RandFan,
Your post uncharacteristically contains a lot of ad hominem attacks. I assure you that your suggestions that I am "disingenuous" and "not arguing in good faith" is entirely unfounded. Your suggestion that I am "obtuse" is a little harder to defend against. Given the fact that I've found your past posts to be quite respectful, I'm going to assume that to be a sign of miscommunication. Therefore, I'm not going to respond to your post point-by-point, but try to summarize what I think you've been saying, and what I've been saying. I'll then attempt to address one additional point that you made.
Unless I'm way off-base, you seem to be arguing that the Christian belief in prayer is inconsistent. The problem is that you have refused to define what you think that belief is, exactly. So responding to your argument(s) is a bit like trying to nail jello to a tree since you seem to be avoiding the question of how you're interpreting the scripture and then using my ignorance of your position against me. But really, your interpretation or my interpretation of scripture is irrelevant if we're talking about Christian belief. So let me go through the possibilities as I see them:
If you think the Christian belief is that God answers
any and all prayers, then I agree that a Christian who believes that holds a belief that is inconsistent with reality. The problem, of course, is that I cannot find any evidence that there are Christians who actually believe that. But if there are, I fully admit they're nuts.
If you think the Christian belief is that God answers
all categories of prayer, then that would mean that God must grant at least some prayers for gold falling out of the sky, absurd as it may be. Again, I'm not aware of any Christians who believe this. But even if they do, this is a defensable position, because it is possible that God in fact
has made gold fall from the sky. So as long as the person believes there is a reason that such events haven't been documented (even if they don't know the reason and particularly if they believe that we cannot know the reason) then their position would be a consistent one. I have suggested that one possible reason might be that God doesn't want us to know for certain of his existence. Again, I'm not aware of any Christians who actually believe that God must grant prayers for gold falling out of the sky, so the point is probably moot.
Now, it seems to me that at least some Christians believe that God answers some prayers, but doesn't answer other prayers. This doesn't seems to be a necessarily inconsistent belief in that it might in fact reflect reality (particularly in conjunction with the idea that God doesn't want us to know for certain of his existence). Other Christians apparently believe as elliotfc has suggested -- that prayer serves a different purpose entirely.
Now, if you have a different idea of what Christians believe, then you'll have to spell it out more clearly, because for the life of me I cannot figure out what it is.
I'm trying to make a valid point. If I can't distinguish a miracle from a non miracle then what is the point of miracles?
I fully understand your point (and it's a very good one) -- now try to understand mine. The point of a miracle is not to allow you to distinguish it from a non-miracle. The point of a miracle is to accomplish whatever the miracle accomplishes. For example, if the miracle is to heal someone of an ailment, then the purpose of the miracle is to heal the ailment. That you cannot distinguish it from a non miracle is entirely irrelevant to the purpose of the miracle.
By the way, I will be out of town for most of the upcoming week, so if this thread is still alive when I return, I'll try to catch up and respond late next week. In the meantime, perhaps you can drag someone else (ceo_esq?) who is more knowledgable than I on Christianity into the fray.
-Bri
