If prayers go unanswered....?

Absolutely. Of course 'simply natural' is how I feel you can eventually describe everything. Nothing supernatural about 'bad' things happening, I mean it sucks and all, but it is all just part of life.

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It's not selling out if nobody's buying.

Okay. Now we are getting somewhere.Can we look at evil as well. Do you agree that it's just part of life, a normal if regrettable part of human nature?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

But the same Public Relations can be applied to an atheist view of prayer.If a believer gets what is asked for, it is merely chance, pure coincidence.If a believer does not get what is asked for, then prayer is a futile activity.Therefore, prayer always fails. With the right spin, the atheist can never be wrong.Now, what is not often considered by atheists is this question. How often does a coincidence need to occur before it can begin to look no longer as a coincidence?Does the sum total of multiple coincidences occurring on a regular basis and often in quick succession constitute something other than one large coincidence? One might say no, it is just one large coincidence, until it happens to them.This message has been edited by Monk, Fri, 04-01-2005 11:19 AM

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

I know this is kind of a red herring and probably not the best way to introduce myself into these forums but...At what point did prayer become a time of only asking for favors from one’s respective creator. It seems to me that when requests are made in the form of prayer one sets him/herself up for the logical fallacy that Citizzzen points out in msg 4. On the other hand using prayer as a time for reflecting on what one is thankful for will help a person focus on the more positive aspects of one’s life and in the end not only have a stronger personal relationship with the creator believed responsible for said events but also a more objective look upon what really matters to themselves.I personally don’t partake in the practice of prayer as it is looked at by the religions I have some knowledge of, and one of many reasons for that is the apparent selfishness of prayer from my observations of what people pray for. For example, people who pray for the outcomes of sporting events, minor or major, pray to do better on unimportant tests, and most offensively pray for my heathen soul to find Jesus (I have several evangelical cousins who have stated that they do so regularly, on instruction from their pastor whom I have never met) makes in my eyes the act of prayer seem like more of a organizational ritual than a personal spiritual experience.This message has been edited by StormWolfx2x, 04-02-2005 02:43 AM

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In the end, all debate that persists as debate comes down to a leap of faith, it is in logic that one chooses which leap he would like to take.

Well, it depends on your confidence interval and how many axes of freedom are present in the experiment space, but basically you can look it up on a chi-square and it'll tell you how often a coincidence needs to occur before we stop considering it coincidental.What is not often considered by believers is the fact that we have mathematical tools that can be applied to tell us what is coincidence and what is not, and that your freehand seat-of-your-pants estimation of significance is liable to be almost always completely wrong.

Welcome StormWolfx2x. (And also Monk aswell as other newbies like the topic maker)I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are just generalizing pertaining to people you've came across rather than falling for the assumption that Christians only pray for themselves, and that's all their prayers involve, all of the time, for personal gain.Infact, I would say that I rarely aske for anything in prayer, and that about 80% of my prayers are gratitude and reflection. Certainly I haven't made many request lately. But sure, there probably are people like you described but not a lot are like this IMHO. It's a bit of a misconception, because infact atheists usually only mention prayers at boards like these, when they involve "hits" or "misses". So infact from my perspective, I'm kind of doomed to a slippery slope of misconceptions already prepared for me when I go into debate. At the moment we're discussing prayers for things we hear about on the news. (about 4% of my prayers)I don't think anyone except me and Riverrat, and Monk have really understood this situation properly. Monk makes this excellent point which I should have noticed before getting in Shraff's trap of prayer experiments, which she always seeks to lead me into.

What are the chances of a primordial sludge bringing about complex cells, according to these mathematical tools?This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 04-02-2005 06:41 AM

Hah. SO I'm a liar. Oh no, I know Shraff, I know already I just don't say. I know I know, our memories seldom tell us accurately what actually happened and people have confirmation bias and post-hoc. I listen to all of you, I really do. But what you don't realise is that these incidents outweigh all of these things you teach me. Does the list include the blind seeing? Why would it if I said that experiments bring doubt and that God won't play lab-rat for Shraff?Which is more likely, that my prayer was answered and I was healed in ten seconds, (as I declared), for each symptom, by Christ whom I believe in, according to the scriptures, OR that it was what chance allowed for AND my own immune system AND my own memory and confirmation bias AND another god.Notice how many unecessary entities you induce in order to explain the situation, yet you in no way and NEVER EVER suggest that God answered my prayer, despite this being the simplest explanation and answering for the inexplicable nature of the events? But Shraff I know that I can know things without evidence. I know that cake tastes good, but another person says it doesn't according to his taste buds. I know that I am saying words in my mind but people only believe I am because they also feel this. And don't distract me Shraff, I'm not talking about brain waves proving it, because I never needed evidence to "know" I was talking in my mind.I know my prayers are answered but I admitt having no evidence save my witness, which is true. God is also my witness, and he didn't need any evidence when he created the universe.So Shraff, I do know my prayers are answered specifically, and any chump could know that a specific occurence of strange request cannot be accounted for by chance. What do I have to put up? Evidence? This is F&B, and it was YOU who wanted to get into this whole prayer experiment thing, which is science. Remember when I said that this would not make good science because; So I can not no from misses, but from my ideology, I CAN from HITS, but the first paragraph explains why you (skeptic) can't accept this, yet I ADMITT that this means it's bad science to examine prayers, because of these factors.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 04-02-2005 07:03 AM

