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Being a non-believer, I have never prayed, beyond a few frivolous prayers as a child ("God, please let me get an A on my Biology test tomorrow...")
I'm interested to know about people who pray and then their prayers are not answered. Apparently, if a person prays, they believe "God" is listening to them, correct? Let's say that their dog is hit by a car and is hanging to life by a thread. They pray to God that he spare Fido and allow him to live on many more healthy years.
If Fido does recover, do they believe God listened and healed the pooch? Conversely, if Fido dies, how they do they deal with that? Do they think God was busy and not listening to their prayer, or that God did hear their prayer but chose to let Fido expire? Or do they think, "Satan killed Fido and I'm being punished because I shoplifted from Sears in April, 1992!" ?
This is a serious question. I am very curious to know how believers deal with the fact their prayers must go unanswered a lot of the time.
The mods will probably move this to the Religion/Philosophy forum, but as a former theist, I can tell you how I would have rationalized this. Seriously.
In your example of the dog: yes, if the dog lived, I would have assumed that God had answered my prayer. Obviously, it was God's will that my dog should live. If the dog died, I would have assumed that God was teaching me something by taking my dog's life. There is a lesson there I should learn. Probably, I would have assumed that I needed to learn to trust God, to love him more than my dog. That's how my brain worked back then.
Being a non-believer, I have never prayed, beyond a few frivolous prayers as a child ("God, please let me get an A on my Biology test tomorrow...")
I'm interested to know about people who pray and then their prayers are not answered. Apparently, if a person prays, they believe "God" is listening to them, correct? Let's say that their dog is hit by a car and is hanging to life by a thread. They pray to God that he spare Fido and allow him to live on many more healthy years.
If Fido does recover, do they believe God listened and healed the pooch? Conversely, if Fido dies, how they do they deal with that? Do they think God was busy and not listening to their prayer, or that God did hear their prayer but chose to let Fido expire? Or do they think, "Satan killed Fido and I'm being punished because I shoplifted from Sears in April, 1992!" ?
This is a serious question. I am very curious to know how believers deal with the fact their prayers must go unanswered a lot of the time.
The people do the same if it is a child and not a dog. Child lives, god is praised, prayer is proven. If the child dies, it's gods will, and of course the child is in heaven because they prayed. Or some really sick BS about "god needed the child in heaven"
Prayer is nothing more than selectively reinforced wishful thinking. Stop trying to make sense of it. There is no sense to be had, and looking for it will only give you a headache.
Unfortunately like all other religions, they teach you nothing about what you can and can't control. Everything situation outcome is chalked up to some reason having to do with god.
That being said I'm pretty sure a believer would go through exactly what you spelled out in each situation. Because like I previously stated, god is involved in one way or another.
God is not our butler. We can't just snap our fingers and expect God to cater to our every whim. Life is a learning experience. We learn though problems and pain. We can't expect God to magically remove all our problems for us, because we would not evolve without experiencing problems.
I am not a big fan of organized religion because church leaders tend to give people unrealistic expectations about what God can do for them. That is why so many people get frustrated when they don't always get a response from their prayers.
This is how I see it....if there WAS a 'god', the dog wouldn't have run into the road, or the owner wouldn't have allowed it...or heaven would have conspired to keep everyone safe.
I hear so many folks who "Praise God" for good things that happen after bad things have befallen them.....makes no sense!
A friend just underwent major surgery...it was successful. Everyone is saying "Thank you, Jesus", or Praise God, or Angels were there.....goes on and on and on......why aren't they praising the doctors skills that corrected the "flaw" that (God) created the problem in the first place? I just don't get it.
We live our lives....we do the best we can. No one is watching out for us )except for our loved ones!!)....if we fail, it's on us. If we succeed, we've done well. It's up to ourselves...not some "spirit" out there!
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