Not sure why is this down-voted? Seems reasonable.

Because it's talking past each other. Very few people are literally asking for divine intervention, they're conveying wishes for a good outcome

	▲	quantified 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		What leads you to that conclusion? It seems that referring to disbelief in prayer is controversial, and belief in prayer is not grounded in reality.

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catlover76 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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amradio1989 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Its not reasonable at all. I wouldn't downvote it, but its devoid of facts and is loaded with false premises.

I'm tempted to call it rage-bait, but I choose to assume the poster meant no harm.

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quantified 5 days ago | parent [-]

I intend motivation to choose actions that might make a difference. Can anyone make the case that prayer actually works? Consider the massacre of children actually praying at a Catholic school a couple weeks ago. Was that the result of someone praying for it to happen? Was any deity looking out for its flock? Whereas making guns a lot harder to obtain would definitely reduce gun usage.

	▲	amradio1989 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		First, my bad. I owe you an apology. I'm sorry for treating you like that. There are millions of eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies about prayer. They are exceedingly well documented (esp. in books) and span nearly all of human history. Whether you believe them or not is a different matter. But at the very least, we can't easily dismiss prayer as something that "doesn't work". Second, even if we accept that "prayer" works, there's a ton of questions that raises. Does all prayer work? What if the prayers are contrary? And who are people praying to? And do all receivers of prayer actually have the power to answer prayer? For those that do, what happens when prayers are contrary to each other? What happens when the prayers are contrary to the will of the one being prayed to? I'm only bringing up these questions to illustrate that we can't say "prayer doesn't work" as a matter of fact, even in instances where it doesn't seem to work.