If prayers go unanswered....?

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Those people don't believe in Christ, so how can they be healed.

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Because God is all powerful and all merciful, maybe?

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Christ didn't tell me to ask for most of these things and I'm hard pressed as to why people of secularist nature assume that the big magic omni-being is some kind of prayer-junky we go to when we need anything.

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Didn't you just say that you HAVE had prayers answered? Now you say that He doesn't answer prayers.Which is it?

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I've heard this many times. Confirmation bias and post hoc reasoning.

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It's clever but not conclusive logically because there is no way to discern the difference.

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EXACTLY!!You can't tell the difference.Therefore, you cannot claim that your prayers are being answered.

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However, if I ask Jesus to appear on my plate, and he does then I fail to see how that is not a specific request which is indeed a confirmed occurence and is not post-hoc.

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It would certainly be a specific request that was granted, and I would be extremely interested in exploring this ability of yours further, under normal experimental controls.

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This is specifically concerning the misses though Shraff. I can certainly say that either God isn't there or the answer is "no".

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Yes, and you cannot tell the difference, since the outcome is exactly the same.

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We know that if a specific request is made and answered then it's more realistic to say that it was from God.

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Not so at all.It could be that Thor is granting your requests even though you are praying to another, wrong, God, that doesn't actually exist.It could be that this prayed for thing would have happened anyway, regardless of your prayers.It could be that, along with praying, you actually took action in the real world to make the desired for event or outcome more likely to happen.Also, if you are not keeping extremely accurate records of how often your very specific prayers are answered compared to when they are not, then you have no way of knowing if the rate of "hits" is greater than chance would predict.

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I can't tell the difference if I ask for something and I don't get it.

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Correct.

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Does it mean God doesn't exist or does it mean he said "no"? It means that I have no way of knowing, but I think the hits provide a way in which I can know = bad science, I concede.

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As long as you this is poor logic, then have at it.

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Shraff, specific requests aren't post-hoc. Remember that.

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I agree. Specific requests are not post hoc.

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Why would Thor answer my prayer if I asked Jesus Christ to heal me according to the way the bible states?

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I don't know. Maybe he's funny like that.The point is, you have no way of knowing if that is the case or not.

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Call him Thor or big-omnipotent dudeguy if you want. For now I'll accept that "God" has answered my prayers how I specifically requested.

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...except that you have ignored all of the factors which are not "God" or supernatural at all in deciding if your prayers were answered or not.

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If someone asks for healing from a disease and they are healed, or the blind see then that's not caused by something else because that's just ignoring the fact that prayer has been succesfully answered.

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If someone gets a cold, and asks for healing, and they are better 3-5 days later, were their prayers answered, or did their immune system just do it's thing?If praying to be healed from disease, or blindness, actually worked, don't you think we'd see better rates of healing in people who are actively prayed for compared to those who are not?Those very experiments have been done, and we don't see any difference in the two groups.

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I've seen it many times, unbelievers simply say "oh well" when they observe an occurence, and carry on with their day.

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I've seen it many times, believers simply say "God is listening to ME, and I am special and important!", and carry on feeling special and important the rest of their day.

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I suggest no prayer result would convince you becaue you arrive with doubt, the opposite to what is required according to the bible.

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Of course I could be convinced.Just carefully track exactly what you pray for and exactly the outcomes, with no deciding after the fact what constitutes a hit, making sure that the things prayed for couldn't possibly be caused by anything other than God, and then calculate the rate of hits against random chance.If you come up with a hit rate greater than chance would suggest, then I would say that there is something to this prayer.Of course, it doesn't say either way if your perception of God exists and is actually answering your prayers.

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Listen Shraff, chance can't allow anything without a Creator to create chance.

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Spare me the drivel, mike, and stop avoiding the point.If your rate of hits is indestiguishable from random chance, then we are reasonable in saying that nothing special is going on compared to rolling the dice.This is basic statistics and experimental design, mike.

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Chance has never done anything, let alone answer my prayers. Chance and naturalism say that we went from primordial sludge to full eyed-critter via naturalistic mindless means.

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Mike, where have you gone? Into la-la land, apparently.Look, we have been down this road many times, and the same thing happens.You claim that your prayers have been answered, and I tell you that you don't really know if they have or not.I explain to you why that is, and how you could test your self to see if you were fooling yourself or if something real was going on.I make mention of statistics and "random chance" and you use it as an opportunity to rant and avoid the point.You haven't changed at all.

