Prayer

In Christianity and many other religions, prayer is the process of directly connecting to God, usually for the purpose of deliberate communication.

Through prayer our thoughts and hopes are heard and understood. Oftentimes, prayer will result in feeling God's presence or feeling like one is touched by God. This feeling of a connection is cited by many theists as proof of God's existence. It is through prayer that man can understand God's will in his life through a personal connection. Prayer is common throughout the Bible in both the Old Testament and the New.

The capability of prayer are often misinterpreted as proof of the non-existence of God. In a common argument, a Christian may be asked to pray for something which cannot possibly occur through natural means, or which is so unlikely that the possibility of it occurring without supernatural intervention may be discounted - asking God to ensure that a fair coin lands on heads forty times in succession, for example, which has a statistical probability of approximately one in a trillion. When the prayer has no apparent effect - the coin lands on heads after a few flips - the argument is made that God as described in the bible cannot exist, as this God claims to be able and willing to grant prayer requests.

A similar argument is based upon scientific study of the effects or prayer, particularly in medical contexts - asking why patients who receive much prayer fair no better than those who receive no prayer at all, or questioning why Christians would pay for health insurance when God has demonstrated in the bible the capability for supernatural healing.

Both of these arguments are fallacious, resting on the false assumption that God will grant all prayers. This is not true: While God hears all prayers, it is His judgment that decides which are worthy of His intervention. There is no reason God needs to provide additional proof of his existence by flipping coins or holding 'publicity stunts' when His existence is already manifest in His creation. Similarly, there is no reason for God to aid or hinder in matters of medical survival - the patients' eventual destination is determined only by themselves, and their time of arrival there holds little importance. God grants the prayers of those who pray in faith and true need.

True need is often determined through the past acts of the person, and their life. If they have lived a life that could be deemed satanic, or have sinned without confession, then their prayers often remain unanswered.

Many people have found that because the time of arrival does not matter, and that the end result is the only necessity, their lives need not be lived in panic, praying for safe haven, and cures for incurable diseases. Many people have succumb to the temptation of suicide, and all that it offers due to lost hope, and lost prayer.