. We always win.
And for that reason, you can literally pray to anything. Even a jug of milk. Because even if the *worst possible scenario* happens, we can just assume that the jug of milk said "No".
Now, your rebuttal to this is that the "Yes" answers you have seen in your life are just too improbable. Such as someone recovering from a coma that Doctors can't figure out. This is unpersuasive. The reason that any medical anecdote will be unpersuasive is because *we already know* that our medical technology isn't perfect. *We already know* that no matter what medical services we provide, ultimately the point of medical technology is to *help the body heal ITSELF*. Doctors and medicine are only half of the story. The body does heal itself.
And the secular explanation for this is evolution, not God. Animals that didn't have bodies that could heal themselves and do things like recover from comas died and have gone extinct. They are the animals that you would have said God was saying "No" to if we had prayed for them.
As for the study, it is fully explained in the NY Times article linked to in the sidebar of the prayer video. I'm confident the article can answer all your rhetorical questions.
@Evid3nc
ReplyDeleteI'm familiar with the Assemblies of God doctrine and I must tell you that u are missing out on much. As for your rebuttal on prayer you are still missing a very important point: When would evolution ever cause or allow a person to survive getting shot through the brain and survive a coma? How does natural selection allow for that? According to evolution we would need multiple ancestors billions of years ago to get shot in the head and a few of the through some sort of genetic survive and pass that advantage to my friend. Get this: an advantage that not everyone has! People just don't heal themselves from a gunshot wound in the head. Also not all medical treatments or procedures involve giving the body the tools it needs to heal itself. An open heart surgery to remove blockages are done because the body cannot clear them on its own.
If you have a relationship with God...in which you interact and speak to him and he speaks back - Prayer - then you would know how God answered your prayer and sometimes even why. This why I doubt that you were ever born-again because you can't seem to point to that experience of knowing God.
From one of the first listings in Google with "gunshot survival rate":
ReplyDeleteA consecutive series of 178 civilians with gunshot wounds of the brain was retrospectively analyzed. The overall mortality was 93%, with 88% of the victims having succumbed within 3 hours. Surgery was performed in 21 cases, all with a Glasgow Coma Score of 6 or more. Out of the 12 survivors, 9 exhibited minor neurological signs at the time of discharge. Good outcome occasionally resulted in patients with lesions crossing the midline, or affecting two lobes of a single hemisphere. Although spectacular recoveries in individual patients with apparently devastating injuries can be regarded as a sufficient basis for an aggressive approach, including vigorous resuscitation and early surgery, bleak possibilities still exist as to the management of civilian gunshot wounds, owing to the high mortality rate on the scene, or soon after the injury.
From this, I would guess God answers approximately 7% of prayers regarding gunshot wounds to the head, though He doesn't entirely heal all of them, depending on the type of wound. Knowing a little about human nature I would also hazard to guess that those 7% and their families are very sure it was God. But to the rest of us it looks like (very fortunate) luck.
An interesting way to check your logic is to ask, what would you think if someone of another faith prayed to *their* God and recovered? Would this convince you that Islam or Zoroastrianism, or Voodoo was true? or would you just assume that it was fortunate luck?
If you would believe it's just chance, then it almost sounds like you agree that the answering of prayers *in itself* doesn't constitute evidence of God's existence. It's the personal relationship that gives you that.
"When would evolution ever cause or allow a person to survive getting shot through the brain and survive a coma? How does natural selection allow for that? According to evolution we would need multiple ancestors billions of years ago to get shot in the head and a few of the through some sort of genetic survive and pass that advantage to my friend."
ReplyDeleteMarcus, your misunderstanding of evolution is astounding. Evolution gives our body general mechanisms for dealing with common physical challenges. These challenges don't all have to be the same for the general physical principles to work.
Let me give you an example. Our skin heals when it is sliced open. This probably evolved in an environment where rocks and claws from other animals caused damage. It was passed from a common ancestor capable of healing to every creature capable of wound healing, from mice to cows to humans.
So, again, this was probably naturally selected from something primitive like rock cuts or attacks from the teeth or claws of other animals. But it also works with *knives* (a fairly modern weapon). That is because a knife wound is physically very similar to a claw wound. All that matters is that the situation is physically similar. We don't have to naturally select specifically for knife wounds. Physiologically, both the wound and the healing process are the same.
Now, returning to the gunshot issue: we are talking about recovering from a coma. It doesn't matter *what* caused the coma. It could have been anything that caused head trauma. We don't have to naturally select for gun wounds *in particular* for an adaptation that recovers from head trauma to work.
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"If you have a relationship with God...in which you interact and speak to him and he speaks back - Prayer - then you would know how God answered your prayer and sometimes even why. This why I doubt that you were ever born-again because you can't seem to point to that experience of knowing God."
Marcus, of course I experienced this. It is hard for me to believe that anyone would maintain a heart-felt commitment to religion if they did not believe they had personally experienced God in this way. I was a Christian for 15 years and I felt that I had encountered God through prayer through almost all of it.
What you are seeing in the video are the *doubts* I had about prayer. This video is documenting the *end* of my belief in intercessory prayer, not the beginning.
I had times too numerous to count when I felt I *knew* God had answered my prayer and I felt God had shown me *why*. But just because a person *feels* that way, that doesn't mean it is *true*. I felt that way thousands of times before I finally came to the conclusion that intercessory wasn't the right way to interact with an omniscient God.
So, in short, your presumptions here about my Christian experience are simply wrong. I did believe God had answered prayers and I did believe I knew why. But just because I believed that, that doesn't mean my beliefs were accurate.