Yes, Prayer is a case of people of simplifying complex realities.
The human mind is very strange and the placebo effect is a very real phenomenon. Every religion in the world has some form of prayer (I think), and most religious people use it as a medium through which they can voice their concerns, hopes and desires. Prayer gives people a (false) sense of security i.e it doesn't work but it makes you feel better. Religion was created for us so we can have a purpose and a (false) sense of security, but nowadays people are throwing away religion and learning to think for themselves and become pro-active. Atheism is a big healthy step forward for man kind but I think during the hardest of times even atheists will pray. For Atheists prayer is something of a last resort, atheists do things for themselves and don't need to rely on God to get a job interview...
Prayer won't get you anywhere, people would succeed if they stopped hoping and started doing. This is why atheists are smarter and more successful than the religious.
Great comment. I agree entirely. Except for the last statement - atheists are more successful also because they are generally more educated and intelligent.
Omfg love your avatar roflmao
lollerskates it looks so like you!
***I could never stand by and NOT try any & every reasonable treatment for any one of my grandchildren, nor my grown daughters (even though that is reallly out of my hands at this point) IF there is reasonable treatment available, unlike the treatment that was offered to my father when he'd been diagnosed with colon CA with mets to the liver. His chemotherapy just destroyed his lungs & destroyed the quality of life he had for the slightly less than a year he had left to live after his surgery removing the tumor from his colon.
***There have been SO many times in my life when I've gone from atheist to agnostic to believer & ALWAYS the "believer times" are ushered in by a STRAIGHT SERIES OF ANSWERED PRAYERS!! However what continually amazes me is the way that I can forget all about those miraculous happenings when I become afraid all over again about something new. FAITH is something I seem to have to work awfully hard to hang onto, even in spite of all the positive overwhelming evidence that prayers ARE answered.
***The placebo effect is naturally an amazing phenomenon that I tend to attribute to a case of mind over matter. Part of me believes that none of what we think we are seeing really exists the way we think we see it. If everything around us are whirling atoms in motion, including us, then the way I see the world is just an effect colored by whatever mindset I have at the moment. I believe an awful lot of things, one of which is, that we can create - whether we know it or don't. Our reality as we know it, can change in an instant.
Your personal experience is but a drop in an ocean.
Just because you've seen one brown cow, doesn't mean all cows are brown.
have a relation who is a follower of the Seventh Day mob... She spends most of her leisure time praying for herself and anybody who has a reason to tell her of their needs.. I mentioned I had a poisoned leg and was on antibiotics, she knows I'm a humanist and think the God business is mythology at it's worst.. But she loves me a lot and said she would pray for me.
6 weeks later I still had the infection and now have 3 blood clots in it. I don't know if her God is punishing me through her informing him of my plight, or prayer works in reverse or perhaps she forgot.
Gee Anton, it sounds as though you REALLY are very ill. I've
always felt that (aside from Church of Christ Scientist) there
is no religion, prayer or mantra which substitutes for intelligent
& practical medical care, something that you sure sound like
you could use right now.
Not really Babsat.... Have been under the care of hospital doctors and now on the mend ( been 10 weeks ) serves me right though, was building a jetty and bloody fell off it into the river, got deep cut in the leg... Wife said it's about time I gave up doing big jobs, said I would when I get old, seeing I'm only 75.
Gee!! Sounds very painful and dangerous. And you're ONLY how old??? Your wife might have a point there OR perhaps you need to be less stubborn (as a pharmacist, I cannot possibly begin to tell you how many wives come in there looking for something that will help their husband and when they describe the condition that their hubby is in, I MUST suggest that at least she take him to the emergency room, or at the VERY least take him to the family doctor - AND - she will say: "But he will NEVER go - he's so stubborn!" If I have heard it once, I've heard it 1,000 times - primarly only about men (and married men, at that) What is it with you fellows - you never want to admit that your health may have temporarily got you down, got the best of you, and that you might need some serious professional medical attention? I can certainly understand anyone's NOT wanting to go to a hospital, or the ER, but a brief visit to a family doctor? At least it's cheap, it's fast, and you find out if you've got reason to be seriously concerned or not, and IF you do - you'll be treated for it. Oh, by the way, the name is Babs, (short for Barbara) it just happens that I live on Amelia Island in Florida hence the "babsatamelia" Guess it would LOOK better as BabsAtAmelia, huh?? But it's too much trouble to print it out every time. Good luck to you and glad to hear you're on the mend.
