Seven wrote:(I posted this in the Celestial forum also) This question has been weighing on my mind after reading a horrific story of the torture and murder of a 2 year old boy Jamie Bulger. You can read the story here if you can stomach it: http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/bulger.asp
We see so many disturbing stories in the news everyday of innocent little children or good men and women who are kidnapped and tortured. Some are murdered and some are tortured slaves. After watching the movies "Hotel Ruwanda" and "Blood Diamond" I began to feel very insignificant to God. Why doesn't He care about these people? There is a documentary I want to see called "God grew tired of us" (appropriatly titled), about the African boys who escaped after watching their families murdered by Muslims for their belief in Christ.
Why do I think God would care about what I need if He allows all of these atrocities to happen? My needs seem pretty shallow in comparison to the people and children crying out to God for help while He ignores their pleas. The innocent Jamie Bulger who was crying for his Mom while she is praying to God for help in finding her son, but He allowed these 10 year old boys to commit the most heinous crime on her little boy.
Why do we even bother asking God to help us? Why should we believe our prayers our so special that He would help us in whatever needs we have?
I know the TBM response would be that God can't interfere with our free agency. If that is true, there would be no miracles in the scriptures and no stories of God saving anybody. If we believe the scriptures are true, then God does intervene with our agnecy. He picks and chooses who He will intervene with. When I hear stories from LDS who believe God intervened with Priesthood blessings, or saved them in a car accident, I want to ask them: "what makes you think you are so special that God saved you, yet He allows all of these innocent children or families to be victims of the most horrific crimes imaginable?"
I believe in God and Jesus Christ, but I don't understand why we should pray for their blessings or help anymore. I have an easier time believing God never intervenes, and allows nature to take its course. What are your beliefs?
If your prayers have been answered, why do you believe they were?
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You can believe whatever you wish to believe. There is no evidence to support the view that God intervenes or can be manipulated by prayer. Only the living make claims of intervention. That is, those who are dead or die or are killed in an event say nothing. Hence, the only people who “speak” are those who are alive to do the speaking.
In addition, there is no evidence for God in any of the God mythologies which can be found in various World Religions today.
If God “never intervenes” as you state, God is irrelevant. Evidence does not support any particular or general God myth.
The real question is one of evidence, not what one believes. Historically, people have believed many things which are demonstrably false.
People tend to believe in that which they have been indoctrinated. That tendency does not make their beliefs valid.
Validation is established by evidence objectively observed and subjected to skeptical review. Wishful thinking is not evidence nor is it a valid way to establish conclusion.
JAK
Hello JAK,
Why do you persist in describing prayer as an attempt to manipulate God?
I've personally dealt with losing my keys. I went jogging and when I got home realized they fell out of my pocket. I walked my course with a flashlight and found nothing. I was in desperate need of those keys if I wanted to get to my exam the next morning. My wife offered to help me look for them. Her nighttime myopia is pretty bad, so I didn't expect much. She had prayed about it unbeknownst to me and said she just felt like we should look in a certain spot. She stopped the car and there they were along the side of the road where I jogged.
Is this evidence of God's intervention? No I know it's not evidence to most, but it sure seemed like a miracle to me and I can't really explain it. Most of the time I've taken the view that God isn't going to help. Most of the time my prayers weren't answered the way I wanted. Yet my feeling is still, it can't hurt to ask.
I've struggled with why God would help me with something so insignificant and not help seemingly more worthy causes. I don't know why this seems to be the case, but I'm not ready to say that God never intervenes. It would be very ungrateful of me to claim I've never receieved help. I don't really think we know why God will intervene in one case and not another. It just happens sometimes, and sometimes it does not. All we really have is a simple faith that God is good, all powerful, merciful, and ultimately fair. We have no scientific evidence of this. People live their lives as if these things were scientifically true because they have faith that they are true.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
I've prayed for and found my car keys. Now, I am not saying that it was any kind of miracle. I think that praying allowed me to take a minute to calm down and get in the proper frame of mind to remember where I left them (in the refrigerator).
Why God doesn't say answer every prayer affirmatively, I don't know. It would be nice if bad things only happened to bad people.
twinkie wrote:I've prayed for and found my car keys. Now, I am not saying that it was any kind of miracle. I think that praying allowed me to take a minute to calm down and get in the proper frame of mind to remember where I left them (in the refrigerator).
Why God doesn't say answer every prayer affirmatively, I don't know. It would be nice if bad things only happened to bad people.
