"Evidence and Faith"

Are you declaring that there are no good Christians?ORAre you declaring that there are no bad Christians?

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Ironically, I was thinking of you when I wrote that. If I recall correctly, you don't claim to "be" a Christian, in that you don't claim to be "Christ-like". Using that criterion, there would be almost no Christians at all.On the other hand, if claiming "I am a Christian" makes one a Christian, there are some very bad people who are Christians.My own definition of "Christian" falls somewhere in the middle. I am generally inclined to believe people who claim they are Christians. Most of them are neither "good" nor "bad", just imperfect.Those claimants who are truly bad (Jerry Falwell comes to mind), I tend to think of as "not true Christians".Edited by Ringo, : Removed superfluous parenthesis.

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You recall correctly. And I agree that there are very few Christians in the world. I believe that we are all imperfect.I am an imperfect born again human, trying to do the best I can during my stay here on planet earth.If it was not for my faith in God and His rules in His Word to guide me I hate to think what my life would have been.BTW thanks for thinking about me.

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Only when you refered to homosexuals.
In your first claim you said this:
"Suppose somebody does X and claims that the Bible teaches X. If X is wrong, then the teaching of X is wrong too."I do not see the word "or" in there. That is reasonable, and if you are now saying that "or" is what you meant, then this conversation was a waste? X is wrong, you said, not "or X is wrong." WEll Ringo, I strongly disagree with you, as I have experienced different. God has shown me how and why people behave the way they do, and I am able to forgive people as they do things to me based on this.I have also been able to address the problem directly, instead of the effects of the problem, and people who I have gotten close to have poured their hearts out to me.Who the hell am I to have this been done to? I am just a regular guy.
It is another one of those subjective evidences that bring up my faith. Before experienceing what I believe to be the Holy Spirit, this kind of stuff did not happen to me, and quite the opposite did. No, I credit the bible with text that when interpreted correctly, can help lead you to a closer relationship with God.I credit the Holy Spirit with helping people grow in that relationship with God, and hopefully be able to improve your behavior.Having said all that, people are still responsible for their actions, and no-one is like Jesus. We are all on a journey.How do I explain all these bad Christians? I don't know.
I guess I was one of them for many years. I still am one, but heading in the right direction, and improving daily. Experiencing the Holy Spirit, was a huge leap in the right direction for me. I was able to shead a lot of bad stuff in the snap of a finger, and I can only thank God for that.

I said, "The only way you can know what other people see and understand is by their actions." You're talking about what you believe, not what you know. Forgiveness is not the issue here. We're talking about "evidence" of people's faith.
(At leat I am. ) We are also not talking about "problems". The bad behaviour that I'm talking about is not always seen as bad by the people doing it. Sometimes, they even think it's "good" - e.g. persecuting homosexuals.Since the Bible says "love thy neighbour", people who claim to believe the Bible ought to love their neighbours - and that love ought to be visible, not just "in their hearts". Jesus was pretty specific about how to love your neighbour - feed him, clothe him, visit him in prison. None of that is a secret between you and the Holy Spirit.And people who love their neighbours don't claim that their neighbours caused 9-11 or Hurricane Katrina.The evidence is in what you say and do, not in what you (claim to) believe.

