"Creation", "Forever", and "Purpose"

At first glance, concepts like creation, forever, and purpose have a clear, unconstrained, and universal connotation. Closer scrutiny, however, suggests that such concepts can lose relevance within the confines of our five-sense-bound faculties and become enigmatic.

We often treat these concepts as if their applicability is unbounded, and extend their meaning to answer questions that they are not really capable of addressing. For instance, we assume that God had some purpose for creating the universe. Likewise, we assume heaven and hell last forever.

The book Thinking Is Authorized! has an intriguing follow-up discussion about those concepts.

Do prayers get answered?

I recently heard of a case in which an upstart business owner had to have a sample of his product tested by a licensing authority to ensure it had enough bacteria of a certain type. The sample failed since the trial test showed the product did not have sufficient bacteria. The barely established business owner felt powerless and got very worried. Being religious, he prayed for the bacteria to multiply as rapidly as possible so that the follow-up test the next day would not fail. As it turned out, the follow-up test showed positive results and the business eventually became a major success nationwide. The business owner attributed the success of his business to that particular prayer early on which apparently increased the bacteria count in the test sample.
However, taking into consideration, for example, that the business eventually affected the lives of numerous employees, shareholders, customers, and all associated with them—including me writing and you presently reading about it—I doubt strongly that it was the prayers that multiplied the bacteria. Chances are, it was nothing supernatural—the bacteria count grew most likely due to normal, natural causes.