by punkofnice 259 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I got everything from 60 years of health and safety. Surviving 10 year working in jail as a detention officer.
Money from various sources and the things money can buy.
Health, security and safety for my loved ones.
Miraculouly surviving a motor cycle accident the bike was destroyed but I did not get hurt.
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funny thing is, this kind of stuff happens to atheists, too.
I used to pray to god to let me wrestle and let me win.
I was on the wrestling team but you had to win a wrestle off each week.
I wrestled every week and won every match except one which I lost by one point because I clapsed my
hands which was my fault not Gods.
I was in the paper every week for winning.
Also I was on the track team and I prayed to God everyweek let me race and win.
And I got a drawer full of ribons and medals.
When I saw my wife at 17 it was love at first sight and I prayed to God that I could get
her and I did and have been married for 40 years now.
I know you can twist all these things and say they didn't happen but I am happy to twist them
and say they did happen.
I also prayed to God for jobs. I always had a job and was always able to take care of my family with a Jehovahs witness
education.
I even prayed to God to become a deputy Sheriff and I became one.
James Brown: Miraculouly surviving a motor cycle accident the bike was destroyed but I did not get hurt.
Good for you!
However, the problem with this kind of "evidence" that God listens to prayers is that it is pre-filtered by those that survive accidents and other acts of violence.
How many people that died in accidents, wars, and the such were praying right before their lives were cut short? By definition, we will never know. But we can easily imagine that many of them were. In fact, if it was a religiously motivated conflict they would all be praying!
Consider this scenario among a war of "True Believers": 10 soldiers on the battlefield are ALL PRAYING. 5 of them die and 5 of them survive.
Since we know they were all praying we can calculate a 50% "saved" rate. But if we only consider the testimony of the survivors we arrive at a much different conclusion: 100% of the survivors were praying and 100% of them survived!
What a whacky way to try to understand the universe!
funny thing is, this kind of stuff happens to atheists, too. I know, that's true.
I don't know if it was just the way things are and coincidence. But prayer worked for me.
In the jail I worked in we held hands and said prayer everyday at muster before going to our assignments. It appeared to me that the majority of the officers were bible believing Christians.
I knew 2 atheist and 1 Muslim, one of the atheist would waffle from time to time. He probably said the same thing about me, one of the Christians would waffle from time to time.
I will say in my 60 years prayer kept me on this side of sanity and alive and that is proof only I can know about.
For those who think god has answered your prayers:
How do you explain the vast majority of prayers that are never answered? Is it that you are so special god will suspend the Laws of The Universe to accomodate your wishes and dreams while ignoring everyone else?
Or is it that the majority are just not worthy of having their prayers answered?
You cannot have one without the other. If you want to hold fastly to the idea answered your prayers, then you also have to explain why your god chooses to flat-out ignore the rest of humanity.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus
Here is an attempt at my answering you.
We all owe God one death. No one gets out alive.
God and Prayer is a coping mechanism.
50% or more of my prayers were not answered.
But if you bat 500 in the major leagues, that is unheard of.
That is beyond being a superstar.
I dont embrace that particular writing of epicurus.
I prefer "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die", which I am pretty sure he knicked from Solomon based
on the dates of writing.
I suspect that we are all part of God we came from God so we are doing this to ourselves.
In this phase of our experience everyone, every part of God has free will.
This is not scientific these are just my theories about what is happening to us.
And these are theories that I cant prove.
But like George Karlin says if you pray you can get what you want 50% of the time.
How often do you get what you want when you don't pray?
JB-
I'm not discounting anything you said or questioning your experiences.
If you look into the ideas of Quantum Physics, the "Law of Attraction", or read the stories any of the great achievers in life, you'll quickly identify a theme: thoughts become things; your life reflects what you think about most of the time; believe in something strongly enough and eventually it becomes a reality; your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.
You sound like a guy that set goals, worked hard to achieve those goals, focused on what you wanted, and believed in yourself. That's awesome.
However, would you have ended up with a drawer full of medals if you didn't set goals and do the work? God doesn't miraculously make the slow, fat kid cross the finish line first. He's gotta work hard just like everyone else if he wants to win.
I remember an older Polish JW called Nicky in a previous congregation whose son Richard was an aerial installer. Richard was married with children.
One day Nicky said to me, "Richard had not enough work so I pray to Jehovah. That night he sent a big wind that blew down lots of aerials and the next day lots of people ring Richard to put them up again".
You can't argue with that sort of naive logic.
How many people were praying to God to prevent their aerials from getting blown down? LOL.
Shirley, I was going to mention that my ideas come from quantum physics.
That is one reason, I cant commit to atheism
Because I think we become what we think about and go where we think about.
Atheist believe they are going to nothing.
I believe I am going back to the light.
You probably know that science has observed a praticle in 2 places at the same time.
Well I want to be in the right place with my particles.
I don't want to be lost in eternity.
No, when my marriage to my elder husband was falling apart and I would go to Jehovah in tearful, desperate prayer, he never answered me. I assumed that meant it was ok for us to divorce and we did.
