God doesn't care.

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the findings are depressing if you're a believer

Not really. Prayer is never meant to treat God like some kind of genie. Although an explanation of prayer and why this study is stupid would just bore half of you and annoy the other half, so...

How ya doing, buddy?

What growing horrible status? Would you prefer to have lived during the dark ages?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

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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 was speaking idiomatically.

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?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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

How ya doing, buddy?

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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? =/

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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Why does God even give us free will if He wants to act in a specific way?

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?

There's nowhere I can't reach.