I would say the moment of calm brought by slowing down and concentrating on where the keys might be is a more likely candidate than God popping the answer into someone's mind. Although I wish he'd pop the Latin quiz answers into mine....*Bond kneels and prays to the Latin quiz God*
"Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded."-charity 3/7/07
I received a beautiful pair of silver earrings from my best friend. The very first day I wore them I lost one. I was heartsick. I had spent the day doing errands, running all over the town in several stores, in the winter, with snow. My lost earring could have been anywhere.
I did some deep breathing and listened to my heart. The first impression I got was to go to a grocery store I had visited earlier in the day.
I drove there, parked in a completely different place than I had earlier in the day, opened the door and laying in the snow, directly below me was my earring.
No prayer... no asking for God's help, (which I would never do for an earring as much as I treasured this gift).
I have thousands of such stories and have these types of experiences literally on a daily basis.
~dancer~
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
twinkie wrote:I've prayed for and found my car keys. Now, I am not saying that it was any kind of miracle. I think that praying allowed me to take a minute to calm down and get in the proper frame of mind to remember where I left them (in the refrigerator).
Why God doesn't say answer every prayer affirmatively, I don't know. It would be nice if bad things only happened to bad people.
I would say the moment of calm brought by slowing down and concentrating on where the keys might be is a more likely candidate than God popping the answer into someone's mind. Although I wish he'd pop the Latin quiz answers into mine....*Bond kneels and prays to the Latin quiz God*
asbestosman wrote:As to why God would not intervene to prevent the Holocaust, I don't think anyone has a satifactory answer. I just know that the wrong answer would be that God doesn't care (or doesn't exist).
The ones who don't have a satisfactory answer are the ones who believe in a God who cares and intervenes. The rest of us do have a satisfactory answer.
Whenever I think of this question, I remember my neighbor. She's a simple woman, monolingual, Catholic, who runs a daycare for field workers. She has a fenced yard, lots of outdoor type toys, and a 10 year old developmentally delayed child. She lost him one day. He found the gate open and disappeared. She was frantic. I drove by on my way home. I noticed the many cars driving up and down the road, teenagers running across the road looking behind the haystacks on the other side, and the driveway/parking lot was full of cars and people milling around. Many were crying. Many were trying to comfort those who were crying. I had no idea what was going on, and I drove on. Half a mile up the road, I found a little boy on his three wheeler just peddling to beat the band, up the hill. I stopped and opened my passenger side door, and asked him if he was lost. He spoke only Spanish and I speak so little of that language as to be totally useless (la esquela es rojo is useless when you want to ask him where he's going and who he belongs to). I finally coaxed him and his trike into my car and I whipped a u-turn and went back down the hill (I was desperate to get him into the car because we were on the down side of the hill and any vehicle coming over the top would have taken me first and then him), thinking the people in the house on the corner would know Spanish and could talk to the little guy. I pulled into the parking lot of the daycare and everyone swooped on the car. The dad opened the passenger side door and grabbed the little boy, the momma's tears flowed even harder, they were all talking a mile a minute in Spanish. A teenager rapped on my window, so I lowered it. He told me they'd been looking for the little boy for almost an hour, and that I was the answer to their prayers.
I'd never been the answer to anyone's prayers before.
Did finding that little boy before a truck made mincemeat of him on the road make any difference to the grand scheme of things? Probably not. There's still alot of suffering in the world. Did it matter to his family? Damn right it did. Did it matter that they weren't Mormon? No. They thought their prayers were answered. Was it coincidence or was it God's hand? They saw it as God's hand. We wave and smile at each other now when I drive past. There's a little more peace on earth.
In answer to the Thread's question: NO!!! I tried for "Huge" here, but am not sure it will work????
In stating this i'm not declaring there is no "God". Something keeps our world in orbit blah, blah... Thank "God"!
However, IMSCO the primitive, ancient, theological "God" concept, serves no "practical" purpose. That others choose to think/believe otherwise is understandable and indeed may be quite purposeful for them... So be it.
I think a better question might be, "can people coming together in a united spirit change things?" To which i would say, "YES!"
I suggest this is what Harmony was involved in. She just happened to be the one of XX# that found the boy. Had there been no effort to do so, would the boy have been found??? An unknown...
This is an excellent topic! Keep it going. Warm regards, Roger
What about the idea that after a certain point, God developed a prime directive for non-intervention? I know Kurt Vonnegut had put forth the idea fifty years ago for a Church of God the Totally Indifferent. That always seemed too much for me, why would God be totally indifferent to his creation? Where is the sense of ownership there? It seems more likely to me that God cares but in a hands off sort of way. Perhaps he would like us to try to recreate a heaven on earth scenario, in which we try to create a pleasant living environment for everyone.