Prayer - Is More Better?

Occams Barber said:

Back in post #22 I said this:
I am aware that prayer is a communication and that the purpose of prayer can cover a range of things like worship, confession, thanks, petitioning or intercession on behalf of another.

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Yes, I am aware of the topic. I was speaking of petitionary prayer. I am uncomfortable with your premise that says petitionary prayer is an attempt to convince or persuade God to do something.

'Petitioning' is the act of requesting God's help/intercession/intervention and it's one of a number of reasons for prayer. You can't seriously tell me that this doesn't happen. A quick trip to the Prayer Wall will supply examples.

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But "requesting help" is not the same thing as convincing or persuading. That was the point.

Your argument is not unlike Bella's in post #41, but without the elitist overtones. It suggests that God needs the help of a translator/explainer if he is to really understand the request. It also implies that the less articulate among us are less likely to succeed since we can't explain ourselves that well.

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I gave two replies and neither of them said that.

In both cases the assumption is that God may need more than simple one-on-one prayer to be convinced or to understand the issue.

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Your arguments have been remarkably sloppy in this thread. My first response said that, assuming your rationality criterion for answering prayers, multiple prayers would be more likely to provide the proper rationality. For example:

Perhaps Ophelia loves Jason and his children, who he supports, and asks God to spare his life for these reasons. Perhaps God grants Ophelia's prayer. In such a case the additional prayer was helpful and your claim that each petitioner's reasons will be identical simply doesn't obtain. Your objection is logically flawed in many ways, and this is one of them.

It appears to significantly underestimate God's ability and turn Him into a fallible human. Why is an all-knowing God more likely to be influenced by a 'cumulative effect'.

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Why is knowledge the only criterion? If God loves us as a Father loves his family, won't he be interested in granting our wishes and desires to one extent or another? Especially if they are holy desires? And why wouldn't there be a cumulative increase in the love or solicitude that God has for two people as opposed to just one person? Your claim is a bit like saying that a human father should give no more consideration to a request made by one of his daughters as opposed to a request made by all of his daughters. That doesn't make sense.

If more is better, is ten better than five or twenty better than ten?

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Yes, that would seem to follow.

Do bigger requests require more prayers in support?

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That's a completely different question.

I only ask them to demonstrate how awkward the 'more is better' argument becomes when taken to it's logical extreme.

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They're not awkward at all, and you still haven't spelled out your difficulty in a clear, rational way.

Occams Barber said:

There is a sense of "It's not what you know - it's who you know" - running through your post. Your suggestion that we should conscript 'professional' intercessors to act on our behalf comes across as a little elitist. Are those of you with the better intercessors acting on your behalf more likely to attract God's sympathy?

What about ordinary men and women who lack ready access to these gifted intercessors? Are they incapable of prayer without 'fluff'. Is God not capable of seeing through the 'fluff' where it exists?

The normal request for prayer support is usually from ordinary people to ordinary people (visit the Prayer Wall for examples). While the idea of co-opting qualified others to intercede on our behalf has some echoes in Catholic practice, by and large it doesn't seem to be a Christian habit.

I accept that collective prayer can bring comfort and relieve anxiety. I said as much in the OP. My question was about the relative impact of one person praying vs many, on God's response.

OB

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Pretty much everything you said in this post was wrong or misrepresentative. For example, the mere idea that certain people are better entrusted with prayer requests is only elitist on a very cynical, strawman-esque mentality. I would be happy to elaborate on any individual point.

Occams Barber said:

If you can't see the difference between co-opting a professional prayer intercessor and employing a public relations consultant, then we are poles apart in our understanding.

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But she didn't say anything about "Co-opting a professional prayer intercessor." That was your cynical revision.

As LaBella already pointed out, apparently on your view it would also be elitist to consult a doctor regarding health or a teacher regarding education.

Occams Barber said:

You have an unfortunate habit of finding the trivia (in the argument context) and blowing it out of proportion. The whole point was to ask whether many people praying for the same thing was more likely to result in God interceding. I used terms like ask, hope, request, pray for. I also used 'convince a couple of times in the context of whether many prayers would be more convincing. The issue is not the word used to describe the interaction. It's whether or not multiple interactions (i.e. prayers) were more likely to result in intercession.

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No, that's not true. You posed a question, gave ample evidence of your own position and the "difficulty" you find with an alternative solution, and yet gave no rationale for your own position besides the idea that God would grant or deny a request solely on the basis of the "reason" for a supplicant's prayer. "If an all-knowing God understands the reason for a single supplicant’s prayer why..." As you point out below, "providing a reason for something is part of a process of 'convincing'...," which is precisely why your whole understanding of petitionary prayer is premised on the idea of convincing or persuading God.

The vagueness of your OP has allowed you to continually shift the goalposts in this thread rather than answer simple questions, such as why you find the efficacy of additional petitionary prayers "difficult."

In your quotes (below) you are saying that many people supplying multiple different reasons will overcome 'mediocrity in the initial petition.

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Nope, I didn't say that. The idea that two prayers are more compelling than one has nothing to do with "overcoming mediocrity." You're putting words in my mouth by way of poor inferential reasoning. In the example I gave everyone provides mediocre reasons. There simply is no "overcoming of mediocrity."

