Steady on, folks. Peter was taking the p_ss. It's his little joke... isn't it?

" My experience is that the meaning for a conservative is to create wealth and for a leftie it means to exploit the conservative wealth"
Individual, surely you mean "My experience is that the meaning for a conservative is to create wealth, at the expense of those less fortunate"
Don't think Jesus would be happy with your evaluation of life, though Maggie Thatcher would have been in agreement with you.

No Sells, God isn't truth - truth is truth, and it is often a stranger to religion. Its just as well prayers aren't foisted on university students - universities are meant for rational thought not mindless indoctrination.

The trouble with Sells is that he obviously does not have any first hand experience of what he is talking or writing about. In this case the very fact that he used something from the "Old" Testament to attempt to argue his case is indicative of this.

Furthermore, because Sells is obviously an advocate of an entirely exoteric form of Christian-ism, which by its very nature reduces everything to the fear-saturated mortal meat-body scale of existence only, and therefore has no experiential sense that we are psycho-physical beings living in a psycho-physical world he is also fundamentally incapable of knowing first-hand how to engage in the Process that is prayer.
Prayer works because this is a psycho-physical world which can to some degree be influenced by both individual and collective prayer.

One interesting proven example of how thought/mind/prayer can affect the natural world can be found if you Google Hado Water Emoto. Also Google Larry Dossey Prayer Is Good Medicine.

One of my favorite books on prayer is Prayer by Swami Abhishiktananda - it is modern classic.

"My experience is that the meaning for a conservative is to create wealth, at the expense of those less fortunate"
kipp,
Yep ! There are many conservatives who do that but they're outnumbered by the lefties who hang off the rich & poor's apron. The rich conservatives provide jobs to exploit but what do the lefties provide ?

Prayer is just wishful thinking. There is no scientific evidence to show prayer affects world or any natural events any more than random chance. It is a form of either self hypnosis or group delusion.