God Does answer prayers...Read this
Offline For the past months I've been out of work because my dad, who I'm in business with is very ill, and with lot of bills piling up. The biggest thing was the loan on my car. I've been getting pretty close to having it repossessed. So my wife and I tried for weeks to sell the car, and in the area that I live in, there isn't much interest even though it's a pretty nice car. To add insult to injury, our son broke his arm jumping off of furniture and racked up a 10,000 bill at the hospital for that. anyway, yesterday, Just when the car was maybe a day or so away from getting repo'd, someone smashed into us at a stop sign, noone was hurt but the car is totaled. So I won't have to worry about it anymore and it's going to be paid for. The irony is, being the bad christian that I am, i rarley ever pray, but the night before the accident I did pray for God to help us sell the car to relieve some of the debt. God didn't help us sell the car, which is fine because we are going to get more money this way. But he does answer prayers, and thats the truth. He seems to help the way he see fit, and on his time, but mostly, he'll find a way to help. just thought I'd pass that along for some inspiration.
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." -CS Lewis
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So just because Jesus was Jewish you assume he's good with finances? What a reinforcement of sterotypes!
This is exactly the kind of sterotypical view that is unbefitting of a Christian.
Are you joking?
nope, not at all
Jesus was a Jew?
just kidding
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." -CS Lewis
I had a runny nose, so I prayed to god that it feel better. The next morning, a meteorite hit me in the face. Therefore god exists.
You have to be f-ing kidding me. I've heard of arguments from personal experience but this is insane. Good thing God is perfect, otherwise you all could have gotten seriously injured. I guess God wasn't on the side of the other driver whose insurance premiums are going to go up now.
Well, then, since you're serious, let's bring out the tired, but true, fact that correlation does not imply causation.
I'm sure glad that God decided to help out that other guy by forcing him to smash into your car.
I wonder if he prayed for that the night before....
*edit*
Dammit! Shelley already made the joke... I was so happy to have first dibs too...
Here's another personal story:
Back when I used to play in a praise band in my not-so-skeptical days, I was playing an outdoor concert. But just as we were setting up, the sky grew dark and cloudy, threatening us with the possibility of rain. Sure enough, it began to sprinkle ever so slightly. But we continued to set up anyway. The sprinkles were thin enough that we weren't worried about damaging any of the equipment just yet. Strangely, just as we started to play, the sprinkling let up and the sun even peaked a little!
"Isn't it nice that God is holding off this rain for our praise and worship here today?" asked the Youth Leader.
Then it started to rain.
Thanks, God!
I could make up all kinds of stories like that if I wanted. The sad part is it's true.
The only way you can see a miracle is if you believe in them ahead of time.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
Isn't it nice to have a life easy enough that you can actually believe you have a god who is your personal assistant?
I fucking loathe people who think any god who exists gives a shit about them. It's so sickeningly selfish. Try telling your little story to someone whose child has died of leukemia, or who can't even afford food, or who lives in an area where she has to fear rape, murder, or injury on a daily basis. Surely your bastardly car was more pressing than their desperate pleas to God!
Do you even hear yourself? Has common sense left you altogether? Are you aware of the world you are living in?
Would a true believer even buy insurance of any kind?
Wouldn't that be trying to protect yourself against God's will?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
That's it, I get it now! God does not help the starving
because he is to busy helping you and your economic problems. That explains everything!
Also, Lux, if your prayer resulted in a neutral or worse scenario, what would that suggest to you?
God works in mysterious ways.
At any rate, you are making an unverifiable claim.
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
So your "god" answer your prayer,but ignores the prayers of starving children in Africa?
People have the tendancy to forget about them.
I am reminded of that bit in God Delusion, how gushing actors on collecting awards thank God and Jesus, like they play fucking favourites so they can pick up a tacky piece of metal and make an ass of themselves on TV. For every winner God is meant to make he will make at lease one loser. Isn't that nice of him?
"Suck it, Jesus!"
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
I wonder who married this guy, I hope they don't breed.
It'll be a little dim bulb factory.
Lux,
I'm starting to notice a pattern with you. You post some moronic, smug little statement, then ignore all the completely valid arguments against your fallacious claims, usually only replying with some flippant little comment. I can't even begin to convey how irritating that is. I really hope, with this thread, you won't do it again. If you're going to post in Atheist vs. Theist, people are usually going to expect you to engage in some level of actual debate! Why even post if you don't feel your arguments can hold up against scrutiny?
DrTerwilliker
{mod edit=double post}
Edit: Sorry, everyone, for the double post! I don't know how that happened!