If prayers go unanswered....? Are you a faithful person, MINI or are you just asking? One more comment: Prayer is good because it gives us a relationship with God. Surely He knows what everybody wants anyway, right? The only purpose for prayer is to commune with God.This message has been edited by Phatboy, 04-02-2005 06:42 AM

confidence interval? chi-square? Tell me more o ye wise toadie Ah now, unless the mathematical tools that you esteem have been used on believers and in this particular situation such that a consensus of data can be perused, then your assumption of error is preconceived.

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

There isn’t a right or wrong way, just jumping is fine. Welcome aboard! Good point. Prayer means many things to different people. But asking for favors is a small part of it. No small favors for Mike, but isn't it nice to know you can ask for them if need be?Then up thread That’s a very narrow viewPrayer is talking to God, communicating with Him, thanking Him, listening to Him, being changed by Him. It is more than just asking for a specific need. That’s only one of many reasons to pray.Ultimately, prayer is about connecting with God (relationally). A friendship without communication isn't much of a friendship. But if you ask people why they pray, there are a multitude of responses that are as varied as the relationships between people. U.S News and Beliefnet conducted an informal survey asking why do people pray. The responses reveal a vision of a supreme being, not as strict moral arbiter but rather as source of wisdom, strength, and comfort.With more than 5,600 responses, the results were varied but there seemed to be a few broad categories. 33% said that the most important purpose of prayer was "intimacy with God." Another 28% said that the most important purpose of prayer was "to seek God's guidance." Link

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ---Albert Einstein

One sludge and one trial? Probably not high, but since we don't actually have a model, it's not possible to apply the tools.With enough sludges and enough trials? Apparently 1/1, because it happened, obviously.

Basically these are statistical tools that allow us, within the bounds of whatever confidence interval you choose (generally 95% or 99.5% are common intervals), the likelyhood that a given outcome is significant, or merely coincidence.If it's possible to clearly explain these techniques in the confines of a single post, I don't have the mathematical training to do it. Well, its not that its just believers who are usually wrong when they guess significance, its everybody. All humans are pretty much awful at judging the significance of outcomes, especially the ones happening to us; its a known psychological condition of the human mind. The presumption of error in this case is not a preconception; its a conclusion from observation of human behavior.

The chances of a primordial sludge bringing about complex cells, given that it is possible, is actually quite good if you look at the sheer number of trials.First off Millers experiment, an attempt to reproduce conditions during the earths cooling and see if life could form from inorganic material, while not proving that life on earth actually emerged from such conditions, did prove that at least basic building blocks of life could be crated from raw materials and energy.Now let’s say the conditions necessary to form proteins, or amino acid, or other such basic parts(I’m going to refer to these as BPs from now on) of cells only happen 1000 times a second world wide (given that these conditions are only a random gathering of chemicals and energy in some form, and on rather small levels of each I’m assuming this is a very conservative estimate) and that the chances of these conditions actually forming a BP is very small for calculations sake lets say 1 in a billion and lets also say that the chance of these BPs forming cell is very very small lets say 1 in a trillion and lets also say that the chances of this life form actually very very very small (technical term : P) 1 in a trillion in a trillion or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 this give the chance of life that will continue on our primordial earth at any given second a 1 in 10^42 chance of forming. Very slim by any regards.But now onto # of trials given that there are 31.5 million seconds a year (rounded) and that this forming of life could have happened over a time of say 4 billion years. Gives our planet a
1 in 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of forming life.
Still very small.But what I am trying to prove is not that is likely that simply our planet could form life but any planet COULD make a form of life. The reason that I say form of life is that I am not limiting all life to our cellular structure, basic need for water and oxygen, and even chemical makeup. If a life form does not have to meet our criteria then ANY planet or large object close to a source of energy (a star) could meet the requirements. Given that there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in universe (NASA estimate) and assuming that each star only has 1 such large objects (for purposes of simplicity, as some have many large objects and many stars have none.) now the chances of some kind of life is only 1 in 8. Adding a zero here or there will dramatically change this number.Now I’m not even close to suggesting that any of my numbers unless otherwise stated are correct, I’m merely trying to illustrate the point that even if the chances of life are extremely small in any given place, when taking a view of a large enough scope, the zeros will eventually stack in the favor of life, and it is only because we exist within this statistical anomaly that creationists are able to say its not by chance but divine will, truly the numbers are so stacked against us ( as in 1 : 10^42) that only a deity of supreme power could make it happen. What I I’m saying is that simply because something is very unlikely to happen in any given instance, it is still statistically likely to happen given enough trials.

You didn't answer my question at all.If "prayers are always answered, but sometimes the answer is no", works out to the same net effect as "sometimes the things I wish for happen, and sometimes they don't", then what is the point of praying?If the outcome is the same, why bother?