Because I get everything I prayed for. I was once in the middle of a desert, had a craving for a banana, so I made a lengthy sincere prayer for a banana. The next day, someone gave me a banana. I get about 90% of the things I pray for, and the rest can be classified as pending.
Possibly a classic case of correlation != causation. In other words, coincidence. I would be curious as to what it is you prayed for and under what circumstances you aquired them. I am also not sure why any God(s) would concern themselves with someones craving for bananas why people are dying and praying
much harder.
Prayer has not shown any effect with any studies done. Some people (a response which fustrates me) may just claim that "oh, but you can't study prayer". Why not? Does it hide itself when it is studied? is it intelligent now? Unfalsifiability is an indicator of something very faulty. If prayer works, it will have a noticible effect in the world (if it works it has to
do something. If it has a noticible effect it can be studied).
This. It pretty much explains prayer (at least the first image).
If it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'd rather live on prayer placebos than have it fail out of disbelief.
So you would rather live blindly then understand the mechanics behind how it works? One does not just "disbelieve", they apply logic to a given situation to get what they want instead of blindly "hope". You get a banana from prayer. Someone who casts doubt on prayer comes to the conclusion that a better solution is to grow a banana plant. Or perhaps become aware of their like for banana's and bring some with them. If someone focuses their efforts on aquiring what they want through reasonable and logical decisions, they will end up with much more done much more reliably than someone who prayes for the same thing. In my opinion at least, prayer blinds people to superior solutions to problems.
Because of Pascal's Wager.
So, one of the major criticisms of Pascal's Wager is that belief in religion is to a minor disadvantage to the individual and a major disadvantage to society. But the society I live in is greatly enhanced by religion - lots of people sharing their wealth, giving aid and education to the poor, flooding donations in the name of God to disaster victims. No disadvantages; things like stem cell research is on full steam (with a lot of highly religious people participating), and there are no restrictions on alcohol or pork or whatever.
One of the major arguments is think if you look at the sheer quantity of religions out there, and the various prerequisits to get to heaven/reincarnation/whatever, this would seem pretty silly. Which God(s) have you gambled your afterlife on (or lack of gods, as a few religions have it)?
Pascal's Wager is belief from fear. How many God(s) will let you in if you only believed them "to be safe rather than sorry"?
Most things I've prayed for I haven't gotten.
A sincere, humble one? Not a "if you want me to believe in you, give me (this stuff)"? Whether or not it's worded that way, an omniscient being can sense your intentions.
It's in essence, just a request from a divine being. It's up to God(s) whether or not they want to meet that request. And showing a little effort for the thing you asked for helps. If you ask for something just to see if you'd get it, I'm pretty sure anyone would reject that.
IMO, the typical 'religious' person's approach of "I can't help you but I'll pray for you" is very insulting to a supreme being. It's a spoiled attitude when you expect a God to do stuff for you if you're not willing to sacrifice some effort for it yourself.
Too many questions...
What is a sincere and humble prayer? How does one meet this criteria? What intentions do you have to have? Perhaps I have to sacrifice an animal to make in sincere?
Maby the Religion of the Lazy God is True, and showing effort hinders responses from the Lazy God.
Do all God(s) respond to prayer/equivelant? Which one should I pray to?
Why not invest that effort into aquiring that thing with proven methods?
How can you have an opinion that "a supreme being" would find that insulting? To do this you would have to have some idea about what this supreme being is, but this term is usually applied in a completely generic fashion. Maby the True Supreme Being like rewarding spoilt people?
When people try to refer to religion in a generic way, they almost always just replace God with Supreme Being and continue to act as if the Abrahamic religions are the scaffholding for all religions. They have not really generalised it at all. I am not a fan of arguments that argue on behalf of religion as a whole, since religions tend to be contradictory and poorly defined. People often seem to fill in gaps needed for an argument with assumptions that are no longer generalised (such as the assumption that showing effort helps prayer, despite this not being defined as part of "religion").
Secondly, now that we're talking about Africa. There's hundreds thousands of missionaries there, trying to make the place better.
I'd like to see you back that up. I've met several missionaries, and generally they're doing good work.
It depends on the person, not the fact that they are missionaries. There are plenty of good people out there doing good (that may or may not be missionaries) and plenty of bad people (again, missionary or not). Any missionary status does not imply that they are doing good or bad. I would be interested in seeing the correlation between missionaries and good/bad work done, versus the average population however, this might reveal some interesting information.
Also, Hello! My first post in this thread. Background: I was raised by non-religious parents (as in no mention of religion, not "raised to believe against religion") and have not seen a need for it. I understand the functions of the world quite clearly enough to not be confused by anything around me, and have had the ability to achieve and aquire what I have wanted reliabily and predictably through reasoning and work. I do not understand belief in belief (How can one do so? If you believe in belief as opposed to actual regular belief that seems to me to be basically admitting that it is false. That ain't getting you into heaven/whatever).