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Getting a dead puppy after 10 sets of prayers might not reflect at all on some notion of generic prayer because none of the actual prayer was generic.
Would ten dead puppies mean "does not appear an effective method of affecting real world outcomes" is a reasonable conclusion? Edit: I should clarify, you can do this with 5 adherents or with 5000, theoretically.
There is nothing in Judaism which is purely petitionary so what you are asking for is already flawed.
Could we not rule this out via pre-experiment research? If they don't do intercessory prayer then why would I include them in my intercessory prayer experiment?
You can't start in a system but judge ignoring the variables of that system.
I don't need to know the variables of the religious system: the adherents do. Why would the observer need to know? Again, super simple experiment: have religious kids pray for a puppy not to die under controlled circumstances in which it is OTHERWISE SURE the puppy would die. If the puppy isn't dead, then prayer seems effective. Why does the observer need to know anything about Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses to determine that the puppy is alive?
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@ethang5
It depnds what you're testing, are you testing the efficacy of pickup lines? How are you defining effective? How are you controlling the experiment? In order for it to be analogous to my test, you'd have to have the ten different guys test ten different women with the same pickup line each time If none of the women respond to any of the pickup lines, your results are "these pickup lines appear ineffective and further testing may be warranted."Let's say we have a woman at the bar of a club. We are going to send in 10 guys to use a pick-up line on her to see if we get any results. Is that a reasonable test?
I agree, because your experiment is poorly designed. It's not really like mine at all, though, because you're testing one woman. In order to be sort of like mine, you'd have to test ten different women with ten different men and ten different pickup lines, then if whatever you define as "success" happens, you have to study WHY it was successful. You'd repeat the experiment over and over. To clarify for my test, five people pray to five different gods, a desired outcome for which they all prayed is achieved. Conclusion: intercessory prayer seems effective. Next step: figure out which one. The first experiment is simple, the next experiment is less so.What has your test told you about pick-up lines? Nothing useful. The test is bogus.
Its like you think God is an algorithm or a robot. That anyone can just yell out any petition to Him and he must act.
I still say there is a reason you don't see experiments like what you described.
Except you do, I cited one that's been peer reviewed, you ignored it.
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@rosends
So then you aren't testing prayer. You want to test Muslim prayer (or Christian prayer) and all the other stuff is automatically included.
How is asking five people to pray to five different deities for a single specified outcome that's outside the natural order of events, seeing that the outcome happened, not testing intercessory prayer? If we get an positive result, then we can start testing specific religions. What am I missing?
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@rosends
But it's not MY demand of no one in particular: the Muslim is praying to his god, the Chrisitan to his god, the Hindu to his god, etc.... it's specific to the adherents.
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@rosends
What good is the conclusion you reach if it is so limited?
It's good because it says "What's the next step in studying why the prayer worked". That's all we're looking for: did the application of intercessory prayer have an effect on the outcome? It doesn't draw any conclusion beyond that because that's not how it's designed. Subsequent experiments are required.
But we can't know that a good samaritan wouldn't have jumped in to save the dog, or the current would have pushed the bag to the shore.
You can know that no one did when youuse the controlled "pool" environment I changed it to, in an effort to rule out more external influencing factors like this, like a fish chewing through the bag, like a rock tearing the bag.
I still can't see how you can assess petitions qua prayer if you take them out of a context that defines and establishes rules for prayer. Is there a generic, religion-free concept of prayer? If, by definition, prayer begs an idea of the object of prayer, then it invokes all the rules and regulations of prayer according to that authority-object.
I'm not taking the prayers out of religious context, the adherents are using the religious context on their own. I can't tell which object of the prayer made a difference under this experiment, but again, that's not what I'm testing for. I'm testing does any sort of intercessory prayer work on a real world outcome. You're doing sort of the same thing as the other guy, it seems like you're adding stuff to the experiment.
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@rosends
I see inconclusive results at best as cause to abandon studying it.
This is a dangerous approach: you'd never arrive at any medical treatment innovation if you abandoned anything whose initial results were "inconclusive." That word itself stems from "not really concluded." That means keep going, as it "you're not done." The most complicated conclusions go through many, many, many experiments with inconclusive results before finding a solution.
If different religions don't agree on the variables which define what prayer is and how it works, who sets the parameters for a test of its efficacy?
Me: the dog lives or dies. If the dog lives, I will include prayer as the leading probability as the factor that made the change in the natural order of events. I'm not trying to define which religion made the change yet.
I don't think it does unless you want to limit prayer's ability to change the course of presumed events. OK, then let's change the scenario so I can test a bit more:my fish is sick. The doctors say he is going to die. I pray to god to heal him.
