Hey you nonbelievers, if GOD does not exist than who answers prayers?

Question

Many times my prayers have been answered. Things have happened that without my faith in Him I could not explain. Many small miracles.
I do not judge you for your beliefs, I just want to know who you think answers my prayers if He does not exist.

Answer 1

What proof do you have that these things would not have happened anyway prayer or not? I do not pray and I'm not a believer. But I can wish for for things. Sometimes my wishes come true. it is well within statistical probability. I find it incredible that some of us believe in pestering god with mostly selfish requests about anything imaginable. I pray for: my favorite team to win, my kid to pass his exams, to smite my neighbor, to win the war/fight, to get my lover to say yes, to have money, luck, cure my disease, pass an exam. God must receive billions of these per day he somehow screens them and then takes action or not. All of these requests have thousands of parameters that have to be tweaked in the right way so as to have the desired effect. We have the audacity to proclaim god on the side of football teams and even supporting players who by the grace of god scored. This is at best ludicrous.

Answer 2

First of all, you're addressing non-believers, so your question is moot. IF is not a factor. However, let's say God does exist. Maybe you should ask yourself "Why does God answer some prayers and not others?"

The answer is, "Because there is no God and it's just a coincidence. You said that "Many times, my prayers have been answered." What about the times he didn't answer? Or the answer was no? When people say, "Of course God answers prayers, he's answered mine," they conveniently forget to say "but he didn't answer A, B, or C."

Typical of "believers" is their inate ability to "pick and choose" the bits of the bible or religious doctrine that fit their religious leanings, while glossing over the other "facts" in the bible.

You can't have it both ways: either the bible is a factual account of "whatever" or it isn't. You can't say, "well, this fits in with my belief system, so I'll use this, but this doesn't so I'll just ignore that bit."

Faith-based belief is nothing more than giving up free will and accountability.

Answer 3

I don't judge you for your beliefs, either. But I do fault you for sloppy reasoning, which your question demonstrates. This is a problem with many people who really *want* to believe something.

You assume prayers are answered. Maybe they are, and maybe they're not. Your experiences don't prove cause and effect. What happens after you pray may have happened anyway, had you not prayed. Or it may have been something you unknowingly set in motion *because* you prayed.

Even as an agnostic, I experience wonderful events--which I usually just call good luck--that you might call small miracles. Often when things are looking very bleak, or hope of a positive outcome is low, they suddenly turn around.

Believers in astrology attribute events to the positions of celestial bodies. Wiccans attribute them to magic and spells. Gamblers, to all manner of personal rituals or lucky objects. And worshipers across the centuries, to thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of gods. Does that mean all these gods and forces exist? No, and I think you'd agree. They thought *they* saw cause-and-effect, too. Perhaps you see the fallacies in their thinking... and perhaps you see why I have the same problem with assumptions about prayer.

Answer 4

Your question illestrates a familiar logical fallacy. You pose a question which assumes in advance an answer to a previous question. In your case, you have to answer these questions first before your question makes sense:

1. Do gods exist?

2. If a god exists, is it the one of Christianity?

3. Does he "answer prayers"?

4. What do you mean by "answers prayers"?

5. Does inability to explain things mean they are "answers to prayer", "miracles", or whatever?

6. Is there any testable evidence, shareable with others and capable of being repeated, that there is such a thing as a "miracle"?

7. When things happen in life, is it necessary that somebody caused them to happen?

P.S.: I am not a "non-believer".

Answer 5

If you never prayed again, do you think that good or even "miraculous" things would stop happening to you?

I can say a prayer every night before I go to sleep that I will awaken the next morning. That prayer will come true everyday for as long as I live, won't it? So, either God would just suddenly choose to stop answering my prayers one day (assuming I won't live forever), or He/She/It does not respond to an individual's prayers or does so arbitrarily.

I think that too often coincidences are seen as evidence of answered prayers.

Good Luck!

;o)

Answer 6

Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White
and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight
and Benito Mussolini and the Blue Meanie
and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie
and RoboCop and the Terminator
and Captain Kirk and Darth Vader
Lo Pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger
Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan
Spock, the Rock, Doc Ock and Hulk Hogan

oh, and Mr. Rogers.

Answer 7

Here's an easy test to determine if prayer really works.

Grab a coin from your pocket. Any coin will work so long as it has two sides even if it's a chuck e. cheese token.

Now pray to an entirely different god than the one you pray to we'll use Odin for this example.

Pray to Odin to make the coin come up heads. keep on doing it. You'll notice quite a few times it'll come up tails instead of heads. You'll probably deduce this happened because Odin doesn't exist.

Now pray in the name of your God that the coin will come up heads. When it comes up tails you'll probably say some excuse like God doesn't waste his time on coinflips, it would reveal him and end your freewill, or any other excuse. But yet you completely dismiss Odin as imaginary.

When you understand why you dismiss Odin and the countless other Gods out there you will understand why we atheists reject all gods.

Answer 8

because of the fact prayer shows relationship with God. Prayer isn't a Christmas record. regrettably, even Christians at time get the prayer element incorrect. The Bible says that God knows what we've want of until now we pray. Operative be conscious is want of. Too lots of our prayers are amiss James 4 because of the fact we pray for flesh appealing issues, our hearts are wicked, and we don't pray for others and our enemies. God is likewise not interior the corporation of enjoying enable me teach Myself in accordance to the factors of guy. in actual actuality God does teach Himself. inspite of the undeniable fact that, if one don't have self assurance in something related to Him they'd have religious blindness. whilst human beings provide up fiddling with God it will be much less stressful to work out Him. this is written, God shall not be mocked. in case you ever do certainly need to renowned Him, he will hear your prayers, yet as long as there is the spirit of mocking and interest enjoying, the words of this form of guy fall on foul floor

Answer 9

You know what?

I thought I had prayer being "answered" before.
But it turned out it wasn't.

3 signs I asked for "happened". Apparently, God had heard.
So, I "knew" that my prayers were answered.

Later on, found out it was not so.
Guess prayer doesn't really work.
Maybe you only think it does, kind of like the glass is half full or half empty deal.

Answer 10

Nobody does.

Your "answered" prayers can be explained by confirmation bias toward favorable coincidences. It's a well known psychological phenomenon. Reports of weirdness at full moon are another example.