The Miracle of Prayer

[Deidre32]

Yes, that's what they say.  Almost every time.  Of course, if God has a plan, why bother praying?  He's got a plan, and that rather settles it.

But even though his plan looks unfair, it really is. Our minds could never comprehend the ''mind'' of God.
 :roll:

If God exists, and he operates like this? ...hell is looking better everyday.

[Mermaid]

Well, I think the devil factors into that to a degree, too. God's will, God's plan, or that pesky devil.

[Deidre32]

Just fyi--my message is to anyone who believes that if only we had enough faith, we could change our fate. We could 'change' God's mind. We could alter our circumstances. I'm not directing that at any one person, per se. (here) Unless you do think this nonsense, of course.  8-)

Even if God exists, that's not really how I learned prayer. Prayer shouldn't be about asking for favors, it should be about growing close to whoeever it is you are praying to. But alas, this is why religion is a problem. Everyone interprets it differently, but in the end, it's subjective at best. Faith is a matter of believing in something unseen on the part of the believer. And I don't have an issue with that, actually. I have a problem more with forcing one's views on others, or implying that if we all had faith, our lives would be better.

I don't like professing lies as truth, iow. Ok, /rant.   :oops:

[SGOS]

that's not really how I learned prayer. Prayer shouldn't be about asking for favors,

Some churches sponsor prayer vigils, and those that I've heard about were asking for favors, almost always to save someone from death or Hell.  

I few yeas ago, I knew a suffering woman in the last phase of lung cancer. She was struggling for breath, and told everyone she wanted to die.  It broke my heart, but I was able to say good bye to her.  Hospice was working with her to the end, and everyone accepted that she wouldn't last out the week.  A few days later she died, and a religious friend was delighted to let me know he had prayed to God to take her two days before she died.  He smiled like he had done something important, something no one else would do.  He wasn't even part of the family.  What was I supposed to say?  -  "It's a good thing you asked God to take her before she died.  Otherwise, it would have been too late and you wouldn't have done any good!"??

Oh well, we all do the best we can, I suppose.

[Deidre32]

that's not really how I learned prayer. Prayer shouldn't be about asking for favors,

Some churches sponsor prayer vigils, and those that I've heard about were asking for favors, almost always to save someone from death or Hell.  

I few yeas ago, I knew a suffering woman in the last phase of lung cancer. She was struggling for breath, and told everyone she wanted to die.  It broke my heart, but I was able to say good bye to her.  Hospice was working with her to the end, and everyone accepted that she wouldn't last out the week.  A few days later she died, and a religious friend was delighted to let me know he had prayed to God to take her two days before she died.  He smiled like he had done something important, something no one else would do.  He wasn't even part of the family.  What was I supposed to say?  -  "It's a good thing you asked God to take her before she died.  Otherwise, it would have been too late and you wouldn't have done any good!"??

Oh well, we all do the best we can, I suppose.

I know, it's hard to not say what we are thinking sometimes. lol When I was Christian, this all made sense, not logically, but you somehow make it make sense. Now that I'm not, I find it to be giving people a false sense of hope. I have lost loved ones, only to be told they are in a better place. It never comforted me. It only made me feel that people say whatever when they can't explain suffering. I try to remember, I used to say the same things. It's weird when you change your views.

[Moriarty]

that's not really how I learned prayer. Prayer shouldn't be about asking for favors,

Some churches sponsor prayer vigils, and those that I've heard about were asking for favors, almost always to save someone from death or Hell.  

I few yeas ago, I knew a suffering woman in the last phase of lung cancer. She was struggling for breath, and told everyone she wanted to die.  It broke my heart, but I was able to say good bye to her.  Hospice was working with her to the end, and everyone accepted that she wouldn't last out the week.  A few days later she died, and a religious friend was delighted to let me know he had prayed to God to take her two days before she died.  He smiled like he had done something important, something no one else would do.  He wasn't even part of the family.  What was I supposed to say?  -  "It's a good thing you asked God to take her before she died.  Otherwise, it would have been too late and you wouldn't have done any good!"??

Oh well, we all do the best we can, I suppose.

