beachbum

A co-worker had a stroke and went into a coma in January. Yesterday I received word that he is starting to recover. He is sitting up and is alert. There is a lot of re-learning to go but the prognosis is favorable.

He and most of the people I work with are Adventists. They have all told me that god has helped so much yada, yada, yada
so my question is: according to the fundys that know they have the only true religion, were the prayers of these - wrongly religious adventists any more affective than say a prayer from an atheist?

Talulah

I grew up in the Church of Christ and I know that they believe that God doesn't answer or listen to prayers of any that aren't members of the 'church' (which means all those members of the coc that they themselves think are right, as even some of them aren't considered pleasing to God enough for him to hear their prayers.)

I don't know about other denominations but I would imagine any group that thinks they alone hold the truth would think prayers from another faith to be quite worthless. All the same though, offering prayers is a common Christian practice of saying 'I care enough about you to petition God on your behalf.'

Maybe they think that God will listen to a prayer about a believer, no matter what the faith offering it.

Talulah

MortalWombat

... but don't care enough to actually do something useful like offering to pick your kids up from school, go drop off some bill payments for you, make sure your plants are watered and pets are fed, etc.

Talulah

Right, but God could influence someone to actually care enough to do those things that really needed done...



Talulah

Echo

I would really be interested in hearing some theist replies to this question- particularly from Christian theists.

Does God ignore prayers that are directed at false gods? Nonchristian theists maintain that their prayers *are* answered, so if god is ignoring them, *who* is answering them and why?

If God *is* answering prayers that are directed at false gods, why would he purposely act in a way that he knows will reinforce the praying person's erroneous beliefs?

Ojuice5001

Echo, it seems that you came close to realizing the truth, but fell just short. When a non-Christian prays, his prayers are answered by a non-Christian god. The gods of Rome or pre-Columbian America exist, and they are the gods who are worshipped, knowingly or not, by a North American who is not an Abrahamic worshipper. Your comment is a factor in favor of polytheism.

Bree

I believe that some more liberal Christians believe that if one's heart is in the correct place (right idea, wrong direction) then the prayer will be answered. I asked a few more liberal Christians and they said that God takes into consideration that a person took the time to plead on someone else's behalf, and that it was, in essence, the thought that counted.

I'm pretty sure that if you asked a Fundie the same question you'd get a much different answer.

pug846

I’ve never heard of wront, but I can’t see why their prayers wouldn’t be considered just as good as any other religion.

Mageth

When someone gets sick, and a group of "believers" of whatever faith pray for him/her, there is always many many more people not praying for that person. So if the person recovers, who is to say whether it's the prayers or the non-prayers that influence the "miracle?"

lpetrich

Furthermore, in the late 19th cy. or thereabouts, the British scientist Sir Francis Galton did some systematic studies of prayer fulfillment. He compared the longevity of members of the British royal family to the average of the general population, and he found that the royals had the same length of life, on average, as their subjects -- even though they had been prayed for much more.