Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Wildswanderer]

You're telling me that your life is meaningless to you except as a stepping stone to something better,

Nope that's not what I just said at all. If a person doesn't even believe in God, they still want to look back and see that they did good in their time here. That's not possible if we are just automatons.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Right and wrong never cease being meaningful concepts to one with a healthy conscience,

What is a conscience if you are essentially a robot? C'mon man, as sleepy Joe would say, get real, man!

 

[Wildswanderer]

It's people who believe by faith that have closed their minds to evidence and doubt.

A completely materialist view of the universe is much more limiting than a theistic view. It's the most close minded of all. Of course by materialistic, he's not talking about what we call materialism today. We might call it a completely naturalist view.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I've been there, remember? I know what you are experiencing.

Um, no... you have no way of knowing if that's the case or not. It's an unwarranted assumption you make. You assume because you didn't find something no one can... that's not very open minded if you. As I said, the naturalistic view is very close minded.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Now reconsider your comment in the light of that

You have good taste in music. But you can't claim a spiritual experience if you deny you have a spirit. Loving a person or animal is a great risk because death is a sure thing in life. I have let myself love a dog again and it's great but everyone's heart bears wounds only God can heal. You should talk to Him about it.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If a person doesn't even believe in God, they still want to look back and see that they did good in their time here. That's not possible if we are just automatons.

Not possible for YOU apparently, although I think you underestimate yourself. If it were the case and you were forced to confront the fact that your entire understanding of reality is nothing like you thought, if you didn't kill yourself in despair, you would eventually adapt to your new reality, and if your life was a good one as you define a good life, you would be grateful for that fact. Why can't fleshy automatons feel the same things that people with free will would?

As I have told you already that I am perfectly at peace with that possibility. If free will is just an illusion, then that works, too. All that means is that it always was an illusion, that none of these ideas I call my will were created in the mind by the self but instead were generated in brain circuits and delivered to consciousness. If life was OK before I knew I had only the illusion of free will, why wouldn't it be OK still?

What is a conscience if you are essentially a robot?

The cortical faculty that informs one what feels right and what feels wrong.

You assume because you didn't find something no one can... that's not very open minded of you.

But I did find what you found, and for awhile agreed with you what it was I had found - God. The difference between us is that I got the chance to see that what I had found was not what I had once thought it was.

the naturalistic view is very close minded.

Open-mindedness is not the uncritical acceptance of ideas. It is the willingness to consider evidence dispassionately and to be convinced by a compelling argument, which is perfectly consistent with naturalism. Closed-mindedness, or a closing of the mind to evidence, is a consequence of belief by faith. My mind is closed to belief without sufficient evidentiary support, but that also is not what the term means.

You have good taste in music.

Thanks. I guessed that those would be songs you liked as well.

But you can't claim a spiritual experience if you deny you have a spirit.

Disagree, assuming that you are referring to something like a soul - something immaterial distinct from the body that can enter and leave it. That's your definition of spiritual, not mine. I've already explained that for me, spiritual experience is unrelated to spirits or spiritualists.

Loving a person or animal is a great risk because death is a sure thing in life. I have let myself love a dog again and it's great but everyone's heart bears wounds only God can heal. You should talk to Him about it.

Thanks, but I've worked through this before, and I'm doing so again.

Also, after over a decade as a hospice medical director, I have professional experience with grief: Hospice Bereavement Care | Interim HealthCare I understand what a privilege it is to grieve. As you said, it's the cost of loving, and a testimony to the one being grieved to have been worthy of that love and that subsequent suffering. I've said that to many survivors.

I expect to die before my wife, I expect here to grieve the loss, and I am grateful that anybody ever loved me like that. And if she goes first, as I said, I will count it a privilege to do the suffering instead, to have loved someone enough that the loss hurt. That's what I meant about the spiritual aspects of grief.

 

[Wildswanderer]

But I did find what you found, and for awhile agreed with you what it was I had found - God.