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Chance didn't answer my prayer, God did.

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So says you.Who knows?

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Chance didn't make me, God did, and chance isn't why there is a universe.

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So says you.Who knows?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-31-2005 07:34 PM

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That's because there are no other factors.

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Are you sure?The things you prayed for could not possibly have come about except by the intervention of your particular God?How do you determine that this is the case?

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Thor and other gods are all false idol images people bowed to in the past. A gold bull is an inanimate object, on the LORD God Yahweh created the heavens and earth, and there are no gods beside him.

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Read what I said, mike."except that you have ignored all of the factors which are not "God" or supernatural at all in deciding if your prayers were answered or not."What mundane factors could have influenced the outcome?

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It's evasive for you to try and get me into questioning other religions when we are dealing with the truth of Christ here.

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No, not really.It's just another factor in the long list of things that could be giving you hits on prayer fulfillment other than the one you wish to be true.

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The first time I declared the throat gone in ten seconds, and then the nose in another ten, while counting down in my mind I literally was improving.

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Sorry, I'd need outside verification for that claim. Self-reports in these cases are notoriously heavily biased.

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Another time I got angry because I was having a run of colds but basically just putting up with them because they are only colds afterall, but I got angry as I had a sore throat, and requested healing and in the morning it was gone.

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So, your immune system had nothing to do with that at all?

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In honesty, the declaration of ten seconds was most impressive but God doesn't particularly work via any rules. People can have slow or fast healings.

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Or, people heal at different rates because of various biological and environmental factors, like individual immune system variations, nutrition and hydration, type of virus, amount of sleep they get, stress, exposure to pollution, etc. etc, etc.Which is more likely, the above list which is clearly observed and documented and everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, can agree on, or that your God is sometimes healing people quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes a kind of medium speed, sometimes not at all?

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It wasn't Thor though because Jesus Christ is my intercessor to God

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So says you.

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and is the only personal saviour who has proved that he is God

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So says you.

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by living as a man and dying for our sins. Thor is fantasy Shraff. Christ liveth.

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So says you.Show me.

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But what is this chance? How do I know what chance would allow?

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It's MATH mike. MATHEMATICS. PROBABILITY. ODDS.Take a statistics course and you will understand better.I found this site on calculating basic probabilityOf course, it deals with extremely clear cut cases, such as the odds of pulling a red or a blue marble out of a bag.The problems with prayer requests is that they are generally much more susceptible to interpretation after the fact, because they are not anywhere near specific enough.

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Why should I do your experiment though Shraff? I'd only do it if I had doubt, and I don't have enough doubt to do it.

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Look, YOU are the one who wants me to believe you.I don't care if you believe it or not, but if you want to make claims that your prayers really are being answered and you want people to take them seriously, I'm going to require some good experimental design and controls.

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That's because my specific prayers have been answered which shows that God is infact answering them,

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No, it doesn't show that.It shows that something is affecting the outcome.See, you cannot define or detect or show anyone this God that you say you are praying to. We have no way of knowing what is making the things happen, only that they are happening.

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and my perception of God is that he answers my prayers according to how the bible says he would.

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Hmmm, "according to how the Bible said he would"?That phrase send up a red flag to me because we all know how vague and open to interpretation the Bible is.What, exactly, do you mean by "and my perception of God is that he answers my prayers according to how the bible says he would"?How, exactly, should God be anwering your prayers? This explanation should be as precise and specific as possible, otherwise we are heading into rationalization and post hoc reasoniong land.

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But I know that my prayers have been answered, you just don't believe they have.

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No, you believe that they have been answered, and I don't know if they have or not.And that is the source of our conflict.You think you "know", when you actually "believe" without reliable evidence.You continue to think that I deny everything you say, when in reality I don't have enough information to make a determination at all.That's why I ask for evidence.Telling me that I have to believe before I will believe is silly.You're the one making the claims about effects in the real world.Now it's time to put up or shut up.

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Sometimes the answer is no.

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So, sometimes your prayers are answered, and sometimes they are not.How is this different from "Sometimes what I want to happen does, and sometimes it doesn't"?Even if God really is sometimes answering prayers and sometimes not, if the outcome is indestinguishable from random chance, why pray?