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rR wrote: No, as I’ve said over and over, that’s the conclusion of multiple studies, including comprehensive reviews of all studies to date where the data is pooled. Even individual studies often have hundreds of subjects. If a drug was found to be effective based on hundreds of people in a study, it would sound pretty silly to say “that result was only for “that particuylar study only, for those people”.Or, for example, does your dog have lungs? Have you cut him open to check? Of course you haven’t. It’s been tested time and again, and many dogs have been found to have lungs. Just because we haven’t cut open all the dogs in the world to check if they all have lungs doesn’t mean that we can’t say they all probably have lungs based on those that have been tested. Just as it’s reasonable for you to suppose that your dog probably has lungs without cutting him open, it’s reasonable to suppose that the thousands of cases showing that prayer doesn’t change medical outcomes show that prayer is simply ineffective for changing medical outcomes. Your statement above is like if I said “dogs have lungs”, and you said “For that particuylar study only, for those dogs getting cut open, and those people checking their lungs”.In countless areas of your life, rR, you accept the results of studies and logic (for instance, home cleaner toxicity, medical treatments, orbs, car safety devices, nutrition information, and on and on), yet in this one area (and probably a couple well-picked other areas), logic and data go out the window.I’m mentioning all this to point out the inconsistency, which makes you look either nave or deluded (and if you are arguing Christianity to a non-Christian, that begins to effect how Christianity looks too). As you and I have discussed and agreed on, this is not to convince you to take the prayer issue up at your church. It’s not a blatant quid pro quo. The members are encouraged to give because they are persuaded to continue to believe that a “prayer answering” god is accessible though involvement in your church. Thus the church helps maintain the belief, which in turn keeps the money coming in to the church. An indirect sale of prayer like this is more highly evolved, and persists much better than blatant dollar for prayer schemes because indirect methods like this are selected for when people learn to distrust the dollar for prayer schemes. As we’ve said in this and other cases, that doesn’t mean the people doing it aren’t sincere believers - it’s just that the sincerity is irrelevant as to whether the method is selected for or not. This is a time tested and well established scam method. First of all, it relies on the quite reliable human tendency of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when a prediction or test is made, and the person monitoring the results has a hope, belief, or even small bias one way or the other. The person will then remember confirming results more than disconfirming results, and over time will believe that the data shows the belief was strongly confirmed. This strengthens the bias, leading to even stronger confirmation bias and an even stronger belief, and the loop feeds on itself. Here is more detail than you probably want (Confirmation bias - Wikipedia), since you probably immediately recognize this same feature in people you know who believe in astrology, are partisan republicans/democrats, believe in crystal healing, or whatever.Secondly, in your pastor’s case, it’s even better due to how your pastor has this set up. Let’s say he says that to 30 people, who then tithe to test this. Just due to random chance, half of them will experience better fortune, half worse fortune (you know how life is - things are happening all the time, if one is looking for things to happen). Then he’s got the half that experience the gain, the worse off half leave, to be replaced by new potential converts - say, 20 of them. Of the new 20, just due to random chance, half of them will experience better fortune, half worse fortune. Then he’s got the half (10) who experienced the gain, plus the 15 from before, the worse off half leave, to be replaced by new potential converts - say, 25 of them this time. You can see how this goes, with people joining and leaving, but all the time at least some of them are tithing and indeed getting “god’s blessings”. Throw in the healthy confirmation bias that humans (including myself) have, and it’s easy to get a sustained group rolling along, which also helps bring people in and keep them (by providing witnessing). Then, even if a member experiences financial loss, then confirmation bias can attribute this to “not looking at a long enough time frame”, or “that sinful thing I did”, or “my tithe was late”, or conveniently forget it, or whatever. The same is true of me since I ran over a raccoon in 1992. I don’t attribute my having money to running over the raccoon, confirmation bias notwithstanding. Nor do I profit by getting 10% of the squashed raccoon’s money. Someone is making money over this tithing business, and I bet it isn’t you.Plus - notice that this is quite a bit of money. 10% of the average income in the US (50,000/yr) is $5,000 a year, or over $400 a month - about what a rent or mortage is for many. For that much money, one could get see over 700 movies a year, buy more than one printer for your computer every week, or get a new jet ski every year. Plus, that's computed before taxes and paid from after tax money, so you'd have to make over $7000 a year more just to make up for it. Even for a family of 4 in poverty, it is the same as 50 boxes of macroni and cheese every week. Sadly, tithing is actually more prevalent amount poorer families, as is buying lottery tickets, gambling, etc. Confirmation bias is to prophecy as cells are to our bodies. The very fact that you mention that you’ve “seen some prophecies come true” shows that. What of the ones that didn’t come true? Oh, that must have been just a person’s prophecy, not really from the holy spirit. So if a prophecy comes true, it’s from the holy spirit, if not, it isn’t. With that rule in place, it’s unavoidable to conclude that the holy spirit gives true prophecy - though I could make up that same rule for Zeus’s prophecies, with equal success.If the Elijah list (The Elijah List - Prophetic Words, News, and Prophecies) doesn’t set off your scam-detector, then your scam-detector is broken (perhaps selectively broken). A Christian spirituality need not rely on pseudoscience and confirmation bias. You can be Christian without all that, just as you are showing by opposing the orbs.Sorry it took so long to reply - I can’t believe that deck took so much time and stain!All the best-EquinoxEdited by Equinox, : added more math.