The reason I don't do the experimen this way is exactly what you lay out: you can't tell what would have happened naturally, particularly with illness. It's why you need a healthy, living puppy who's not close to death, then you can make a better conclusion. You're not limiting "what kind of "prayer" we are talking about, the less useful any non-generalizable result will be." You're just taking a short term result (a dog would drown inside of ten minutes) that can be measured conclusively. This sort of parameter is the only way to test that the prayer effects the outcome, you have to rule out anything that could happen on its own (see sealable bag, controlled pool with no animal, rock, or diver in it, no intervention, etc).
but if isn't specific to any single religion then it has no parameters that can be used other than the most generic "did it effect the specific and limited request" and that can't be useful within any religious context.
That's exactly what I'm aiming to measure: did it affect the outcome. If it did, then you'd have to design different experiments to figure out which religion did it, or if it was something else (group telepathic powers, etc).
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@rosends
This presumes that "didn't happen" isn't an answer.
Wouldn't this not happening, regardless of if it's an answer or not, lead to the conclusion "does not appear to effect the outcome in the real world"? Yes, I'm measuring for specifically "does the prayer affect the outcome," Not all religions believe the prayer is dependent on the merits of the prayerful (though this is why you'd pick children to do the prayers, because they're less corrupt, and the puppy, because those prayers would be less self serving and more sincere. But there are versions of Christianity that can't agree on who gets their prayers answered or why, or if they constitute a test of god or they don't.
separated from any religious context,
This isn't separated from ANY religious context, it's just not specific to any single religion.
It still has to qualify as prayer, judged within the religious context which generates that definition.
Could not theologians of some stripe or other validate the prayer's content prior to issuing it to the children? So in other words if the experiment was laid out so that the Hindu head theologian looks at the prayer you want to use in your experiment and says "Yes, this prayer as I see it is valid prayer," then you give said prayer to the child of that faith in the experiment?
Surely we can put all sorts of internal variables into it, but in the end, every result studied so far has yielded the same thing: inconclusive results at best. I'm not in any way saying you cannot confirm intercessory prayer as effective, but there's no reason to say it cannot be studied.
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@rosends
still think that this all takes a rather narrow and limited view of even intercessory prayer. Within a religious understanding, there are a variety of possible answers and mechanisms, and even rules about what should be asked for in the first place. Asking whether something "works" while ignoring all the variables which would determine whether the it even qualifies to be tested leads to a stilted view of the results
This is why you don't test for a specific religious understanding of it at first, you test a variety of intercessory prayers all at once. I'm not sure why you think it's narrow and limted: intercessory prayer is the only kind that seems answerable, certainly the only kind that would be measurable (I asked for X, X did or didn't happen). I'm not asking if prayers of thanks 'work,' what would they even be working at doing?
Why isn't prayer "qualified" to be tested? I'm trying to think of another proposition wherein there should be measurable outcome, but doesn't qualify for testing. Some people think prayer substitutes for medical attention, shouldn't that be something we test? What sort of variables are you talking about sepcifically? PLease don't say the atheist saboteur.
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@Seth
I'm not saying it's a moral experiment, but it's certainly sound scientifically. And I'm not testing for the Chrisitan god, that's a subsequent experiment. The "god doesn't like tobe tested" then raises the question "isn't every prayer of petition a test of god?" Would "save my child from leukemia" be testing god? Why not, right?
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@ethang5
No you wouldn't. As you said, some kind hearted atheist could have jumped in and pulled them out.Someone could have sabotaged the test with bags the puppies can escape.By chance there could have been divers under the water where you threw the puppies who set them free.Your experiment doesn't plan for any of these chance things.
THese are not "chance" things. The environment obviously would be controlled. No experiment "plans" for sabotage, though most check for it. Also, you note that the step "OBSERVE." Do you really not understand this?
Your experiment cannot tell you if any prayer was answered. All the puppies dying could be God answering all the prayers with a "no". You have no way of differentiating that from a non answer.
All the puppies dying would lead you to the "results of intercessory prayer do not appear to have an affect on real world outcomes," which would then lead you to re-try to the experiment. "No" and "ignored" and "unheard" would all look exactly the same, you're right, but that wouldn't mean you somehow departed from the scientific method by default, or that your result was unscientific. In a similar way, if the puppy miraculously surivies, you know, without sabotage, because it's a controlled scientific experiment, we can say "what the children prayed for happened, and observation reveals no tampering or observable influence on the experiment, therfore however this puppy survived seems to be outside the natrual order of things. Prayer must be included as the leading factor for the puppy's survival."
Prayer can only be tested on what the people who pray say about prayer
This is not remotely true.
Consider this. Let's say there is a religion that teaches that God doesn't answer any prayer on Mondays.
This is controllable in two different ways: don't include this religion in your initial experiment, or don't do the test on Monday. Problem solved. THere are many religions that say "If you ask it in my name, it'll be yours," right?
