MadPhatCat

Don't hold your breath (for a good answer from him that is). I was going to make an analogy with ManM in it, but that would be mean. Just prepare to be disappointed.

Anyway, here's a less dumb analogy. I have a jar full of pennies. I believe there is a Giant Monkey In The Sky (GMITS) that listens to me for some reason. Each day I flip a coin... sometimes it comes up heads, sometimes tails. But I just *love* when it comes up heads. Every day I wish, each day I pray, each day I sacrifice a chicken to the GMITS, so that the penny will come up heads. And wouldn't you know it, sometimes, about 50% of the time, it does! Great Holy Bananas, the Monkey answers my prayers!

That's a much better analogy.

Sigma

I have proof that prayer works (in one very important case). Its personal to me so i don't want to put it on here, however, feel free to PM me if you really want to know.
I'm atheist btw.

Integra96

And since there's no way to prove that the GMITS wasn't altering the outcomes of the coin toss, then I would probably thank the GMIT for a 50% prayer success rate. GMIT...PBUH.

I like the post about free will vs. answered prayers. I often hear about free will from the same people that like to go on about the great things that god does. I wonder which acts of god count as violating the free will of what's being manipulated by the skyguy?

Integra96

I'm not going to PM you for the story, but if you're an atheist, who answered your prayer?

Traum77

Yeah, I think prayers work as Placebo's just as well as anything else. People getting "healed" by evangelists do so because they believe in the method, and only.. erhm... God knows how that works. Praying for an action to occur will make it more likely, even if it's only by a small percent, like say approaching zero. Still, thinking positive thoughts can't really hurt can it?

By the way, I voted that no, they don't work, which I believe.

Sigma

How could i know that?
It just felt as if it was answered by 'something', i don't know what.

At my most atheist - chance.

ManM

Yes, the little boy's mother in the analogy is representative of God. So, does the boy's petition for ice cream work or not? MadPhatCat believes that the mother's actions are random. They might be. Or, they might not be random. The mother is a person, not a force of nature. People can be unpredictable, but does that mean their actions are random and without motive?

And yes, I've prayed to God for courage, and been given it. I've prayed for peace, and been given it. I've prayed for the patience to make it through some rough times, and I made it. I've prayed for my mother's health, and she lived. I've prayed for my brother's health, and he died a slow death. Sometimes I get ice cream, sometimes I don't.

Zeichman

Any serious prayers that I've had have been answered. Any time a friend's life has been in jeopardy and I've prayed, they've ended up without a scratch on them. If you care to rule it down to coincidence, you're more than welcome to, as I'm sure you will.

Integra96

The analogy fails. The mother only stops for ice cream because of the boy. If there was no boy, she wouldn't stop for ice cream. The things that people pray for happen even when people don't pray for them. For example, a man prays that a tornado doesn't develop from a nearby thunderstorm and destroy his rural Oklahoma house and kill his family. So let's say that a tornado doesn't develop and his house and family are spared. The next week, another thunderstorm is brewing above the man's home, but he and his family are away on vacation. Again, the tornado does not develop and nothing happens to the man's house.

Now, if tornadoes only happened in the absence of the prayers by man for them not to exist, then your analogy might be valid. A better analogy would be that the mom was programmed to randomly stop for ice cream, whether or not there was a boy in the car and independently of his asking for ice cream.

MadPhatCat

The analogy also fails because the boy has direct evidence of the mother's existence. The mother also bathes the kid, spanks him, cooks dinner for him, yada yada yada. Lots of directly obserable things. God on the other hand "works in mysterious ways" and hasn't shown himself since way back in the day according to the Bible. In short, even this:

Is lacking. An even better analogy is that the boy is shuttled around by a robotic driver (who randomly stops for ice cream, or not, maybe there is a pattern involved). The boy decides to pray to Aunt Bessie (some woman his parents tell him exists but he has never seen) for the car to stop near the ice cream. And when the car does stop for ice cream, he doesn't think it is random, or that it folows a pattern, he thinks Bessie did it.