Praying to God & Jesus- Christian vs. Atheist Views
Praying to God & Jesus- Christian vs. Atheist ViewsYouTube Video Link = Audio Link =?Unable to Upload to Anchor for unknown reason- sorry!Prayer: Why Applying Critical Analysis to Magical Thinking Is a Waste of Time (Skeptic’s View)Prayer is a Christian doctrine that utterly resists critical analysis. For years, I couldn’t figure out why that was. After all, it seems the easiest thing for a skeptic to do is prove conclusively and convincingly that prayer simply does not work. If you are reading this and hoping that I will do just that with this week’s topic, you are in for disappointment. I am not going to try to convince anyone that prayer doesn’t work. Rather, I am going to explain why skeptics remain unconvinced by prayer claims, and why Christians are predisposed to reject skeptical objections.When it comes to prayer, skeptics and seekers are talking past each other. This is where different understandings of how the world works at the most basic level leads to a clash of opinion that runs so deep, it cannot be resolved by the most sincere negotiation. To repeat, our differences are not superficial. We are not stuck on semantics. Let’s begin by outlining a few of those sticking points:A Whole New WorldWhen believers sign on to the Christian worldview, they are taking on more than a set of moral guidelines. They are accepting an entirely different world of facts that are not compatible with most people who have not bought in. A 6,000 year old universe is easy to accept for many because they are no longer bound by what others understand as possible. They have an entirely different cosmology and physics.The cosmology and physics of prayer gives us a glimpse into a wildly and magically different world than the one with which I am familiar. Minimally, prayer is a specialized way for a human to talk to a god. That is already problematic. Humans talk to other humans all the time through a variety of media. But none of it is particularly specialized. We wouldn’t refer to it as prayer. But to talk to god, it requires a whole other form of communication. I am already suspicious of the idea.It is also obvious that before one can take prayer seriously, they already have to believe in a god. Those of us who don’t buy into the existence of supernatural beings are already out of luck. Prayer is not just a different word for talking to someone. Prayer is a specific communication with a god. It is a religious act that is utterly meaningless outside of the belief that the god in question exists.When we see Christians pray, we do not see them talking to a god. We see them talking to themselves and/or one another. We cannot join in this practice because we simply do not believe there is anyone there other than ourselves and the people who happen to be in the room with us. The skeptic cannot pray because she does not have the necessary creatures in her world. The Christian’s world is populated by supernatural and magical creatures that make prayer possible.Besides the population of our worlds being different, so too are the physics. In the skeptic’s world, we communicate with other beings through physical media. We speak sounds that send waives to the ear. We use gestures carried by light to the eye. It is not magic. These are well-understood mechanisms. We don’t communicate important things by trying to think at each other. Even if telepathy existed, it is doubtful we could send a coherent thought via the turbulent chaos of our minds.The Christian recognizes no such physical restrictions. They just think things in their heads and imagine that there is some mechanism that will order those thoughts and send them instantly to the great mind in the sky for immediate assessment. Most Christians I have mentioned this to have never given a moments consideration to how prayer actually works. They have never thought about the mechanism of prayer. And when they are forced to do so, they are perfectly happy just shrugging their shoulders, content that the physics of their universe can accommodate the activity.Revocation of Space, Time, and MatterThere is more I could say about the transmission of prayer such as how unlikely it is that a rational mind can process billions of prayers at once. Instead, I want to take a closer look at the effect prayer is meant to have. For god to answer the most trivial prayer, he has to suspend the laws of physics.He has to temporarily revoke the limits of time, space, and matter. Further, that revocation cannot be all that limited if he is answering even a fraction of the prayers on offer. On further consideration, it should be a rarity that time, space, and matter operate with any regularity at all.You ask for a safe trip to work. You are not specific about how that happens. You really don’t care about the mechanism of it as we have already established. You just want to arrive safe and sound. You didn’t ask that there be no accidents. You just don’t want to be in one. So it could be that god reaches into the cosmos to give you a flat tire so that you are a few seconds too late to be in the middle of a 10-car pileup. Praise be to god.How did he cause that flat? Perhaps he moved a rock into the road at just the right place and time while no one was looking. Perhaps he caused you to drive erratically enough to wear down your tire so that it gave way at the right moment. Such speculations are not even necessary