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What if I listen when I pray and God starts telling me things, like what to do, or to pray for certain people. To pray for them concerning a certain matter, which I would have known nothing about.

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Do you have verification from those people, or another outside source, that these "things you shouldn't know about" are actually valid?Also, have you considered that you might have heard these things from somebody else but have forgotten that you ever learned them?

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I had a dream that my Pastor was walking hip high in mud, on a Saturday night. Sunday morning during service, I drew the picture of him walking in the mud, and just as I finished the picture, he said to the whole church that he felt like he was standing hip high in mud. I then handed him the picture.

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Is this mud comment something he says on occasion? What was the theme of his sermon that day? Was the theme posted anywhere for the week before?Anyway, what does this have to do with prayer? That was a dream.

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I am a worship leader in my church, and for the last 5 weeks I?ve prayed on Saturday for the service, and ask God for words that are relative to the congregation. I write them down, and when I came in, the other worship leader has the same words (subject) written out, just worded slightly differently. Then the Pastor starts the service, and he starts it with our words, but we haven't showed him what we believe God has told us.

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You, the Pastor and this other person are independently coming up with similar subject matter five times in a row?The three of you have not discussed the following week's topic at all, have no contact between services?Did the fact that Easter was comin up perhaps influence all of your writings?Also, did you pray for this exact thing to happen, or are you just thinking it's spooky after it happened, so you attribute it to prayer?

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?

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Hah. SO I'm a liar. Oh no, I know Shraff, I know already I just don't say.

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No, you are human, and therefore, prone to all sorts of bias.We all are. That's why I don't immediately believe every single thing anyone tells me, or that I experience.I need outside verification for lots of things.Please stop being overdramatic.

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I know I know, our memories seldom tell us accurately what actually happened and people have confirmation bias and post-hoc.

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Right. It's not because you are dishonest or anything. It's because you are human.

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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.

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How so?Upon what evidence do you base this claim?(Lemme guess...your own self-reports, right?)

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Does the list include the blind seeing?

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Sure. Tell me more about blind people being healed from their blindness through prayer. Names, dates, doctor reports, scientific papers, etc. Funny I haven't seen anything about it in the papers...

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Why would it if I said that experiments bring doubt and that God won't play lab-rat for Shraff?

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So, I have to believe before I will believe, right?Sorry, my bullshit detector won't allow me to do that.

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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.

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That's not a fair comparison.My list was not dependent upon ALL of the items being included, but yours is.Here's what I wrote: Try again.

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Notice how many unecessary entities you induce in order to explain the situation,

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Sorry, read what I wrote more carefully. It is you who are twisting what I said to change the analogy.Now, please answer the question: Which is more likely?

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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?

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AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!It frustrates me to no end when you continue to misuse this concept, and I am begining to think you ARE a liar because I have explained this to you many times.The "simplest" explanation is the one which answers the question using the fewest unsupported assumptions.The fact that you make the gargantuan unsupported assumption that your particular God is healing you, even though there are many mundane factors which could also explain the phenomena, means that your explanation is very, very complicated. It is the opposite of "simple".It is NOT the simplest explanation.It is S I M P L I S T I C.It explains every possible outcome. Therefore, it explains nothing at all.You say that the explanation of "God healed me" is the simlpest explanation?OK.Let's say that "God healed you".How? How did God heal you? What mechanism did God use? How has our understanding of the nature of healing been increased by using this explanation? What predictions about future healing can we make using the "God healed mike" explanation? Is there any time in which the "God healed mike" explanation is ever not applicable to a healing? How can we tell?See how simple, and useful, your "explanation" is?

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But Shraff I know that I can know things without evidence. I know that cake tastes good,

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You have evidence for that, and we can perform tests to show that the pleasure centers of your brain are being activated.

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but another person says it doesn't according to his taste buds.

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Right, and we can do the same tests on this person.

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I know that I am saying words in my mind but people only believe I am because they also feel this.

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...and we can do the same kinds of tests which will show activation in the verbal areas of your brain.

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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.