He'll solve your petty, first-world problem, but he could give two shits and a fuck about thousands of stranded peasants in flood-ravaged Mexico who have probably prayed more fervently than you have in your entire life.
Your adorable little anecdote proves one thing about Yahweh, if anything at all: he's a shallow, vacuous cunt.
When I read the forums I love reading a new thread by Lux because it means that I get to read the same old tired bullshit, and that makes my life easier because I can just repeat the same rebuttals instead of having to research something new. Usually, though, when I read the same old tired bullshit, I just crack jokes, because why on earth would I want to get out my A-Game debate material for a whacko like this?
Götter sind für Arten, die sich selbst verraten -- in den Glauben flüchten um sich hinzurichten. Menschen brauchen Götter um sich zu verletzen, um sich zu vernichten -- das sind wir.
Gather round for I have an amazing story to tell.
The time was late at night and I was escorting two teenage girls to one of the girls homes in the big bad city (The other girl had phoned and said that there was someone lurking around her house and she was home alone).
About 50 metres (about 150 feet for you weirdo americans
from our destination I suddenly told them to start running home. They of course asked why and I proclaimed that it was going to pour down with rain. One of the girls knew me pretty well so proceeded to run with her friend home. Just as they got to the door of her house, it started pouring down with rain.
A miracle from god? A freak guess? Nay friends! Having been raised in the remote areas of Australia you learn the sound of heavy rain coming from hundreds of metres away. Nothing mystical or magical. Just plain good old science. City people usually can't recognize the sound.
Atheists can do miracles too!
: Freedom - The opportunity to have responsibility.
: Liberty is about protecting the right of others to disagree with you.
Obviously God was working through you and granted you the ability to hear the sound of far-off rain. What does it sound like, if I may ask? It seems like city noise would make it hard to hear.
Götter sind für Arten, die sich selbst verraten -- in den Glauben flüchten um sich hinzurichten. Menschen brauchen Götter um sich zu verletzen, um sich zu vernichten -- das sind wir.
i will prey to my gallon of milk tonight that it will forgive you for being stupid enugh to prey to another god and think it helped!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jk6ILZAaAMI
"If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!"
Clark Adams
CONFIRMATION BIAS!!!!!!!!!!!
Please read all you can on this subject. It is the technical term for what everybody in this thread is alluding to.
I watched a VERY close family member die a slow & painful death from cancer. She was a most devout xian & had a whole church and more praying for her constantly. NOTHING! Painful death.
Other people I know had cancer, prayed, and it went away.
Guess what? Some people's bodies, for whatever reason--usually complex ones--are able to fight disease off better than others. There are volumes of data & research on this subject.
Again: **CONFIRMATION BIAS**
Read up on it. Education is a wonderful thing!
EDUCATION! EDUCATION! EDUCATION!
{mod edit=duplicate post}
I owe you a big thanks Lux. The night before the accident I was playing poker against this guy and we were involved in a big hand. He was praying to catch the card he needed but didn't catch it. Obviously it is because God was too busy attending to your needs to watch the game because otherwise I'm sure he would have punished a heathen like me. Next time your in the area I'll buy lunch for you with my winnings. Thanks a bunch and keep God real busy with all your prayers.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
see! it was a win win situation.
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." -CS Lewis
Didn't you read the post? I do have a Kid, his name is Forrest. Ha ha.
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." -CS Lewis
So lux let me get this straight you can't afford the car, so you prayed that it would be taken care of, so that you didn't have to pay it back. You got into an accident you kid broke his arm, your 10,000 in debt due to medical costs, but you no longer have to pay the car.....but now you have 10,000 dollars medical bill......and this is your evidence that prayers work? Yeah i call bullshit on this one. Because it A) doesn't solve your problems, takes away that car bill, replaces with another one. 2) Someone got injured (loving god eh?), 3) someone else insurance rate is going to go high and their car may or may not be totalled who actually might need their car (again loving god eh?) so, yeah i call bullshit on this entire story, no god just stupid driving and beside, why didn't god just have someone steal the car, then you could have claimed the insurance, no need to have anyone injured, no one elses insurance goes up, and your off the hook. Or maybe have someon buy it off of you. yeah see those are the problems with this WHOLE god answers prayers, he doesn't.
I bet your the type of moron that prays for a parking spot near the front of the mall and when you find someone leaving, hey god answered.
Aww well chances are you won't bother with the details in responding back, all your posts are nothing less the uneducated moronic statements and insults.
