Prayer

Among most Western practitioners, prayer is to ask (or pretend to ask) that the laws of the universe (or the gods) be suspended (or followed justly) on behalf of the petitioners or their loved ones.

But why?
Various doctrines codify the manifest reasoning behind this certianly irrational or deceptive behavior.

The majority of modern intellectual believers seem to follow psuedo-philosophical justifications involving quantum mechanics. The same supposed gaps in mechanistic causation which allow for free will or the spontaneous begining of our universe, may allow the almighty deity to insert prayer fulfilments. Less popular these days are the parallelisms: Pre-established harmony involves the deity predestining the universe to appear as if it has reacted to the request of the prayer. More popular among Muslims is occasionalism which simply denies materialistic (Western) notions of causation.

Of course "liberal" understand there are no gods and therefore if prayer "functions" at all, it is by other mechanisms. Now back to our program...

Can prayer move mountains?
According to Matthew 21,21 and other verses prayer can indeed move mountains. "If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done." Has this ever happened? If a mountain ever fell into the sea it would cause such an enormous tsunami that history would record it. Any number of Christians have faith, Christians who don’t know about the tsunami might well pray in faith for a mountain to move but history does not record a mountain moving. This verse of the Bible can’t be literally true.

By the way if Jesus was an ignorant 1st Century wandering preacher we can easily understand him talking about prayer moving mountains. Those who imagine Jesus was God and was therefore omniscient must wonder why on Earth Jesus would encourage good people to pray for such a devastating tsunami? Why does God allow tsunami in any case?