Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Praying for alternate paths?

Often times a situation comes into somebody's life where prayers are the only hope towards achieving something important in the world. When nothing else seems to work, praying seems to be the last resort.

The concept of praying becomes very ambiguous at times, specially when you have strong belief that things will go on as written in fate or if one believes the saying "what is written will happen". To me, this is somewhat conflicting at times: What'll happen is already written, then why pray? Will prayers lead to alternate paths in life? e.g. if I had to attain a degree and this is written as my fate then whether I work hard and get it with flying colours or I don't work hard and get it for the sake of just getting it, I'll get it.

If I were to do something and its quality depends upon my effort and concentration, then what role does prayer play? Or to be exact of the conflict I am in right now, what if I am not certain of getting something I really want, do the prayers play any role?

It's not certain that: "If you pray for something it's just a matter of time that you'll get it" because of the reason that it might be good for you but not for everyone. Again this is logic and my question still remains the same: What do prayers do?

If we limit this discussion to the result of the prayers as: "I will get it or not" rather than "I will surely get it, but I pray that I get it with lesser obstacles", etc. If we are to think upon whether prayers really make it happen or not, we can come up with the following combinations, after praying:
  • You get it IF you pray, not otherwise
  • You get it regardless of praying
  • You don't get it regardless of praying

The last two combinations are solely based upon logic and prayers don't work. Let's talk about the first one, can this be true? If yes, then this statement: "Whatever happens, happens for the best" becomes false. And if this becomes false, then the alternate path which occurs after human praying is better than the original path. This implies that human path construction is better and leads to a weird state of mind.

Coming back to the last 2 points above and assuming that our last paragraph is just false, then we arrive to a conclusion that praying does nothing. Again, a weird state of mind.

All these questions can be answered if we think of this:

  • This world and its events are based upon humans, but God's intervention is there whenever required. Requirement is posted through praying.
  • There's no such thing as fate, everything is done by humans, except for maybe a few things such as birth & death? Maybe a few more?