OK, firstly, you call me a moron and you're guilty of not reading my op. My Kid didn't break his arm as a result of the accident, that happened PRIOR to the accident. 2ndly, The car was totaled, therefore the at fault persons insurance will have to pay the value of the car. We didn't owe the entire loan amount on the carbecause we've been making payments on it for over a year 1/2
The other drivers TRUCK had harldy a dent and a smashed out headlight. My car, wihich is made of fiberglass is smashed all to hell, while his TRUCK is made from metal which sustained minimal damage. The other driver isn't hurt. After the accident he admitted we was busy looking at an ambulance in his rear-view mirror and didn't see up stipped in front of him, he was also traveling at (as esimated by the police) at about 50+ mph in a 35 mph zone.
So you should really read the entire post before you start the name calling. I added some details in this post just for you so that you can wrap your little mind around the situation.
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." -CS Lewis
Yeah. It's funny. The god you believe in gives a shit about you on some personal and petty level, but doesn't care about:
My Step Mother
My Father
My Mother
My Grand Mother
My Grand Father
My Aunt Cindy
My Cousin Sean
My Cousin Matt
Poor People
Diseased People
People born into terrible environments
Etc.
Glad to hear. More reason to not give a shit.
No i am still going to call you a moron, his insurance is going up still, as such it makes no sense to total a car, have someone else pay for it instead of having it stolen, or traded for a cheaper car, and getting rid of your loan, oh there are so many options, but praying and having your car totalled by someone else, that's means god answered your prayer....yup your a moron.
Wow, way to only reply to the guy on this board who was mistaken about the facts on your post. Everyone else's completely valid arguments, you ignore.
Please Lux, tell us, why does God listen to your trivial little prayers about your bloody CAR and completely ignore the desperate, fervant prayers of so many other people in far more dire situations than you? Why does your car take precedent over terminally ill children, and people who are starving? A lot of those people are praying to the same God you pray to, but a great deal of them don't get answers. Does God just like you better?
That's right, no miracle prayers, no healing the sick and the children, but lets total some dumb asses car so he doesn't have to make payements on it, yeah again, if this is your god, are you sure your praying to the right god? This christian god of love? because it sounds like BULLSHIT, hence my original statement about you. Also this is the same god the ignores all the prayers of people in Katrina that died (many of them christians) the same god that drowned a practically a whole family at church in the Tsunami of 2004 (A good friend of mine, almost all her family died there, aunts, uncles, cousins, except the grandmother who decided not to go to church that day). Yes this is the god of mercy, love etc etc etc, all the same bullshit all christians try to put down everyone's throat. Lets ignore 99.999 percent of all the evidence against god, but lets believe the .0001 that could/might/most likely isn't but lets just say is a sign of god....yeah, that's right lux, you believe it, fine, your still a moron.
Good question. My answer is, I don't know. Why God seems to help some but ignore others. Why are there Starving children in the world? NO I don't believe God favors me and not others especially when it comes to something very insiginifgent like my car Compared to others who have much worse things to pray for. We see people suffering and yet we don't walk in thier shoes. How do we know that God isn't with them? The things we see that people go through are seen by us from the outside. If you believe in God, then you also believe that This life isn't the end of our existance. As a Christian I look to the suffering of Christ and his ressurection as proof of God's Mercy. Jesus was sent to suffer to show us that here on earth, there will be suffering. After all what would we learn if our lives here were perfect? We could not appreciate the good things in life if nothing bad ever happened. So the rain still falls on the wicked and the rightous just the same. Does God answer prayers, I like to think that he intervenes only on his time. But I don't think prayers fall on deaf ears. So why would God help me with my little problem and seem to turn his back on others? The point is, no matter what, many of us put our faith in God, good times and bad
"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." -CS Lewis
Lux,
Then surely you can't expect us to see your story as anything but ridiculous. You prayed for something and got some version of it; things went well for you, and you credit God for it. But if nothing that seemed to answer your prayer occurred, you wouldn't have used it as evidence that God DOESN'T answer prayers. So how can we take such a story seriously?
The world is a shithole. People are suffering constantly, dying horrible deaths too soon, just because God was busy with your car? How can a reasonable person really believe that God intervenes because you have a problem with your car, but offers only emotional solace to those who are genuinely suffering?
Considering the world we live in, the chances of there being a god who cares about people and answers prayers are virtually nonexistent. If such a god exists, he favors a very small percentage of people living, granting them good fortune only at the expense of others, many of whom are devout believers in HIM. You can deny this all you like, but if you have any notion of how much undeserved pain people suffer every day, you'll know your only kidding yourself. To acknowledge this isn't cynical, but realistic.