for a god. He might have just spoke a word and caused instant damage to your tire. All of these are possible in the Christian’s mind. The suspension of physics is not a problem for them.I knew one person who swore that she was driving along one day, and out of nowhere, a car came along and had what should have been a head-on collision with her at high speed. As she recounts the story, the front part of the other car passed right through the front of her car as if going out of phase for a moment. She is not crazy and is utterly convinced that this happened. In her world, why not? There is nothing keeping that sort of thing from happening on as routine a basis as necessary.Now imagine a prayer that involves other humans. You pray for a promotion at work that you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten. For god to grant that promotion, he has to override the freewill of your boss. Now, your magic includes mind control.To put your boss in the right mood, god helps him find his keys instead of having to waste time and frustration searching and being late. God parts traffic so that the boss can have no stress at work. Your resume is magically moved to the top of the pile and he misreads your qualifications, making you look like a better candidate than you are. There are countless incursions into spacetime for this promotion to take place.Christians do not tend to respond well when we attempt to apply this type of analytical process to understanding the mechanism of prayer. It breaks down even further when we apply it to the theology of prayer:An Incomprehensible DoctrineCritical analysis requires a thing to be explainable and consistent. You cannot analyze something that is one way today and another tomorrow, and yet another when explained by someone else. However, magical thinking can accommodate all these views no matter how contradictory. That is the doctrine of prayer. Just consider all the contradictory or confusing doctrines related to prayer:We should ask god for things we want and think we need. Or, we should not try to impose on a friendship by asking for things.We should ask for things with the confidence that we have already received it. Or, we should ask for things with the understanding that god might not give us what we asked for.We need to have faith without a grain of doubt for our prayer to be considered. Or, we only need a grain of faith as small as a mustard seed for even the biggest requests to be granted.We can track and document the success of prayer. Or, we can never do empirical prayer studies. God just doesn’t work that way.This doesn’t cover the spectrum of contradictory teachings on prayer. Christians just look at this list, shrug their shoulders, and say that it’s all true. We skeptics look at you with our eyes glazed over just trying to figure out which prayer claim we are fighting that day. We can’t analytically examine, let alone, defeat a claim we can’t even nail down. Magical thinking wins again.Why Prayer Should Never WorkI have listened to hundreds of sermons on prayer. The entire enterprise seems to be getting people to buy into it while explaining why it doesn’t work. We are told that prayer works in the abstract, but rarely in the specific. But Christians have made a tactical error. They have provided too good of an explanation for when prayers don’t work. If one takes those explanations seriously, they would come to the conclusion that prayer should never work. Just consider some of the reasons Christians give for failed prayer:You used the wrong formula: Should you have started your prayer with “Our Father,” or “Dear Jesus?” Some denominations believe prayer has to have a specific formula to be effective. Do you pray in the name of the Father, or in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? You get the idea. The exact formula for the incantation is unclear. And without the right incantation, the spell doesn’t work.You had a little doubt: No one can pray with the confidence that they have already received it while holding in their mind that god might say no as one of the possible answers. It is a sheer impossibility. We all have some doubt when it comes to prayer.You had a selfish motive: All prayer offered by humans is somewhat selfish. Even prayers for world peace are somewhat motivated by selfishness. We want to live in a world ruled by joy and prosperity, not war and despair. Besides, there is nothing wrong with asking for things just because we want them.You had an unresolved grievance with someone: It is unclear if the grievance Jesus spoke of was limited to your fellow brothers in Christ, or if it referred to the brotherhood of all mankind. Good luck being a human without any unresolved issues with other humans.