That's where the use of faith comes in, my friend.
You see...Iceat and I had faith BEFORE our personal revalations, and before the prayers were answered. Faith that those prayers would be answered at some time or another.

So when they were answered...then it confirmed belief...and we no longer operate on faith.....but knowledge.
Yeah...we still operate on faith...in other instances...but as far as God is concerned...we don't really have faith that he's there....we know, because he has spoken and revealed himself to us.

If his situation is anything like mine...then you'll realize that many many (smaller) prayers were answered as well, not just the 3 main ones he remembers. It's just that those 3, specifically, were the ones that were our "truth-tellers" or "milestones"...I guess. (I have two or three specific prayers that have influenced me as well)

You can attribute the answers to prayers like a need for money, or someone to talk to, or a little food at the end of the week or anything of the sort to coincidence. Sometimes.......not often...but sometimes people are just good people and things like that can happen.

But the day that you pray to make it out of the car wreck alive...or that you ask for some guidance...and you're directed to the answer.........or the night where you're alone you start praying to the ceiling to hear it talk back.......there are ways.

I'm not saying that any of those are the status quo of "true revalations"......but when you have one...you know it, and there's nothing that anyone else can do or say about it....because he reveals himself on the spot...and you can't deny it.

Well...you could, if you were ignorant...but that would be the same as saying that the sky isn't blue when the sun hits it, or that the tree outside doesn't cast a shadow.

Either way...Darth...I believe that God is omnipotent.

I believe that I don't have to say every single word of my prayer to the Lord, and he'll hear me. He'll know what's up.

I believe that, technically, I never had to pray any of those prayers out loud, and the almighty stapler would have answered me. But I did anyway...because I had faith that he was there...and that he heard me. Part of it could have just been my need to say something aloud...but he'll hear either way.

If he is a stapler buried deep within Mars...it doesn't matter to me...he created everything that we see, and he's guided me through times when I was completely clueless on what my life was about. Power to the Stapler. The almighty Swingline. He gives direction, hope, and love. Something that most people look for all their lives....not all...but quite a few do.

Maybe not you. Maybe your ideas are sufficient to keep you running through the day.
But that doesn't go for all of us.
Some of us need a savior...because we understand that we aren't capable beings. Sure...we're survivors....but I'm not trying to survive, when death is inevitable.

I'm investing in something a little more long term than an e-mail to a stapler through our super-telepathic-wifi system...but call it what you will. You've seen the movies, too...you know how this goes.

Achilles...obviously the doctors did have something to do with it. But obviously the odds of her survival through such a surgery weren't too great if he attributes the reason to God.

As much as I would love to have a man-made, full-proof rule system for physics, miracles, and how the earth works....you and I both know that we are simply a bunch of organic matter looking for answers. Science isn't fool proof yet, and neither is religion.

But to me and Iceat....God is.


(*HINT* God DOES NOT = Religion.)

OH yeah...and as far as how often I pray for miracles.......not often.
I honestly don't understand the need for them, most of the time, because people just want to lengthen their lives most of the time........and I don't think that a miracle is defined SOLELY as a life lengthener. I also think a lot of people pray for miracles without deserving them......not that I'm to make that judgment call....but I can see why they don't get answered. A lot of prayers are out of selfishness, greed, and the want for more and more and more.

I have had miracles in my life. Some...completely without warning. (As in- I didn't even pray for them.)
Let's just put it this way...
I've been given more miracles than I've asked for.

__________________
Davo is my favorite this week.


THANKS SOLID................................& STORMS!!!

Not mentioned in sig: <3 Lammie

I agree with all of it except for the omnipoten part, im not sure about that yet... Though I may very well be soon.

Nice write-up BTW.

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At least you're thinking for yourself, and not just letting some preacher tell you what to believe, though. You don't want to say omnipotent if you don't mean it.

__________________
Davo is my favorite this week.


THANKS SOLID................................& STORMS!!!

Not mentioned in sig: <3 Lammie

The only problem I have with people who already believed when they had these "revelations" is that due to the fact that they believe, they are in a highly suggestable state of mind. If I truly believed that God would answer my prayers if I prayed to him, then it wouldn't take anything as big as a sick aunt to confirm my beliefs. A simple coincidence would likely do the trick. I don't doubt that you had these revelations. Well that's not true because I do, but I'm in no position to say whether or not you did actually have them, I'll just say I'm unconvinced and my reasons are above. I'd be a little more convinced if someone who didn't believe at all said a prayer for whatever reason, and it was answered.

It is analogous to this situation: My mom tells me for the first 5 years of my life that Santa Clause brings me gifts every year at Christmas. She also signs some of my gifts "From Santa". It would be completely rational for me to conclude that Santa brought me those gifts because I've been fooled. I would have had no reason whatsoever to believe that he didn't bring me gifts, because my mom also gave me gifts from her so who else would I have suspected? Obviously that is not what happened, and I now know better than to accept explanations to complicated questions without some sort of evidence or reasoning.


TMNT

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The Dark Knight = God of movies

Well...if you're anything like me....then you don't believe anything for it's face value. You look deeper. Maybe saving a sick aunt is all he needed....but for some of us...it takes more.

When I got those gifts "from santa"....I checked the signiture of "santa"...and realized that it was the same writing as the Easter Bunny's, and the same as my mom's. Interesting, huh?