Oh Babs! You are so cruel.. Fancy posting all those true things about us men.
You are not quite right about me.. My local doctor, who's also been very cruel to me, like when he told me I had to go and see a specialist about some little heart attack I never knew I had, and arranged for 3 stents to be fitted and the time he arranged for me to have a silly pace maker fitted and this latest one when I went to see him, and only then, because my wife bloody nagged me so much...he then forced me to go into the hospital just because my leg was swollen up and going purple. GEEEZE the things we men have to put up with.
By the way, I live on the river on the Gold Coast in Queensland Australia, where the weather is fantastic one day and even better the next, on Fridays we have a heap of tennis girls here and they have a nick name for me they never say it to my face, but I know they use it with my wife, it's.... Dickhead
I think that the very simplistic answer is that when one prays for ones own recovery of some illness, the positive thinking has a positive effect on one's own health.
There's been experiments done on group praying, and the outcome for the patient did not change.
Positive thinking is the key.
Wow, it seems like calling you "dickhead" is going a little bit far, don't you think. Gee whiz - you DO kind of fit the bill, regarding the exact kind of guy I was talking about. He's sitting at home having a heart attack, but his wife comes in with a list of symptoms & I think "what in heaven's name can "I" do. All I do is dispense medicine. Granted, I learned enough about so many diseases & conditions, infections that when I listen to a story that sounds sort of life threatening - it sounds like a heart attack, definetely not just heartburn or indigestion OR plenty of stories of what sound like a really bad staph skin infection - you know, with the red line that starts running up the leg or arm etc etc. that could lead to gangrene. I tell the wife/girlfriendd to try to scare the crap out of him - tell him he might end up losing his leg. I DO have a theory about this. IF the wife just said 'Oh well, what the heck if you don't want to do anything about it" and she ignored you men - that you would eventually be forced to be concerned about yourselves. I saw it happen.a neighbor of mine. He is a middle aged guy who lives alone - was having a heart attack and eventually he actually DID go to the hospital, but while the nurses were freaking out & trying to get him into a wheelchair, into ER in the back, he was still going on & on about how much he wanted to go outside and have a cigarette first. I think I agree with you C.I. about the positive thinking effect that prayer has on a person getting well. Another thing that I've considered since there was a period of about 8 years there where I was in & out of the hospitals 2 to 3 times a year. During those years I was SO sick that by all rights I SHOULD have died. BUT for some reason I didn't. I was so sick that I had no idea of how bad off I was, so I sure wasn't praying. I was in too much pain to even think clearly enough to think about little things like life & death. In my life, I almost drowned once when I was 3 or 4, my Dad & Uncle just happened to come back in from fishing in the boat at the exact moment. Five more minutes & I've had been dead. I had a car accident that just missed being on the parkway in Pittsburgh by inches which could've killed me. I was in Mexico for only about 3 weeks when gallstones caused an acute case of pancreatitis which left me hospitalized for 2 weeks - in a foreign country - weird. I was camping way out in the middle of nowhere when I developed appendicitis. ( now that doesn't really hurt as bad as I'd expect it
to) Fortunately I asked a park ranger about where the nearest hospital was (just in case) and they called an ambulance, since they said I would NEVER find my way to the hospital in the dark. Then I got pneumonia from the surgery & THAT nearly killed me. I had a fever of 106.5! THAT got
my attention. I went to the bathroom, starting running warm water & began just dumping glassfuls over my head until it felt better, I felt cooler, although I was dripping & soaking wet. A nurse eventually came along and said "What are you doing standing there all dripping wet like that?" Duh. (Hey, what was good enough for my girls growing up, was good enough for me as an adult, it worked) There are more - many more - but the point is just that I don't think you're gonna die until it's YOUR time! What that has to do with prayer, with one's belief in God, a Higher Power of whatever persuasion - I can't say. All I know is that it seems that "something" or "someone" simply will not let me die.
