The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

[MikeG]

This thread has been split off from the Second Channel of Communication thread.

Posted By: Agatha

If man alone is running the world, as you would have it, then he needs to turn control over to God asap.

OK, sounds good. How do we contact this god of yours? And how do we know he's heard us? Does he have an email address?

 

[blue triangle]

OK, sounds good. How do we contact this god of yours? And how do we know he's heard us? Does he have an email address?

Pray to him, sincerely.

If you pray regularly and sincerely you will be heard and your life will change. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

 

[MikeG]

Pray to him, sincerely.

If you pray regularly and sincerely you will be heard and your life will change. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Please cite some evidence that this works. I work on evidence, not what people say. So perhaps you could find a nice big double blind study somewhere with statistically significant results. Once you've done that, then we can start talking.

 

[Slowvehicle]

If man alone is running the world, as you would have it, then he needs to turn control over to God asap.

Wait...

...according to you, your "multi-omni" 'god' IS, in fact, in control.

No wonder you leave "omnibenevolent" out of your laundry list.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Pray to him, sincerely.

If you pray regularly and sincerely you will be heard and your life will change. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

"If you sincerely decide to believe as I do, you will come to accept why you should believe as I do; and my 'god' will "save" you from the things it will do to you if you don't let it "save" you..."

Perhaps you should "aquaint yourself[sic]" with the paucity of your circular arguments regarding your superstition.

 

[blue triangle]

Wait...

...according to you, your "multi-omni" 'god' IS, in fact, in control.

No wonder you leave "omnibenevolent" out of your laundry list.

Overall, yes, but we also have free will.

 

[tsig]

If man alone is running the world, as you would have it, then he needs to turn control over to God asap.

Why does anything have to be running the world?

 

[fagin]

Why does anything have to be running the world?

That's my job, but I like to keep it quiet. And please don't call me anything.

You may call me sir.

 

[blue triangle]

Why does anything have to be running the world?

I never said it had to be that way. But that is the way it appears to me to be. Even if you try to take God out of things, there are still the forces of nature 'running' the world. So something is always 'in charge' and our freedoms are limited.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Overall, yes, but we also have free will.

I see. Your 'god' is omni-enough to create humans in such a way that it can allow them to create suffering; and picayune enough to blame humans for acting as it created them. Not to mention sloppy at maths.

Some of your "omni's are slippping...

 

[SusanB-M1]

Pray to him, sincerely.

If you pray regularly and sincerely you will be heard and your life will change. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

When you pray, either silently or aloud, where do you think your words go to, and how do they get there? If you are alone, who or what hears them? If you assume God, I expect you think that God considers whether or not to do anything about it. Perhaps the degree of sincerity is taken into account. How do you know whether what happens next would have happened anyway regardless of whether a prayer has been thought or said, or has been answered or rejectedd by God?

I am not sure whether the book, The Improbability Principle' by Prof David Hand, is relevant here, but I wonder if it would answer some of your questions. The author was a speaker at a meeting I went to and was most interesting.

 

[Slowvehicle]

I never said it had to be that way. But that is the way it appears to me to be. Even if you try to take God out of things, there are still the forces of nature 'running' the world. So something is always 'in charge' and our freedoms are limited.

You keep changing your mind about what it is you are selling.

 

[MikeG]

He's everyone's God.......

Nope. He's not mine. I'm certain he is of no interest to most Chinese. Your god is an invention of the human mind, and you can keep that little figment of some Arab goat-herder's imagination to yourself, thanks very much.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Nope. He's not mine. I'm certain he is of no interest to most Chinese. Your god is an invention of the human mind, and you can keep that little figment of some Arab goat-herder's imagination to yourself, thanks very much.

Which, according to the OP, demonstrates that it (that 'god') does not exist...

 

[blue triangle]

Nope. He's not mine. I'm certain he is of no interest to most Chinese. Your god is an invention of the human mind, and you can keep that little figment of some Arab goat-herder's imagination to yourself, thanks very much.

If it were proven beyond doubt that God is not an invention, but our Creator and Sustainer, and that the only way to get in contact with God is to pray, would you pray?

 

[Slowvehicle]

If it were proven beyond doubt that God is not an invention, but our Creator and Sustainer, and that the only way to get in contact with God is to pray, would you pray?

In what way do you suggest that such might be "proven beyond doubt"?

 

[tsig]

If it were proven beyond doubt that God is not an invention, but our Creator and Sustainer, and that the only way to get in contact with God is to pray, would you pray?

Which god are you talking about?

 

[blue triangle]

Which god are you talking about?

Let's just say a 'field of consciousness' from which everything came and which all religions are attempts to understand. Most have a name for this Consciousness, and although Buddhism doesn't, it does have concepts such as Infinite Love and the Buddha Nature. Let's say they are all like the blind men touching different parts of the elephant, because I don't want to lean towards any particular religion for this question. Let's callit Infinite Consciousness, or IC for short.

Let's just say, hypothetically, that it is proven beyond all doubt that IC exists, that IC gave birth to your consciousness in some way and that you can contact IC through prayer. Would you pray to IC?

 

[fagin]

Prove it and I'll consider it.

But read up on what 'proof' is first.

 

[Seismosaurus]

But in the case of John 1.1, nobody knew that e even existed! It wasn't known until the late 17th Century. How do you explain that?

I did explain that. The people who wrote John 1.1 did not write it to contain e. What happened is that after we discovered e, somebody fiddled about with John 1.1 in order to make it say e.

I could take a text that was 1,000 years old and fiddle about with it to make it say "President Obama". That is not an amazing and difficult to explain fact, because it doesn't show that the people who wrote the text knew about President Obama. It simply proves that I, the one doing the manipulating, know about him now.

But you have still to explain how it could have been done. The verse still had to make grammatical sense too. Finally, you don't mention how this person simultaneously managed to work the rest of the patterns in. It was certainly done, but was, and still is, far beyond human capacity.

No. Because once again : the text was not written with this information "encoded" within it. This information was assigned to the text after the fact. So there is absolutely nothing to explain.