Do You Think Praying Works?

definitely not

heres my idea on prayer. its all about believing. now lately i've been lacking my own personal faith, but i do pray sometimes. i honestly never had a prayer answered, but i guess if you beleive it will it just might. (: keep faith friend. <3

Praying works in the sense that when you pray for something, you look for signs that it'll come true, and then when something slightly related to your prayer happens, you think it's the prayer that caused it. :/ Idk, as a scientist it's pretty hard for me to say praying works and some higher-up deity will answer it, and then change my life to make it work.

I wouldn't know. I've only prayed, like, once or twice.
And maybe it's worked without me even knowing it.
Who knows.

If you pray to something/somone you believe in,
Then I would say it works.

But say you don't believe in God,
And you pray to him..

Why would you then believe that it worked?

i honestly don't know if i believe there is a god. my sister recently lost her best friend, and i think she (and her friend's family and friends) need to believe that they'll meet him "on the other side", and that he's watching over them. I want to believe for their sake, because i want it to be true for them.
at the same time, i can't get my head around it.
i'd love it if whatever people believe in is true. and i can't see why there would be one infinite truth or whatever, because why would "God" or whatever deceive some people and only help the people who believe the right thing? idk.. as i said, i can't get my head around it.

I believe in God and I have to admit that it is hard for me to wrap my head around it too. I'm pretty sure that most people that believe in God, question it sometimes. I'll admit I have. But the whole point is faith. So, even if you can't see or hear God, you still have the faith that He is there.

As for prayer, I don't pray all that much. I don't even know how I feel about it. When I do pray I am usually desperate for something. But when I go to church (which isn't often) I do pray that God watches over my family and friends. And they are all, for the most part, ok so maybe it does work. I, at least, like to think it works. If I didn't believe it works I probably wouldn't do it at all.

I don't believe in what can't be proven.

Which many people take as though I don't believe in God when I say that,
Because there isn't a way to prove he/she/it exist.
However, has anyone proved there is not?
Nope.

I suppose I like to think that there is some form of something.
But, I honeslty don't know.
And if there is truely something, then I will find out sooner or later.

I believe in God and I call myself catholic, but honestly I don't agree with religions that have so many "rules" such that if you disobey, you won't go to heaven. I don't agree with, you know, god fearing evangelicals in the sense that I think God is a nice guy. So long as you don't murder anyone, have a clean conscience and are remorseful for anything you ever did wrong, I think He'll let anything else slide.

Desmond Hume:

I believe in God and I call myself catholic, but honestly I don't agree with religions that have so many "rules" such that if you disobey, you won't go to heaven. I don't agree with, you know, god fearing evangelicals in the sense that I think God is a nice guy. So long as you don't murder anyone, have a clean conscience and are remorseful for anything you ever did wrong, I think He'll let anything else slide.

Yes, I agree. I'm Catholic but there are a lot of "rules" that they teach that I disagree with. Like, people aren't going to hell for sex before marrage. My mom always tells me I'm going to hell for not going to church. But I don't think I will.

I never go to chruch, I'm not really a very religious person. At all.
My best friends Atheist, and I'm okay with it, it's not like I'd judge her on it or anything.
But somewhere inside I think there's something telling me there is a God. I mean,
we all gotta have something to believe in, and I believe it's your choice, not anyone
else's. Even though I think there is a God, doesn't mean I'm going to believe in
everything about it. Like the "rules" in the Bible, and the stuff the do at chruch,
I'm not doing that.

And anyway, I've already done a lot of sins, so screw it.