To test their claim, you must test THEIR CLAIM about prayer.
Maybe in some other experiment, but you are only testing for the efficacy of intercessory prayer in general. You don't need someone's opinion to know if a dog died.
And even when you get a result that coincides with an answered prayer, you have no way of ruling out some other circumstance, like chance or sabotage.
If this is your standard, no scientific experiment would ever be valid. Luckily, we use something called "controlled environments" and "control groups". The rest of your questions are red herring garbage, 'If the puppy is revived by CPR." Come on now. Be a big boy.
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@ethang5
Your experiment cannot give you an "answered" prayer. Your experiment has no way to tell the difference between an answered prayer and pure chance, and skewed results.
This is why you use the puppy in the sack, in a pool. The only way out of the sack is a miracle, and then, you'd know you had an answered prayer. Then you could set up your next experiment, to find out which god answered the prayer. You missed this part, apparently. What exactly is your objection to this?
It cannot give you any reliable data about the real world. It is flawed.
Where is it flawed, exactly? I'll draw it out for you again so you don't have to go back, and I'll add what you seem so concerned about.
- HYPOTHESIS: Intercessory prayer effects outcomes in the real world.
- EXPERIMENT: Gather five children between the ages of 6 and 10, who are adherents of different and mutually exclusive religions. For example, one Chrisitan, one Scientoloigist, one Hindu, one Muslim, one Greek Pantheist. As a group, let them spend time with a puppy, four or five hours per day, enough to form a bond. After one month, take the children and the puppy to a pool. Sew the puppy into a burlap sack with a brick, sealed so it cannot escape, and tell the children you're going to throw the puppy in the sack into the pool. Have the children pray to their specific god for the puppy to survive. Throw the sack into the pool. Observe the results.
Where is the flaw? Where's your objection?
An atheist can review the results. If he says it was blind chance, how would you counter?
"How do you conclude it's blind chance if the seal on the bag is intact and the bag remains underwater?"
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Which is why many religious adherents are the people doing the praying, this way we can see if it works. You mean testing outside YOUR religion because you think they others are bunk. Just say that then, and you can move further into your misunderstanding of the scientific method. I'm not testing it a person responds to prayer, read the experiment again. I'm testing if prayer is effective. You make this same mistake, over and over again, it's like Sideshow Bob with the rakes, it's funny, then it's sad, then it's funny gain. Maybe review my experiment's description again.Prayer outside a religion makes no sense. And prayers are directed at someone. You are testing if that person responds to prayer.
The validity of the test depends on whom the prayers are directed to. If your prayers are directed to a lizard, the sun, a totem pole, or a man, you will get certain results.
Only if the test aims to test if a single entity is responding to the prayers. And the experiment doesn't say pray to the sun. It says pray to the god dictated by your religion. This is already the third time in one post you're missing this point. All you're doing is basically carpet praying for a change in outcome. If the outcome changes, you have to do a different experiment to narrow down WHY the outcome changed. This is where you claim you cannot design an experiment or use the scientific method: figuring out if any gods exist. That is a fundamentally different question than is prayer effective. Please, please stay away from science, you're so bad at it. c
The test is to find out if the one the prayer is directed to responds to the prayers, not simply if he hears.
No, the test is "is prayer effective at changing outcomes in the real world." And it follows the scientific method. And the results will be at best inconclusive. That doesn't mean it's not scientific.
If the experiment doesn't specify whom the prayers are directed to, how will we know who it is that responds if there is a response?
That's a different experiment. First we need to confirm that prayer is effective. I keep telling you this because you are impenetrably obtuse about it.
If the experiment doesn't specify what is an acceptable response, how will we tell a response from blind chance?
THis is why you sew a puppy into a bag and throw it into a pool. The only way for the puppy to get out would seem to be against the natural order of events: a miracle. People often pray for things that will happen in many cases regardless of prayer: make my team win, let me get better from this cold, let there be a movie on Netflix I want to watch. The only way to filter for this (and to take out confirmation bias) is to ensure that what you're praying for could not have happened in any other way. So, you throw it int a pool because a pool is a controlled environment, no rocks, no other animals, nothing. Just the puppy, prayer, and the threat of drowning.
If the one the prayers are directed to knows it is a test, how will we know He didn't skew the results?
Aaaaaaand you'r back to completely misunderstanding both science and the experiment. First you'd have to be able to tell who's receiving the prayer. In order to do that, you'd have to do more experiments ONCE YOU HAVE AN ANSWERED PRAYER. Without an answered prayer, at best, you can say "prayer is ineffective according to the results." It's only when you can confirm that you have an answered prayer, one that has an impact on real world outcomes, that you can go into "Now, which one of these five religious systems likely produced the result?" