winstonjen

It's a feeling he has.

Faust, don't forget the image!

EGGO

I guess that's ok. But I'd like to ask what were you praying for (assuming your prayer was asking for change, because if you were just praying, then how would you know it just 'works'?) and what was the outcome (without even the slightest hint of a lie for Jesus, you know he hates that). And we would look into it as objectively as possible.

XtrueOloveX

I have prayed before and i really cannot explain it or provide any tangible proof for it, but the things that I have sat down and prayed for with concentration have been met with positive results.
(this is just one random example) -> I prayed once when I went to Mexico. When we got to the border, it was raining and really gloomy outside. I prayed for some sunshine for the duration of my stay in my mom's hometown. When we finally did get there, it was sunny and the sky was blue with only a few clouds. It stayed that way until the day I left. That morning, it began to rain and the sky became cloudy again.
There isn't any rational explanation I can offer as to why this happened, but it did happen.

Magus55

Prayer by definition is supernatural. There is no natural explanation, it just works.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Magus55
There is no natural explanation, it just works.

OK, pray that I'll convert. Or pray for world peace. Then we'll see if it works.

EGGO

Well I guess while we're on the subject, lemme tell you something that happened to me not even a week ago. It was raining hard, so hard I had to turn on my blinkers, and you could feel the rain pushing the car back.

In this one 'S' turn I put my hand out (like I was casting a spell) and I said "Sky clear". When I made that last turn on the S, the rain stopped COMPLETELY, and there I saw, sunshine shining through the clouds. It wasn't CLEAR, but it was definately something that made me feel powerful.

Yes, that is unedited.

Jimmy Higgins

So doesn't placebo, but you don't see pharmeseutical companies selling bottles of it in the drug stores.

Ojuice5001

Actually, that's a good analogy. Prayer works, but if there are thousands of competing gods, and the god you're praying to might not end upf granting your request, and many processes in the world aren't determined by the gods' will at all...why, the effectiveness of prayer just might be comparable to that of a placebo. (Of course, this means that if you pray for the healing of yourself, or that of someone who believes in the power of prayer, you gain the benefits of both prayer and placebo--you've doubled the healing.)

Let's follow the prayer-placebo analogy. The gods work not by making things happen (intitating events with no natural cause) but by controlling the way things happen (determining that a natural event shall happen in this way, when it could have happened in that). Placebos are the same way. They don't cause a healing process like an actual drug does; they increase the effectiveness of your natural healing processes.

So what is the use of a placebo? You use placebos either in conjuction with other treatments, or when you've exhausted all other treatments. It's the same way with prayer. This is not only how most laymen use petitionary prayer, it is how they should use it.

Tickfast

I prayed to Jesus for world peace, i prayed to the Sun God Ra for a meal, and i prayed to the vinyl replica of a movie statue of Kali on my desk for a $1 win with my next lottery ticket.

According to the headlines, Jesus is a no-show.
A week later, my boss invites everyone with a September Birthday to a lunch-provided meeting. Score.
And my next payday lottery ticket was a $2 win.

Conclusions?
Kali, or at least my Kali Toy, is the most powerful, for she (it?) gave me twice as much as i asked for.

So, i sacrificed my hamster to her, and asked for lasting peace throughout half of the world.
Now, just have to wait for it...

Biff the unclean

Sure they do. It's called homeopathic medicine. How they work is by similia similibus curantur or 'like cures like'.
They put a natural 'poison', that causes an ill, in a dilution called a 30X. That would be one part medicine to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 parts pure water. Which would come to about one molecule per a 7,874 gallon swimming pool. The claim is that this water retains the 'memory' of the medicine. Then a drop of this memory water is placed on a sugar pill and allowed to dry. How the memory doesn't evaporate is a question you aren't supposed to ask.
The sugar pill is now homeopathic medicine. All natural alternative medicine