O PENSAMENTO CRÍTICO E A EFICÁCIA DA ORAÇÃO INTERCESSORA

Abstract

There are several types of prayer. Prayer includes practices such as confession, praise, thanksgiving etc. In this paper, our focus will be on intercessory prayer. Intercessory prayer is the type of prayer in which one or many people pray to supernatural entities to intercede for other people with the purpose of achieving a specific goal, such as health, work, success etc.

   The aim of this paper will be to determine the actual objective effectiveness of intercessory prayer, that is, to decide whether or not prayer truly changes “things around us”. To that end, we will examine two important sources of belief: critical reasoning and faith, specifically as manifested in the belief in intercessory prayer. Our analysis will focus on concrete examples, particularly scenarios where critical reasoning and intercessory prayer have directly intersected in real-world cases. Special emphasis will be placed on a context that is both timeless and contemporary: pandemics.