Why does God answer some prayers and not others?

[locationforna]

Just this really.

If you are a Christian, please can you tell me why God answers some peoples prayers and not others?

For example, one woman could be praying her baby survives. Baby dies. Another woman with the exact same situation of an unwell baby - Baby lives. Both prayed, they prayed a lot

Why is it you say 'God is good' and 'God does answer, this is a miracle' and 'we are praying for you'

Do you really think that if the first person prayed hard enough, her baby would've survived? Or if not, and it's just chance, why pray?

I believe in God by the way. I have been studying for a while and seem to lean towards Judaism but notice a lot of 'God is good, he answered my prayers. It's a miracle'

Why some prayers and not others? Why do people think He's helped you get a job offer you really wanted but not answered a woman across the road's prayer not to be raped?

There is suffering throughout the Bible. Jesus himself suffered according to the Bible. That's not what I mean - I mean specially, why some prayers can be answered and not others that are equally in need?

Sorry for the litany of typos :).

I don’t have historical references to Solomon or the veracity of Ecclesiastes but I took the liberty to throw it in to make the point that the question itself is not a new one. It’s the premise here that I question.

@Maximinimalist quite right. The world is massively over populated by humans. Our own free will I suspect.

Babies die because there's too many of us right? Out free will. Original sin etc.

All. Part. Of. The. Plan.

@TomPinch

Not many of us exercise our consciences in a vacuum. We inform them according to the beliefs and norms of society around us, and according to the beliefs and norms we hold as individuals. There will almost certainly be a big overlap between the two.

I agree with your post. I'd be naive to believe that my beliefs and morality haven't been shaped by the society I live within and the relationships I've had. My point was that, at its most basic, we are responsible for determining right and wrong, and its irresponsible to 'subcontract' that to a religion (or any other non-religious structure for that matter).

Why does all seeing, all knowing and all powerful mean that he must stop all bad things from happening which would require the removal of free will?

Is that what you want him to use his omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotence for? To remove all your free will and simple dictate every human action, everywhere to avoid bad consequences of human actions?

Or would you rather you dictate to him who is good and innocent and who you think should be shown mercy and grace? Or are you happy for him to follow my orders or Rishi Sunak’s. Which individual or group of individuals’ requirements or opinions should he bend to and obey. Which human god should God take instructions from?

But all that aside, yes God himself states he is Almighty. All seeing, all knowing, all powerful. What else do you think or know he has said? Well he also said he has given you free will. He also said he placed eternity in the hearts of men/humans. In fact, he has said a lot of things. Until you ask what does this all powerful, all knowing and all seeing God (whoever you conceive them to be) wants from you, then you will always be going round in circles because ultimately you want a God who isn’t a God but rather a genie that can bend to your personal will.

@Maximinimalist

• Why does all seeing, all knowing and all powerful mean that he must stop all bad things from happening which would require the removal of free will?

Is that what you want him to use his omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotence for? To remove all your free will and simple dictate every human action, everywhere to avoid bad consequences of human actions*

So what is the point of God?

I do see some value to prayer as a way of focusing on the needs of ourselves and others, to try and make sense of things or as a way of fostering our empathy, and making us into better people as a result. Prayer becomes more of a meditation than incessant pleading to a sky-father.

I think someone upthread mentioned the names of people they consider evil and who God should have either struck down or who should never have existed. Yet here in lies another problem of our time. The Western world hold up certain people as great, hero’s, worthy or praise and adoration. Meanwhile at the same time, half way across the same people are considered vile, wicked and causing untold misery.

Even the great Royal Family would be condemned by some.

Do who on earth should God take instructions from. If he listened and did the will of everybody who thinks he should answer to them, we will all be dead.

If social media is anything to go by, with the sheer scale of hatred even for people we don’t know, what utter madness it would be if God answered to each and every one of us according to what we think he should do, make his priority, who is good, who is bad, who should exist or not exist, which bad things to allow or not allow.

Why not for once ask God what does he want from us? What does it all mean? Really ask by searching and understanding what does an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing God wants from his perspective rather than from a flawed human perspective?

@Maximinimalist

But all that aside, yes God himself states he is Almighty. All seeing, all knowing, all powerful. What else do you think or know he has said? Well he also said he has given you free will.

This idea that the Bible states that God has given humans free will is not supported by the text. It's largely an invention of more populist strands Protestant theology to "square the circle" to rationalise their faith.

