At the beginning of this section, we looked to the Bible and found that Jesus makes a number of specific and remarkable promises having to do with prayer. Accordingly, I have responded to every one of them, showing your interpretations to be fundamentally flawed. If anyone cares to see my responses to any of these, I encourage you to review the last ten essays, because I don't have the patience to state the same thing for the fifth time on this website alone.
For example, in Matthew 7:7 Jesus says:
Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."
Jesus says something even more straightforward in Mark 11:24:I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
In John chapter 14 Jesus describes just how easy prayer can be:Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; 14 if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
However, when you look at the world around you, you find that things are not like that at all. You find yourself surrounded by contradictions:
- God never answers the prayers of amputees. If he did, we would see amputated limbs spontaneously regenerating every day. Not so: this is a non-sequitur. I don't see why it would be true that God would answer amputation prayers every day, since amputation isn't that frequent of an operation anyway.
- God never moves mountains -- if he did, we would see mountains moving around all the time. Same thing. Ability to do something does not necessitate frequency of doing, especially when the action (moving mountains) is ad hoc and completely unnecessary.
- God never answers impossible prayers -- if he did, people would be flying through the air like superman on a regular basis. The irony is that if people had been flying through the air like Superman on a regular basis for thousands of years, you would merely say it's part of the evolutionary biology of human beings, not supernatural intervention.
- God never answers prayers that turn people into puppets -- if he did, then you are a puppet. The issue here is what, exactly? Would you like to be a puppet?
- God never answers prayers that break the laws of nature -- if he did, then scientific equations and computer models would have to take God's random antics into account. Nothing God does ever "breaks the laws of nature," so why should he answer prayers for things that do? Do you really want a different set of the laws of nature for Christians than atheists?
- God never answers prayers that break the laws of probability -- if he did, then every believer would be rich and Las Vegas could not exist. You have yet to show me how it makes sense for a holy God to enable and encourage sin through prayer.
- When two people pray opposite one another, obviously someone's prayer will go unanswered. Otherwise, the Law of Noncontradiction would be useless, would it not? This is simple logic. If a million people pray for the same thing but only one can have it (e.g. - winning the lottery), then by definition 999,999 people will have their prayers unanswered. Which is simply how it has to be, if one wants to be consistent with the laws of logic. I really don't understand how someone who claims to be "rational" and "logical" can make such an argument with a straight face. And besides, if one million people all won a multi-million dollar lottery, we would be screwed. Ever seen Bruce Almighty, for example?
- God doesn't answer medical prayers -- otherwise the U.S. would not need to spend $2 trillion a year on health care. Refer to one and two. But regardless, many of these things would need money with or without the prayers answered by God.
- God doesn't answer prayers to avert natural disasters -- if he did, hurricanes would not hit the U.S. Once again, you're confusing "some" with "all."
So let's agree on this point -- God does not answer prayers. No, I won't agree. I, and many others, have seen God work in our lives too much to agree with you merely because God doesn't allow us to fly like Superman or regenerate limbs. Something this apparent should not be hard to accept, and this conclusion perfectly fits the evidence that we see in the world around us. No, it really doesn't. Perhaps in your life, since you seem to make no effort to see how God works. But for the rest of us, the fact that God answers prayers is obvious. There is no evidence whatsoever that any human god answers prayers. Luckily, I don't believe in a "human god." There are mountains of empirical and statistical evidence showing that prayers are never answered. Is your record broken?
If it is this obvious, then why do believers so adamantly insist that God answers prayers? Why is there an entire industry built around inspirational literature? Why do believers demand prayer in public schools? Why do believers hang onto the idea of prayer so strongly when it is quite obvious that God does not answer prayers? Probably because it works, and you're ignorant. To answer these questions, please see Understanding Christian Motivations. See my response to an almost identical essay from GodIsImaginary.com (of the same name) here.
