Religion

Chelsea are due to play Arsenal in a soccer match. Mr A prays for Chelsea to win, while Mr B prays for Arsenal to win. Chelsea won the match. Why were Mr A's prayers answered but not Mr B's?

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Why assume that Mr A's prayer

Why assume that Mr A's prayer's were answered? Is the idea of the example that Chelsea won because Mr.A prated for it to happen and God acted accordingly? Suppose I ray for a natural disaster and one happens. Would we assume that this was God answering my prayers? Surely not on any conception of God that's worth taking seriously.

That Mr A prayed for what happened doesn't mean it happened because Mr A prayed for it, and in this case, that seems to be the response the believer should make. There's no reason even for a believer to think that Chelsea's victory was a matter of God favoring Mr A over Mr B.

Of course, non-believers have an even simpler reply. But I'm treating your question hypothetically.

Hi,

Hi,
I'm going to answer this question as a non-theologian, but I should note that there are many, many different theological approaches to the theory of prayer, and I'm sure some would disagree with, or offer a different answer than, mine. For the purposes of your question, it seems important to first point out that you are conceiving of prayer *merely* as an attempt to affect the course of events in one's (or another's) favor. So one prays for success at a soccer match, or that one's relative recovers from an illness, and so on. This first sort of prayer is what is commonly portrayed, I think, in movies, casual conversations (including jokes), and, I think, it is what most atheists/critics have in mind when discussing prayer. My first point is just that there are other purposes of prayer in many religious traditions; in most traditions, one regularly prays without having a specific request in mind ,in order to be intimate with the divine, our of love (or something like that). I think you have a Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religion in mind (sorry if my assumption is false), so I will also point out that, at least in the Hebrew bible, there are various examples of unanswered prayers of the kind you are imagining (anything from pleading for personal favor or help (Job) to prayers of an entire people for protection against an enemy (so many examples and lamentations here). So, there is plenty of reason to think that God, in the bible, often does not do what we ask him to do. Thus, if I understand your "why" in the question as a sort of accusatory objection to theism, one reply would be: it is not part of the religious doctrine under discussion that God does whatever we request, so the objection fails. If, instead, the "why" question you pose is the theological question, on what basis does God choose to help one player and not the other, I doubt there is anything definitive for us to go on in your story. I suppose one sort of theology would have it that God decided for Mr A because, ultimately or overall, Mr. A was more deserving, but there is so little in the Bible to suggest that things are so straightforward, with plenty of examples of the unworthy and wicked being successful, and vice versa, at a particular event. Again, Job is a good example, but there are plenty of other examples, including the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, in which the righteous are made to suffer/lose. A more promising answer, I think, is something like: in the grand scheme of the world, only part of which we see (I mean, we don't see everything in the world that is relevant, like how badly or for what reason, really, each player wants to win, and we also don't see the "scheme" or plan for the whole world, including the future and how it plays out given Mr. B's loss, etc), it is better for Mr B to have lost. Or, perhaps, less grandiosely, but just as plausible: the rules of the game were set, the players played, the best person at playing the game, or just the luckiest, won. We have so little to go on in your scenario, that I doubt there's anything much more to say that would enlighten us about God. I hope that helps! And I'm sorry if I've misunderstood the question.

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