Of course, people are assumed to have a degree of agency in the Bible, and there are point where people make certain key choices, not least in the Adam and Eve story, but this doesn't extend to more generally to its contents. To quote:

"The consensus of reputable scholars who focus on the study of free will in the ancient world are abundantly clear that it is not to be found in the bible. The leading scholar on the subject of Free Will in Antiquity, Michael Frede, observed that "freedom and free will cannot be found in either the Septuagint or the New Testament and must have come to the Christians mainly from Stoicism.""

Doesn't this thread make you realise that there is no such thing as god??

Science and medicine are what helps people survive illnesses and unfortunately some people are more prone to disease than others (genetics).

Prayer may help you in that you think you are doing something but it doesn't work. How can it?

Put your faith into things that exist is my advice.

Good question. The answer is certainly not to be controlled by the created or to take away the free will of the created. The thrust of your question is still one that sees God as a human instrument that must give to us what we want and if he does not always shield us from bad then there is a problem.

This is also not the thread for this discussion but it is the starting point where you must ultimately find this out yourself.

Was just about to say the same thing, though less eloquently, @Tuilpmouse - scripture does not refer to free will; it’s an idea developed later than those writings, to explain the problem of evil. The concept is also completely unrelated to why accidents, many diseases and natural disasters occur.

This reminds me of many conversations with DC’s over the years about what is right and what is wrong. We as their parents taught them this and religion had no part of this. DC’s went to an international school so plenty of experience and tolerance of different cultures and religions.
DS summed it up (about age 12) - people believe in different Gods, Father Christmas , the tooth fairy - they can believe what they like - doesn’t mean any of it is true.

If you read the Bible you will see that an absolute central theme is free will. Even from the very creation story where Adam and Eve chose to disobey God unless you will claim he forced the “apple” down their throats or in fact they never had any choice but to eat the apple despite God saying they had the choice.

The whole story from Genesis to Revelation is about free will and how the exercise of free will landed us in a messy world and correcting that mess led to Jesus being crucified. Salvation is all about exercising free will. Choosing to obey.

So exactly how is free will not central to the Bible?

I think your googling might have led you to the discussion of predestination and preordination. However, these are not inconsistent with free will.

@Maximinimalist

Why does all seeing, all knowing and all powerful mean that he must stop all bad things from happening which would require the removal of free will? Is that what you want him to use his omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotence for? To remove all your free will and simple dictate every human action, everywhere to avoid bad consequences of human actions?

Firstly, a lot of enormous suffering is, and has been, caused by natural factors that have nothing to do with human activity, whether good or bad. And much of that suffering simply can't be attributed to sin in the person suffering. A young child who lost their parents and family from the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages, and who then suffered an excruciating death alone from the disease in the following days, can hardly be said to have deserved their fate unless the most twisted theology of original sin is applied.

Secondly, it's a false dichotomy to say that God either has to intervene in everything, or he can't intervene in anything.... a position which is made even more absurd by the simultaneous belief that God does indeed intervene frequently to answer various prayers or to ensure his will is done. Besides, I'd be very happy for God to have intervened and overridden free will in the most egregious of human evil acts....

It takes a special kind of sociopathy to want God to refrain from intervening in the exercise of my and all free will, even though that would mean things like the girls abducted by Belgian pedophile Dutroux to starve to death alone at his house would be allowed to happen.

Only you have made that false dichotomy. It is that very false dichotomy I’ve been questioning. The very fact that God’s goodness and existence is questioned if he does not intervene in a particular situation is exactly the problem. This thinking requires God to intervene in every situation in the way a particular human decides is the right or best way.

There is good and bad. I’ve said this repeatedly. I’ve made no false dichotomy. Quite the opposite.

Your other outlandish outpourings, I’m not going to engage with. These rabbit holes are pointless and in any case my answer lies in what I’ve been saying.

So your work colleague believed that we are all non player charactersin her life? Wow. Some people are just really funked up aren't they?

@Maximinimalist

If you read the Bible you will see that an absolute central theme is free will. Even from the very creation story where Adam and Eve chose to disobey God unless you will claim he forced the “apple” down their throats or in fact they never had any choice but to eat the apple despite God saying they had the choice.

