Half a year ago I had a nicotine habit and I prayed that the God helps me to stop this nicotine habit, but then I realized that my prayers were not answered and I used nicotine, gum and cigs, more often than before my praying. Either the God does not exist or my prayers are meaningless. What do you think?
More God talk, great. No, he doesn’t exist.
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Tried praying once when I was desperate. It worked. Still working a couple of decades later. Not going to try and puzzle out the magic trick, just enjoying this one. That being said, I don’t go to church. Don’t ever intend to go to church. Church is for suckers.
10-96
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I pray to a higher power who I believe helps me keep clean and sober. Do I REALLY believe in a high power? I don’t know, maybe as much as the next addict or alcoholic.
Do prayers work? In a way I believe. First of all my sponsor told me never to pray for specific things. That means I can pray to my higher power for strength to help keep me clean and sober but NOT to pray for money or a car or a better job.
Prayer to me in general seems like a show of faith and commitment. It shows you have the QUALITY or trait of faith inside you that you are exercising. It doesn’t necessarily mean faith in religion. It shows you have faith in the sense that you have faith your sibling will be there for you, or faith that no one will kill you at work. This type of faith is separate from having a 100% belief in god. Prayer is exercising and strengthening your faith that everything will work out. Of course I have read several studies about whether prayer does any tangible, measurable, good for anybody. The studies I read seem to say that prayer does nothing. Que sara, sara. But if it comforts you as a discipline then it has it’s use.
I compare praying to meditation.There’s nothing magical about either of them but they both serve to relax me and ease stress, so I occasionally do them.
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I believe that the automated Internet assistants are just coming, these are intelligent information agents that help us in our daily lives. Actually, back in 1999 I visited in one Internet company in Atlanta that actually developed these Internet assistants already then. They had different beings/characters such as a young woman, a male in his 20s, a middle-aged male and so on and the intention was that these assistants helped people in their lives, these were like the Internet robots that may help us to remember to take meds, buy food and so on. These can provide travel advises and other advises. This will be the reality in the future as they have seen it coming. Sometimes I also would desire to have remote controlled light switches, especially when I am watching my TV and I am too tired to turn on or off lights. Things are coming.
I don’t know if God does or doesn’t exist. The argument from design is pretty strong. C.S. Lewis had the best analogy. A man finds some kind of garden while he’s on a walk in a forest. There seems to be evidence of some kind of a hand shaping that garden, but there is no sign of its creator anywhere around. That is the way I see the argument from design. There seems to be some kind of order that maybe God imposed, but there is no evidence of his presence. Without a creator it would be hard for order to exist. It would be like a tornado making an airplane.
I like this Cosmos TV series. We in the universe are in the constant move and then some other universes maybe found inside the black stars, the black holes. This takes the question 'Does the God exist? to a totally new level.
Never pray for patience. You’ll get a chance to use it.
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I watched a couple of astronomy programs tonight. One was on parallel universes and black holes, and the other was on the possibility of life on Saturn’s moon Titan. Very interesting. If they can find life besides us in the solar system it means that more than likely life is common in the universe.
God can take addiction and withdrawl feelings away, but sometimes we have to take the action to quit ourselves and go through them.
As far as prayers being answered, I have had many answered, many specific prayers, and some undeniable…as in there is no way I could have done them myself as they involved more far reaching things than quitting a habit.
Even on a small scale, like when I was walking several miles home with a heavy pack and praying desperately for a ride. I get a voice from God in my head saying 'Wait one minute. I am sending someone now. You will get your ride in one minute."
One minute later a truck stops and picks me up, the driver tells me he was trying to get somewhere in the opposite direction and was detoured…he actually even missed a detour sign that could have taken him a much shorter route nowhere near the road i was on…He literally goes like 15 miles back out of his way, picks me up and drops me off at home…
Not only was the prayer answered, it came with a voice of knowledge that proved true…it was one minute later after praying I got picked up, and someone had been turned around from the direction they were going…
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That reminds me SO much of this old story…
A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.
Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”
The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.”… So the rowboat went on.
Then a motorboat came by. "The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.”
To this the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”… So the motorboat went on.
Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.”
To this the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”… So the helicopter reluctantly flew away.
Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!”
To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?”
I personally am NOT very religious… I do believe in a great energy that keeps the universe in check. But if there is a God… he gave us the brains and the power to help ourselves.
Sitting motionless… praying… doing nothing to help ourselves isn’t going to get action.
I can understand praying in the same sense as meditation… letting the mind untangle and setting the mind on a focused path to action. You have to know what you need before you can go and get what you need.
If praying… meditation lets the brain know what it needs… then the process works… If one uses prayer instead of action… the process doesn’t work.
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As you sometimes say: Can I get an Amen 
Expecting someone/something to do all the work for you will probably leave you disappointed.
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those people that believe in God 100 percent without any doubt of his existence, those people prayers are answered.
I pray a lot, not all prayers are answered, and I know why because in my hart I am not sure of Heaven, Hell, spirit,
when a person is not sure if the person next to him is his friend, than he shouldn’t expect from that person something a friend would do…
That’s how it is with God!
That was very good, but I do not believe in a Heaven or a Hell after the death. I believe that when we die we go to our graves and any material posessions including writings are left behind for any future generations if these have any value. I agree we are connected through these energy fields, after all you are there in Seattle and elsewhere and I am on another side of the world, but we still communicate. In the past our letters might have taken weeks to arrive, but this communication happens in seconds, which will be also the future evolution. I agree that prayers can be meditational methods to change our thinking, but it does not need to be religious.
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put it this way, if god exists i am in the sh…t !?!
take care
i don’t think prayers are meaningless and i don’t see anything bad about praying unless it is obsessive and thats not really praying it is obsessing, maybe you are just not ready to give up just now and the praying made you realise that, what if i prayed for you to stop smoking? would that help?
Incidents like that do not convince me prayer works for specific things. That can EASILY be explained by luck, coincidence, or chance. No offense e_lunaseer. But it’s when people offer up incidents like that that they use as incontrovertible proof for such things as mind-reading, predicting the future, or dreams coming true,etc. it makes me a little leery of those phenomena. But hey I just wrote a treatise on prayer myself. Some people are probably laughing at that. If you look at it your way it’s not much of a stretch to say that every time you hitchhike and you pray to get picked up and someone picks you up it’s either a miracle or proves prayer works.
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