Hi, Eq. And after the confirmation bias wears a little thin, the I-don`t-want-to-give-up-my-belief-even-if-I`m-wrong apologetics kicks in.
'God moves in mysterious ways'
'Maybe if I prayed harder?'
'How about if I tithe 20%?'
'If He wanted me to have it, He would have given it'
'He`s just testing me'
etc., etc., etc.

How can you you know what other people see and understand by their actions?Example, say a guy curses you out in traffic, you know by his actions what he sees, and understands? You can then understand how he got to that point? Yes, I know, God has highlighted those things to me. That's why I was saying I can now see why people do things they do.It is why I mentioned what Jesus said on the cross. Amen. Well that depends. Your visible actions may not be, but the why and the how, might. Yes, I agree. You are only supporting my point here.But that has little to do with if the actual texts of what you claim to believe in are wrong or right.Wouldn't you agree it is 2 different issues, and just because Buddists may have abetter outwardly apearence (if they do) than Christians, that does not mean that buddism is the way.

With every drug study, there is a placebo effect. That means some people get cured without the actual need of the drug. What does that mean?Then you go on to compare prayer to whether or not your dog has lungs, poor show.Prayer is subjective, lungs in your dog are not.The bible even says how God wants you to test Him, and prayer is not one of them.Jesus sends people out to heal people.
The people in the study who got prayed for and were healed, how do we know that if they weren't prayed for, they would have not been healed?The woman who reached out and touched Jesus's robe, and was healed. Jesus didn't look down at her and say, see, I told you prayer works. No He said it was your faith that healed you.Maybe blind praying doesn't actually do anything.Does this mean that all praying does nothing? Not true. When I consistantly see prayer effectively work in my life, I do not need a study to tell me if it is working or not.I mean if I walk outside and it is raining, and the news, and doppler show that it is not, what should I believe?I have stated this many times before, especially to nator. I will not live my life completely by scientific study. No matter how good all these studys are, there are still choices to make.Example, Doctor tells you, if we operate on you, you will have a 50% chance of making it. You are still faced with a decision. That's fine. Christians always looked deluded to me, before I felt what I believe to be the Holy Spirit also. And that all makes perfect sense to me now. That will not stop me from speaking what I believe to be truth. I would love to share our vision, mission, and relational values with you.Our church is only for gathering, and corporately worshipping together. To hear a speaker, who may have heard from the Lord, and have words. Even if those words do not directly apply to you, sometimes the Lord will speak through that person, even if that person is not even Godly. Shit I believe God uses Atheists.We go to church to get recharged, and be with friends. To organize all of our outreach programs, and to corporately help others. Well I don't know. The church regularly hires me, and has probably spent as much money with me, as I have given. I also get a good protion of business from the congregation in the church. I give them a big discount, as I refer to Acts.Our books are open, and no-one is getting rich at our church. On Pastor actually works for free. I think only one Pastor gets paid (some of the times) and the secretary gets paid.
The head Pastor has is own successful consulting firm, and does not need a full salary from the church.Probably 80% of the tithe goes into just running the church.You would be surprised just how much it takes to run a church, or a charity for that matter. IT is not as easy as you think. I don't know, the bible says you will know a prophet is one, by his accuracy.I ahven't had much prophecy come to me, but when it has, it has been 100% accurate.I think being able to distinguish God, from your own personal thoughts helps in your accuracy.But I know it is all subjective, and I uderstand about confirmation bias. I watch out for it as much as possible, and it is the reason why I say "I believe God exists" and not "God exists"Edited by riVeRraT, : No time to spell check, sorry

