Minion - one could consider this era the new dark age :o.

If one were completely unaware of history, sure.

Society has always been fucked up. And it's not because God doesn't care. It's because we have the ability to make our own choices. Even if that means doing horrible things. If God steps in even once, He compromises that completely. Not only does that take away our free will, but it also proves the existence of God, thereby eliminating the concept of faith and basically scaring everyone into believing in God, which defeats the whole purpose of our existence.

The will to be destructive. That's you know who's catogory there and it amazes me how much more active he has been allowed to become.

Realistically speaking though I understand what you're saying.

Seriously, if you're feeling like society is just getting worse and worse, read some history. You will be very glad that you're living in today's society.

Praise Hell Hail Satan!

I would also think that praying for someone you don't even know, a semi-anonymous individual with no face, known history or mutual experiences to reflect upon, greatly detracts from the sincerity of the prayer. There is very little vested interest, and surely some Catholics may not be truly earnest in their well-wishes when the possibility exists that "Walter P." isn't a fellow Catholic, or worse, isn't a believer in God at all.

There are far more esoteric issues at hand as well but, like Minion, I will refrain from addressing them at large. It would open up a lot of unnecessary debate and I don't mean to force my own beliefs upon others.

This sounds like some premium-quality crazybrain talk and I would very much like for you to elaborate on your views at length.


sinner.

I know how much people hate it when I mention CS Lewis, but he wrote an essay entitled "On the Efficacy of Prayer" which addresses this issue very well, if anyone is interested.

I agree with Crash in that these people didn't even know the people they were praying for. The article doesn't make it sound like they even went in to meet these people they were supposed to pray for. I'm also wondering if they were like given a list of names and told "Hey, pray for this person, kkthx" or just told to pray for people that were getting the surgery done. The article is really vague.

Edit: Ok, so I didn't realize until just now that the article was linked. My bad. It does say in there that they were given a list with first names and last initial.

I don't really know how effective I think prayer is, but I'd really imagine that if it were to have any power you need to have some sort of connection with the person you're praying for.

It all depends on how you think prayer works. If prayer doesn't have anything to do with God, and instead heals a person through some sort of confluence of a bunch of people concentrating on healing that person (some sort of psychic transfer of energy, if you will), then it would help to know the person you're praying for. On the other hand, if healing is achieved through divine intervention, would it matter if you knew your prayer's recipient? God would view the prayer as a selfless act to help your fellow man, and it wouldn't matter to Him whether you knew the person.

Then again, why should mass prayer affect God's decisions? If God truly loves all His children equally, why would he be more likely to help the people who can gather the most prayers? "Sorry, Steve, but you don't have any friends that care about you, so you're not worth saving."

Well, prayer doesn't really affect his decisions.

Would it help if I told you that prayer is more for the one praying than it is for the one being prayed about?

As previously mentioned, the prayers didn't personally know the persons undergoing treatment. They weren't associated with them outside of this project, so whether praying proved to be inefficient or not is quite irrelevant.

About as relevant as somebody seeing something traumatic, and saying to the family "I'll pray for you." yet they really won't, or it won't do any benefit. It's a kind thought, but it won't stop catholics from getting sleep. As insensitive as that sounds, it's quite logical.

The only thing associated with catholics and christians which I don't agree with, is the rubbish about priests being able to heal people of cancer, illness, aids and the rest. It doesn't work like that, it's merely for morale, and it just doesn't make sense. If it was logical, we wouldn't need hospitals. And you don't see people with insert illness here hiking off to priests for a cure.

Interesting, although I suspect that if the results had gone the other way to show that prayer was beneficial in the recovery of surgery, I'd bet the true believers would be the first to claim that science had vindicated their faith.

Yeah, damn that logical impossiblity of proving a negative even though it's fairly simple to prove a positive!

People never put GOD first on anything, and thats why people have problems.

But what do i know, i am nobody, right?

Of course god doesn't care. Praying - pffft! Seems like a pretty unscientific study to waste so much of an effort on - they should have been researching the effects of positive thinking, or the effects of support (or the illusion of support).

Aren't you the one who believes that the majority in society is the portion of society that is right, Minion?

Could you clarify your stance on this for me?

Why do you always ask me questions that tie together two things that have nothing in common?

I said, somewhere, sometime, in SOME thread that has nothing to do with this, that the only way to have a fair society is to let the majority make decisions. They may be flat wrong about their decisions, but it's the best possible way to run a society.

What this has to do with history (throughout which, we have been mostly undemocratic) or the fact that we probably live in the least fucked up time in history, I have no idea.

You play Devil's Advocate a lot. Either that, or you use certain topics to your advantage constantly.

Sometimes, you're on about GOD SOCIETY IS SMARTER THAN YOU THINK, SASS - sometimes, you're telling us how STUPID people are. I agree with the latter. I am pretty consistent about it.

For argument sake: Let the majority make the decisions - even when they're completely wrong on the facts?

What I am saying is you play the topic to your advantage.

Do you think people are stupid or intelligent when it comes to making decisions for themselves (as a societal whole)?

I think people are mostly bad at making decisions. That doesn't change the fact that it is only fair to give the majority what it wants.

Now can we go back to talking about whether or not praying works? =/

I think it's been proven by the study that it doesn't, sir.

It only works in your head.

Much like self-medication and holistic healing. If you can tell your body it works, you can only convince yourself.

People who believe praying does anything at all is stupid. First off, why are they praying for ONE certain particular time at that point of the day?

"Oh, I need to get a 80% or higher on my exam, PLEASE HELP ME GOD! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!"

-End prayer, resume regular life.


If I were God, and I saw this ignorant use of my services, wouldn't I be pissed off that a decendant of my creation thinks I'm their "do-everything" person? Sure I would naturally love them and care for them, if I were God. But to have some idea that God even exists and assume he's the only gleaming ray of light to help you in a time of need..... that's down right ignorant. It's like saying you know he's there, but you don't really love him. Just thank him for your existance and be off with your day.

This is my first time taking a whack at this perspective of religion and the existance of God, but it just further motivates me to not undertake any religion that exists today.

If you've seen the Anime, it's just as Lord Illpalazzo(?) says in the Excel(Excell?) Anime: "Ignorant Masses"

Anime: World = on potential verge of conquest, people continue with their lives.
Real-life: Some of the World = succumb to some repetitively ephemeral, ethereal being.

Why does God even give us free will if He wants to act in a specific way? Is this some grand experiment of His, where we are His mice searching for cheese in the maze? Why make us capable of something if it is not desired? God should anticipate all possible behaviors and accomodate all of them because He designed them. That seems fair to me.

Because he doesn't want robots.

According to the Bible, you were created in God's image. What that actually means is that you have some quailities in common with God. The reason for this, I think, is basically so that you can understand Him better. Would you want robots to worship you or real, thinking people who could make their own decisions about whether they want to be with you or not?

I think the real issue at hand here is why anyone would want to spend a good $2.4 million dollars on a moot study like this when they could, I don't know, be spending that money on something that actually benefits the world in some way. I'm sure there's a continent load of hungry children out there who wouldn't mind having some dinner tonight.



uh, God isn't a service.

if that was your first time "taking a whack at this perspective of religion", you may want to wait a while before the next time, develop your skill to actually argue a point without sounding like you're just arguing because you can, and then maybe try again.