(My favorite) God does not interfere with free will or its consequences: Why does god allow bad men to do harm to innocent children? Ask any Christian these days and they will tell you that god does not interfere with the free will even of a bad man, nor the natural consequences of sin. Well, that pretty much eliminates all prayer requests. In some form or another, they are all requesting that god interfere with the natural order and consequences of this sinful world to bring about a better outcome. It should never happen.Because you’re not right with god in some way of which you may not even be aware: And with that, the door should be closed completely on the hope of a positive outcome for prayer. We all have sinned and fallen short of god. There is none righteous, no, not one. The heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? No one is so sinless that there isn’t something corrupting their prayer.Despite all these poison pills perverting potent prayer, Christians insist that we should expect prayer to be effective. I can’t see how any prayer should ever be effective because no one is positive of the right formula. There is always a little doubt. There is always a selfish motive. There are always some unresolved grievances. There is always an expectation that god contravene free will or its effects. And no human is ever in a state of sinlessness.With so many barriers to successful prayer, an analytical approach is hopeless. Only one engaging in magical thinking can one expect a positive outcome in the face of so many obstacles.Conclusion: Thy Will Be Done2,000 words in and I’m only scratching the surface. Apologies.As a Christian, the thing that caused me to stop praying was not disbelieving the existence of god. The fact is I just couldn’t figure out the point of the exercise in the first place. It no longer made any sense to me whatsoever. I started to believe that my prayers were just making things worse. Here’s why:At the end of the day, the only prayer you can pray and have complete confidence in it coming true is the old standby, “thy will be done.” Stop there, and you’re good. We can be sure that a god with a sovereign will is going to do whatever it takes to accommodate his will. We can be so sure of it, that to pray for it is silly.It is not like god’s will will not be done if we don’t pray that it be done. If god wants to wipe out a city with a freak storm, that storm is on the way. And no amount of prayer can stop it. If god’s will is to spare a city, no storm can touch it. Your prayers in such matters are superfluous.It is possible that your prayers are even heretical because you may be inadvertently praying for something that is decidedly against god’s will. God wants that lifetime smoker to suffer the COPD he richly deserves to punish him as well as set an example to others. And there you are praying that he be cured and not suffer that fate. Worm! Were you trying to change god’s will?I have heard many preachers describe prayer as praying god’s will back to him. I’m sure you’ve heard this too. What the heck does that even mean? Who knows god’s will in any particular circumstance? No one does.Obviously, we want god to do what is best for us. But we are too childlike and limited to know what is best for us. So what if we pray for something and get it. Did god give us what was best for us? Or did he downgrade his will to accommodate our request? If god is always going to do what is best for us, why does he even want us to come to him with our requests? It is just an exercise in sycophancy.The way Christians describe prayer is little more than a gameshow from hell on which I have no desire to be a contestant. I felt like I was always praying for door #1, door #2, or door #3. There was no way to audit the prayer to see if it got through or if it was held up due to red tape. And I didn’t know if the answer was supposed to be Yes, no, or not now. If I asked for a promotion and got fired instead, I didn’t know if that was just god closing one door to open another. All the while, I had to pretend that I was always a winner. There was never really anything to do except close every prayer by punting to “thy will be done” and bracing for the inevitable storm.I succumbed to the worst thing a Christian could do. I applied critical analysis to prayer. After that, certain types of magical thinking were forever beyond my reach. I would need a lobotomy to believe in prayer again. I cannot believe in the version of cosmology and physics that makes up the world of the Christian. I cannot accept the theological and logical contradictions one has to accept for prayer to be real. And I cannot see the point of the exercise in the first place if the one we are praying to is an all good, all powerful god who always plans to do what is best for us anyway.Deer seeker, if you cannot bring yourself to apply critical analysis to the doctrine of prayer, at least try to understand why we skeptics do not and cannot believe as you do.And that’s the view from the skeptic.David JohnsonPrayer: Always Time Well Spent (Christian View)What is Christian prayer? Prayer (within a Christian context) is essentially “talking to God.”; it’s not meditation or mere passive reflection but involves a direct address to God. Prayer is the primary way for the believer in Jesus Christ to communicate his emotions and desires with God and to fellowship with God. The Bible reveals many types of prayers and employs a variety of words to describe the practice, 1 Timothy 2:1 gives us a good example of some of the different types when it says, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people”.Obviously, there is wide chasm between Christians and Atheists on the question of whether God exists or not or in the viability of proposing the use of supernatural mechanisms in general, let alone in response to prayer. These are definitely fundamental disagreements that would make reaching any kind of consensus on the efficacy of prayer impossible to obtain; one would simply first need to prove that God does exist via appeal to natural theology, skeptic’s hopefully still