Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Sheldon]

Lol, this assumes only atheists have mature minds. Perhaps that's why they tend to act arrogant because they think they are the only enlightened ones.

Correct and it's a created universe gifted to us by an omnipotent all powerful God. The ones who can't see that are willingly blind.

 

[Polymath257]

We do not "choose" what we believe?

I cannot respond to that statement.

That seems pretty patently true. We do not choose what we believe and what we do not believe.

We are either convinced and then believe or we are not convinced and do not believe. But being convinced is not a choice: it is simply whether the argument and evidence convinces you.

We *can* choose to ignore the contrary evidence and *say* that we believe. But that is simply lying, perhaps even to ourselves. That isn't actual belief.

 

[Sheldon]

They believe they are answered because they prayed and received...

That's a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

 

[F1fan]

Did God inspire someone to write a story about a naughty baby Jesus, casting spells on on his friends?

Someone wrote these stories, and for some purpose. And then when it came to decide what ends up in the Bible and what gets cut, these didn't make it.

Frankly the New testament texts are so troublesome it is ready for a do over. The 4 Gospels have a pretty dubious history as it is. Many Christians still think there were 4 different writers named in the book title.

There's all manner of ways people divine the true nature of the universe - one of which is called the Scientific Method,still being refined last century by Karl Popper.

Science isn't magic.

The fact that most methods are bogus doesn't mean they are all bogus.
Ditto with religion.

Sorry, but methods work because they have reliable results. Religion offers no reliable method for anything. The one exception is that it is successful in taking the money from the gullible. Feel free to send your money to Reverend Jerry so he can send Bibles to El Salvador. Or just pocket it.

 

[PruePhillip]

Someone wrote these stories, and for some purpose. And then when it came to decide what ends up in the Bible and what gets cut, these didn't make it.

Frankly the New testament texts are so troublesome it is ready for a do over. The 4 Gospels have a pretty dubious history as it is. Many Christians still think there were 4 different writers named in the book title.


Science isn't magic.


Sorry, but methods work because they have reliable results. Religion offers no reliable method for anything. The one exception is that it is successful in taking the money from the gullible. Feel free to send your money to Reverend Jerry so he can send Bibles to El Salvador. Or just pocket it.

The bible warns about people like this Reverend Jerry (who is he?)
Using people who BREACH certain principles to DISCREDIT those same principles is not honest or logical.

 

[PruePhillip]

No, but a non-existent God would also not inspire someone to write the accepted gospels either.

The Christian gospel first appeared in the Old Testament.
There would be a Messiah - both as king and as redeemer (paying the price for sin)
The two Messias would be seen as one when the Messianic king appears - and the Jews will mourn to see it's the same lowly figure they pierced.
The redeemer would be crucified (King David writing about a method of death invented by later Persians)
When this Messiah comes the Hebrew nation would come to an end (Jacob early iron age) and he would be believed upon of the Gentiles
This redeemer would suffer, be slain and in his resurrection see that his work was good (Persian period prophecy)
The Messiah would heal the sick, raise the dead, recover the sight of the blind

If someone didn't inspire writers for 2,000 years to build this image then it was extraordinary amount of co-incidence.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Being 'powered' by the laws of physics is NOT the same as being powered by chance,.

It is in your world where those laws came about through chance.

 

[KWED]

Sure, but this overplays the general concensus on the books we have today. We might argue about the Infant Narrative of Jesus
but we all agree on Matthew's Gospel, for instance. There's still the Apocrypha.

You seem to be missing the point. The "consensus" could have been something quite different if the rivalry and conflict between the different sects had played out differently.

 

[joelr]

Think of it this way. When you place an order online to a company you have never heard of before or seen and are not sure about their competency, you hesitate. After 12 orders of efficient deliveries you give them a 5 star and you know where its coming from.

When you order a package online you get a package. If you don't order no package shows up. With things people often pray for like illnesses, jobs, situations, those can and usually do resolve. Bad times begat good times, it's extremely common. So unless you are praying for packages this wouldn't be any type of answer to that question?

I have never said that.