The problem with prayer
The problem with prayer is simple: prayer is an illusion, and the people who believe in prayer must ignore reality in order to believe in it. Except this problem is immediately countered by examining the data. Not simply going up to an old lady and having her tell stories about how God removed a stain from her dress. Examine the real accounts of incredible miracles that have happened through prayer. If you look at the data rationally, you can see exactly what is happening here:
- When we pray to God about any unambigous situation, God never answers the prayer. For example, if we pray to God to restore an amputated limb, absolutely nothing happens. See this page for an in-depth discussion. If you still don't understand why such a prayer is flawed, you have no hope.
- When we analyse any ambiguous prayer using statistical tools, we find zero effect from prayer, except of course the studies that show prayer to have an effect. For example, if we have Christians pray for 1,000 cancer patients, those patients do not recover any faster or live any longer. Which is what we'd expect if we're trying to test something that has probably hundreds of unknowns about it. It's like trying to test reactions of chemicals of different colors...blindfolded in the dark.
Christians, unfortunately, must ignore reality in order to believe in prayer. Just like you must ignore reams of evidence to not believe in God, or prayer, I guess?
Whether you are a Christian or not, I think we would agree that people who "ignore reality" and "turn off their ability to process factual information" have some sort of problem. You're therefore saying that something close to 90% of the world's population has "some sort of problem" with them. And yet, we hear about the "arrogance of the faithful." And the problem is serious. For example, we would probably agree people who ignore reality are not the sort of people who we want in positions of responsibility in our society. Somehow, I really don't believe that belief in prayer is a "serious problem" to anyone. You must demonstrate that. And yet, Christians cling to their beliefs. See link above.
Thus, Christians find themselves in extremely awkward and, quite frankly, embarrassing positions. They must "believe" that God answers their prayers even though it is quite obvious that he does not. You make it sound like all these Christians know they are kidding themselves. Far from it. They find themselves in uncomfortable conversations like this one:
Chris: God DOES exist! God IS all-loving and all-powerful! God DOES answer prayers! God is real and I have a living relationship with him every day! Lift up your heart and accept the Lord Jesus into your life today!
Bright: Oh, hi friends! I missed you guys!Norm: Can you give me an example?
Chris: Absolutely. Just yesterday I locked my keys in my car, and I prayed to God. Not five minutes later my husband came home unexpectedly for lunch and let me into the house. God answered my prayer yesterday!
Bright: You're kidding, right Chris?
Chris: Yeah, I am. I don't know anybody that would really claim such thing was a miracle. I'm just leading him on so he can have a temper-tantrum.
Bright: This is why I like you, Chris.
Norm: Can you not see that this was a coincidence?
Chris: Absolutely not. God made my husband come home at that moment. God did it.
Norm: Wouldn't that make your husband God's puppet?
Chris: Absolutely not.
Bright: Well, such a prayer would, in some way. But God does reserve the right to do such things, I imagine.
Norm: So… God answered your specific prayer in five minutes by sending your husband home. God actually reached down onto planet earth and guided your husband. But on the same day, God allowed thousands of praying people around the globe to die of starvation, and he allowed thousands of praying patients to die of cancer and other diseases, and he allowed thousands more praying people to lose their jobs, die in accidents, contract diseases, etc.?
Bright: Even if that were true, that still doesn't mean the one prayer wasn't answered. Just like the fact that hundreds of thousands of people don't win the lottery when one person does doesn't mean that one person didn't actually win.
However, you're merely resorting to an emotional appeal anyway. I've already responded to this diatribe (what feels like) hundreds of times.
Chris: Yes, God answers MY prayers.
Norm: Does that make sense to you? Why would God have a relationship with you so intimate that he personally solves your most trivial problems, while at the same time he has given thousands of people new cancers today?
Bright: Who said God gave these people cancer, Norm? Nobody except you.
Chris: God loves me.
Norm: And what about the times when you pray for something and he doesn't answer your prayer? Or all the millions of people whose very sincere prayers go unanswered each day?
Bright: We Christians understand that prayer isn't simply a blank check to get whatever you want from the moment we become Christians, Norm. It's only you, the atheist, who seems to put in these false categories.
