i've heard people talk about how they were terminally sick and who prayed very hard, or had other people pray very hard for them to get better and they did, therefore it is assumed that their God answered their prayers. I mean it's wonderful that such people got better and all and in such events i'm truly and sincerely happy for them but...
I don't understand.
What about those many people (sometimes young innocent children) who have prayed and who still died horrible deaths. Is this to mean that they're prayers were of less value?
Can't it be reasonably noted that people, whether they pray or not do die from terminal illness in most instances, and there are people who whether or not they are religious also pull through from terminal illness on very rare occasions.
Isn't it possible that perhaps, just perhaps, the determining factor here isn't the power of prayer.

My belief is...God answers all prayers...sometimes he simply says "no"

if the answer to whether or not an innocent child for example is to be saved from suffering and death is written in stone and in most cases is a no, then why pray at all... prayer isn't going to change the answer.
Secondly if God is benevolent and all-powerful, and is capable of saving but just refuses to.... isn't that contradictory?

Good question ... in fact ... damn fine question.

I think the power of the mind has a lot to do with the ailments of the body.

You know..........I've asked those same questions. I feel very lost over the whole thing. Why do non-Christians seem to have the things they want and Christians pray and pray and yet their circumstances don't get better sometimes.

If you understand the law of attraction and the creative techniques you would have a better idea of how prayer works.

I believe death is predetermined. That is to say, we are all going to die.

What we do and what we think and how we live has a lot to do with the manner of our death.

So does belief and life energy levels. Perhaps prayer sends life energy to the sick person being prayed for. I don't deny that this is possible. It may not be enough.

Have you ever heard the saying that "you are your own worst enemy?" You are when it comes to your health and your death.

Have you ever heard that it was your belief that healed you, not the prayers? It probably played a major roll.

Belief heals and this has been proven with the use of placebos.

I believe the determining factor is belief, not prayer.

JB

Because God "may" want to keep christians from things that nonchristians use to alienate themselves from God., if the aim is to have what non christians have just because non christians pursue those things with such reckless abandon.

"may"..key word here is "may".

Encompassing "may" are things that are deliberately contrarian to what is deemed righteousness.

Delivering "unrighteous" fruits may be delivering temptation and not deliverance from the same.

ask in blamelessness that nothing given be hindered from pleasing God.

I agree

I think you hit the nail on the head. We can test the energy theory . . . nope no interesting energy inside people that reacts to prayers. NRG after all is the ability to do work. When we test prayer groups to detect any change in the person in question we find nothing over and over again. Not something doing work anywho. The body is an amazingly complex thing, and of course we cant monitor every cells movement thought the body in real time . . . . only in delayed time, it takes an MRI,CT, CR, PET, ect several seconds to process an image lol, of course each does its own job, but we are beggining to merge these modalities to get a total image, the tech is a few years out from being ready.

We can even test the minds ability to help heal the body, and what do you know, we find it everywhere in medicine.


PS one thing I wanted to point out about the studies I refer to, is this
1) they are blind studies . . the participants do not know people are praying for them . . . they can be seen by the people praying but cannot see, or know that they are being prayed for. . . thus the minds ability to gain mental will power, or any kind of advantage through the bolstering of group interaction is removed from the experimental group.

2) These same kinds of studies have been debunking mentalists for a long time.