That doesn't mean you had the same experiences. Or that my experience can't be real because you decided yours wasn't. You can't know what another persons experience is. That's part of why we don't assume everyone who claims to believe does.
There's different kinds of believing, too. The devil believes in God after all. Trust has to be an essential part of an enduring relationship with God or anyone else. The longer we've trusted him the more we can see him working.

 

[Polymath257]

Why would I? The appeal of the divine makes no sense in a strictly material universe.

“The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.”

― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

That seems to be a better description of theists as far as I can see: always sure that some deity had a hand in every event, always sure that there is a grand plan, always sure That they are special.

Atheists, on the other hand, are in doubt. That is why they demand evidence. That is why they reject bad arguments and faulty logic. The want those making a claim to show why anyone should believe that claim. What *evidence* is there for the claim?

And when the theists fail to give that evidence, the atheist has doubts, while the theists never seem to grasp why they aren't believed.

 

[PruePhillip]

I have no idea what point you're trying to make here sorry? Or what any of that has to do with the errancy of the biblical creation myth?

The evidence for the dark earth theory is super-recent - only one year old. Genesis 1 it says 'Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.'
Going back 20 years I used to say 'That can't be true because the early earth was hot and dry.' But then we found, here in Australia, evidence that the early earth was actually W.E.T. In fact the entire earth was one ball of water - 'formless' if you like as there was no relief to this ocean as there was no landfall.
And I wondered how could the early earth be dark. Could it have been a cloud planet like Venus, the gas giants and Titan? Then I began reading theories that the early earth could have been like Venus - a white ball if you like. Now we have the evidence that yes indeed, the early earth was wet, featureless and dark. Like Genesis, actually.

 

[Bird123]

Yet you gave a condition in your own post.

And are you saying James was wrong?



I completely agree. Never said differently.



I completely agree. Never said differently



There are some things that aren't a choice. Prayer for forgiveness is for all and is demanded from all.



that is true. Not sure what we are exactly disagreeing on... we are pretty much on the same track IMO

There are no conditions on how one prays.

How little you really understand God. Asking forgiveness has never been necessary. This has never been demanded by God. It is only demanded by mankind. Further, it has never been about good vrs evil. This too is a man decided issue. God is beyond the petty things mankind holds so dear which mankind incorporates in their holy books.

Religion is mankind's attempt to understand God. The first thing God pointed out to me is that mankind carries such a narrow view. I cry that!! There is so much staring us all in the face yet how much do people see? From looking at holy books, I would say quite a bit. I have found no religion that understands God at all.

That's what I see. It's very clear!!

 

[PruePhillip]

So everything after the existence of the singularity is down to natural process, not god. So Genesis is wrong.

This verse in the KJV bible frustrated and amused bible believing people for centuries
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth..."

How can the waters bring forth life? Doesn't God create life? How do birds come out of the sea?
Now we know.
God gave COMMANDMENT for this to happen. Who did He command? His creation.

Likewise, God said the Jews would reject their Messiah and become outcasts to their own nation, suffer terribly but be restored in the latter days.
WHO exiled the Jews, God or the Romans? Who caused the Jews to suffer, God or the Gentiles? Who is bringing back (right now) the Jews to their ancient homeland, God or world events?

You can declare this isn't God's direct work, but then you have to consider the odds of it happening naturally.

 

[PruePhillip]

Nope. Only the last is correct, sterile.

The early earth was lit and had no surface water. It also glowed like lava. The sun already existed when the earth formed, and earth was too hot to be wet (Hadean eon). From When did oceans form on Earth?
... It would illustrate that you have understood the argument and understood what a rebuttal is.

Sure, and Genesis doesn't mention the SNOWBALL EARTH either, or the LATE GREAT BOMBARDMENT.
It doesn't mention the first ocean was GREEN or that the sky (probably darker than this painting) was DARK ORANGE.
Genesis isn't a text book, it's a religious book. But it does give us some broad images.
So yes, there truely was a time when you, the observer, could paddle on this dark green ocean, no land in sight, no sun, no life.