Chris: Yeah, Norm. We Christians understand that when God does not answer my prayers, it's because it is not part of his plan.
Norm: God has a plan for each of us?
Chris: Yes, of course he does. God has counted every hair on my head. God has a plan for me. However, that doesn't mean that he forces us to follow it. We choose to follow the plan, and our way of discerning what the plan is is to pray.
Norm: So… God's plan was for millions of people to die horrible deaths in the Holocaust? He planned that?
Bright: Of course not. That's exactly the opposite of what God planned. But hey Chris, say the opposite and see what he said.
Chris: Yes.
Bright: *snickers*
Norm: Isn't a being who commits the pre-meditated murder of millions of people an abomination -- a horrific monster?
Bright: Yeah, it is. But that's not we're talking about. Keep going, Chris...This is rich.
Chris: Of course not. God is all-loving.
Norm: Then what if God's plan for you is for you to die after being raped, tortured and then stabbed to death by a serial killer? When you pray for escape, God totally ignores you and you die because that is his plan for you. Would you say that God answered your prayers in that case?
Bright: God would never directly plan for anyone to sin, as that would be the opposite of holy, and God cannot do anything that is unholy.
Chris: God would never let that happen to me. God loves me. God answers my prayers.
Norm: Then how, exactly, did God totally ignore millions of praying people who died in the Holocaust?
Bright: Who says he ignored them? The issue is free will here.
Chris: They were not believers. God punished them.
Norm: OK... Then why did God kill the tens of millions of praying believers -- both soldiers and civilians -- who died during WWII? Why would God send your husband home for lunch, but completely ignore these millions of other people.
Bright: Once again, Norm, you're confusing the root cause here. God did not kill anyone in World War II. Soldiers did. The SS did. Hitler, as well as many other generals on both Allied and Axis side, gave the orders, and people followed them. War is war, and there is a lot of it in the Bible.
Chris: It was all part of God's plan.
Bright: Hey Chris, let's go out to lunch or something and catch up.
Chris: Sure, Bright. This guy's whiny voice is making my ears ring a little bit.
Norm: Wait a minute! I didn't crush your faith?! WHAT?! I thought my logic was impeccable!
An Insane God
Simply look at the world we live in. All around us we have murderers, rapists, robbers, child molesters, terrorists, etc...
How do they do their deeds? If God is all-knowing and God answers prayers, then we have to believe that: By the way, this next bit is copied verbatim from Proof 31. Allow me to respond accordingly.
- God watches them as they murder, rape, molest and terrorize other people millions of times a day, but he does nothing to stop them. Millions of times a day? Really? I think that's a bit of an exaggeration...That means that we would all be raped, molested, and terrorized at least once every few years, not even mentioning murder. But here's a more important point. Where were you praising God for his mercy on your soul? Nowhere. Now you're demanding that he do things at your beck and call?
- God watches the victims as they are being murdered, raped, molested and terrorized, but he does nothing to help them. Why should he stop them? Why should he help them? You know, all of these things wouldn't happen if everyone followed God's law, so I don't see why God should do anything here.
- God completely ignores the prayers of the planet to eliminate murder, rape, child molestation and terrorism and allows these atrocities to continue unabated. So he should just come down and fix everything while letting us do whatever we feel like?
- Marshall Brain sits around on his computer writing essays instead of campaigning against murder, rape, child molestation, and terrorism. What a hypocrite.
- Marshall Brain doesn't understand the concept of God allowing free will, much less the implications of micromanaging the world as he seems to feel is necessary.