The Fall is an allegory that is the basis of teaching that we are so corrupted that we are slaves to sin, without the ability to 'will' ourselves into a sinless life, and that due to these deficiencies we would be damned were it not for the opportunity given by Jesus. Of course, people have a degree of agency, and that is implicit within the Bible, but there is no unfettered free will, that's a distortion and over-simplification of the biblical messages (in so far as they are consistent).

The thing is, how can you prove to her otherwise?

I’m going to take my leave of this thread as I’ve got some things to do this morning.

I end of this: it would be folly to think that people who follow a religion- Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc have not grapple with these difficulties questions but end up solidifying their belief in God even if they have different views of who Jesus is.

What I often observe is that whilst religious people have a profound understanding of these difficult questions, most atheists have, at best, a very surface understanding of what God is about. So a discussion often feels like it’s going round it circles without moving on to really profound questions about why are we here, for instance.

Critical thinking for atheists is reserved to questions about God and not about the other alternatives they hold on to? For instance, and I say this with a smile, how come the thing that evolved into a human after the Big Bang, underwent the transformation in such a way that the female and male developed at the same time, in the same place, in the same way and of the same kind/species that they could then reproduce.

Only you have made that false dichotomy. It is that very false dichotomy I’ve been questioning. The very fact that God’s goodness and existence is questioned if he does not intervene in a particular situation is exactly the problem. This thinking requires God to intervene in every situation in the way a particular human decides is the right or best way.

Why does questioning God's goodness and existence when he doesn't intervene in egregious acts of evil mean that he therefore has to act in every situation?

The examples I chose were deliberately extreme, yet nonetheless real, so they couldn't be rationalised away unless by bizarre and crass mental gymnastics.

But you are entering into a discussion about different interpretations of the Bible. A completely different thing. This discussion is going all over the place.

We can get into which religion’s view of God and his relationship with Jesus is the right one. Which religious sect within these religions are correct, etc.

Some sects of all these ancient religions believe their religious texts are allegories, literal, open to modern human change, etc, etc.

If you think that all Christians, Muslims, Jews interpret their religious text in exactly the same way, then you are mistaken.

@Tuilpmouse so how does that work?

“Why does questioning God's goodness and existence when he doesn't intervene in egregious acts of evil mean that he therefore has to act in every situation?”

This thread focused for most part on the existence of God and his goodness. The fact that babies suffer was used as an example of why God is either not good or does not exist.

God is good and if in instances you think he is not good because of the suffering of some, then you are in fact questioning his very nature and saying he is actually not good or at the very least he is not always good. God would have issues with that because he says he is ALWAYS good.

As to his existence, I was not the one who questioned his existence on account of bad things happening in the world. I simply questioned that assumption.

Anyway, lovely discussion. I really must go now. Enjoy the rest of the day.

I’ll give you my own atheist point of view, which, because we don’t share a doctrine or philosophy other than we don’t believe in a god, will differ significantly from atheist to atheist.

I think that, with the size of the universe and the length of time it’s been around, biological accidents like the earth and life on it, was always likely to happen purely as a matter of statistics. Given a large enough sample, pretty much every possible outcome is almost guaranteed to occur sooner or later. Our existences as we know it is just one of those outcomes.

Moreover, I get the impression (and I accept I may be wrong, so my apologies if so), that you think human life is a wonderful thing, so fantastic that it could only occur through some kind of divine will or action. I have the opposing view, planet earth and humans aren’t that fantastic at all, we’re just some carbon based things that happen to exist, and all the thoughts, hopes, worries, dreams, loves and understanding we have are simply a combination of electrical impulses and chemical reactions, nothing more. If we could connect a voltmeter across the universe, the lifespan and impact of the time planet earth exists wouldn’t even register as a flicker on the needle.

I think if the world literally ended tomorrow, in the grand scale of things, it wouldn’t be figuratively be the end of the world.

What I often observe is that whilst religious people have a profound understanding of these difficult questions, most atheists have, at best, a very surface understanding of what God is about. So a discussion often feels like it’s going round it circles without moving on to really profound questions about why are we here, for instance.

Atheists tend to be rejecting the traditional concepts of God that many Christians and other theists promote as being "correct". If God were defined in ways by Christians in ways that were more sophisticated, less dogmatic and less fantastical, I expect the tone of the debate would be different.

I still disagree that was based on religion. Sounds more like one single church member’s insensitivity and victim blaming. The church member is not the religion; they’re human, not God.