Just how is that done?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

How can you know any other way? Sure. You know you did something he didn't like. I never said anything about "getting to that point". I never claimed that you can learn somebody's whole life history and psychological makeup from his actions.I said that his actions are the only evidence we have to work with.Jesus said it first, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Argue with Him. And that's just your belief. There is no evidence that you can "see why people do things they do" or that God has "highlighted" anything to you. Once again, we're only talking about visible actions - evidence. We can only infer the "why" from the visible actions. You're saying that the texts might actually be 100% perfect and that people do wrong because they misinterpret the texts.I'm saying that the texts might not be 100% perfect and that people do wrong because they interpret the texts correctly - i.e they do what the texts tell them to do.I'll let people decide for themselves which position makes more sense. It ought to suggest to you that Buddhism is a way - and possibly a better way.

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rR wrote: The placebo effect is the well known effect of experiencing a positive effect because your expectation of a positive effect affects your mental state, improving your outlook, and helping you heal. There is nothing mysterious about it. It’s (partly) because of the placebo effect that we do double-blind experiments, which eliminate that as a cause (along with confirmation bias, which is also a strong effect). Here is some info on what a double blind study is:
Blinded experiment - WikipediaBecause we do double blind experiments, the placebo effect is controlled for. The prayer studies (at least the ones that showed no effect) were double blind, so, no placebo effect. As we’ve discussed before, there has been a placebo effect with prayer - in other words, someone who prays for himself or thinks someone is praying for him (whether someone actually is or not) will on average often show benefits to health. In that way, prayer is as powerful as any other placebo.The prayer data supports the placebo effect, which, as we’ve discussed before, we agree can help the person praying for himself. I’ve never contested that - I’ve just pointed out that it’s nothing any more supernatural than giving yourself a peptalk. As we’ve discussed at length, the prayer itself is subjective, but you are claiming that there are objective results (healing, etc). Whether or not I think a dog has lungs is subjective, if there are actual lungs in the dog, is not. Objective effects of prayer like healing can be examined just as objectively as the effect of any other medical treatment, such as taking a pill, undergoing hypnotherapy, counseling, or radiation therapy. We went over this back in post #163. When the “healing effect of prayer” claims say that someone can pray for someone else and it will help them heal faster, they are saying something testable, which has been tested, and repeatedly shown to be false. On the other hand, prayers for yourself change your mental state, and this does have a real effect. As Deng Ming Dao said “let us listen to our own prayers, it is we who will make them real”. That’s why I don’t disagree with what you wrote here: That should do it for the prayer, but just to cover another base, I’ll answer this, thought you probably already know the response. We don’t. What we know from the data is that a certain percentage of people get well after being sick, and that this percentage is not increased if they are all prayed for, nor are there any measurable medical or other benefits from being prayed for unless you know about it. Nearly all of those are good and real benefits that I agree with (after I adjust the words as you mentioned). We are a social species that needs contact and a community. That’s why I’m active at my UU church, and why atheists (or anyone) without a community suffers both mentally and physically.As you’ve noticed and spoken on before we even talked about it, some things, like pseudoscience, orbs, creationism, gems, etc, aren’t needed for those benefits above and may actually hurt those above points. I think we still agree on that. I agree those are real benefits. I think you get the church business because you are involved at the church, whether you pray or not. Your own prayer helps keep you mentally connected to the church, which effects your actions and hence the results. I don’t deny that. I am, actually familiar with all that, having been president of our UU church. It does add up, but do remember to take into your calculations how much that tithe really is. If there are just 90 people in your church (that’s a small church), then that’s, say, 50 households. 50 households X 50K average US income, X 0.1 (tithe) = a quarter million a year (250,000). When I helped run our church of 140 members, we needed a budget of 130,000 a year. So it seems to me that if people really are tithing, then there’s a lot of surplus that has to be going somewhere. I think what you are saying is that on average people aren’t tithing (?). I don’t think they need to tithe fully 10% to support the church, and more importantly, I think the pastor should say “pay 5% because we need to support our community together” - which is true. Instead he says “pay 10% because you’ll get mystical benefits” - which sounds indistinguishable from Emoto to me, except of course that Emoto asks for a lot less money.I don’t know the financial details of your church, and I believe you that there are expenses. My point is twofold. 1. that 10% is probably more than your church needs, if people did pay it, and 2. that framing it as a mystical benefit is misleading at best and much like other scams.Lastly, in my UU church, our budget (income) exactly matched our expenses, and any surplus (or deficit) went toward next year’s budget. I would have been amazed to see a 20% surplus, and enraged to see it disappear. You mentioned 80% goes toward the church - do you know where that other 20% (which is quite a bit of money) go? All understood. I watch out for it too, and I’m sure it fools me from time to time. Have a great memorial day . .Equinox

