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8. If you have been taught that intercessory prayer works if you have enough faith, why is it that it seems a magical incantation and not really faith – especially when nothing happens?

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This question raises several important theological issues – from What is the right course to follow when what you've been taught proves to be either patently false or unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless? to What is really faith, as distinct from magic? and, not least, What is the point of intercessory prayer if, on at least some understandings of it, it seems to be quite pointless and/ or a matter of practicing magic instead of really living by faith? Obviously, we could spend our entire time this evening on anyone of these issues – to say nothing of the others the question also raises. So I shall respond to it by saying only a few things about just one of them – leaving it to the subsequent discussion to bring out anything else that can and should be said to respond to the question.

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