functioning sensus divinatatis or arguments for the equal possibility of the supernatural in general (something that is simply outside the scope of this blog).The Skeptic opines; “I am not going to try to convince anyone that prayer doesn’t work. Rather, I am going to explain why skeptics remain unconvinced by prayer claims, and why Christians are predisposed to reject skeptical objections. When it comes to prayer, skeptics and seekers are simply talking past each other… it cannot be resolved by the most sincere negotiation”.Perhaps, the first thing to realize is that maybe its not for the skeptic to understand or test prayer in the way they wish to do, the Bible is clear that the verses on prayer are meaningful for Christians (and Christians alone)- people who already have sufficient warrant to know the truth of the God of Christianity. I don’t recall anyone in the Bible using answered prayers as the means by which to convince outsiders of the truth, but is instead it provides guidance to already believing Christians on how they can best interact and commune with God as they mature throughout the sanctification process.Hence, I’m about to suggest a notion that may be surprising to some skeptics in the audience, maybe it is a misnomer to try and use answered prayers as a proof for the truth of Christianity, appealing to double blind prayer studies, various credible testimonial evidences, medically-documented healing accounts, etc.- perhaps the reason why finding tangible proof that would convince even the most hardened of skeptics is because that is not God’s purpose in answering His flock’s prayers; as though God is subject to some kind of “G-Belief Authenticating Event” test every time we bow our heads to talk with Him or share our passions and desires with Him.At the very least, I think it is valid question to ask the skeptics, do you have the wrong idea about the purposes of prayer; are you as a non-believer truly meant to understand and see proof of its validity in the first place. God has provided multiple G-Belief Authenticating evidences for skeptics to capitalize on (the Resurrection, the Shroud, Messianic Prophecies, Witness of the Holy Spirit), answered prayer may not be meant to serve that purpose in the same way supernatural healings may be done simply for compassionate purposes within God’s overall plan of redemption without regard to providing proof to skeptics 1000 miles away.Mechanistic ConcernsTypically, skeptics overemphasize the importance of understanding mechanisms- how do things work mechanistically speaking; without an understanding of the mechanisms involved, then it must not be true is a common sentiment today. The rise of modern science is what has put this false notion into the heads of so many otherwise intelligent and well-intentioned people. The how question is not the only game in town, there are far more important questions than that and so I agree with the Skeptic that many Christians don’t give a second thought to how God does what He does in answering prayer or how supernatural events could occur.That said, the mechanistic question is not invalid, it is important if not all-important. All truth belongs to God and so I have no issue with asking any question so long as they are done so with the proper intent and seen in the light of their proper importance. For most Christians, God is an Omni-Being and hence we typically don’t like to place any limits on the ways God could interact with the world in response to prayers; natural or supernatural means, God can and does use both anytime He wants (according to His overall providential plan of saving as many souls as possible).However, I would say its logically impossible for God to determine the choice of any freewill creature and as such this does place a mechanistic limit on how God can answer prayers, he can’t snap His divine fingers so to speak and force your boss to give you a promotion tomorrow (due to the intrinsic limits of His own essential divine nature). This is something for the skeptic to sink his/her teeth into, at least one mechanism (over-ridding the freewill of sentient creatures) is off-limits. Hence, God can perhaps use direct or indirect influences given His divine middle knowledge (including foreknowledge that certain Christians would pray for certain things in certain circumstances) and God chooses to create those said circumstances to prompt the freewill response He wants to affect. Hence, God knows supernaturally moving a rock in this particular instance vs. letting nature take its course and have a rock slide happen is the best means to accomplish His overall goal of saving as many people as possible, there is no need to artificially restrict God to only being able to use one means or another.Apart from that, can I speculate on how the supernatural works in a mechanistic way like describing how a billiard ball moves when hit with a stick, no I can’t- but I don’t need to either. Can Skeptics explain how quantum physics allows for “spooky action at a distance”- no they can’t, but they don’t need to either. Humble admission of ignorance doesn’t entail the falsity of the event.Biblical Prayer is Contradictory and Should Never WorkThe Skeptic provides a list of 4 areas of supposed contradiction in the Bible about prayer;1) We should ask god for things we want and think we need. Or, we should not try to impose on a friendship by asking for things.Ans: God expects us to