I know, it's hard to not say what we are thinking sometimes. lol When I was Christian, this all made sense, not logically, but you somehow make it make sense. Now that I'm not, I find it to be giving people a false sense of hope. I have lost loved ones, only to be told they are in a better place. It never comforted me. It only made me feel that people say whatever when they can't explain suffering. I try to remember, I used to say the same things. It's weird when you change your views.

Heh, I'm told all the time that I'm an Atheist BECAUSE I haven't lost anyone. As in, even at 44 my parents are both alive and doing well as well as all my other immediate family. They are quite sure that if and when I lose somebody very close, I will "find" god. I kindly ask them to shoot me if that were to happen as I have clearly lost my mind.

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Maybe the patient should stop giving it the Holy Joe routine.  While it's great that he has got the all-clear, he's going to look a right knob if the cancer returns....

Well, if he really is all-clear that will be welcome news to everyone. He will say it's a miracle, and I'll be happy for him.  If it turns out he still has cancer, I don't plan on lecturing him about the folly of miracles, however.

Indeed.  I don't think any reasonable person would.  However, I'd say he hasn't thought the implications through.  Maybe he's just high on his news, and that's as expected I guess....

[Sal1981]

This is exactly why I keep my religious beliefs to myself unless I am 100% sure the person I am speaking to is on the same page. If someone starts to talk about Jesus, I smile and listen and shut the hell up. If someone is being dumb and disrespectful, there is no reason to reply in kind unless they cross a boundary.
In this scenario, I would have congratulated him and told him how happy I am for him that he is cancer-free. Period. End of sentence. If pushed by the woman, I would smile and avoid or tell her that I don't want to spoil this great news by arguing about it.

You basically described me, I sometimes lose "character" and say my mind (like yesterday at a 40-year wedding anniversary when a speaker started talking shit that got under my skin), but for the most time I just remain silent and avoid the issue altogether. People who know me, know that I'm atheist and they don't give me beef about it.

[SGOS]

They are quite sure that if and when I lose somebody very close, I will "find" god.

It's another way of convincing themselves that atheists are missing important parts of the mysterious puzzle that lead to a god.  Unfortunately, they don't realize that the parts seldom have any logical significance.  The parts are real enough.  The emptiness and despair of grief do exist.

God is a distraction they use to lessen the pain.  Without a god, they must deal with the loss directly.  But with or without a god, the pain is real.  Whether you deal with it directly or distract yourself from it, grief is what it is, and takes time to dissipate into a memory.  In the end, the skeptic is left to deal with the question of god's existence based on the relevance of the evidence.  Pain and suffering of grief, are not relevant evidence.

The theist sees pain and suffering as a relevant part of the puzzle.  The skeptic just sees it, but doesn't make the leap of faith.

[PghPanther]

Miracle claims of cancer recessions or mis-diagnosed conditions while rare occurs with enough frequency regardless of whether prayer is involved or not in the results that it is useless to assume an individual testimony of such is valid. Plus there is no such thing as being cancer free.............we are always in a state of fighting of cancer cells throughout the body. It is a matter of our immune system as to what can happen in instances of "miraculous cures"..............

If a faith based person is really serious about this then give us a medical healing of which really minimizes the possibility of mistakes or natural processes we've haven't figured out yet......

Take a person with a burst appendix (confirmed in an MRI and their symptoms) and see that healed from faith via prayer to God...........or lets see a limb grow back instantly from that same faith based processed on an amputee...........

We haven't found that evidence yet.....................but if we did that would justify looking more serious at such a process........

BTW why would a God allow some salamanders and lizards to have an ability to grow back a tail and yet not care for humans in the same way?.............Evolution explains that condition very well, creationism doesn't explain shit about that.............

This idea of "my so and so had cancer and we prayed and now it gone" stuff is just hopeful ignorance.......

......after all if God is the healer why did they need a doctor to tell them they had it?...........Why wouldn't God tell them they had it as well as healing it???

There are no miracles as claimed biblically that have ever been confirmed..............

Think about this, if there were then the intervention of such as personal God would render the scientific method as being useless since its consistency and predictability would be interfered with by a personal God intervening through prayer and whatever other sovereign ideas this God had......