"Look at all of those praying people getting tortured in that death camp. Excellent! I won't do anything to stop that. What should he do, then? Make the death camps disappear and everyone suddenly appear back in their homes, completely unharmed? Make all the torturers suddenly repent against their free will? Does that even remotely make sense? And look at that little girl down there being raped and murdered. Perfect! She is praying like mad [assumption], and so is her mother [assumption...Wait, why isn't she calling 911?], but I won't do anything to stop that. So God should once again change his mind, making him repent against his will, or make his penis explode so he can't rape her anymore, or some other convoluted explanation? And there are three terrorists preparing to blow up a church and kill 1,500 people who are saying the Lord's Prayer to me right now. Outstanding! I won't do anything to stop that. So you're telling me that God should step in, despite all the mistakes and non-action that thousands of humans undoubtedly made raising them, and change their minds against their free will? How wonderful it is that 1,000 prayerful people will die of starvation today in Ethiopia. I love it! How silly is it that you blame this on God when it's really the inaction of humans that is to blame for their starvation? I won't do anything to stop that. Oh… and there's little Suzy Jankins praying that I remove that pimple from her nose for her big date with Chad tomorrow. Let me go help Suzy right now…" Of course, no intelligent Christian would assume that God made their pimple go away.
But you're once again making a false comparison. God is not allowing 27,000 children to die of starvation each day...We are. What are you suggesting God should do in this situation? Make Big Macs fall out of the sky? I, for one, could think of several reasons he shouldn't answer prayers like this:
- Too obvious. Since the Bible fully supports the idea of God remaining "hidden," this makes complete sense.
- It violates his nature. He cannot answer prayers so men can be greedy and lazy by not giving.
- It might ultimately teach humanity a lesson about how greed and laziness literally kills. Once that hits in, there might never be a starving child on the face of this planet. We have the resources, we can do it. God has already done his part in giving us these resources, giving us food to feed these people with, and commanding us to do it. So why should God step in and set everything right?
Yet, if you believe in a God that answers your trivial prayers each day, this is exactly the type of insane God that you are worshiping. Most people I know don't believe that God answers "trivial prayers" like this. And you look insane for believing it. You look insane for propagating this ridiculous caricature of prayer, as if people actually believe that. You are so out of touch with Christian thought that it's almost sad.
The Power of Coincidence
What, then, is actually happening when God "answers" a prayer? Let's take a simple example of a trivial prayer:
"I had finally gotten to the end of my rope with women, so I simply gave it up to God. I prayed, 'Lord, I need you to send me a sign. When you have found the woman you want me to marry, I want you to show me by letting her birthday be on the same day as my mother's. Amen.' And you know what? About a year later I met a woman, and she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and eventually I got up enough nerve to ask her out. On our first date we had such a great time I asked her when her birthday was. It was the same day as my mother! I told her about my prayer, and we got married six months later. We have been happily married for 15 years."
Well, that seems like a strange prayer to me. If God planned out who you were to marry, why must he do it on your terms, especially on something so irrelevant as a birth date? That means that you are planning who you marry more than God is. A prayer that forces God to act within a blueprint doesn't seem like a very respectful prayer to me at all. And chances are, he had already "found the woman he wanted him to marry" before he asked him to do such a thing. Must God alter his original intent then?
It is nothing but a coincidence. And it is not a "one in a million" shot. The chance is 1 in 365 that any woman will have the same birthday as his mother. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
What really happened? If the woman had had the wrong birthday, the man would not have married her, and eventually he would have found someone who was a match. And he probably would have missed the point of God's plan entirely. Or, he would have simply forgotten about the prayer and married her anyway. Ditto. In that case, we would not have heard the story.
Coincidences -- even remarkable ones -- happen all the time. Coincidences like spontaneous remission of severe rheumatic heart disease? In a matter of seconds? The "power of prayer" should actually be called the "power of coincidence." Coincidence like Rick Heil's Chron's disease literally disappearing? The dictionary defines the word "coincidence" in this way:
A sequence of events that although accidental seems to have been planned or arranged. [ref]
Notice that this is the one and only situation in which this logic can actually be used. "The amount of unsuccessful prayers proves that no prayer has ever been answered." In other words, "The amount of [non-x] proves that there is no [x]." Imagine trying to apply that to anything else.
The amount of non-lottery winners proves that no one has ever won the lottery.
The amount of people who are bad at math proves that no one is good at math.
The amount of silly arguments in this essay proves that Marshall Brain has never made a non-silly argument.
