I am an atheist. However I have personally had an experience that surely seemed like my prayers being directly answered. When I was young, from about 6 to 9, I would see these weird bright lights in my field of vision. Very often when I closed my eyes and frequently in normal daylight. Think greenish orbs superimposed over my field of vision (I could still see fine).
I was very freaked out about these lights. At 9 I prayed to god something similar to “I am not sure if you are real or not. But if you are real please makes these lights go away. If you answer my prayers I will know you are real and no longer doubt. Please help me.”
Soon thereafter the lights went away. And until I was much older I considered this very convincing proof for the existence of God. However I have since been convinced the prior of God existing is so low that I should not believe despite my personal experiences. Seeing does not always justify belief. Maybe I was hallucinating the lights or a medical condition improved by itself. But to this day I am still not sure what to make of my experience and whether I should believe in God.
Despite feeling belief in God is reasonable (even if I do not believe) I am very confused by people who are confident in a specific theory of God (say Catholicism).
Here’s a data point, do your own bayes accordingly:
I’ve frequently been able to solve mind or brain-related problems by doing actions conceptually similar to, or sometimes literally by, praying to God. I’m not a believer in any way, but the simple attempt to convince myself that I was communicating with some higher outside entity that had the power to solve my problem did solve my problem.
Here’s the other evidence I have at my disposal, all of which I am confident above 90%:
My subconscious knows and understands everything—everything—that I think consciously, or even feel in passing.
My subconscious is much more powerful than my conscious with regards to such issues, with “power” corresponding here to having more input channels and more output channels for the same problem-solving ability.
My subconscious probably can figure out technical neurological or psychological solutions for things that aren’t even in my (conscious) power to solve (either because I don’t have the input to identify the properties of the problem, or to be aware of the exact nature of the problem, or don’t have the output to affect the specific things in my brain / thoughts that need to be affected to undo the pattern causing the problem).
So by those assumptions, and a few other assumptions about base rates, it seems normal for me to conclude that my subconscious fixes problems for me when I “pray”, as opposed to some deitic entity. But since you may not share my confidence in the above crucial beliefs, or my assumptions about base rates, the data point of my problems being solved by “prayer” might lead you to a different conclusion.
Something like this happened to me a long time ago too. I can’t give the exact details because the incident would be recognizable and I need to preserve my anonymity. However, basically I wanted person X to do Y, and X absolutely did not want to do Y. So I prayed something like “God, unless you tell X explicitly to do Y, they’re not going to do it, please tell them to do it.”
The next day a total stranger (to both of us) came up to X and told them they had a message from God for them and that they should do Y.
I am an atheist. However I have personally had an experience that surely seemed like my prayers being directly answered. When I was young, from about 6 to 9, I would see these weird bright lights in my field of vision. Very often when I closed my eyes and frequently in normal daylight. Think greenish orbs superimposed over my field of vision (I could still see fine).
I was very freaked out about these lights. At 9 I prayed to god something similar to “I am not sure if you are real or not. But if you are real please makes these lights go away. If you answer my prayers I will know you are real and no longer doubt. Please help me.”
Soon thereafter the lights went away. And until I was much older I considered this very convincing proof for the existence of God. However I have since been convinced the prior of God existing is so low that I should not believe despite my personal experiences. Seeing does not always justify belief. Maybe I was hallucinating the lights or a medical condition improved by itself. But to this day I am still not sure what to make of my experience and whether I should believe in God.
Despite feeling belief in God is reasonable (even if I do not believe) I am very confused by people who are confident in a specific theory of God (say Catholicism).
Here’s a data point, do your own bayes accordingly:
I’ve frequently been able to solve mind or brain-related problems by doing actions conceptually similar to, or sometimes literally by, praying to God. I’m not a believer in any way, but the simple attempt to convince myself that I was communicating with some higher outside entity that had the power to solve my problem did solve my problem.
Here’s the other evidence I have at my disposal, all of which I am confident above 90%:
My subconscious knows and understands everything—everything—that I think consciously, or even feel in passing.
My subconscious is much more powerful than my conscious with regards to such issues, with “power” corresponding here to having more input channels and more output channels for the same problem-solving ability.
My subconscious probably can figure out technical neurological or psychological solutions for things that aren’t even in my (conscious) power to solve (either because I don’t have the input to identify the properties of the problem, or to be aware of the exact nature of the problem, or don’t have the output to affect the specific things in my brain / thoughts that need to be affected to undo the pattern causing the problem).
So by those assumptions, and a few other assumptions about base rates, it seems normal for me to conclude that my subconscious fixes problems for me when I “pray”, as opposed to some deitic entity. But since you may not share my confidence in the above crucial beliefs, or my assumptions about base rates, the data point of my problems being solved by “prayer” might lead you to a different conclusion.
Something like this happened to me a long time ago too. I can’t give the exact details because the incident would be recognizable and I need to preserve my anonymity. However, basically I wanted person X to do Y, and X absolutely did not want to do Y. So I prayed something like “God, unless you tell X explicitly to do Y, they’re not going to do it, please tell them to do it.”
The next day a total stranger (to both of us) came up to X and told them they had a message from God for them and that they should do Y.