Jees, with all these perfections, you would think there would never be any mistakes. lol.Here's my propblem with these experiments.
What is the point of praying for someone, specifically to see if prayer works?
I do not feel the Lord should be tested on this level.Second, there is more than one kind of prayer.Third, as I stated before, it is possible that healing relies on the faith of the believer, not the person praying.And lastly, of course prayer would be more effective if the person getting prayed for was spoken to directly. There is power in the spoken word. You even agree to that, as well as the studies. Although it does not "prove" God's existance. Could we at least agree that taking a pill and praying for someone are completely different?One is very objective, and the other is highly subjective. Yet, I still get to se people get healed, including myself. Must be something wrong. I know you've explained it all to me, about confirmation bias, and everything else. Of course. I get the business because I try dam hard to maintain integerty.It is one of the things we teach about in our church. Character, and integerty. We believe you will be much better off, trying to hear from God, once you have those things in order. In order for tithing to really work in your life, you must believe that you are giving back to God. It really doesn't matter what the church does with it.On the other hand, this is not a licsense to be foolish with your money either. Even though we are non-denominational, our books are open. (actual, we are losely tied to the assemblies of God church.)
We have a business meeting every year, where the floor is open, and we review the books, and you can ask any question you want.We also run a day care in our church as well. I have truely enjoyes this thread, from the beginning to the end, and especially talking with you and ringo.
Have a great weekend yourself.
Anthony

Let me explain better.Let's say you have a white friend. He hates black people.
You don't agree with that, because that is not the correct way to live life.
So you have judged your friend, and called him wrong by his actions.Little do you know, that he was molested, mugged, and hurt really bad by some black people in his neighborhood (it's just a fake story), way beyond what you could ever comprehend. But you don't know this. Once you find out, you start to understand why he is the way he is.Being the understanding person that you are, you proceed to try and help him through it, so that he won't be predjudice towards all black people, and not all black people are going to treat him the same way.Mentally he was locked into a bad place, because of what happened to him in life.This can happen with things like, being molested, divorce, hurts from break-ups, etc.No-one is perfect ringo, and we all act a certain way, based on our experiences, no matter what we belive in. To me, only God was able to show me these things (sometimes specific things) about people, which leads me to a state of understanding where they come from, and why they act the way they do, appropiate, or inappropiate. Yea, but how can you explain the hugely varied response you will get from one person to the next.Someone might not to anything at all. You might even consider that good, and say, see, that person has it all together, they don't let thing bother them.​

Our experiences, good or bad, have an effect on our behaviour. That doesn't change the fact that our behaviour is the only objective evidence that anybody has about us. If somebody tells you about his experiences, you have no way of knowing if he's telling the truth. People just are different. You can't just assume that one person was abused and one was not. Sometimes the one with the bad expereinces will behave better instead of worse. But you can't know what's in their hearts. No it isn't. Jesus taught that we will be judged by our actions, that many who say, "Lord, Lord" will not be saved, that many who think they will be saved will not, that many who think they will be condemned will not. Relativity has nothing to do with it. The point is that your fruits are visible.A tree with fruits in its "heart" is of no value.

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