It simply doesn't work. So why does it work in the situation of prayer? If even one prayer is legitimately answered, you are wrong.
You could pray for 20 trivial things today:
- Pray for your car to start in the morning,
- Pray for traffic to be light so you get to work on time.
- Pray that you don't get fired for the mistake you made yesterday. So God should make up for our mistakes, then?
- Pray that the coffee stain on your purse comes out.
- Pray that it doesn't rain.
- Pray that the price of a stock has gone up. Yay, more money for me! That's exactly what Jesus preached!
- Pray that your computer doesn't crash.
- Pray that your son got a decent grade on his math test. Ex post facto prayers are always ridiculous to me. "God, change my performance on a test that I did yesterday to make it a good grade instead of a bad one." Yeah, right.
- Pray that there's enough money in your checking account to make up for all of the materialistic spending you've been doing, and still need to do. Man, I need to buy another TV!
- Pray that the guy you went out with on Saturday calls you.
- Pray that your mother in law cancels her trip for the weekend. For shame, Marshall Brain.
- Pray for there to be an available washing machine at the Laundromat when you get there.
- Pray that your car passes inspection.
- Pray that they have your size in the shoes you are thinking about buying at the mall. Yeah, I need that extra, extra, extra pair of heels to go with that one outfit I have. God really wants me to have lots of unnecessary stuff.
- Pray that the envelope you are opening contains a check rather than a bill. So it's legitimate now to make God take your bills away, is it?
- Pray that your cat didn't pee on the new sofa.
- Pray for your baby not to wake you up tonight screaming so you can get some sleep.
- Pray that you have the winning bid for that camera on EBay. ...eBay?!
- Pray that they have the video you want at the video store tonight.
- Pray that your team wins the game on Sunday. Sports prayers are also ridiculous to me.
Some of your prayers would get "answered," some would not. The next day you could simply watch 20 trivial things happen without praying. Some would work out, some would not. There would be no difference. The act of praying about them does not change the outcome. That's because you picked certain types of things that would have happened independently of prayer. This is by design on your part, not the fault of prayer.
Coincidences happen to all of us every day. If you are a believer, you handle those coincidences in the following way:
- If something nice happens, you attribute that to God -- he answered your prayer and is "looking out" for you. I don't attribute everything good that happens to be God's doing. Maybe some people do, but many certainly don't.
- If you pray for something and it does not happen, or if something bad happens, you rationalize that it is part of "God's plan" (see chapter 8). Again, this is false. There is no need at all to ascribe every bad thing that happens to God's doing. It is "his will" that this bad event happens. This is doubtful in most cases.
It is the same with any superstition. Walking under a ladder is not "bad luck". Neither is breaking a mirror. Neither is seeing a black cat. Statistics prove that a broken mirror has zero effect on your life, because a broken mirror is not a sentient entity, and it's therefore unreasonable to postulate as such. In the same way, statistics prove that God never answers prayers. They are too different to even compare. How ridiculous.
If you are a believer, try this experiment. Go for a week without praying. You will find that things work and don't work in exactly the same way that they do if you pray. Coincidences and problems still happen whether you pray or not, and in the same numbers. Prayer has no effect on the outcome. Good coincidences will not stop happening if you stop praying. Bad coincidences do not stop happening no matter how much you pray.
I would be interested in speaking to a Christian who has tried this specifically because of this website. I would like to know what the results were himself. I know many Christians for which prayer does have a significant difference on their day: without prayer or a "quiet time" in the morning, their days fall apart, and other bad things happen that usually don't. I don't see this as coincidence, and you haven't given me a good reason to think they are.
