The deathly ill might feel better when they pray for themselves because prayer is a pacifier and has a placebo effect. However, praying for someone else who is deathly ill is a pacifier for the one doing the praying.

Knowing that people are praying for you might make you feel nice but does does wishing you well or good luck. For the deathly ill, knowledge that you're in their prayers might actually make you worse. That is the nocebo effect from believing you're more sick than you really are and then actually getting more sick.

Prayer pacifiers you in the same way as drinking warm tea but for many religious nuts have an obsessive compulsion to pray to a magical being and are no different then a schizophrenic who wears a tin foil hat to focus his brainwaves at martians.

God loves to hear us grovel

Let's look at a classic example.

Whenever somebody is ill, Christians want to pray over that person. Well if God already is ever present and all-knowing, what use does praying do when God is the present, past, and future, and therefore he already has his plans set out?

Scenario 1:

A Christian is dying of cancer. People pray over the Christian to heal them and say Jesus has the power to heal all sicknesses. A few months pass by and the Christian is healed!! Therefore Christians say "Jesus has the power to heal, he answered our prayers."


Scenario 2:
A Christian is dying of cancer. People pray over the Christian to heal them and say Jesus has the power to heal all sicknesses. A few months pass by and the Christian dies. People say "God has his plans, he is in a better place now."

So technically shouldn't it be "Jesus heals sometimes, only when he decides he should, and he is selective in who he should heal?"

Maybe God is bias against Africans because he doesn't answer their prayers a lot

But God is already all-knowing so what's really the point in praying when his decision is already made. Do you actually think he will intervene?

With the famous saying "ask and you shall receive" if you are asking for a sick child to be healed and then two days later they die, how did you receive what you asked for? How come people twist this and say "God did give you something but it's too difficult to understand and maybe that child is in a better place."

Why can't the quote be more logical and reasonable and say "ask and there is a possibility you will get what you asked for, but most of all this is based on probabilistic outcomes"

The premis of the thread is missing an element- The assumption is that prayer is about making a petition for relief from suffering for someone, perhaps ones self. There is another kind of prayer, a plea for unity with the all concious. Focused attention (meditation) accompanied by recitation ( sound familiar?) leads the prayerful practitioner to a state of bliss/ out of body experience/ nirvana/ "heavenly realms"/ etc.

There are thousands of accounts of this kind of experience from every culture and era, including Christianity.

What is it That makes a Christian prayer different from anyone elses?

So I guess that the argument can be made that meditation is not prayer, Or that millions of people through history are having delusional mystical experiences.
The proof is in the practice......

I can't disagree with that, although it's probably an over simplification. The OT part of "the bible" which makes up 80% of the Christian bible is the scriptures of the Jews or Hebrews, it's much older and more primitive. The four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the NT were written down from memories and stories 30-60 years after Jesus died. Paul, who is prominent in the rest of the NT outside of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, never met Jesus. Most of the NT outside of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is by Paul, about Paul and about Paul's theories about Jesus. Paul says, and Christians believe, that Jesus died for their sins, but neither Jesus nor any of his 12 real apostles ever preached that gospel to the people while Jesus was alive.

Praying changes the mind set which is positive and the body feeds on what is positive,
that is why some get a healing and yet some are not healed, maybe it's because they don't
really believe and that is negative, as what is negative is bad for the body.
It is a known fact the body feeds on what is positive and dies by what is negative.
Think positive and live longer, think negative and die sooner.

Praying changes the mind set which is positive and the body feeds on what is positive,
that is why some get a healing and yet some are not healed, maybe it's because they don't
really believe and that is negative, as what is negative is bad for the body.
It is a known fact the body feeds on what is positive and dies by what is negative.
Think positive and live longer, think negative and die sooner.

That's a dangerous philosophy, in my opinion, and it's akin to the sometimes Christian idea that if you are more righteous you will also have more wealth. Christians also suggest that if you don't pray hard enough or are not sincere enough, God will let you die but if you pray harder, then He will let you live. This blames the victim.

There are plenty of mean, crabby people who live to a ripe old age.

I did not say that you live longer, my statement is saying your heath is better,
i work in heath care and when workers are positive, the people we treat, do
much better health wise because they are more positive. This is a known fact in
health care. What we also see is when our workers are negative, the people we treat
also become negative and tend to have greater problem's, we therefore teach our
workers to be positive for the sake of the people we treat, so pray is positive as
it changes the mind set in a positive way.

Think positive and live longer, think negative and die sooner

Being positive is healthy and when you are healthy, you do live longer but it does
not mean how long you will live. Car crashes doesn't have anything to do with whether
you are healthy or not, car crashes happen because someone made a bad choice or you
lost control or because something went wrong with one car or the other, pray has
nothing to do with a car crash. Yes people can get cancer, my point of view is based
on a healthy person who thinks positive, the odds of living longer is greater.
You are adding things that have nothing to do with pray, as pray is an inner healing
that comes from being positive.
No, if you get hit by a car, it's not your fault, it would be because; other factors
was at fault.
You are changing the topic by adding other factors, that has nothing to do with pray.
The topic is; what the point of praying ? It's positive !!!

Here is where some many fall short in understanding.

Here is what it means when it says God is all knowing;
God knows your every thought, therefore before you
do what you do, God knows before you do it because
He knows your thoughts, so God is all knowing of
what we think, that does not mean He controls my
thoughts. We have the freedom to think and do what
ever we want, God does not make you do anything
you don't want to do.
Does God know my past ? Yes !
Does God know my present ? Yes !
Does God know my future ? Yes !
How ?
As soon as i have a thought, He knows my thought even before i take action
with my thought, that's my present and when i take action with my thought, that's
my future that comes to be.
This is just how i see it !

God specifically might not make you do anything you don't want to do, but believing in God makes people avoid doing things that they want to do. I'm pretty sure if you ask most guys including priests and pastors if they are 100% happy not having sexual contact with anybody they would say no. You said in your previous post that praying is positive and increases your well being, therefore making you live healthy. Statistics show the dangers like prostrate cancer when you don't masturbate and that people who have regular healthy sex lives are more happy (I'm not speaking about promiscuity, I mean healthy sex lives in general). So why do priests and nuns have to sacrifice their sex life which has been proven to decrease well-being and health?

They're not allowed to have babies. Isn't it ironic that everybody who is pro-life and against abortion tend to be Christian because they believe we need to procreate and expand God's kingdom, and yet the epitome of piousness are priests and nuns and they are prohibited to procreate?

How's that for a head scratcher!

a true preist,or nun who doesnt fail ON THEIR OPTIONAL MISSION..is surely to oneday meet sainthood,i dont know if thats why they do it,but God bless them.but me and you,we'll neeeevvveeeer be saints.we can still be Gods children though