Your thoughts on prayer

I love this one from Martin Luther:

"Pray, and let God worry."

He was a man after my own heart, Diana. I like his definition of Faith, too.

"Faith is believing something you know ain’t true."

This saying would be very apt for Professor Richard Dawkins, John.  He's such a devout atheist!

Ha!

In what way would you say he's devout, Sue?

I went to one of his talks in Oxford a couple of years ago and had a chat to him in the bar afterwards. No horns or anything, despite the death-threats he gets. He seemed to me to be a decent human being.

Count me out in the death-threats department, John.....I literally wouldn't kill a fly. Did I say he had horns???  No, what I meant was that it takes as much faith for him to believe in his own version of events as it does for the people he continually berates. I'm sure he is a very nice chap but I do wish he give us all a break. Forever having air time on television to tell us what fools we are. Why should he care....or even bother??. He's wasting his breath as far as I'm concerned and millions of others, too. There are more holes in the evolutionary theory than a sieve. Even Charles Darwin admitted that the eye is so complex it could not possibly have evolved.  I'm sure if God himself  spoke from the heavens to Mr Dawkins he would still continue on his demented path. 

If only he would live and let live. 

Hi, Sue.

No, you didn't say he had horns - but people who call Dawkins a devout atheist frequently (in my experience) have an anti-Dawkins agenda.

It doesn't take as much faith to put your trust in Science as it does to put your trust in Religion, because Science is evidence-based. Religion isn't.

As for why he should care - he'd say (and has said) that he cares because he cares about truth, and (in his opinion) supernatural religion is untrue.

There are no holes in evolutionary theory. It's as hole-free as anything in science gets to be. (Science never says anything is 100% certain.)

Darwin knew nothing about genes. The complexity of structures like the eye did indeed puzzle him - but we now understand the processes that produce such wonders.

If God spoke to Dawkins I'm sure he would do the same as me. He'd first check to see is he was dreaming. Then he'd check his booze-intake. Then he'd wonder about bi-polar problems.

In other words, he'd try to eliminate all the natural causes.

If he did all that and still heard the voice of God - he'd probably change his mind.

And so would I.

Hi John:  Mark Twain is great, but I would expand on what he says above.  This is an observation that I just read today, oddly enough, in one of my daily devotionals, The Word Among Us:

"Faith is a matter of disposition, before it is a matter of knowledge. This means that our faith can grow as we learn to be open to God and his work in our hearts, even as we try to incease our understanding of his teachings."

There's that choice thing again, John.

Now. about faith and prayer, again from The Word Among Us:

"We often think that we need active faith in order to pray, or active prayer in order to have great faith.  This makes us doubt that God will hear us, either because we think our faith is weak or because we don't pray as often as we should.  While it is true that deeper faith leads to deeper prayer and vice versa, it is also true that many came to God with little faith and no prayer, and he never turned them away....Obviously those with deeper faith do have a deeper prayer life.....The misconception (emphasis is mine) is that the rest of us - we who feel our faith is not strong enough, or that we don't pray enough - are left out in the cold.  Don't believe it! 

We can all come to God in prayer and he will give us greater and greater "evidence of things not seen."  And that evidence will move us to greater faith.  And that greater faith will move us to deeper surrender.  And that deeper surrender will move us to a greater desire for God. And that greater desire for God will move us to deeper prayer - and the whole cycle will start over again, on a deeper level."

That's been my experience, John, as well as the experience of countless others.  And even people of great faith still have many doubts, including me.