The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

PartSkeptic said:
I find these studies to be problematic. First, they are tests, and God (if he exists) would know it and refuse to take part.
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You have know way of knowing this. You made it up. You have personified your imagination.

Further reading for those that care about being rational.

If someone wants to believe in leprechauns, they can avoid ever being proven wrong by using ad hoc hypotheses (e.g., by adding "they are invisible", then "their motives are complex", and so on)
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MikeG said:
More than that, one would have to postulate why a god would be so keen to persuade us of her non-existence.
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And I could have sworn that PS said previously that God performs miracles specifically to make us aware of his existence. I'll look it up later.
 
MikeG said:
More than that, one would have to postulate why a god would be so keen to persuade us of her non-existence.
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The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."


"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."


"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
 
MikeG said:
Senior god and junior god.

Who created the senior god?
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Regression of cause has to end somewhere. It "just is". Just like any other theory of what existed in the "beginning".

On the other hand it could be that it is a machine intelligence made by some civilization in a universe with no God or supernatural, in which case we are both right.
 
Desert Fox said:
I am assuming that you are suggesting that you have been the recipient of those miracles? Assuming that, why are you worthy and not a child starving in Sub-Saharan Africa?
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To me a miracle is a clear violation of the laws of physics. Like turning water into wine. No, I have not experienced anything as remarkable as that.

If Tarot cards work, then God must be shuffling the deck somehow. That would be a miracle, but not one that is observed to be unusual. I know of no clear miracles experienced by anyone in recent years.

I had the good fortune to find out about my histoplasmosis through a series of coincidences, and not by medical diagnosis. I would have been dead otherwise. I find that remarkable and think God intervened. But coincidences do happen. Why would I be a beneficiary? Why would anyone be a beneficiary?
 
Pup said:
This actually just came up yesterday on one of the cancer groups I'm on. People talked about having faith, praying over their medicine, praising God, etc. I noted that I didn't have faith, only expected medicine to do what clinical trials indicated on average with a small chance I'd be in the top or bottom percentages due to good or bad luck, didn't pray about it obviously, and after two years was doing about as well as most. (We all have the exact same type of cancer.)

Apparently if I'd put in all that effort and worry about keeping faith, praying, etc. it would have been unnecessary, and the medicine alone was doing the job. Which fits with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer
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Many people who do not have faith get healing. Medicine works. Once I found I had systemic histoplasmosis (and I am not immuno-compromised) the medicine saved me. Without it, I would have been dead in a matter of months.

My late wife had faith and got systemic histoplasmosis at the same time I did, but she got cancer and died before I found out what we had. Her strong faith did not save her.

My son-in-law got a nasty cancer with only a 10% chance. He and his wife had strong faith and he has done well for many years now.

A good friend got cancer at 45 years and died despite being an ardent Christian. But I feel the Church pressured him into not divorcing and staying in a bad marriage. Death was a way out perhaps.

There are too many factors. I have to just look at an overall impression I have, and of course I could be getting the wrong impression.

This is where individual anecdote fails.
 
Rincewind said:
Mark 11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

So - if you pray, and believe that you will receive whatever you prayed for, you'll get it.

So when the Pope prays for peace and peace doesn't happen, it's his fault because he didn't believe?
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Religion does not deal in maybe. There is no room for doubt. This has benefits for many.

As for the Pope (and all those beauty queens), maybe things would be worse without their prayers. However, I suspect God already knows how things are, and which way they are going, and the prayers are noted for judgment day.
 
I Am The Scum said:
You have know way of knowing this. You made it up. You have personified your imagination.

Further reading for those that care about being rational.
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I am a rational problem solver. I have a US patent for solving a problem and it was highly successful commercially, and have solved problems that corporate engineers said were not possible. I reduce problems to the basics, and think them through.

1. Assume God exists.
2. Assume God chooses to intervene.
3. Assume some individuals are aware of the intervention.
4. No tests to detect intervention work.
5. Is it because God chooses to remain hidden?

Steps 1 to 3 are what most religions accept as "the Gospel Truth". We agree on step 4. So what is your rational deduction or theory?
 
PartSkeptic said:
.......
1. Assume God exists.
2. Assume God chooses to intervene.
3. Assume some individuals are aware of the intervention.
4. No tests to detect intervention work.
5. Is it because God chooses to remain hidden?

Steps 1 to 3 are what most religions accept as "the Gospel Truth". We agree on step 4. So what is your rational deduction or theory?
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That your assumptions are wrong.
 
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I Am The Scum said:
And I could have sworn that PS said previously that God performs miracles specifically to make us aware of his existence. I'll look it up later.
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God gives the faithful clues and guidance. Miracles help. So do anomalies in nature and the cosmos. Scientific proof is quite a different thing.

BTW - Odd choice of forum name! Are you bottom scum or floating scum? :rolleyes:
 
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PartSkeptic said:
I am a rational problem solver. I have a US patent for solving a problem .........
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So am I. I hold a SA patent for solving a problem. Really.

When problem solving, I try not to start with a false premise.
 
Pup said:
Which is why I included a link describing several controlled studies.
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I understand.

The tests gave a negative result. That is no indication that prayer fails. There are many tests that also give negatives but what they are testing for is very difficult to test for.

The blood test for systemic histoplasmosis is one such test. It take 4 weeks to culture in monkey brain fluids. It only indicates a correct positive 40% of the time. Doctors are told to do a clinical diagnosis. This is medical speak for asking the patient about their symptoms and possible exposure, and deciding whether the possibility exists.
 
MikeG said:
So am I. I hold a SA patent for solving a problem. Really.
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Many people take out patents. The important thing is whether it was a commercial success, and was not challenged.

The companies I worked for did not take out patents on other "inventions" of mine. Easier to just get the lead when there are only a few companies in that market. We had a problem in that we would have to sue our customer for using company patents that were copied by a smaller competitor.
 
PartSkeptic said:
I understand.

The tests gave a negative result. That is no indication that prayer fails. There are many tests that also give negatives but what they are testing for is very difficult to test for.

The blood test for systemic histoplasmosis is one such test. It take 4 weeks to culture in monkey brain fluids. It only indicates a correct positive 40% of the time. Doctors are told to do a clinical diagnosis. This is medical speak for asking the patient about their symptoms and possible exposure, and deciding whether the possibility exists.
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A negative result indeed indicates that prayer fails. Histoplasmosis tests must be different where you are, because the tests I went through, blood and urine, only took a few days to come back from the lab. But the difference is that the prayer tests were testing for a clearly recognizable outcome.

In one study, prayer was specifically for "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications." The result: "Complications of surgery occurred in 52 percent of those who received prayer (Group 1), 51 percent of those who did not receive it (Group 2), and 59 percent of patients who knew they would receive prayers (Group 3)."

Clearly the prayer, as it's advertised to work, failed. It's not like people actually had no complications, like they actually had histoplasmosis, and the test missed it. The prayer was for no complications, and complications occurred just as if there had been no prayer.

Some religions deal with this by saying one should pray for strength to endure, for God to watch over, not my will but thine, and similar untestable outcomes, for just this reason. Testable prayer doesn't work, but one can continue to believe that untestable prayer works.
 
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