God, Prayers, and Prosperity
by Randy Gage
Last post we continued the discussion on god, prayer, and prosperity. I said that you don’t manifest prosperity because you make a prayer, and an omnipotent force responds favorably to your plea. While believers are no doubt convinced that they worship the one true god and their god answers their prayers, the evidence would certainly not support that.
However, I promised to answer the question Sloopy posed: Was his wife saved because he and their friends were praying to the one, real god, and that god chose to answer their prayers, and ignore the prayers of the other 150,000 people who died that day? But before I share my thoughts, some disclosure here: I was a lay minister at my local Unity church for 20 years. I’ve delivered dozens of prosperity services at churches all over the world. I taught the principles of prosperity and how I felt that god and spirituality fit into the equation.
But after taking a two-year sabbatical and spending hundreds of hours in quiet reflection and introspection, I came to the conclusion that no rational person could believe in god. Since that time, I have evolved some, and would amend that summary to say that I believe a rational person could believe in a god — but no rational person could believe in the religions claiming to represent gods. (And all of the ridiculous dogma, doctrines, and Stone Age sky god superstitions they propagate.) I just came to the judgment that as a rational, thinking person, I could no longer hold those beliefs.
Some of you may think that I’m writing this for clickbait, or to insult you or your beliefs. Not in the least. I’m not a militant atheist, and I don’t view it my mission in life to convince other people that god doesn’t exist. Technically I’m probably a fundamentalist agnostic. If someone has faith in a supernatural power and that belief brings them joy and peace, good for them. I too wish I could believe that when my grandma died, heaven got another angel. But I just can’t.
So to be totally clear, I don’t believe in god or any other omnipotent, omniscient, all-knowing entity…
But I do believe in the power of prayer. And I do believe that it is possible the prayers of Sloopy, his wife, and their friends and family could have helped cause her recovery.
I’ll explain my reasoning on the next post. Until then, would love to see your thoughts below.
-RG
Originally published at https://www.randygage.com on September 25, 2019.
