"Everything that happens
    in the world is an answer
    to somebody's prayer."
      --Judic West, Benign Human Tumor


Are there people who want terrible things to happen and are happy, or at least 'okay,' with whatever suffering they've been hoping and praying for?

How Christian is it to pray for the death and destruction prophesied in whatever verses those praying revere in scripture?

Why do some religionists want/need to believe that they have the power to curse others?  What's wrong with leaving it all up to their ghawd?

Do rabid BYU fans pray to ghawd that their team will win?  Will the team's 1984 #1 ranking be cocktail chatter in the Celestial Kingdom throughout all eternity?

The important thing is always to end with "Thy will be done" so no matter what it's all God's fault. Also, knowing your prayer won't be answered saying this relieves the need to worry about that and needle yourself with doubts as to why not.

Disclaimers are very convenient in religion.

Is everything that happens in the world an answer to somebody's prayer? Think about this.

The sinking of the Titanic was the miracle the Lobsters in the tank of that kitchen were praying for.

Wikipedia says, "The average salary for a player in MLB stood at 4.9 million U.S. dollars in 2023."

When you're watching two baseball players, a pitcher, and a batter, each making, on average, almost five million dollars for a six to seven-month season, and each players crosses himself and glances to the heavens at the start of the at-bat...and they're both Catholic, who are you gonna bet on?

Of course, atheists just look at the stats...

Poor God. Is it any fun to watch a game when you already picked who is going to win based on the best prayer?

Made me chuckle, I was thinking along the same line.

Did someone pray for that tornado to cut through town and destroy the school so they could avoid the final math test? Or did only one person pray for winning that last big lottery?

I believe all things!

I hope it is an article of your faith.

I believe all conspiracy theories. I believe everything even everything on the internet. Everything is both true & false.

Do you believe anything between true and false?

I've gotta stop this. I promised my Doctors I wouldn't bother people anymore.

Cog dis creeps into the space between true and false. You've got to keep that hole small and virginal.

I don't think you understand Christianity just some of its bad examples.

Is it like, to err is Christian, to forgive is divine?

Maybe The Cat will remind us what Gandhi has to say about Christianity!

Duly summoned. . .

If it’s true that Christianity built Europe and the Enlightenment built America, I’d say, prayer or no prayer, Christianity wins.

> Christianity wins.


What's the prize?  And is it unique?

A God who failed to answer the fervent prayers of all those innocent victims of a terrorist attack on 9-11 is as good as dead.

I'm sorry but this is so myopic. You lived at the same time they did so I understand that, but a belief in God is bigger than your lifetime and human suffering that according to your logic God allowed is much more than your experiences.

Elderolddog wrote in part:

"Are there people who want terrible things to happen and are happy, or at least 'okay,' with whatever suffering they've been hoping and praying for?"

In the business world, there is a term called short selling. Literally, it means that you're betting that whatever stock you've put a short sell on will lose its value. When it does, you make money, because you won the bet. In 2007 and 2008, a major financial institution whose name I can't remember now encouraged other institutions and individuals to purchase stocks that it owned because, it argued, the prices of those stocks were going to rise in the near future. Unbeknownst to the institutions and individuals it was selling these stocks to, however, was that the selling institution had secretly short sold all of the stocks it was selling. So when the financial crisis came in 2008, while the institutions and individuals it sold its stocks to took big losses, this major financial institution earned a lot of money because it had short sold for itself the stocks purchased by the purchasing institutions and groups.

In other words, the answer to your question is a resounding "Yes!" As Frank sinatra sang:

"That's life,
And as funny as it may seem
Some people get their kicks
Stomping on a dream."
--Frank Sinatra, "That's Life," 1966