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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Power of Prayer?
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Komensky
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# 8675
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
My mother had an account of having been aware of being prayed for. She, and a number of other older ladies of the church were in London as witnesses in a family court session to determine the future of the child of an ended marriage. On the other side there was obvious evil concerned, and a history of skillful manipulation. The ladies were afraid. But, at home, there was a prayer group in action throughout the time of the trial, and they were all aware of being surrounded with God's love and support as they faced the other side's legal representatives. The right conclusion resulted.
Stepping on spiders makes it rain. I can prove it. Just this morning I stepped on a spider and within minutes it rained. Not just that, I knew someone, I think he was a doctor and he was working for free in the heart of the Amazon (or was it Uganda?) and he saw for himself that when he stepped on a spider it rained within seconds. With evidence like that, you can't tell me that stepping on spiders doesn't make it rain.
K.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
This is the argument that if one thing is wrong then everything is wrong. It's an interesting argument, but it doesn't exactly prove anything. It doesn't even let atheism off the hook, since atheists aren't always wedded to the most rational or objective of medical treatments.
Moreover, very few Christians - and not even Jesus himself - have argued against the use of medical intervention.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
Stepping on spiders makes it rain. I can prove it. Just this morning I stepped on a spider and within minutes it rained. Not just that, I knew someone, I think he was a doctor and he was working for free in the heart of the Amazon (or was it Uganda?) and he saw for himself that when he stepped on a spider it rained within seconds. With evidence like that, you can't tell me that stepping on spiders doesn't make it rain.
K.
There must be no spiders left in the North West of England! ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
@SvitlanaV2
What one category thing wrong makes what larger category wrong?
[ 26. January 2018, 11:39: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
Good question.
Komensky seems to have brought up the spider-stepping theory in order to imply that one silly religious theory disproves all silly religious theories. I was critical of that idea.
Still, I agree we can't prove the 'wrongness' (or effectiveness) of one religious system or another. That's a subjective stance - as is the stance that no religious system can possibly be 'right'.
[ 26. January 2018, 12:07: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
My mother had an account of having been aware of being prayed for. She, and a number of other older ladies of the church were in London as witnesses in a family court session to determine the future of the child of an ended marriage. On the other side there was obvious evil concerned, and a history of skillful manipulation. The ladies were afraid. But, at home, there was a prayer group in action throughout the time of the trial, and they were all aware of being surrounded with God's love and support as they faced the other side's legal representatives. The right conclusion resulted.
Stepping on spiders makes it rain. I can prove it. Just this morning I stepped on a spider and within minutes it rained. Not just that, I knew someone, I think he was a doctor and he was working for free in the heart of the Amazon (or was it Uganda?) and he saw for himself that when he stepped on a spider it rained within seconds. With evidence like that, you can't tell me that stepping on spiders doesn't make it rain.
K.
I was being extremely careful in my post. It was essential to avoid identification of any one or any case. But if those ladies had not been aware of the support directed to them, they would have found it very difficult, if not impossible, to give the evidence that would ensure that a child was not left in the grasp of a very evil person, to go down a very dark road. (I don't like to accuse people of being evil - I think this is the only person I have felt it appropriate for.)
Examples of versions of the elephant powder story are trivialising something they felt to be important, and which I agree to have been important. If it were fantasy, it was a vital fantasy, and did good. The spider belief wouldn't be, and wouldn't.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Penny S. Chill. Works for me: No spider rain claim is being made.
SvitlanaV2. Robust as ever. He might be wrong, but he's not wrong. Magical thinking just don't cut it. Says he who has rediscovered that the wind blows where it will.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Going back to the OP after a real life discussion this week, I believe in the power of prayer to change me, the person praying, and a group of people praying together.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Rationally it can't not. Incidentally the wind may blow accordingly or one may more likely adjust one's trim to Him.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Komensky
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# 8675
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Posted
The spider yarn is introduced because (yet again) someone has said 'someone prayed for someone for X to happen and X happened, therefore God did it.
K.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
Posts: 1784 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
From epidemiology and public health: Bradford Hill causation criteria. Prayer passes perhaps #6, plausibility. Not sure about the others. In posting this, I'm not saying necessarily that science criteria for assessing causation is fair with prayer, but maybe it helps to think systematically about what we're doing when we pray. We are not required are we to suspend our critical judgement and reason when we go into a church or get down on to our knees are we? (does anyone else bother getting on to their knees any more outside of a church?).
I wonder if some of our praying is egotistical, that it makes us feel if we are sharing God's power? The televangelists and evangelicals often seem to have adopted this without questioning it when they "slay in the spirit" and otherwise channel the power of Jesus to cure people of whatever ailment or suffering.
I think we also run the risk of shutting ourselves off from the sinful nature of humanity and the people who don't pray.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
The spider yarn is introduced because (yet again) someone has said 'someone prayed for someone for X to happen and X happened, therefore God did it.
K.
Steady K. I don't see any such claim?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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MaryLouise
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# 18697
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Posted
When I was thinking about converting in my early 20s, I went off to do a weekend retreat at a Catholic convent with a small chapel. I was a doubting cynic from a largely agnostic background who wanted to believe in something, anything, to give me some meaning in life. I had almost no understanding of what I was supposed to do in prayer.
