TESTING GOD
Christians and Jews and Muslims say you should not put God to the test. You should not pray in order to see if what you ask for will happen. For example, you cannot plant two geraniums and ask God to make one grow well and the other grow a bit and then die away to check if there is a God. But surely there has to be circumstances in which this test would be legitimate despite the fact that the Bible and these cults forbid it totally. You have a right to know if there is a God and if the evidence for him is good. The reason testing is forbidden is that it will soon become apparent that praying makes no difference to geraniums. Or anything else for that matter! Testing God when you already have evidence would be wrong and he would be right to ignore you but when it is right and still nothing happens then it should be clear to you that there is no God.
Think about the following reasoning advocated by many sceptics today, "God supposedly wants a relationship with us. He says he will help us and has the power to do so. If that is so, he would prefer to reveal himself by letting us test him rather than expecting us to listen to popes and bible bashers and apparitionists and miracle mongers and religious feelings/desires."
Research that says that testing God to see if prayer works seems to say it does. There are many projects that give the opposite impression. But the research that seems to have successfully shown the power of prayer does not verify this alleged power. It verifies the power of testing God if it verifies anything. To attempt to use the research to get people to believe in prayer will fail. If you do your own tests they will probably not work. Christians complain that the testing process gives a degrading view of God. If so then the prayers can only go to the Devil. God doesn't want them.
Christianity teaches that praying to pass an exam when you have done no work is a sin. They say it is magic and treating God badly. But praying to pass an exam when you have done the work is still magic. It is asking God that you will not be having a bad day on the day of the exam, that your concentration will be good, that you will understand the questions, that the questions will reflect what you have learned, that your pens will work and that your script will not be lost before it is marked. People have passed exams they did no work for. It is bizarre to say that asking God to get you through an exam you did no work for is magic and asking him to help you think clearly on the day of the exam is not.
Believers
want sufferers to believe their suffering is for a reason when prayer does
nothing to allay this suffering. Sufferers are supposed to think that the pain that is more
real to them than God should exist to please this being who is less real to
them. God knows he will benefit from their pain but they are not as sure so
this is a totally selfish one-sided arrangement on the part of God. Believers
pray principally that sufferers will learn from their pain. That is
self-righteous – it amounts to wanting God to make them suffer so that they
will be as holy and superior as themselves while they don’t suffer
themselves. The false belief that prayer is caring may help some sick people
for feeling cared for is good medicine but prayer is not caring.
Prayer is meant to proceed from trust in God so the essence of prayer is,
"Thy will be done O God and I submit to you for you are never wrong". How
could saying, “Your will be done,” for another person be praying for that
person? It’s ridiculous for that is not the same as the person submitting to
the divine will. Praying for one another though Jesus practiced it and
commanded it is a superstition. It is offensive to pray for anybody else for
it is trying to do for them what they ought to be doing for themselves,
namely telling God that he alone counts. If prayer helps sick people then God
has nothing to do with it and it is black magic or psychic power which he
forbids. Prayer for others tries to make a fool of God.
There
would absolutely be no harm in praying to God to give you a miraculous dream
that seems so real and happy and that seems to last for a week right now but
which really only lasts a few minutes for God can distort time as we know
from physics. But he won’t do it even when he could wipe your memory of this
event afterwards to let you go on as nothing has happened like he wipes it
all the time anyway. It is evil to pray to him. He does not want you to be
happy. He does not exist if he is all-good. Jesus’ promise that prayer could
make a mountain move when it is said in faith is false.
God can’t even pass a harmless test.
The WEB
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
Catholic
Encyclopaedia. This discusses Quietism.
Books Consulted
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