Does Praying Really Do Anything?

[Wild Pegasus]

It depends on who you ask, some religous people, and that is some, seem to think so. I never pray, nothing good or bad happened when I did once.

[Go_The_Mighty_Magpies]

If it gives people the peice of mind and a feeling of spiritual fullfilment then I believe it has done something positive for that person. However I don't really know that god as such can hear them and 'grant' those prayers as there are just too many people wanting too many things in the world.

People offering to pray for someone/ people who are facing a tough time is a kind sentiment meaning they are hoping for things to improve.

[Eunos]

Praying is a crutch for people who need it.
For that fact alone it does have a place in our society.

[HAL]

There exists someone named Watching the Stigmata last night reminded him or her of why he or she. Is it a new film or a classic? I talk to a lot of people on the Internet. I always wondered how he or she believe things are.

[rand corp]

If it helps you to pray to your god or gods then go ahead and all the best to you. No real harm in it -as long as you don't feel everybody else has to believe in the same theories as you less they be an inferior person.

[Birdy]

Prayer certainly does do things, depending on what, how, and to whom you are praying. It is the practice of experiencing God's presence and so should not be something that is just said with no meaning behind it but should be exercised in faith and hope.

1 John 5:14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us.

This says that when we pray we should keep in mind that what we request may not be answered in the way we were hoping as prayers won't be answered that aren't according to God's will.

[Dr Alf Andrews]

Prayer is a very powerful spiritual tool. Used correctly it can change your day.

Asking for specific stuff is a waste of time because that's not how it works.

Asking for peace of mind will work, if you do so in a spirit of humility.

Even if your notion of God is a very vague one, like mine, the simple act of taking 5 minutes out from your own bullshit to have a chat with whatever you believe in can help to put a lot of things in perspective.

When bad things happen, a lot of people want a quick fix. God doesn't usually do things that way. God fixes things up in God's time, not ours.

In the meantime, the best prayer you can say is this one:

GOD, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

It's the sort of prayer you can say over and over, and if you contemplate the words you're saying, the answers to your problems will slowly be revealed.

A bit of patience comes in handy where prayer is involved.

"God give me patience ... and give it to me NOW" doesn't usually work.

And don't bother praying for a Collingwood premiership. If we've learned nothing else from the past 46 years, we've at least learned this:

God fkn HATES Collingwood.

[Blanch]

If you've ever hit rock bottom and you feel as though you have nothing else you'll be surprised at the strength prayer can give. I'm not a church goer, however I understand in circumstances prayer can be extremely powerful.

I find that prayer finds me rather than a conscious "I'm going to pray now."

[David]

I just heard the other day about how in WW2 Britain was losing the war but then they had a 'national day of prayer' and suddenly things started going right for them. It seems pretty clear if you believe the bible that prayer works cos there's lots of examples in there. But as Alf said praying for a Collingwood premiership won't work. Undoubtedly you would have 100 other people praying that their club would win the premiership . Somehow I think that God wouldn't be very interested in footy anyway.

[rand corp]

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of the world pray to a different god or gods and all hold similar legends and stories of immaculate intervention and miracles.

To me, the suggestion that one god is better than another or, their is only one true god or, only one god offers the way to salvation etc. sows the seeds for hatred and prejudice born by fear.

We are not born with any specific apriori knowledge of a god or 'other world' and all that we take on in faith we are taught.

Certainly, there is a spritual side to humanity but, in true Kantian tradition, it lays just beyond the grasp of our sensory apparatus and must therefore remain purely personal representation. We are all free to believe what we like (lest it harm others), because the universal truth we can not know until we get there (we die).

In a true Schopenhauerian sense, once we do die, we might just find out that all these individual representations are one and the same thing.

[Dr Alf Andrews]

[Donny]

Alf,

It lays just beyond the grasp of my sensory asparagus, mate.

Maybe you should just try answering the question, RC.

[Johnson#26]

I believe praying does something. I pray from time to time if I fel the need. Then again, I am religous. Each to their own.

[rand corp]

Alf, Mags;

My apology offered to you both.

These are references to the Philosphical ideas of 1) Immanuel Kant, in particular his 'Critique of Pure Reason' and 2) Arthur Schopenhauer and in particular his work 'The World as Will and Representation'.

In short, Kant offered the idea that the only way we can gain any knowlege of the world out there is through our senses, which pick up data of the world around us, then our own unique and individual brain makes a mental representation of the world in our mind. His famous line being, that because of this practice, we can never really know of a thing in itself and only of our personal representation of it, created from the knowledge gleaned by our own unique, individually specific and limited senses. He also goes on to suggest that there is probably a lot more going on out there than our senses can arrest.

Schopehauer, picking up the metaphysical mantle where Kant leaves off, suggests that beyond our sensory abilities lies a place where everything is pretty much the same (it is rather a lot more complicated than that, but you will have to investigate further yourself if interested) and that it is us, the sensory apparatus we have and the brains we have that put the categories, divisions and boundries into things.

Rather than go into a long discourse on their ideas here, I am sure you will find plenty about them on the net.

As to my own religious bent, it is ambiguous but lies more towards somewhere between philisophical revelations of the Enlightenment, which occured on continental Europe from about the mid 1600's through to around the early 1800's and the Ancient Philosophies of the Far East, (in particular Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confusionism).

Truth is, I have a philosophical and anthropoligical interest in all theology, finding that their is almost always something we can take from or learn from all of it. I do however, remain an agnostic when asked to place all of my faith into any particular metaphysical theory that invloves mere theism.

[punkologist]