One afternoon I was sitting upstairs in a deep gallery overlooking the nave and altar when an elderly woman came in and set out flowers around the church. Then I heard her talking and assumed at first that she was talking to someone else whom I hadn’t noticed. After a while I realized she was praying aloud. I didn’t want to embarrass her by getting up and just shrunk back into my corner and hoped she wouldn’t see me. The idea of inadvertent eavesdropping horrified me, but I was too flustered and shy to know what to do.
She didn’t say anything especially personal or revealing. She thanked God for helping her find the answers to something that had worried her for some weeks. She talked about how lonely she felt now that an old friend was dead and how she missed him. Then she asked what she should do about a difficulty at work. She asked that her sister find peace of mind about moving house. Again she went quiet and listened for a little, then she told God about something beautiful – a flowering climber -- she had seen earlier. She went silent for another few minutes and then got up and went out.
It wasn’t a monologue, it was a conversation. The Presence she was talking to was ‘real’, a tenderhearted beloved Friend that was quite different from the thin judgmental abstraction I had been trying to pray at for months. Someone had told me faith was contagious and I suddenly realised that I wanted to find her God and it might be possible. A door opened on an entirely subjective, shared, mysterious kind of ‘getting to know You’ process called prayer that led to intimate relationship, being heard and known and loved by God rather than just making attempts to convince myself that some version of deity existed. That glimpse into a stranger’s inner life with God was a gift, a beginning. Her prayer changed me.
I express this kind of thing badly and tend to avoid theological or rational arguments about prayer, especially when I feel the other person is just wanting to score points, dismiss or trivialise a profound and significant experience (relationship) in my life. I’m still something of a doubting cynic and there aren’t many certainties or proofs in my faith life.
And I’m often grateful and relieved that some of my most heartfelt and urgent prayers have gone ‘unanswered’ because I didn’t know myself well and didn’t have the bigger picture at the time. Over and over again, though, I have felt guided and transformed by prayer and believe deeply in intercessory prayer, that the God we 'know' and love whether as Presence or Absence is listening and cares.
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“As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.”
-- Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Thank you MaryLouise.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
MaryLouise: quote:
Over and over again, though, I have felt guided and transformed by prayer and believe deeply in intercessory prayer, that the God we 'know' and love whether as Presence or Absence is listening and cares.
Yes.
Anything that happens in our lives and the lives of those prayed for is often then seen through a variety of lenses from ascribing everything to the actions of an interventionist God through to Komensky's stepping on spiders analogy.
I have come to the place where I am not happy to do that level of dissection of people's experiences and I avoid the limitations of having certainty in any direction. I just don't think it does justice to the complexity of life.
But anything and everything that happens can become a spur to further prayer and the deepening of spiritual connection of those praying and sometimes those being prayed for IMO.
I find it inexplicable in rational terms (a mystery) and therein lies its power for me.
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
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Komensky
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# 8675
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Posted
Some of these responses answer my original question. The answer seems to be 'no'; no matter what scientific method may reveal, people will believe in the 'power' of prayer operating something like The Force, whereby external objects and people can be change. I'm a little bit saddened to hear that will continue to use intercessory prayer in the way covered in the study, knowing that they will have have no effect or make people worse.
Thanks.
K.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
Posts: 1784 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2004
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
K. I'm as rationalist as the day is long and do not believe for one moment that the laws of physics are ever contravened. Ever. Except when they incontrovertibly are. They haven't been for millennia. I also believe that in Christ is 'Yes!', to the good. That we know Christ through the New Testament and through His and His Father's Spirit. The Holy Spirit has yearnings, desires, purposes for His Church. When we pray as individuals and collectively we may align with that, with 'The (unforced, unforceful) Force', where we wouldn't if we hadn't. We may become the only hands, ears, mouths, wallets that He has by prayer.
How does that make anything magical happen apart from metaphorically? A very limited analogy is Sir Fred Hoyle's 'A for Andromeda' nicked by Carl Sagan in 'Contact' a generation later, in that in them we interact with a broadcast computer program, a torrent, a wind of... encouragement - we get with the program. We don't change it. We don't bend it to our will. And it doesn't take over ours or our environment. The Holy Ghost is like a Joshua Von Neumann machine. By seeking Him we can't not be changed by Him.
[ 29. January 2018, 16:21: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
In my example, what happened as the result of the prayer was that the witnesses in court were enabled to give a good account of the situation despite opposition from the opposing side and their legal representative, which they would have not felt so able to do without the knowledge that they were being prayed for. It is possible, therefore, that the prayer indirectly influenced the outcome, by enabling the witnesses to counter a very plausible person who was none-the-less a very nasty piece of work.
I was not using this as an example of the "God sent me a parking space" sort of thing. It looks to me like the sort of thing that prayer should be expected to do.
[ 29. January 2018, 17:42: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
Some of these responses answer my original question. The answer seems to be 'no'; no matter what scientific method may reveal, people will believe in the 'power' of prayer operating something like The Force, whereby external objects and people can be change. I'm a little bit saddened to hear that will continue to use intercessory prayer in the way covered in the study, knowing that they will have have no effect or make people worse.
Thanks.
K.
Your references don't prove that all prayer makes all people worse. It doesn't prove that all prayer is useless. It was a test under very specific conditions.
The best we can say is that we probably shouldn't tell hospital patients (or, if you prefer, any sick person) we're praying for them, if we don't know their spiritual and psychological condition.
I don't know why you find this hard to understand, as I'm sure you've had to make appropriate use of statistical data as a part of your education.
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