You are selfish and arrogant to believe in such a god. You may be a nice person in your every day life, but to hold a belief that God cares about your life at all is terribly conceited. The fact that you aren't aware of that frightens me.
Once you start speculating without any information, you're stuck creating ad hoc explanations of things. If god's will can't be expected to follow certain patterns, how is it differentiable as a will at all?
But the Christian tradition does hold that God is rational and orderly. Throughout the Bible, this is seen. Psalms 8, 19, 104, 148 all praise God for the orderliness of his creation.
Sure, most Christians admit the possibility of miracles, but the very idea of a miracle suggests an unusual event, and it is only in an orderly world that such an event can be recognized.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
God can't disturb rational order and still be considered rational and orderly, and yet that's the only way he can show himself?
What a pickle...
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
Prayers of petition are always answered, it's just not always the answer we want. When we request anything of anyone, "no" is just as valid an answer to that request as "yes" is. The same principle applies to requests we make of God.
The old "problem of evil" has been kicked around from the very beginnings of man's attempts to reason the universe. The book of Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible. The portion applicable to this discussion, I think, is chapter 38, where God basically tells Job that if he thinks it's so easy to deal with chaos and evil in the universe he should give it a try.
For example, a massive drought is ongoing in the state of Georgia right now. One of the best things that could happen to break this drought and bring relieef to the people living there would be for a big old hurricane to sweep into the Gulf of Mexico and on into central Georgia bring with it lots of rain. This much needed event is going to cause some folks in Florida, or along the Georgia and Alabama coast a whole lot of suffering though.
I've seen children hungry. I have friends who have been horribly maimed. I've sat with dying loved ones in their last moments. I can't answer the why. I've tried to answer that for my theist self, and my explanations fall flat to my believing ears. I can imagine how hollow any explanations must sound to those who don't believe.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Then do you disagree with Lux that his prayer was answered?
Which makes this supposed will indiscernible as will. If nothing can't be rationalized through ad hoc assertions to be part of god's will, then indeed nothing can be counted as confirmation of it either.
The orderliness of the universe itself argues for the existence af a Creator, and I think I would tend towards belief in the existence of a God even in the absence of the unexplained occurences commonly known among Christians as "miracles".
First God catches heat for not interfering enough to alleviate the suffering of humanity and thereby not being a loving God. Now he catches it for interfering too much and being an irrational God. LOL
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
No, I don't disagree with Lux. His prayer was answered, though I would expect that Lux was looking for something more alonng the lines of an unexpected cash windfall than a car wreck.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
I think I may have responded to your point here, magilum, in my reponse to Archeopteryx. It's late at night though, and my brain has the horsepower of a small lawnmower engine even at it's peak, and the double negative is kinda shorting me out. If I didn't address your point, please restate it and I'll try again. Thanks.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
So god said "yes" to giving a middle-class American a parking place when they were running late for work, but "no" to starving children in third world countires?
Oh, so god is not powerful enough to stop it? Seems strange for an all-powerful being.
Or he could have just not allowed the drought to begin with. Or he could make it rain without using a hurricane. He's all powerful, right? I mean, if it's all due to his "working" anyway, what difference does it make if he follows an order? He can just do it.
It's always possible that there is no "why".
Actually, before I learn the "why", I'd still very much like to know "what" God is. No theist has been successful in defining God in a way that isn't self-contradicting, unorthodox, or meaningless.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
First off, it's not my contention that the universe is especially orderly. It's actually kind of a mess in a lot of ways, really. The only way that it is orderly is that it tends to always behave in predictable ways. At least until you get to subatomic particles, anyway.
But what order DOES exist can be explained naturally without throwing God into the mix, so the "order" (or appearance of order) does not prove god in any way. And even if it did (which it doesn't), which God? (it's a fair question)
Miracles don't exist. "Miracle" is a word given to an unlikely event that a theist considers beneficial. That's all.
You're misunderstanding the point.
In the former situation, God's not "catching heat" for not interfereing enough. The argument is that he doesn't interfere because miracles aren't real. Miracles equate to counting the hits and ignoring the misses.
In the latter situation, I was pointing out a contradiction that the "orderliness" (or consistent behavior) of the universe can't prove god if god disrupts that order. The moment he did so, the universe would cease to be orderly and so it would cease to prove him. He would have officially unproven himself. It's a paradoxical action.
But if god could proven himself not through the order (consistent behavior of the universe) but rather through the disruption thereof, I will simply kick back and wait for him to do something supernatural.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.