How does God decide which prayer to answer?

0

I was thinking about this just now and wondered what people thought. First let me say for the record that I am not a religious person, but I hope not to offend those who are. It’s a sincere question, not one designed to poke fun at anyone’s beliefs. Ok, here we go:

So what do you think God/alla/budha/whomever does when there are two people with conflicting prayers? Say for example a couple broke up because one wants to move on and the other can’t let go. So person A prays for the other person to let go of them, while person B is praying for God/Whomever not to take that person away. How does God/Whomever decide which prayer to hear/resolve? Is it the pray that came in first? Is it the prayer that is most sincere? Does the higher power decide by flipping a coin? Or by who’s been around longer? What’s the criteria here? What are your thoughts on this topic of conflicting prayers?

Category: asked October 16, 2014

5 Answers

0
accepted
2
The physical function served by prayer is to calm the mind and assert one's intentions. A person who prays for guidance will be more open to solutions, a person who prays for strength will sometimes persevere through their next hardship. It is directly correlative.

To put this into a context of critical thinking; a person(a true and honest believer) is in mortal distress, they collapse to the floor with their head pressed to the ground deep in supplication to their deity as their doom draws near, offering the most honest proficiations of their lives, it stands to reason that their prayer should be heard by dint of its sincerity. Meanwhile, a serial killer who is driving home with a trunk full of his latest predation drives through an intersection at the same time as a drunk driver who fell asleep at the wheel. The godless serial killer shouts "God no!" - some would argue that counts as a prayer -.

The true believer, prostrated before God and deep in devout prayer does not see their prayer answered and dies of their indeterminate peril, while the serial killer, fresh off the slaughter with his hollow words, narrowly avoids a collision.

To any rational person, the answer is that prayer does not work. The serial killer neither wants nor deserves mercy, while the believer is begging for it. An all-loving deity would by his very nature answer both prayers, since he is ALL-loving, and would answer the prayer to save the believer from harm, but one thing must be kept in mind; prayer is faith-based. It functions on assumption and presupposition. You can not ask for evidence of a faith-based claim; all you will get are faith-based GUESSES.



0
As a Muslim, the answer is, God decides. There are no criteria, God chooses for what to happen, whenever he wants and how he wants. When praying to God, you have to be as sincere as you possibly can.
2
Well, my religion says God will only not answer your prayer if
It's not good for you, what youre asking for and
He has something better planned for you.
Plus, all the prayers that He didnt answer because of these reasons, will be put on the scale of our good deeds to weigh it down on the Day of Judgement. So itll be heaver than that of our unrepented sins
So yeah..None of it gets wasted

And He is All-Knowing. He knows the future, past, present. So He knows better. That's how He can only decide what's good for us
-1
God answers every prayer. However, He answers them His way. If you pray for a pony you probably won't get a pony because God might be trying to teach you humility. What I'm trying to say is that there is always a bigger picture and no prayer goes unanswered.
-1
I believe that God would choose that which would hurt both parties least. Person A clearly ones to be away from Person B, so I believe that rather than make Person B continually suffer on from the longing of Person A they would cut it short. Let them move on, in short, do what's best.