What was the Earth before us? | Earth Chronicles News (earth-chronicles.com)

 

[PruePhillip]

Just explain why your God created cancers that affect children, and then, as we observe, does nothing to miraculously cure these children. If you were God, would you do that? Would you cause cancer in a child and then stand by as it suffers through illness and treatment?

You could 'pray for rain.' That's not what Jesus said we should pray for, but you can try.
But this 'drought' could be a part of a weather cycle, just like the Pacific el nino and la ninya cycles, that regulates our climate. God allows your drought because it's the cycle you ultimately rely upon.
You could pray there's no earth quake. But earth quakes release pressure from crustal deformations and slippage. Without earthquakes the continental slabs jam up - there's no more mountain building, no more recycling of materials and absorbtion of carbon etc.. You ultimately rely upon quakes.
And you could pray to be spared some viral infection. But viruses are crucial for the evolution of life on earth and its ongoing maintenance.

The bible does not say you will be spared droughts, quakes and bugs. It warns your life is short and you must prepare yourself to meet your maker, and be grateful if you manage to get through life without these sorrows.

 

[PruePhillip]

There is no such transcendence or meaning.
An odd claim where Genesis 1 differs from Genesis 2.

But feel free to expand on this claim, complete with reputable links. And then prove that it wasn't coincidence. And then explain why Genesis gets other things wrong, like the A&E myth.

How do YOU know there is no transcendence or meaning to life? Where is your rebuttal? That's not science - there really could be black swans somewhere on the earth.
The bible is built from different authors and different ages. That's fine - it's presents itself as a mystery. Anything before Abraham is not a Jewish book at all - more Sumerian I suppose. And there's Yahwist authors, and Elohim authors, and priestly authors etc.. The Jews were split into two nations after Solomon and I suspect the bible was too - the northern Israel bible slowly deviated from the southern Juda one, so we get two accounts of some things.

Works like this. The prophecy was that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem of the tribe of Juda. But in the Christmas story Jesus is born in Bethlehem, flees to Egypt to escape Herod and returns to live in Galilee with the tribe of Zebulum and Napthalee. But when the religious leaders mock Jesus they point out he is a Galilean and not of Judah as prophecy insists. Jesus did not reply. He wasn't here to argue some technical point but appeal to people's hearts. If you don't find appeal in the Gospel then that is fine - no-one pushing you, no-one arguing with you. The bible gives you a 'get out of jail' card so that you can easily excuse yourself from its demands.

 

[ppp]

How do YOU know there is no transcendence or meaning to life? Where is your rebuttal? That's not science - there really could be black swans somewhere on the earth.

Why does he need to offer more evidence than you offered for there being transcendence or meaning to life?

 

[Wildswanderer]

What elements of observed evolution involve speculation?

Much about the theory isn't observable.

 

[Wildswanderer]

That is merely your perspective. You think that without a god to tell you not to, you would be killing and raping and stealing

Straw man. No, I think there would be no reason for me to tell someone else that killing, etc was wrong. And it seems you agree, with your admission that there's no real standard of right and wrong.

 

[ppp]

Much about the theory isn't observable.

Such as?

 

[Wildswanderer]

That seems to be a better description of theists as far as I can see: always sure that some deity had a hand in every event, always sure that there is a grand plan, always sure That they are special.

Atheists, on the other hand, are in doubt. That is why they demand evidence. That is why they reject bad arguments and faulty logic. The want those making a claim to show why anyone should believe that claim. What *evidence* is there for the claim?

And when the theists fail to give that evidence, the atheist has doubts, while the theists never seem to grasp why they aren't believed.

You are describing agnostics. If one isn't sure there's no God he's not an atheist obviously.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Such as?

The whole basis of Darwin's theory can't be observed.
He proposed that all species derive from one or a few species...we cannot observe that happening.