Praying for the keys is sort of an ongoing joke here, but here are the words of a singing German on her mobot profile---

Prayer is a huge part of my life and God answers so many of my prayers everyday whether they are small like me not knowing where my keys are and I pray for help and I find them shortly after or they a might be a major thing in my life.

http://mormon.org/me/2TT2/
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That is the thing about mobots that I love, no matter how much you make fun of them...you don't have to exagerate because it is ALL TRUE. In the name of cheese and rice, Ramen.

"Heavenly father, where are my car keys? Are they in the living room under the couch, or did I drop them in the bedroom, or...[continue ad-nauseum]"

"Heavenly father, I'm a refugee fleeing persecution and am literally starving to death. Please lord bless me with just some rice, or beans or.. anything. amen. He- Hello? ['All circuits are busy now. Please try your prayer again later.'] ..."

No, you can't have any rice or beans but I know where there is a spare set of car keys ...

Yep, that is EXACTLY my problem with prayer. Our family was falling apart, praying our brains out for help and getting nothing, but then we'd go to church and hear people bear trite testimonies about how god answered their trivial requests. My favorites: "I get a little depressed in the gloomy weather, but this morning as I was putting on my makeup, the sun shone really brightly through my window for several minutes. I knew it was god telling me he knows and loves me." or "I was at the store trying to find a birthday present for my neighbor's son. I asked Heavenly Father to help me know what to pick. I don't know why, but I felt I should buy a little train. When he opened it up, he burst into tears and said, 'How did you know I always wanted a train.'" Uh, really? God can help you pick out a birthday present but he can't save people from genocide, starvation, or natural disasters? Is this the kind of person we should be worshiping? Seems like child neglect to me. Where's the cosmic Child Protection Services when you need them?

Obviously I'm a nevermo, but I escaped the Word of Faith cult, and I too was encouraged to ask God to help me find my keys (and many other things because I am always losing them). Occasionally, I did do the whole calling on the name of Jesus to find my things. Personally I always had better luck when I just allowed the location of an item to come to me in a dream, but I imagine my former faith tradition would consider that occultic...

In the known Universe there are 125 billion galaxies.
The average galaxy has 150 billion stars.
So there are 18,750,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in known Universe.
There are 7 billion people on Earth.
There are 2.68 trillion stars for every person on Earth.

My daily allotment of God's time is 1/80000 of a second.

If I get that amount of time each day for 82 years then my lifetime allocation of God's time is 0.374 of a second -- less than 4/10 of a second.

I don't believe that God can do anything for me in 1/80000 of a second. That is why I must save myself and find my car keys all by myself.

Hence my screen name -- SAVIORSELF.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2011 02:08AM by saviorself.

You forgot to take into account the atheists into your equation. You actually have closer to 1/75000 of a second of God's time, since they are not praying.

And kids are ordained into priesthood.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And kids are ordained into priesthood.


and youths are called "elders"

My better half mentioned about the Holy Ghost helping to find her car keys, I asked her why the Holy Ghost hadn't been able to help those Turkish people find their way out of the earthquake zone?

Silence....

How, exactly, did the Holy Ghost help this young girl?
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/cougars/52809171-78/alexis-friends-ogden-north.html.csp?page=1



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/31/2011 08:21AM by Stumbling.

when I took my TBM daughter to temple square to see the lights. I haven't found them yet. What does that tell you?

That car key cost me $168 to replace. You'd think . . . I guess I just didn't do enough like go back to church.

including the presumption that "God" *is* the mormon image of a Big Human in charge of managing the physical universe. Other human-centered presumptions:

1) That there is a definite hierarchy of needs in the universe and that "God" has to deal with the biggies first.
2) That "God" is subject to the same principle of "Lack" that humans are: that is, there is only so much Divine Attention, and that attending to one thing entails neglect of other things.
3) That "God" should have the same priorities as rational human beings in assessing what is important and what is not.
4) That "God" is unfair...because "He" hasn't miraculously found "my" keys (that is, followed "my" priorities).

Of course the whole point of this thread is to discredit the mormon/human notion of "God," but I'm suggesting that such a notion is a straw man, easily discredited, and the other aim is simply to discredit other humans who would seem to believe in that. But in the process, posters are discrediting their own limited imaginations...and feeling superior because of that.

But specifically about car keys: isn't there *some* part of your forgotten awareness that does know exactly what you did with them last? You're not accessing it now, but is it wrong to call on that fuller awareness, beyond your present scope, to remember? And what about you--shouldn't "you" solve the problem of world hunger before you waste the world's time and the lives of Somalis while looking for your own keys? Try that one on your child the next time she gets hurt: after all, there are much worthier objects of your attention!

The point is, you can work to reform the world AND be lovingly attentive to your child's distress. It would be a hypocritical contradiction to do otherwise. Projecting "scale" problems onto "God" reveals that we have not yet solved our own scale problems.

hope this works:

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=god+find+car+keys&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&gbv=2&biw=1152&bih=636&tbm=isch&tbnid=jGcUrCFp1PxsXM:&imgrefurl=http://www.greatplay.net/essays/the-contradictory-failure-of-prayer-part-ii&docid=orOWdzpbyyHEvM&imgurl=http://www.greatplay.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Thank-you-Jesus.png&w=600&h=265&ei=9NmuTvy1JKOsiAKO29T5Cg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=1055&sig=115366738066934385481&page=1&tbnh=83&tbnw=188&start=0&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:0&tx=107&ty=35

One time in Fast and Test Monkey Exhibition Sunday one sister got up to the Rameumtom to tell us how grateful she was that a simple prayer helped her and her daughter who was going to be late for an important school function unless they could find the keys to the garage door.

And as I listened to her I kept thinking about the news story that morning about a whole town praying for the safe return of a couple kids who had been missing since the day before.

And then we got home and the news was saying they had been found dead after locking themselves in the trunk of a car while playing hide and seek.

From that time forward, I have rarely prayed for frivolous favors.