The dictionary defines the word "superstition" in this way:
The belief in prayer is a superstition. When a prayer appears to be answered, it is a coincidence. You have seen dozens of examples in chapters five through ten that demonstrate the coincidental nature of "answered prayers." Rather, I've seen dozens of contrived parodies of what prayer is supposed to be. You've given me nothing new.An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome. [ref]
Proving it to yourself
What I would ask you to do at this point is simple. I would like you to think this whole thing through. You have seen lots of evidence. What evidence? All you've given me is word games. What do you believe? Either:
Assertion #1: You believe what Jesus says in the Bible about prayer. I do. Just not as you do. I believe it like literally every Christian in the world does, and you don't. When Jesus says in the Bible that anyone with faith can move a mountain, you believe him, even though no one has ever moved a mountain. I believe it's more likely that, since "moving mountains" is a metaphor for accomplishing difficult things, he was using dramatic orientation. When Jesus says that nothing will be impossible for you, you believe him, even though God has never healed an amputee. God has healed amputees. When Jesus says that he will do anything that you ask in his name, you believe him even though you can ask for something right now and he will completely ignore you. Yet we Christians know that there is SO much more to this statement than what you would say here. You believe in prayers despite the evidence to the contrary. The evidence you have given me is pure nonsense.
Assertion #2: You do not believe what Jesus says about prayer in the Bible. You simply look at the world around you and you can see that it is not true. God does not answer prayers.
- God never answers the prayers of amputees. If he did, we would see amputated limbs spontaneously regenerating every day.
- God never moves mountains -- if he did, we would see mountains moving around all the time.
- God never answers impossible prayers -- if he did, people would be flying through the air like superman on a regular basis.
- God never answers prayers that turn people into puppets -- if he did, then you are a puppet.
- God never answers prayers that break the laws of nature -- if he did, scientific equations and computer models would have to take God's random antics into account.
- God never answers prayers that break the laws of probability -- if he did, then every prayerful believer would be rich and Las Vegas could not exist.
- When two people pray opposite one another, obviously someone's prayer will go unanswered. If a million people pray for the same thing (e.g. - winning the lottery) but only one can have it, then by definition 999,999 people will be left in the cold.
- God doesn't answer medical prayers -- otherwise the U.S. would not need to spend $2 trillion a year on health care.
- God doesn't answer prayers to avert natural disasters -- if he did, hurricanes would never hit the U.S.
- Thank you for repeating verbatim something at the top of the essay.
You can prove it to yourself right now. Simply pray for something. Pray for anything. What Jesus promises in the Bible is crystal clear and completely unambiguous:
- If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. [Matthew 21:21]
- If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:14]
- Nothing will be impossible to you. [Matthew 17:20]
- All things are possible to him who believes. [Mark 9:23]
- For with God nothing will be impossible. [Luke 1:37]
- You must obey the commandments of God for your prayer to be answered. [John 15:9-10]
- You must not refuse to hear the truth when you pray. [Proverbs 28:9]
- You cannot refuse to humble yourself and expect to get your prayers answered. [2 Chronicles 7:14]
- People who forsake God will not have their prayers answered. [2 Chronicles 15:2]
- Provoking God is definitely not a good idea if you are praying. [Deuteronomy 3:26]
- Praying with a hardened heart is a sure way to get God to not listen to your prayer. [Zechariah 7:12-13]
- If someone doesn't have charity, their prayers will not be answered. [Proverbs 21:13]
- If you "cherish sin" in your heart, continuing to commit sins and not repenting, the Lord won't listen. [Psalm 66:18]
- If you pray with faulty motives, you won't get anything. [James 4:3]
- Treating your spouse or companion with dishonor will hinder your prayers. [I Peter 3:7]
- Not having enough faith will ensure that you won't get what you ask for. [Matthew 17: 20-21].
- Sin in your heart means no prayers for you. [James 4:1-15] [Isaiah 59:2].
- Making vain repetitions is a sign that your prayers aren't effective. [Matthew 6:7]
- If you don't forgive the sins and mistakes of others, God won't forgive you, and won't answer your prayers. [Mark 11:25-26.]
- Being a hypocrite won't help you either. [Luke.18:9-14]
- Don't be anxious or worrisome when you pray. [Phillipians 4: 6]
- The Lord won't hear you if you are doubtful and double-minded. [James.1: 5-8].
- Parading prayers is the wrong method for getting them answered positively. [Matthew 6:5]
Will it happen? Of course not. But who's fault is that?