I'm an ex-Christian - I was forced to go to church until I was 14, but to make matters worse my mother started working at the church when I was about 9, so I had to spend five years of summer/Christmas/Easter holidays and half terms in the church until she finished work. (Luckily she only does four to five hours a day.) There were far too many things I took issue with in the Bible, and as a general ideology/science clash, plus the youth group leaders never liked it when I asked questions because they could only answer them with circular arguments which were inherently flawed. When I was 7, the Sunday school leaders told me that anyone who didn't go to church went to hell, which is a totally bastardised, fictitious statement even for Christianity. My dad doesn't go to church, you see, so I was naturally very upset. Needless to say, I'm now a staunch atheist (though various friends of mine are very strongly Christian.)
But I still pray sometimes - when I'm particularly eager for something to happen, or when my team has a penalty. (it always works except during penalty shootout scenarios) Praying has "worked" - I got the A-level results I asked for etc - but I still can't believe in God. It just seems so... I don't know. I'd like to believe, but I just can't. I'm quite moralistic though.

fancy pants:

I see it as more of a placebo.

It doesn't do anything on it's own. I don't believe in higher beings that we can communicate with through prayer. But people do it and they believe it works, and it's just like when someone takes a pill that they think will make them better, even though medically the pill does absolutely nothing, their faith in it will contribute to the favorable outcome.

yeah i dunno i could agree with this one time i was really ill and i got better after praying..although i dunno how much was anxiety related so yeah that placebo effect..i kinda believe in higher beings though..there's gotta be something there but ive prayed and nothings happened so yeah..

I kinda agree with fancy pants:
My mum told me praying is good and helps when I was in 6th grade. She advised me to pray and thank God for my day - and I really did this. I've had a few problems during this time and I kept praying every evening and so I believed it got better, even if I did the most stuff on my own I guess.
Anyway, I still believe in something like a God but I disagree with the catholic curch and the Vatican. I don't follow The 10 Commandments and dislike going to church and confessing for forgiveness and all that. You could call me a free christ or so; I don't know if there's a word for it...

Conclusion: I don't know if there's a God or something like that and so I couldn't definitely say if praying works or not. But I'm pretty sure it helps people who belive it works. Everyone has to choose on its own if (s)he believes in God and wants to pray and thank or not. And I want the others to accept someone's meaning, so stop chasing and punishing people because of their religious beliefs!

blur.:

I believe praying does work, and I pray to God every night, and I talk to him about my problems and stuff. Even though nothing has really gotten better for me, I still believe he cares and eventually things will get better.
If you don't believe in God/pray, there's really nothing to hope for in life. If someone's about to die, you can't fall to your knees and pray to God that a miracle saves them; you just kind of wait for them to die, you know. Whatever, that's what I think.

uhh. i respect your beliefs, but its wrong to say that people who dont pray or believe in god have nothing to hope for.
its true that atheists dont have a god to pray to when in despair, but then again, they dont need a god. that doesnt mean they cant still hope and be desperate. its not like an atheist would just be like "well.. if theres nothing we can do.. oh well" and go on with their life.
i know thats probably not what you meant, but it sounds like people who dont believe in a god have empty, meaningless lives and dont care about people. and thats not true.

Thom Yorke.:

I believe praying does work, and I pray to God every night, and I talk to him about my problems and stuff. Even though nothing has really gotten better for me, I still believe he cares and eventually things will get better.
If you don't believe in God/pray, there's really nothing to hope for in life. If someone's about to die, you can't fall to your knees and pray to God that a miracle saves them; you just kind of wait for them to die, you know. Whatever, that's what I think.

Can I just say that I don't believe or disbelieve in God.
Becaues I can't prove that he/she is real or not?
Thanks.

Second, I am more should I say...Intuitive? Or, one with the five elements. Spirit, Earth, Water, Fire, Air.
I believe in gaining strength though the nature around us, and when I pray, I like to pray to Nyx, the goddess of Night.

No, I am not wiccan or whatever.

So, you really can't say if you don't pray to God, you have nothing but fate.
Because that's wrong, and really, it offends me.

I'm not a religious person, so I don't believe that there's necessarily someone out there listening to anyone's prayers, but I do think praying can help in a sense. What I mean is, I think praying may help push people mentally to fix the problems in their lives, because they believe that God is going to help them make things better.