The Pros And Cons Of Petitionary Prayer

Some theists always pray and believe it works. The argument of petitionary prayer tries to prove the point that it is pointless to pray, because it will not influence God’s decision anyway. Given that God is going to do the best he can, God would not change his choice if someone prays, because he is doing his best choice and. God would not change his choice if someone doesn’t pray, which is obvious to see. The behavior of petitionary pray seems to be pointless in this way.

Personally, I think this argument against petitionary prayer appears more convincing to me, so this paper would mainly about some responses to the objections to the petitionary prayer arguments. Specifically, the objection I am focusing on is called the institutional challenge.

I don’t agree with this proposition. In order to figure out whether the petition promotes the relations or not, we have to know that what is the God-human relation. Relation, by definition, is the way two people are connected or deal with each other. Relation is interactive and apply to both sides of the relation. God, by definition, is all good, all known and all powerful. Since God is always at its maximum good, with the petition or not, God will treat human beings with maximum love and goodness. Or else, it violates God’s definition. Therefore, if there is a boost of relation, it must be the boost of the human side towards God. Does human’s attitude or behavior towards God really promoted by the

First thing first, I think this could not happen in reality. When people are praying, the underlying assumption is that this prayer may be actualised, so the result of the prayer would definitely have influence on the person’s attitude towards God. Maybe the influence is not big enough to make a change, but we should not disregard it. I am not going to deny that it is possible Tom could feel closer to God after prayer, but it is only a byproduct of the prayer. The main focus of Tom is alway to actualise his goal. Maybe the byproduct would have some influence on the relation between Tom and God. After Tom sees the result of his prayer, I believe this influence is largely undermined or even forgot, because Tom’s focus has never be in this byproduct.

Above all, no matter the petition is realised or not, if Tom is faithful, petition is not promoting his relation with God. If Tom is not faithful, he wouldn’t believe God exist in the first place, so we don’t even need to bother with this discussion. Regardless, relation is a complicated idea and we cannot be assertive that any kind of behavior would strengthen it or weaken it. Maybe the action of prayer is only promoting some people’s relations to God, and it is just too little to make God decree the institution of petitionary