"Answered" Prayers

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TILL

>Have some people had their prayers answered or is it just that some people

>have had things turn out the way that they prayed?  If we could suppose

that

>in a group of 1,000 people who do not pray, there will be a variety of

>desires and wishes that these people have, which turn out the way that they

>wished or hoped, whereas some in the group won't have their wishes and

hopes

>fulfilled, what could we conclude except that in life some people realize

>their hopes and wishes but others don't.  Now substitute the word "prayer"

>for "wishes" and "hopes," and you are left with the obvious fact that in a

>large group of people who pray, some of them will have life turn out for

>them the way they prayed, whereas others won't.  How do you determine

>whether prayer or just chance and circumstance was responsible for some

>getting what they prayed for?


KOLLER
When I was a devout fundie Christian, my life was about average. When I
realized the error of my ways and abandoned Christianity, my life improved
and my outlook was more positive. Now I cannot necessarily conclude that the
abscence of Christian belief was the result of the improvement nor do I want
to. My point is that if one were to take my life now, with all of its
successes, and superimpose on top of it a "prayer life," it would be easy
for myself and others to conclude that the prayer life is responsible for
the success.

IMO, shit happens. Shit means good things and bad things and there need not
be a reason for the good or the bad. However, if one superimposes a "prayer
life" on a persons current state, I think we would find results that tell us
what we already know -- there is no correlation between one's status in life
and their praying habits, or lack thereof.

People will believe what they want to believe and that means interpreting
outcomes to mean that it is "God's will" or is an "answer" to prayer. I
think Dan Barker addressed this in his book, "Losing Faith in Faith." In
fact, he had a story that described how a family had prayed before they took
to the road in their car. There was a car accident and there were some
fatalities in the car they struck, but none in their own car. Their
response? "Thank God for sparing our lives."


>From this one can only surmise that the people in the other car didn't

prayer or did prayer but were less successfuly in impressing God with their
petitions. At any rate, Barker astutely observed that had the people in the
praying car not prayed in the first place, the accident may have been
avoided altogether!

As I said shit happens and what we make of that shit is entirely in our own
heads. If a Muslim wants to believe Allah answers prayer, you can be sure
they will give Allah his fair share of credit for "answering" their prayers.
Ditto for Christians and other theistic religions.

Another phenomenon is that people have selective memories. Since prayer life
is not studied scientifically with tabulation of successes and failures,
people naturally tend to remember the positive outcomes and either forget or
minimize the negative outcomes. Again, I believe Barker used a story to
explain this point:

A person drives to work everyday and is met with an over-crowded parking
lot. The person prays to find a "good" parking spot and sometimes does. But
nine times out of ten they don't. When asked about their "answered prayers,"
very few will say only 10% of the time were their prayers answered. It is
not necessarily deceptive reporting on their part. Rather it is a
psychological mechanism to reinforce their beliefs that God answers prayer
(and if he doesn't there must be reason).

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