See...when I said that first prayer...and God told me it would be answered, I wasn't completely convinced. I gave it a chance, and had some patience...and before I knew it...it was a gift 10 times greater than what I had originally imagined. That's one of the ways that you can tell it's God......because it's much more than you would ever even dream, even when he tells you what's going to happen.

Obviously...I don't expect you to be able to believe in the same revalations that I, or Iceat had. They are not yours. They prove nothing to you. In fact...you could probably just say that we made it up...and feel better. So why even bring it up?

That's part of the reason that I don't share it...and probably similar to why Iceat hasn't shared his. Cause those revalations were not the ones that were intended to win-over the universal population...they were small ways in which God revealed himself to individual humans in larger ways than they could have imagined. At least...that's how mine was, and I like to keep it that way.

So when I got that gift from God....I looked into it. Could it be mere coincidence? Who else could have signed for God? Could it have been the fact that I was just hoping for it to happen one night?
Well it could.......but the probability of such prayers being answered are about 11023897634076 to 1, because of the amount detail involved in my answer, and how convoluted everything was.

It's one thing if God says...."Hey...you're about to get a car." And then you go buy a car. But it's a completely different thing if God says "Hey Darth...you're about to purchase a really nice car. But hey...when you go there...they're going to be a little too pricy for you. All you gotta do is say 'I'll put $1150 down' and they'll knock $5000 off the cost. Just wait until he says the word "fire" before you make the offer."

^And then that happens. (No...that's not my prayer...lol. But it's a good analogy for one of my experiences...including the verbal flag.)

What are the probabilities of the existant Santa's handwriting to be the same as your mother's? What about the wrapping of the actual present? Do they both wrap all gifts alike? Bags vs. Boxes vs. Envelopes? All of it?
Would a man in a big red suit who rides a sleigh of flying reindeer be more likely to have given me that gift than my mother who works 40 hour weeks at the school's cafeteria, where she earns REAL money? Would some dude up at the North Pole actually have a checklist for all the things that I've done wrong...when my Mom is the one who CAUGHT me doing all those things wrong?

Well...considering I've used this thought process for as long as I can remember....I can tell you......I don't ever remember believing in Santa. Seriously...I don't even know if I ever did. I remember faking it one year, so I wouldn't spoil the possibility of getting some presents (thinking my parents would quit playing santa if I quit playing ignorant)....but I don't remember actually thinking that Santa brought me presents. I think the Easter Bunny was more believable for a while, just because he hid plastic eggs in kids houses, rather than dropping off hundreds of dollars worth of copywrite infringments from elves who don't have money (you think they could get away with GIVING away toys that were created by large corporations?). That is...until the easter bunny started bringing presents, then I was sure he was fake.

But to this day...I can not give an explination for any of my answers, or the discussions surrounding them, or the complete twist of how extremely impossible the odds of it happening "accidentally" are, except that God...who told me it would happen.....and it happened...followed through with his answer to my prayers.

I wish I could make him answer your prayer.
I wish I could make everyone believe.
But this life is not about how easy things come...or the crazy odds at which you experience revalations.........it's about spreading the love of God, and that's what I try to accomplish, ultimately.

Maybe those coincidences would be enough for you to be sucked in to whatever is being placed in front of you.......but it wouldn't convince me. I'd need some pretty hard evidence to be pushed in any direction other than that which I choose. Christianity was a tough choice for me at first...because I thought I was eliminating any other possibility of any other probability out there. But being the rational being that I am...I still think about other possibilities.

Knowing that my God will let me choose whatever path I want to choose...with his help or not...and that he has given to me overly and abundantly is what has convinced me that this is where I need to be, and this is what I should be doing/believing.

Not just some coinkidink.

__________________
Davo is my favorite this week.


THANKS SOLID................................& STORMS!!!

Not mentioned in sig: <3 Lammie

Yep, Darth, like I have been explaining, it doesnt hurt to believe... Maybe someday you will get an answer from believing. I honestly do not know what else to say for the arguement of Gods existence, besides I myself and some of my other family members have expereinced "revelations"...

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Oh boy Rebal's back...

But I partially agree with what he has to say about miracles. I think it would be a greater miracle to make someone with a brain tumor happy and convert to christianity in the last days of their life, then to live miserably through it.

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BTW, as harsh as this may sound...

Life on earth is only part of the story.
You have to realize that Life is not everything and when someone dies, they are going elsewhere.

Therefore if you pray to live or for someone to live longer it is more of a selfish prayer... Im sorry, but it would be the Harsh reality...So if they die, you have to realize they are moving along just liek we will eventually...
Its hard to accept, take in, and utilize, but that would be the only logical answer to the sadness of death despite prayer...

Thats why my prayers have nothing to do with materialism...

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That would be amoung the best reasons to believe in G_d. Actual evidence of some sort. Of course, it can be disregarded as coincidence, or perhaps some other phenomena.

I experiance stuff like that quite a lot. It brings up an interesting question. How do you go about it? At what point can it not be dismissed as coincidence? I'm sure most of you have seen atleast one of the stories of an experiance I had that was out of the ordinary. And you probably know that I like to think things through logically. It's hard to be objective when dealing with personal experiance.

Many of mine do. If you pray for something that is physical, you can see that it happens or doesn't. It's a much better system if you want proof you can be content with. I've prayed for things simply out of conveniance, or entertainment. I appear to get quite a high answer rate. That includes obvious no's.

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Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night.
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm the rest of his life.

Thanks to Shystie for avatar

Are you even going to make an effort to substantiate that claim? There isn't a shred of evidence suggesting an afterlife.