What are the criteria for considering a prayer answered other than personal post hoc assumption?
I think perhaps it is a more likely scenario that humans fool tthemselves into believing that prayer was answered or not based on a mindset that allows for either outcome to be acceptable without refuting the basic premise.
Actually, I think asking the criteria for answered prayer or for God's existence is a lot like asking what the criteria are for proof in a civil case (so that "beyond a shadow of doubt" doesn't apply as in a criminal case) as to whether a crime was committed. It depends on the crime, circumstances, etc., and the evidence presented could vary greatly. What would constitute "proof" would vary from person to person.
Recently an 80-year-old woman who lives here in the village had to get her shoulder operated on, because a break in the humurus (sp?) wasn't healing right. It was causing her some pain. I prayed for her, but not very diligently, and when she went in, she had a bladder infection and the surgery was postponed. I really felt like I hadn't prayed as I ought, and now she had another week of shoulder discomfort to face, and so during that week I prayed properly and got others to pray with me. I prayed that the surgery and recovery would go as smoothly as possible.
Surgery went great. That evening she had a stroke. The next morning I heard the stroke was severe and the doctor's were fearing she'd not recover.
I was crushed. In fact, I was pretty angry. I walked around outside and asked God what was going on and why this would happen. I was pretty downcast when I went in. It's not that I expect everything I ask for, or we ask for, to happen, but I guess I did expect to have some feeling, in advance, that what I was asking for wouldn't happen.
That evening, I heard that she had unexpectedly woke up, and that she recognized people, answered questions with nods, and had feeling everywhere. No paralysis.
She got rapidly better, and though she's still in the hospital, they expect a full recovery.
All of that I consider proof of nothing. I learned some things from it, because I already believed, but there's no conclusions that can be drawn from such anecdotes.
On the other hand, about 20 years ago my sister wrote me to tell me that her 2-year-old son was blind in one eye from an infection and that the other eye was not starting to lose its sight from the same infection. This infection had been going on a year, and it was the reason she had moved to Andrews AFB near a big medical center, whose name I forget. I knew she had moved, but she hadn't told me about the infection or that the AF had moved her for the medical problem.
She said the doctors didn't know what to do, and could we pray. I prayed with two friends, and I felt like our prayers were heard, but we couldn't quite "get all the way through." It was a weird feeling, really.
I was in Germany, and it took a week for her mail to reach us. Two weeks after our prayer, she wrote to say my nephew had 100% of his sight back in both eyes, and that the infection was almost gone, but not all the way.
That probably proves nothing to skeptics, but it was a massive faith builder to me, and I am quite convinced that my nephew's eyes were healed in answer to our prayers by the hand of God.
One more.
In India, this January, we went to visit a "Mercy Home," where up to ten orphaned or half-orphaned children are raised in a household with one couple. We arrived, and there was an additional girl, 8 years old, that was there that Pastor Daniel, whom we were traveling with, hadn't expected. He was immediately told why the girl was there.
It appears that in early December he had visited the same Mercy Home and the child had been brought to him to be prayed for. She had cancer of the stomach, and the doctors were ready to give up, and so they were there to ask for prayer. He didn't know what they were there for, and they didn't catch him until he was on the way out, in somewhat of a hurry. So he didn't ask why the child was brought to him. He simply picked her up and prayed, "God, give them whatever they're asking for." Then he pressed on.
They brought the child to the Mercy Home while we were visiting so they could report to him that the child was completely healed. They were very excited.
I've heard reports like that before, but always from a friend of someone's cousin, twice-removed. You know the stories. I've heard plenty of them. There was nothing about this story that seemed made up, though. I obviously believe in miracles from God, thinking I've experienced many, but I'm a skeptic when others tell me about them, because I've been a part of the charismatic movement and left because I got tired of made up stories about miracles.
Anyway, my point is that I don't think there are hard and fast rules about what constitutes answered prayer. Everyone is different and every situation is different and must be judged accordingly, just like every court case is judged on its own particular evidence. Each witness is assigned a certain level of credibility by each individual that hears that witness. That's just how things are.
I'm a believer, and while I'm as human and biased and prone to looking for patterns based on the evolutionary development of the human brain as everyone else, I think that once you get enough cases like the above, you have to wonder if there is something more than chance and coincidence going on around us.
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