Once again you're underestimating your God by assuming that He could not see beyond a mediocre reason. You're also saying it may take a number of people to fully explain the issue.

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Meh. I don't know why I expected you to be capable of a rational discussion when you couldn't even give a basic reason for your position in the first place.

By the way - providing a reason for something is part of a process of 'convincing'. If you want to avoid the accusation of trying to convince God then you are limited to asking without providing reasons.

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Here's your answer, kiddo. It's called arguendo. You would've had to read and think more carefully to spot it:


It means your reason-argument fails even on your own faulty premise, which is to say that the argument is not only unsound, but invalid. "Your objection is logically flawed in many ways, and this is one of them."

Occams Barber said:

Prayer – Is More Better?

A common Christian practice is to pray to God seeking some form of assistance or support.

It’s also normal for Christians to ask other Christians to pray for God’s intercession on their behalf or on behalf of another person or cause. Christian Forums even has a specific Forum; the Prayer Wall; set aside for this purpose.

Looked at from the point of view of the original supplicant, I can understand that supporting prayers, from other Christians, would be a source of comfort and help promote a sense of Christian community.

Where I’m confused is whether or not additional prayers increase the likelihood that God will intercede.

Do more people praying for the same thing make it more likely that God will intercede?​

If the answer is ’No’ then supporting prayer would appear to be unnecessary from God’s point of view.

If the answer is ‘Yes’ then it raises the question of why God is more likely to respond to multiple prayers in support of one person’s request. If an all-knowing God understands the reason for a single supplicant’s prayer why would 10 supporting prayers make a difference?

OB

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It is somehow in between. You seem to miss the point.

It actually depends more on faith and subsequently how close you are to God. When Jesus describes the faith of His disciples as the smallest seed, how much faith do today's humans have in an all corrupted world? It is no doubt smaller than the smallest seed.

So how to boost up the chance of a prayer of faith. When you gather up with many prayers, then you will have one closer to God with others further away from God. If you are further from God but by chance teamed up with one closer to God, the chance of the prayer is thus increased. God knows before hand of everything, but He follows some "rules" to make Himself more obvious to you when you can stay closer by yourself, or through one in a position closer to Him.

Occams Barber said:

Prayer – Is More Better?

A common Christian practice is to pray to God seeking some form of assistance or support.

It’s also normal for Christians to ask other Christians to pray for God’s intercession on their behalf or on behalf of another person or cause. Christian Forums even has a specific Forum; the Prayer Wall; set aside for this purpose.

Looked at from the point of view of the original supplicant, I can understand that supporting prayers, from other Christians, would be a source of comfort and help promote a sense of Christian community.

Where I’m confused is whether or not additional prayers increase the likelihood that God will intercede.

Do more people praying for the same thing make it more likely that God will intercede?​

If the answer is ’No’ then supporting prayer would appear to be unnecessary from God’s point of view.

If the answer is ‘Yes’ then it raises the question of why God is more likely to respond to multiple prayers in support of one person’s request. If an all-knowing God understands the reason for a single supplicant’s prayer why would 10 supporting prayers make a difference?

OB

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Prayer isn't magic. So it's not like God needs our prayers at all. In fact I would argue that prayer is for our benefit. I have often argued the position that the point of prayer isn't to influence God or change His mind or whatever, or to change the world around us (as though it were magic), but rather prayer changes us.

So "more prayer" isn't about some kind of transaction whereby more prayer somehow results in a better outcome, like putting more coins in a claw machine gives you a better chance of getting your prize.

But it does bring us together in compassion and like-mindedness, that is we are coming together for mutual care, love, and support. We aren't simply islands of loneliness struggling by ourselves, but rather the burden becomes share, in a sense.

When the Church meets together in prayer, not just literally as in during Christian worship when we literally pray together, but when we are in agreement together through our prayer--and when our prayers and the prayers of the saints who are in heaven are held together like incense (as described in the book of the Revelation in the Bible) something does happen. Not as a kind of magic, or way to manipulate God or the universe--but something does happen, we are affirming a single Amen together as God's people, in faith, hope, and love, and through our unity with one another by the Holy Spirit, in Jesus Christ, under God the Father.

What I think is important is learning to move away from "God, I want a pony" type of prayer to, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done" type of prayer.

-CryptoLutheran

Occams Barber said:

Thanks VC. Putting aside my non-belief, I've had some difficulty understanding how an entity like God could be swayed by the petitioning type prayer and how multiple pray- ers were more likely to succeed. In the OP I said:

I see the value of corporate or communal prayer in a way similar to what you've described. It acts as a reinforcement of personal faith and helps build a faith community.

Talking and listening to Christians I regularly strike the ought/is problem -Christianity as it ought to be vs Christianity based on what it actually does. Based on the responses to this thread it seems that the 'ought' you've described is not the 'is' others are expressing. There seems to be a belief that delegating to more experienced pray-ers, or going for numbers, is more likely to produce results. The magic element seems to be well and truly alive.

Your understanding of prayer makes much more sense to me although it appears that others might disagree with you.

OB

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Oh, I don't know that my position on prayer is all that different than that of ViaCrucis. So, that makes essentially '2' in general support for his view.