You implied that all prayers could be answered by your God,

"As my signature say, I offer a Christian perspective. I also personally believe that God does answer prayer outside of my faith in as much as His mercy is everlasting and it is His goodness (in answered prayers) that draws people to Him."
A "prayer outside of your faith" would include all prayers, no?

Have no idea where you are coming from

You are still going to dodge the question? This same thing happened last time?
It's really not complicated to understand. You said God may answer prayers outside of your faith. Which would include prayers that do not have proper form.
You said that is your belief and it's a "Christian perspective".

But then you listed some specifics Jesus said regarding how to properly say prayer and said that because the prayer study may have used these improper prayer forms that they were "invalid"?

Which doesn't make sense because you said you think God could answer a prayer outside the faith which would possibly include prayers with improper form?
So do you think God follows the "Christian perspective" and answers more than just proper Christian prayers or do you think he does not and the prayer test may be invalid if they used bad prayer form?

The basic post was - "God is good and can answer any prayer. The prayer used in the prayer study may have used improper form and is therefore invalid"
Those statements are in contradiction. Did you want to glorify your God but at the same time put down the prayer study because it didn't produce the results hoped for?

 

[KWED]

Quote - " “The person old in his days will not hesitate to ask a child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live."
CLASSIC example of someone trying to sound profound (Jewis scribes did this too - and it's common in Islam as well) yet
being completely stupid.

Just because you don't understand the profound teachings of the Son of God, doesn't mean they are "stupid".

The measure of the true Jesus is found in Matthew 5,6 and 7 - the Sermon on the Mount - profound
and full of authority and transcendance.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." How is that not a meaningless platitude? The meek don't get anything. They just get shat on.

People in Rome, First and Second Century, who often died for their belief, were not easily fooled with alternate Christs and revisionist history.

You obviously aren't aware that the followers of different versions of Christianity were regularly persecuted and killed for their beliefs - the very beliefs you claim people would not die for. In fact, part of the reason orthodoxy triumphed was because it tortured and killed its rivals.
Yet again you are merely displaying confirmation bias.

 

[KWED]

It's a bit like science, or democracy --- there are many imitations. It's up to you to figure out which is which.

Erm, that's not how science works or democracy works.
Scientific facts are not decided by popularity or preference, and there is not "political truth". It is all about self-interest.

But saying everything is fake because some or many are fake isn't good logic.

That isn't the argument. You are claiming that the current Bible is true because it is popular and the omitted gospels are fake because they are not. That is a classic fallacy. To the unbiased observer, all the gospels sound unlikely and display all the hallmarks of ancient mythology. It is just confirmation bias that makes you think one set is reasonable while the others are not.

 

[KWED]

I would suppose he has testimonies but as with any testimony, it depends on the credibility of the testifier.

Indeed. If it is just an unsupported personal anecdote from someone with a vested belief in prayer working then we should be sceptical.

I can testify to somewhat amazing answers to prayer.

Cool! Examples?

 

[KWED]

Most religions have some truth to them... just because they don't get it completely right doesn't change my point at all.

So you accept that your own beliefs might be wrong to some extent.

We are spiritual beings and always have been.

What is a "spiritual being"?

 

[KWED]

All of them have been gifts from God, who gave us the intellectual capability to make practical discoveries.

So "none" then.

 

[KWED]

That's exactly what you claimed.

No it isn't.
Most of the time we can simply accept what our senses tell us, because it corresponds to what is reasonable and expected. It is only when they tell us things that contradict accepted reality or expectation or logic that we should demand verification.

If there is a knock on my door and I open it to find the postman, I do not need to question my experience. If I open the door and it is a miniature talking giraffe, I should be sceptical.
Not a difficult concept to grasp.

 

[joelr]

More likely that all three were based on a sayings gospel similar to that of Thomas. The usual designation of that text is 'Q'.

Right now the scholarship points to Mark as the source.
Arguments here:
The Synoptic Problem | Bible.org


The recent work from Mark Goodacre (he specializes in this) has pretty much closed the door on Q and so forth.

Mark Goodacre's Books (Authored) The Case Against Q has good arguments against the source Gospels.