Watch in your mind
Now watch, in your own mind, what happens. You have prayed, but your prayer has not been answered. In your mind, you will start coming up with a thousand excuses -- reasons why Jesus has refused to answer your prayer. It is not his will. It is not part of his plan. This prayer is "too big". This prayer is "too obvious." The Lord works in mysterious ways. It will be answered three years from now, not today. You are not sincere enough. God will eventually inspire scientists to cure all forms of cancer, blah, blah, blah....Yeah, that's really respectful of you. "Blah blah blah" is clearly the mark of a rational individual.
You are an expert at creating excuses like these. You have to be. The reason why you are an expert is because you have been creating excuses like this for Jesus your entire life. Jesus has disappointed you so many times that you expect to be disappointed. That is why creating this list of excuses is automatic for you. Sounds more like a personal confession than a description of Christians. Is this your experience?
There is a reason why God has never answered a prayer to restore an amputated limb, except for the soldier who's ear was chopped off and then healed. It is because God does not answer prayers. Actually, it's probably because amputations are life saving, non-life threatening, merely conveniences, and we were not made with the ability to regenerate limbs. Every "answered prayer" is a coincidence. It is easy to prove it using statistics. Keep deluding yourself.
Proving it on TV
It would also be possible to prove that God does not answer prayers with a reality TV show. Imagine this -- we conduct a nationwide survey, and we find the 1,000 most devout believers in the land. It would be very interesting to determine who would qualify here. People who go to church the most? People who give to charity the most? How in the world would we determine who were the most devout? We assemble them in a studio and ask them to form the nation's most powerful prayer circle. Yes, let's make man the power here. Great call. We then ask them to pray on live TV. Here are some of the challenges we would give them:
- In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says, "For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you." We ask our 1,000 devout believers to pray that Mt. Everest move to Newark, NJ tomorrow. We watch and see what happens. You would assemble a group like this, spending millions of dollars on air time and transportation, and pray for God to do something as stupid as move Mount Everest for no particular reason?
- We bring in a double amputee and have him sit in his wheelchair on the stage. We ask our 1,000 devout believers to pray for his legs to be restored as he is sitting there. We watch and see what happens. See above.
- We find someone suffering from terminal cancer. We bring her on stage on a gurney. She is weak, gaunt and bald. She has just a week or two to live as her metastasized tumor consumes her body. We ask our 1,000 devout believers to pray for a miracle that cures her. We watch and see what happens. Let's say that a miracle does happen. She jumps off the gurney ten minutes later, completely cured. We bring in another patient. Ten minutes later that patient is cured. We bring in another patient, and the cure works again. Why is this not enough for you? So we ask our 1,000 devout believers to pray for the complete elimination of cancer worldwide tomorrow. We watch and see what happens.
- It is hurricane season and a Category 5 hurricane named Johansen is barreling straight toward the United States. We ask our team of 1,000 devout believers to pray that the hurricane be completely eliminated so it does no damage. Let's say that the prayer works. Do you know what this means? It means that the United States will never be threatened by a hurricane again. Every time a hurricane approaches, we can assemble our 1,000 devout believers and they will be able to eliminate the storm. This will save the United States billions of dollars, and thousands of deaths, every year.
- Etc.
You can see what would actually happen. Our team of 1,000 devout believers will not be able to move a mountain. They will not be able to restore the limbs of an amputee. They will not be able to cure cancer worldwide, or even one cancer patient on stage. They will not be able to divert all the hurricanes that hit the United States. They will not be able to accomplish anything reliably through prayer on TV. We all know it. Do we really? Have we actually tried this?
Why is that? Why is it that all of Jesus' promises about the power of prayer are false? It is because God does not answer prayers. Continue to ignore the evidence if you must.
What does it all mean?
