by TEDxKrakow

Question: Prayer seems like a huge waste of time?
According to some sects of Christianity, God has a “divine plan” – there is a predetermined course of events that God set forth when he created us all. Predetermined – that means that my writing this sentence was a part of God’s plan. I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t in God’s plan. If that’s the case, then why should I bother praying to God for anything (praying only in the sense of asking for something to happen). If someone’s mother goes into surgery and they pray for a safe recovery, what good will it do if He has already decided she won’t make it?

On a much larger scale, why would God hear the prayers to help that guy’s mother survive her surgery but then turn around and ignore the prayers of the 10 million innocent people who perished in the Holocaust? What possible explanation could there be that God decided to ignore the prayers of those that perished in the 911 attacks? Or in the Vietnam War? I’m not even going to get started on why God would allow the Crusades to happen in his name. The bottom line is this: if prayers can be heard, then millions of life-changing prayers are ignored every day. Why would a benevolent, merciful, loving, caring God do that?
“Prayer gives people hope”….incorrect. Prayer gives people false hope. It is alright to hope for something and wish for it come true. Praying implies that there is a chance, however small, that the mere fact that you asked for them to come true may have an effect on them occuring. And if prayer can give people false hope, think how dangerous it can be. Imagine you are a Jew living in Auschwitz the day before the occupation. You know the occupation is coming but decide to stay and pray that God will watch over your family….

“God helps those who help themselves”
“That’s because you have no faith in God, and don’t belive he’s listening….” You’re not listening. I didn’t say it was my prayers who are being ignored. There were tens of thousands of extremely religious and devout Jews that were wiped off the face of the earth. They prayed every day, even before they asked for what they needed most – for the God they believed in all their lives to save them. Instead he left them to choke in gas chambers at the hands of evil men.

As for your instance that “He is (listening)!” You have no proof. Only blind and ignorant faith. And if he was listening, screw him for ignoring the pleas of his devout followers.

“Christians says relgion is a test of faith. What if faith is a test of logic?”
“In the case of the Holocaust. the 10 million people died knowing that they were going to die and their prayers were for the salvation of their soul. This is why God did not change the course of the war but allowed them to die.”

Really? REALLY? So you mean to tell me of the 10 million people, not one person every prayed to have their life saved – they all ONLY prayed for the salvation of their soul? okaaay….several inconsistencies. 1) you can’t possibly know what every one of the 10 million people was thinking, “only God knows that” 2) even if they ALL prayed for their salvation, how do you know all their prayers were answered? 3) how could you know why God really allowed them to die. you don’t know God’s “master plan”

“He who thinks he knows it all knows nothing”
“….meanings can be lost or changed if the translation is translated more than once to make people finally accept the meanings that they want. it is best to go directly to the source in order to have the best most accurate meaning.”

Perhaps you don’t realize how fundamentally you have just proved my point. You just told me to go read a specific version of the Bible because you want to make sure you are not reading a mistranslation. The Bible was originally written in Aramaic, a now-dead language. How can you, who live your life based on your version of the Bible, be so sure that yours isn’t mistranslated too. How can any of us truly know what the real original translation meant. People still argue over the technical translation of some Shakespearean phrases and that was less than 400 years ago in a language very similar to modern day English.

Answer:

Answer by gutbucket
That’s because it is.