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I have my own experience with the powerlessness of prayer. I was deathly sick. I had my church come in and pray for me. Nothing happened. In desperation I went to a doctor who put me on medication and I was healed. God didn't cure me, medicine did.
There is no better way to measure the total bankruptcy of Christianity than to examine the track record of prayer when Christians pray for a desired outcome, follow all the rules and conditions that Jesus lays down, and then have to stand by and watch helplessly as nothing happens. Their loved one dies, they lose their job, they lose their residency and go homeless, they're rendered penniless. They prayed through all of it and prayer got them nowhere. And the best their church can offer them is, "Must be the will of God" or "You must have unconfessed sin in your life" or "God's ways are mysterious" when all they had to say is the unvarnished truth, "Nothing fails like prayer, I'm sorry."
Most Christians don't know that there is an ironclad promise made by the Bible that specifically singles out illness--God will heal sickness specifically--that is apart from the ones Jesus made in the four gospels that, generally speaking, God will grant any request if it is made in Jesus' name. Here it is:
Quote:
14 Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. James 5:14-16
Did you get that?
*If you're sick, even dying--cancer, Hodgkins, diabetes, heart disease, you name it--call for the church elders.
*Let the church elders pray over you
*Anoint the person with oil in the name of Jesus
*Jesus will heal the sick person
Simple as that.
Except that Jesus won't. The best promises you can find in the Bible that God will rescue your loved ones from evil fail miserably and there is no place Christian conmen can hide when it comes to this fact. Study after study bear out the fact that prayer has absolutely no force at all in healing someone who's sick or dying. Christians try to wiggle around this by claiming that James isn't promising physical healing but rather, spiritual healing. Really? Look at the next line, "The Lord shall raise him up."
Surely Christians can't wiggle out of that one! Don't we expect that James is using the phrase "raise up" the way Matthew uses it in 8:14-15 when Jesus raised up Peter's mother?
Quote:
Now when Jesus had come into Peter’s house, He saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. 15 So He touched her hand, and the fever left her. And she arose [rose up] and served them. Matthew 8:14-15
This is not rocket science, folks. If there is any single proof prayer is Christianity's Achilles' heel then it has to be this:
Quote:
Seeking to assess the effect of third-party prayer on patient outcomes, investigators found NO EVIDENCE for divine intervention.
Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG coronary artery bypass graft surgery, but certainty of receivingintercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.
It's a double whammy. Not only did prayer fail utterly in helping patients avoid complications from bypass surgery, but those who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse. The next time you're at death's door and your Christian friend says, "I'll pray for you" scream at him, "Don't you dare!" And then run for the hills because you know he's going to anyway--chances are because he's trying to squirm out of paying back all that cash he owes you.
Last edited by mensaguy; 03-25-2019 at 04:28 AM..
Reason: Removed extra quote tag
I have my own experience with the powerlessness of prayer. I was deathly sick. I had my church come in and pray for me. Nothing happened. In desperation I went to a doctor who put me on medication and I was healed. God didn't cure me, medicine did.
Their stock answer to that would be that their god gave the doctors the means to cure you, gave the doctors the intelligence to become doctors and invent the medicines that cured you.
God sometimes does not help people who have not confessed Jesus Christ and have no exercised faith to receive healing , as God prefers to heal the soul first ....... Jesus said ``these only come out with prayer and fasting`` for the un-confessed.............. The their are many who ignore the witness of healing in churches where faith is used for Jesus and then deny this power of Christ
My Lord God,
even now I accept at Your hands,
cheerfully and willingly,
with all its anxieties,
pains and sufferings,
whatever kind of death
it shall please You to be mine.
God sometimes does not help people who have not confessed Jesus Christ and have no exercised faith to receive healing , as God prefers to heal the soul first ....... Jesus said ``these only come out with prayer and fasting`` for the un-confessed.............. The their are many who ignore the witness of healing in churches where faith is used for Jesus and then deny this power of Christ
Right ... because going without food is precisely what a sick person needs to do.
I never understood why people buy into these nonsense rituals that always demand that a person go without things that are necessary for survival - like food and sleep. If someone told me they had a vision from god after going days or weeks without either one, I won't believe them for a nanosecond since the brain does all kinds of funny things when you deprive it of nutrients and sleep.
Heh, I remember once driving all the way from the Washington-Idaho border all the way to Pennsylvania straight through with no stops for sleep. By the time I was in Cleveland, I was seeing all kinds of funky things, no doubt one of them was god or Jesus or Gabriel. I think it took 2.5 days of almost constant sleep before the hallucinations finally stopped.
