What are answered prayers ?

[Lost]

Lately, I was wondering what actually people of faith mean when they talk about answered prayers ?

 

Sometimes I've got this impression that faith in God will never stop until people continue receiving answers to their prayers.

 

Are answered prayers and coincidences a result of manifestation through the power of our brain?

 

According to Tik Tok spirituality, New Age spirituality we can use positive thoughts and daily affirmations to attract what we think...

[♦ Fuego ♦]

Hard to tell actually. Believers used to say that God answers prayers even if it doesn't look like it, or looks like the opposite. They also claim he lives inside of them, but never really tells them anything of substance, preferring a constant shell-game of "Where's the will of God?" Believers will say after a horrible traffic accident that someone who lived is a "miracle" while those that were left maimed or perished are not mentioned. They have to keep up a constant verbal reminder that god is faithful and good, because if they stop self-programming they will start to see through the facade. They don't have to remind themselves that gravity is always there for them, they just know. But god, they have to remind themselves several times a day through quotes, memes, music, and sermons. The best test of prayer is something measurable, like a missing leg growing back, something simple for Jesus. Converts are lured in by tales of magical cures by Jesus, and stories of standing up to entrenched religion. Once inside they learn that there are no magic cures anymore (Baptist), or there are but you REALLY have to believe (Pentecostal) and then they won't look like what you expected because god is so deep and mysterious. Converts also then get entrenched in religion, and standing up to that gets one labeled as "contentious", a slanderous term in Pentecostal circles. 

 

The best answers to life issues generally come from introspection and learning about human nature, then making choices towards maturity and healthy living. 

[Myrkhoos]

Well, I don't have a definitive answer. I don't think there is ONE answer.

    But my beef is that answered prayer = God , unanswered prayer also = God. 

    By the way I have no qualm with the hypothesis that our conscious beliefs influence not only our perceptions and physical body ( placebo effect, etc) but also a little part of the exterior world. Our brains function with electromagnetic waves that interact with other EM waves so who knows maybe that interaction influences the world. Current science is not all possible science. Not by a longshot probably.

    I mean astrology seems stupid in a way, but maybe the ancients discovered an empirical effect - the influence of starlight upon human life and natural life or at least intriguing associations and explained in their own ways. Religion starts to sound like a proto-science when looked at this way, like alchemy before chemistry. Not the ONLY way to look at religion but interesting model nonetheless.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

I'd like to be able to say something really profound here; but in my experience, an answered prayer is simply whatever one wants or needs it to be.  Whatever the believer needs to believe in order for the religious virus to perpetuate itself and survive.  Any circumstance, from finding a parking space to the death of an innocent child, can act as an answered prayer.  It is the misfiring of neurons that allow one to perceive ordinary situations through the lense of faith, in much the same way as the alcoholic sees everything through the bottle.

[Myrkhoos]

5 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I'd like to be able to say something really profound here; but in my experience, and answered prayer is simply whatever one wants or needs it to be.  Whatever the believer needs to believe in order for the religious virus to perpetuate itself and survive.  Any circumstance, from finding a parking space to the death of an innocent child, can act as an answered prayer.  It is the misfiring of neurons that allow one to perceive ordinary situations through the lense of faith, in much the same way as the alcoholic sees everything through the bottle.

This. My point exactly. Many times unfalsifiable propositions.

[florduh]

"Father God, we ask you to blah blah in the name of Jesus, and may Thy will be done." That's how most prayers went in my former church so that the obviously unanswered ones were covered with a technicality.

[Lost]

That what bothers me the most are testimonies of people, who say that through prayers they communicated with God and they were healed from addiction, deadly disease or they found love - the perfect godly spouse of life.

 

Some people say that they prayed for specific sign and IT happened.

Or something that they prayed for came TRUE in real life in details.

 

I don't know, is IT magic or our brain through the Universe make things happen?

 

I had situations when I thought about something and IT happened.

[◊ Krowb ◊]

Confirmation bias & neglect of probability.  Possible, repeatable events do occur.  The fact that someone prayed for such an event beforehand does not change the underlying probability.  What does change is the person's interpretation of the event (confirmation bias).  You could also include some examples as a correlation/causation error.

 

Every . single . religion with a deity or deities who miraculously perform miracles has adherents who pray to said deities for events that occur in life, whether prayed for or not.  Due to the sheer number of requests for actual possible events, over a large enough iterations, the timing of some events will almost certainly coincide.  The more mundane the "miracle" and the more often the request, the more likely the two will happen to occur together.  I'm certain you'll find some people who will say something akin to "I was planning on praying that night/on my way to church/temple to pray X - when Lo' and behold! the prayer was answered. god is good!"

 

Humans are reliably bad at probability.  If there is magic, it's so magical as to equal random chance when subjected to repeated trials.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

It's been said that the best way to find miracles is to look for them.  I don't agree with the inherent woo behind this sentiment; but the truth of it remains.  It all has to do with perspective.  When someone prays and a "miracle" happens, it is because they were looking to see it.  It doesn't mean "god" did anything, as is evidenced by the number of prayers that go unanswered and the number of those the believer is able to overlook I'm favor of this one time god came through for them.  Much like people who look for beauty will find it, even in the midst of chaos and tribulation, those who look for miracles will see the hand of god even in the death of a child or the loss of gainful employment.  It's all about perspective. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

Another way of looking at it is that in an infinite universe filled with infinite possibilities, it is statistically certain that, eventually, every thing will get around to happening.  So, I pray for a parking space and one opens up.  What is more probable?  That an infinite god overlooked all the starving children in Africa, all the battered women in the world, all the victims of human trafficking and slavery, just so he could reach down from heaven and move that Prius out of the way just for me because I'm just so special to him?  Or that, in an infinite universe filled with infinite possibilities, it occasionally happens that the right car pulls out of a parking space at just the right moment for me to pull into it?

[◊ Weezer ◊]

I got the same results praying to a fence post.  Sometimes they were answered.   sometimes they were not.