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Let's imagine that "talking to oneself inside one's mind" is something that only a few people say they can do.You tell lots of people that you "know" you can do it, but none of them believe you.You then take them into a lab where there is a FMRI machine, and you show them that there is activation in the language areas of your brain when you are "talking to yourself inside your mind".This would be some powerful evidence that you are doing what you say you are doing, and those other people would be more likely to believe you.Your problem is that you simply want other people to believe that you have had fantastic experiences based upon nothing but on your word alone. Furthermore, you have admitted that you are completely non-skeptical regarding these experiences; you have no doubt whatsoever.

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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.

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What occurence? How specific?Also, who said anything about chance? There could have been many factors making the liklihood of that occurrence greater.

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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.

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Nope. You tool it out of F&B when you claimed that prayer works in the natural world.Anything in nature is fair game to science.also, I'd really like an answer to this part of my last post:

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That's because there are no other factors.

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But what is this chance? How do I know what chance would allow?

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That's because my specific prayers have been answered which shows that God is infact answering them,

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and my perception of God is that he answers my prayers according to how the bible says he would.

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You make complaints about "prayer effects investigation not being good science", yet you completely ignored all of the science-based investigative questions I asked you in my last message!Prayer effects are a very good place to use scientific investigative techniques. That you avoid all scientific investigation into your claim speaks volumes about your fears, I think.

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LOL! The papers. Do you think God is going to turn up in the papers? Ahahahaha, I never found any truth in those papers Shraff. Oh dear girly!

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Wouldn't a report of prayer giving sight to the blind make some newspaper, somewhere?

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Hey Shraff, You're being impossible because you haven't fully understood the true nature of what we're dealing with.

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Obviously.That's why I keep asking all of these questions, which you keep refusing to answer.

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Science arrives with doubt , which according to God is exactly what you don't need, and infact is the core element of disbelief in God. Jesus could do no miracles in his home town because of doubt. His disciples couldn't force out a demon when without Jesus.

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So, I have to believe before I will believe.

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Also, you don't look for instances in which faith-events would produce miracles. I've seen photographic proof of miracles.

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Like what?

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Names and adresses? WHy would I collect them when watching this stuff on tv? That's why you ask, because it would be difficuilt to find these evidences.

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Then don't expect anyone to take your claims of "miracles" ans anything other than you talking out of your ass.

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Well, that's fair enough. I can understand why you won't want to be thought of as gullible. EVen the bible teaches to be on guard for false prophets.

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Worse than being though of as gullible is actually being gullible.

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It is.

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Becoming belligerant only indicates to me that you cannot support your argument.Explain how you are using the fewest assumptions when you say that your God is answering your prayers.I will repeat my explanation from my previous post until you address it like a grown up:

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This is your own methodo scientifico probably. Your fear is that I am correct!

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No, I am TRYING TO GET YOU TO GIVE ME INFORMATION SO I CAN MAKE A DETERMINATION ABOUT YOUR CLAIMS BUT YOU REFUSE TO DO SO.

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If it explains it then it's the best explanation with the least entities.

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Let's say that "God healed you".How? How did God heal you? What mechanism did God use? How has our understanding of the nature of healing been increased by using this explanation? What predictions about future healing can we make using the "God healed mike" explanation? Is there any time in which the "God healed mike" explanation is ever not applicable to a healing? How can we tell?

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I've read the principle of parsimony before you told me anything SHraffy so I'm not lying. I read it, and I can see that God is not simplistic, but rather the true and simplest explanation.

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Let's say that "God healed you".How? How did God heal you? What mechanism did God use? How has our understanding of the nature of healing been increased by using this explanation? What predictions about future healing can we make using the "God healed mike" explanation? Is there any time in which the "God healed mike" explanation is ever not applicable to a healing? How can we tell?

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I'm not dumb enough to buy into the whole, "God is more complicated" scenario. I'll leave that for other people to fall for. Or is he simplistic? Hmmmm.

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Let's say that "God healed you".How? How did God heal you? What mechanism did God use? How has our understanding of the nature of healing been increased by using this explanation? What predictions about future healing can we make using the "God healed mike" explanation? Is there any time in which the "God healed mike" explanation is ever not applicable to a healing? How can we tell?

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That's my little scientist.

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Let's say that "God healed you".How? How did God heal you? What mechanism did God use? How has our understanding of the nature of healing been increased by using this explanation? What predictions about future healing can we make using the "God healed mike" explanation? Is there any time in which the "God healed mike" explanation is ever not applicable to a healing? How can we tell?also, I'd really like an answer to this part of my last post, now asked for twice:

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That's because there are no other factors.