I just find it rather odd that you can't just pray. Oh no. You also have to put your body through rigors that cause the brain to hallucinate. Is there a correlation there between deprivation and so-called visions, messages, and guidance from god? You bet there is.
In any event - yes, sometimes god doesn't heal people who haven't confessed Jesus Christ.
And yet - sometimes he does.
Christianity isn't the only religion where the occasional "miracle" occurs. But, there is no evidence whatsoever that any sudden healing is the result of a god - of any kind - much less evidence of magic. All it means is that something unexplained happened. As religions are wont to do, if anything out of the ordinary happens, it's because of god.
And why would god care if you confessed Jesus Christ? No where in the Bible does it say that Jesus is a part of god; nowhere does it say that Jesus is god's avatar on earth; nowhere does it say that Jesus and god have any real connection at all. That's all Christian dogma that was added later.
Their stock answer to that would be that their god gave the doctors the means to cure you, gave the doctors the intelligence to become doctors and invent the medicines that cured you.
If they did that one, it would be accepting that prayer doesn't work; science does. But they want to give the credit to God anyway.
This is giving up a huge amount of ground, if only they know it. They have conceded that they have No valid evidence and revert to a faith -claim "God is behind all the stuff that looks either natural or man -made."
It's the same when they use other other apologetic - 'God always answers prayers - sometimes the answer is "No". Fine, and as good an answer as Vic's 'The world looks like nothing is being done about 'Evil' because God has good reasons'. It's a workable answer, but Occam's razor says the simpler answer is the better. 'that prayers would be answered Yes, No and Wait would be just the same if there was no god there, and the evil of the world looks just like there was no god there is better explained if there is no god there'.
Effectively, they gave up all the evidence without a fight and reverted to a faith -claim based on Nothing. You neeid a Faith -based mindset to think that is anything but losing the argument. You need to have a brain said to the illogical belief that a god has to be taken as true until disproves, not the logical 'the god -claim has no reason to be believed until validated'.
That was why Vic's head was theist even if he claimed to be atheist and is why 'Yes, No and later' doesn't win the argument, but gives it away.
God sometimes does not help people who have not confessed Jesus Christ and have no exercised faith to receive healing , as God prefers to heal the soul first ....... Jesus said ``these only come out with prayer and fasting`` for the un-confessed.............. The their are many who ignore the witness of healing in churches where faith is used for Jesus and then deny this power of Christ
The evidence refutes that. I have had several experiences that could easily be presented as miraculous. But I have never believedand was not praying to Jesusgod or any other. There are many other occurrences in my life that have turned out pretty well, Random Factors be praised. That is why anecdotal evidence of answered prayers or miracles are worthless as evidence of a god.
From what Ive seen and heard, healings due to 'prayer' are usually only the type where the explanation COULD be anything, in other words, we will never see an amputee miraculously grow his lost appendage back overnight, no matter how much they pray! (there would be no other explanation, other than prayer, divine intervention, if such a thing did happen).
Really? Your hatred of God and prayer and refusal to consider divine healing is somehow PROOF that prayer doesn't work. Well, good for you. You can live your entire life this way for now.
From what Ive seen and heard, healings due to 'prayer' are usually only the type where the explanation COULD be anything, in other words, we will never see an amputee miraculously grow his lost appendage back overnight, no matter how much they pray! (there would be no other explanation, other than prayer, divine intervention, if such a thing did happen).
Of course not, because we know that amputated limbs cannot possibly grow back. This example that some people seem to find wildly hilarious and a big knee-slapper to say is one I find particularly stupid. I'm the daughter of a double amputee. He was a religious man, but he was also an engineer and very logical. I doubt that in the 55 years he lived after losing his lower legs in WWII he ever once entertained the idea that he could have his feet grow back by praying. I doubt any amputee on the planet ever has.
At any rate, teaching people that all you have to do is pray for healing is damaging. When I was six, my same-age cousin died of leukemia, even though I prayed for her every night. I truly believed that I had not prayed correctly or paid enough attention during my bedtime prayers and that's why she died.
I also had to pray for my aunt "to get better". She was mentally retarded and had cerebral palsy. Brain damage at birth due to lack of oxygen because a superstitious nurse wouldn't remove the amniotic sac from over her face until the doctor got there. She was NEVER going to "get better".
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