I've been content for the past several years to just read/. and never participate, but I want to respond to this issue. My youngest son spent the first 3 years of his life undergoing a series of open heart operations at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I am a christian, and I believe in prayer. We received emails, letters, phone calls from people we didn't know, all over the world, who were praying for my son. Belief in prayer requires a belief in God, something that many slashdotter's seem to think is naive, and pointless. In my time at CHOP, and the Ronald McDonald House, I saw several kids not make it. By our last visit, I felt like we were running a gauntlet. I really think that my own sanity was starting to fray. Maybe prayer didn't affect my son's survival, maybe it did. I don't understand how it works. I do know that it helped me survive: just knowing how many people cared about my son, and were asking God to spare him; I knew that there was nothing I could do for my son, that I was helpless in this situation. I had to give it to God, the surgeons, the cardiologists, the amazing nursing staff. Does this make me weak-minded? Am I foolish to have faith?
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I've been content for the past several years to just read /. and never participate, but I want to respond to this issue. My youngest son spent the first 3 years of his life undergoing a series of open heart operations at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I am a christian, and I believe in prayer. We received emails, letters, phone calls from people we didn't know, all over the world, who were praying for my son. Belief in prayer requires a belief in God, something that many slashdotter's seem to think is naive, and pointless. In my time at CHOP, and the Ronald McDonald House, I saw several kids not make it. By our last visit, I felt like we were running a gauntlet. I really think that my own sanity was starting to fray. Maybe prayer didn't affect my son's survival, maybe it did. I don't understand how it works. I do know that it helped me survive: just knowing how many people cared about my son, and were asking God to spare him; I knew that there was nothing I could do for my son, that I was helpless in this situation. I had to give it to God, the surgeons, the cardiologists, the amazing nursing staff.
Does this make me weak-minded? Am I foolish to have faith?