be an open-book in our relationship with Him, it does our souls good to unburden ourselves by passionately telling Him what we want or think we need in supplication. That said, it is bad for sinners to pray selfishly; in everything we ask for we must maintain the right motive or intent when asking for things, not just for the good of ourselves but for everyone else as well. Praying for a new car to replace an old broken down one so that one can drive to work to provide for their family and help get their elderly neighbour to the grocery store and to church each week is a selfless motive worthy of being answered whereas I want to buy a new corvette and show it off to all my friends to make them feel bad, is a selfish prayer that we ought not to do nor expect to be answered by God.There are no verses that say expressing our honest desires in supplication to God is “imposing” ourselves on God, no such verse exists in the Bible. Instead, we are told in 1 Peter 5:7 to “cast your cares on Him for He cares for you”. He wants to hear all of our heartfelt desires, when born out of a redeemed heart.2) We should ask for things with the confidence that we have already received it. Or, we should ask for things with the understanding that god might not give us what we asked for.Ans: This is another faux pas on the part of the Skeptic, the Bible no where claims that every Christian will always get whatever they ask for. Consider the following texts;a) 1 John 5:14,15 – We can have confidence that, if we pray according to God’s word, He will hear us and grant what we ask. Here a condition is laid out, if we pray according to God’s Word and God’s Word can be used to prove that we ought not to expect every prayer to be answered in exactly the way we expect or want initially.b) 1 John 3:22 – Whatever we ask we receive because we keep His commands and do what pleases Him. Another condition, we must keep His commands and do what pleases Him or else no expectation to receive.c) James 5:16 – The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah prayed and it did not rain for 3 1/2 years. He prayed again and it rained (v17,18). This entire verse proves that we must trust in God that He will provide what is good for us and it is not instantaneous, sometimes we must pray over and over again and be patient with God’s timing.d) Matthew 7:7-11 – If we ask, seek, and knock, we receive what we requested. God is like an earthly father who gives good gifts to His children who ask. Good gifts, hence not everything we ask for is necessarily good for us and thus we should expect to receive those. Maybe I think its good for me to have a million dollars, but God knows that wouldn’t be a “good gift” for me, else I would be corrupted by having so much money.3) We need to have faith without a grain of doubt for our prayer to be considered. Or, we only need a grain of faith as small as a mustard seed for even the biggest requests to be granted.Ans: Here the Skeptic has taken the texts out of context to make a point. Read James 1 about having no doubts; in the first place this is specifically about requests for wisdom, we know that in context this is about wisdom on God’s essential truths, not getting stuff we want. On that front, I have no doubt at all, a perfect God will follow through on His promise to give all real seekers and Christians wisdom if asked- zero doubt in my mind. The other verse is a gross hyper-literalism on the part of the skeptic, no scholar in the world says this is literal and instead rightly recognize the ancient literary form involved; faith that can move mountains is not meant to imply a faith that can literally move literal mountains. The point Jesus was making is that even a little bit of faith—faith the size of a tiny mustard seed—can overcome mountainous obstacles in our lives (see =??).4) We can track and document the success of prayer. Or, we can never do empirical prayer studies. God just doesn’t work that way.Ans: This is just strange, the Bible doesn’t say anything either way here even if modern Christian apologists may differ on the usefulness of empirically studying answered prayers, certainly no one in the ancient world thought in this way and so the Bible quite obviously says nothing about tracking and documenting answered prayers or outlining the proper protocols to do empirical prayer studies.Anyways, one can do whatever one wants in this regard, there is nothing wrong with documenting one’s answered prayers, it can even be helpful to see how faithful God was, but it must not be done as a test to prove or falsify God. Answered prayers are not primarily meant to be “G-Belief Authenticating Events” in the same way the Resurrection of Jesus was. Some Christian apologists think that there are at least some examples of such that can rise to that standard and if so, then great, but that doesn’t mean we can take answered prayer as a whole as means of verifying or falsifying the faith- that is simply not what it’s about. Hence, in this respect it is entirely proper to count the hits (if there are any) and skip the misses in this case.Recommended Sources (for further study):a) Got Questions Articles on Prayer and the different types of prayers =?) William Lane Craig on Prayer in the Light of Molinism (does Prayer Change God’s Mind) =?) Gospel Way study on the Biblical Data on the Power of Prayer =? ................
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