Please scroll back several pages and look at Assertion #2. The assertion is that God does not answer prayers. The assertion is wrong. It should at this point be very easy for you to accept Assertion #2. Nope. Still not. We have demonstrated it from a dozen different angles. And by that, you mean two. It is compatible with common sense and the things that you experience every day. Exactly the opposite is compatible, actually. It meshes perfectly with all of the evidence that we see in our world. It's about as far from meshing as you are from rationality. The "power of prayer" is really "the power of coincidence." That should be plainly apparent to you. It's plainly apparent that you haven't done a speck of homework.
In that case, you have discovered a profound truth. Here are several of the implications:
- It means that the world makes sense. If you have been looking at the world wondering why God "answers" some prayers while ignoring billions of others, you now have a sensible explanation for your observations. Rather, there have been sensible explanations for thousands of years.
- When someone says that God "answered my prayers" or that "God sent a miracle," what you are actually witnessing is the power of coincidence.
- It means that there is no supreme being sitting in heaven doling out favors to some people but withholding them from others based on his whims. "Whims" have nothing to do with it. See above.
- It means that when a person says a prayer, he is talking to himself. There is nothing wrong with that -- meditation can be a powerful and beneficial activity. However, there is no God listening to and answering prayers.
- It means that praying for God's intercession in any catastrophe, like a hurricane or a terrorist attack, is pointless.
- It means that public prayers, for example at conventions and sporting events, are a waste of time. There is no one at the other end of the line to hear the prayer.
- It means that humans need to solve the problems of the world. That would be true independent on whether God answered prayers or not. In the Bible God says quite clearly many times that it's OUR job to take care of others. Instead of praying to God to solve, for example, world hunger, you should use that time to work toward a solution to world hunger yourself. God is not going to do a thing about world hunger. Are you working to solve world hunger at all, Marshall Brain? You seem to be spending a great deal of time working on this book, but presume to tell other people to go out and solve the problems in your stead.
- It means that people who believe in "the power of prayer" should not be taken seriously. When someone says to you that God answered his or her prayers, it means that the person is superstitious. The person is just like someone who believes in the power of horoscopes and astrology.
- It means that everything that Jesus says about prayer in the Bible is wrong. Therefore, the Bible is not the "unerring word of the Lord." The Bible is a collection of stories written by primitive men thousands of years ago. We will discuss this topic further in the next section.
If you don't believe me, you can prove it to yourself right now. Simply pray for something concrete. Define "concrete." Then watch as your prayer is ignored. Well, do the people qualify when it comes to the things I've mentioned above?
On a personal level
The fact that God answers no prayers has meaning to you on a very personal level. Let me give you an example of what it means.
Let's say that you have a friend who is 35 years old, and she finds out that she has breast cancer. Obviously she is devastated. The cancer is fairly advanced, and the prognosis does not look immediately promising.
If you are a believer, what is the first thing to do? The first order of business is prayer. Then the advanced believer would create a prayer circle to channel the "Lord's healing power" to your friend.
As you now know, both the prayers and the prayer circle are pointless. God never answers prayers. If prayer circles worked, then we would be able to regenerate the legs of amputees, and we know that we can't. If prayer circles worked, we would not need doctors or hospitals. If prayer circles worked, we would pray that God completely eliminate breast cancer, and no one on the planet would ever get this disease. The effort spent praying is a waste of time.
So what should you do instead of praying? Think about this question: What might actually help your friend? Do not waste the time praying -- spend your time wisely doing something that will actually help your friend. For example:
- Make her family a nice dinner and deliver it to her home.
- Offer to take care of her kids for several days while she recovers from her last round of chemo.
- Make get-well cards to cheer her up.
- Organize a bake sale or telethon to raise money for breast cancer research.
- Go sit by her bedside in the hospital each day and read to her.
- Bring happy movies for her to watch in the hospital.
- Etc.
God does not answer prayers -- the evidence is all around you. Now that you know that for certain, make the most of this knowledge.
Finally. That took forever. Now, onto the Biblical stuff, which I actually enjoy.
© P-Dunn's Apologetics. All rights reserved.
2 comments:
:/ I wonder if Mushy is a broken record, in disguise.
Oh, by the way, your refutation of proof 11 disappeared.
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