Carrier has an article that covers Marks sources focusing on Paul and touches on a few others. But the conclusion is there isn't a need for any source gospels or even oral tradition, he cites some recent scholarship on this as well :

"
Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, possibly even Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left.

We have very good evidence for all these sources. For example, that Mark emulates stories and lifts ideas from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, the Kings literature, and so on, is well established and not rationally deniable. That he likewise lifts from and riffs on Paul’s Epistles is, as you can now see, fairly hard to deny. By contrast, we have exactly no evidence whatever that anything in Mark came to him by oral tradition. It is thus curious that anyone still assumes some of it did. That Mark’s sources and methods were literary is well proved. That any of his sources or methods were oral in character is, by contrast, a baseless presumption. Objective, honest scholarship will have to acknowledge this someday."
Mark's Use of Paul's Epistles • Richard Carrier

 

[KWED]

You don't want to understand that your beliefs are more irrational than religious beliefs.

Once again, I don't have any "beliefs". I just accept things on the basis of evidence and rational argument.
Evidence and rational argument suggest that the gods of religion do not exist.

You speak of spiritual experiences as out of the ordinary, but they aren't, they are the majority.

Firstly, most people do not think that god has spoken to them. They simply follow a cultural tradition.
Second, that's just another ad pop fallacy. It is irrelevant how many people suffer delusions - they are still delusions.

What is out of the ordinary is to believe that you are just the result of blind chance.

I don't.

Your beliefs have always been a small minority so you have to make a lot of noise, I guess.

Yet again, the ad pop fallacy.
Do you think that the sun orbits the earth? It used to be the popular belief so it must be true, yes?

 

[KWED]

I just did.

Here it is again for an Orthodox source:

" Very recently Sam Harris, one of the so-called ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse‘, released a book on free will, arguing that it is nothing more than an illusion. If materialism is true, that is undoubtedly correct.3 In such a reductionist paradigm, since man is an amalgam of material systems, and since material systems are bound by the laws of cause and effect, man is merely a determined machine.

I agree that the "free will" we experience is guided to a degree by a whole raft of elements, including genetics, environment, culture, expectation, etc. Not sure why this state of affairs is so impossible. It seems to be the way things actually work.

We may perceive that we are freely making our choices, but this is nothing more than a perception. Logically, every decision would be nothing more than the result of the antecedent state of the universe."

Ironically, this is the state of affairs under an infallibly omniscient god who determines our destiny by his will and decree.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Why? Because it makes life completely meaningless.

Sorry you feel that way. Life has been good outside of religion.

this assumes only atheists have mature minds. Perhaps that's why they tend to act arrogant because they think they are the only enlightened ones.

No, it doesn't, but outgrowing magical thinking is part of growing up.

It can be anything from easy to terribly hard depending on where you are in the journey.

There is nothing difficult about believing by faith. Or virtuous. Faith, by definition, is unexamined belief.

 

[PruePhillip]

Erm, that's not how science works or democracy works.
Scientific facts are not decided by popularity or preference, and there is not "political truth". It is all about self-interest.

That isn't the argument. You are claiming that the current Bible is true because it is popular and the omitted gospels are fake because they are not. That is a classic fallacy. To the unbiased observer, all the gospels sound unlikely and display all the hallmarks of ancient mythology. It is just confirmation bias that makes you think one set is reasonable while the others are not.

Take the Jewish account of their settlement in Canaan ca 1700 BC. We have the accounts of the Patriarchs, Sodom,
Egyptian slavery, exodus, rule of the priests, first Monarchy, separation of Judah and Israel, Assyrian conquest, loss
of the ten tribes, Babylonian captivity, Roman occupation, the coming of Jesus, the spread of Christianity throughout the
ancient word.
With the exception of the Egyptian slavery we now have evidence for all of the above.
Now compare that account to the oral traditions of Nth American indians, or aborigines, or even the Greeks and Romans.
I put it to you this Jewish account is most likely the most historical of any oral or written tradition of ancient people. Prove
me wrong and I will respect your point - I simply have never bothered to look it up.