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But what is this chance? How do I know what chance would allow?

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and my perception of God is that he answers my prayers according to how the bible says he would.

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You make complaints about "prayer effects investigation not being good science", yet you completely ignored all of the science-based investigative questions I asked you in my last message!

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The following are additional points and specific, direct questions to you which you ignored from my last message:

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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.

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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.

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Notice how many unecessary entities you induce in order to explain the situation,

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I think I look at this epistemologically. Apparently, we can know things without evidence. What I mean by that in simple terms, is that
if you slapped me on the face, and five minutes later, I "knew" you slapped me, I infact have no evidence, yet the knowledge remains.

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No, both people are witnesses in this case.Also, we know and have much general knowledge that humans can, and do, slap one another's faces. It is not any sort of extraordinary or unusual event.Your claims of answered prayers are both extraordinary and unusual. Additionally, we have no evidence for the entity "God", whom you say is responsible for answering your prayers, nor do we have any evidence for the means or mechanism by which this entity is able to influence events in the natural world.So, there is a great deal that we can say we know about humans slapping each other's faces, but almost nothing we can say we know about your God, and if he heals people or not.The analogy to human events is a poor one.

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We collect circumstances beyond coincidence,

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How do you determine if it's "beyond coincidence?"You use statistics.That's why the field of Statistics exists, mike.If you simply say it's "beyond coincidence", without doing the math, then you are probably falling prey to all manner of post hoc reasoning and confirmation bias.

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The slap analogy is one of thousands of instances which could illustrate my point, which is that we can have knowledge before or without evidence.

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But you do have evidence. Your witness, and that of the person who slapped you.Humans slapping other humans is not a fantastic or supernatural occurrence.Your claims are fantastic and supernatural.How on earth can you not see that you are trying to compare the mundane with the extraordinary?

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As much as I would love to answer all those questions in your other post, I feel that the ultimate truths pertaining to your posts and my posts leaves us with the problem of the true truths being unidentifiably moot pertaining of the truths I have told you. I suppose it's futile because of that problem, and we are going nowhere, so I think we she agree to disagree.

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If you had an answer for any of them, you would have addressed them by now instead of completely ignoring them.Look mike, I have absolutely no problem with you believing that god answered your prayers. Maybe he did, I have no way of knowing.I only transform into my bulldog alter ego when you step over the line into Verifiable Claim Land by making a factual claim about the natural world that you then refuse to back up with evidence, yet insist to be taken seriously and believed at face value.Your insistance that you are right, combined with your utter refusal to 1)provide any evidence in support, and 2) properly, honestly examine the illogical, irrational basis for your claim is what makes my jaws clamp down on your behind all the harder.

What are the morals of God?

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Personally I think the idea of giving credit to God in one breath and asserting that his influence is always undetectable with the next is an insult to the men and women of the human race who are actually working to improve things, and whose actions are very much detectable. Credit where credit is due - to the people whose existence and actions we can observe, not to some do-nothing God.

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Hear, hear!!It irks me to no end when I see some family in a hospital on the television praising God for saving the life of their loved one who just had some major surgery. They declare it "a miracle!"!Meanwhile, it was the thousands and thousands of inquiring and bright human minds who have worked hard over the generations to understand medical problems and develop technology and surgical techniques to make such things possible.It wasn't God, OK? It was human effort.

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But what I can say is that over all those generations right up to the present day, the vast majority of those bright minds were believers who not only had a profound respect for God but also for the majesty of His creations.

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Uh, I don't think so.The "vast majority" of scientists haven't believed in the supernatural for a little while now. link to sourceSo, general disbelief in God among scientists has been at pretty much the same level (with a slight increase) for almost 100 years, and it is nowhere near the "vast majority" that you claim.Now, of course, many more doctors (who are applied practitioners and do not usually work with theory and the scientific method) probably believe in god, so they would raise the percentage a bit, but not to the "vast majority"-level, I don't think.Besides, are you now claiming that you really know that any of those people "not only had a profound respect for God but also for the majesty of His creations."?Unless you can read minds, how can you know this?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-04-2005 10:32 AM