Last I checked science discovers working models within reality which we can apply to the progress of humanity for over the past 500 years it has been practiced..................where faith of any kind never did a damn thing for that progress..........

These discussions by believers are only fueled by an ignorance in hope...........that doesn't cut it in reality.

[SGOS]

Miracle claims of cancer recessions or mis-diagnosed conditions while rare occurs with enough frequency regardless of whether prayer is involved or not in the results that it is useless to assume an individual testimony of such is valid. Plus there is no such thing as being cancer free.............we are always in a state of fighting of cancer cells throughout the body.

I won't respond to everything you said, other than I agree.  The particular information above is also true, and for some reason I want to comment, only because I think it's a technical issue worth understanding.

Cancer (the refusal of cells to die or to stop reproducing when commanded to do so by chemical messages in the system) goes on constantly.  Out of the trillions of cells in the body, it's only a small percentage that fail to respond to the chemical orders.  But with so many cells in a given organism, this anomaly occurs often enough that it can accurately be said that the condition is continually present.  In this case, a back up system (the immune system) steps in and takes over when the chemical messages are ignored.

What most people refer to as cancer is the condition where the immune system fails to keep up, and the condition normally controlled by other signals and biological safeguards gets out of hand and makes it to a diagnosis.  Large growths of useless tissue develop with overzealous cells ignoring the signals.  I suppose they are carrying flawed genetic mutations in the genetic material from the original "renegade" cell.  The immune system is overwhelmed to point of a life threatening situation, and the doctor now tells you that you have cancer.  What he means is that you have got cancer cells the immune system can't keep up with.

That doesn't mean that in some rare cases the immune system can't catch up and cause a remission in cancer, at least the cancer that makes it to the doctor's diagnosis.  It's possible for the immune system to eventually wipe out every last cell of the rampant tissue, but usually not likely.

[SGOS]

Humans don't normally think of their body as cells, working in a coordinated and sometimes an uncoordinated manner.  To normal humans the ordinary psychological response to learning the doctor has diagnosed cancer is, "OMG, my life is in danger," accompanied by massive and appropriate amounts of fear.  If the cancer goes away, either from remission or a surgical procedure, the response is, "Thank God, I am now well."  From a survival standpoint, that works fairly well, although it's far from perfect, but evolution does NOT create perfection, it only increases the likelihood of short term survival.

Now throw in superstition and the nitty gritty of what's going on becomes a miraculous wonder:  "I thought I was going to die, but now I'm healed."  It's nice and all, but it hardly reflects the hard and indifferent reality that surrounds us.

[Sal1981]

I'm sorry, but you sound awfully defensive in your OP, you need to give her a taste of her own medicine - if she's as thoughtful and provocative as you allude to - I think you should make her stop and think, like what has been suggested already.

[SGOS]

I'm sorry, but you sound awfully defensive in your OP, you need to give her a taste of her own medicine - if she's as thoughtful and provocative as you allude to - I think you should make her stop and think, like what has been suggested already.

I really don't care to give her a taste of her own medicine, although that's already happened.  It happened right in the exchange when I chuckled at her nonsense.  I didn't do it intentionally, but the chuckle closely mirrors what she frequently does, the differences being (1) that I just chuckled without including words like, "You're just being silly."  And (2) She got pissed.

I think what you see as "defensive" is me not responding to her preachy superiority about how she thinks I'm supposed to respond to her.  But I don't want to escalate this exchange.  Believe me, I have a proven history of escalating situations like this, and it doesn't end up looking pretty.  I can always do that sometime down the road if I choose to go that route, but I will only do it if I decide there is nothing worth salvaging in the friendship.  What I will miss is my friendship with her husband, however.  He is a really nice guy.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I have a tough time keeping my yap shut in these cases and people I consider friends know it, even the sky pilots out there among them. Still, there are times I just nod and say halilooyee brothers and sisters and more or less avoid the holy gibberish altogether. Now if someone cares to try to nail me to their silly ideas and make me out to be the bad guy I'll turn on them in a hot minute and demand some sort of proof their notions hold water, but that's seldom.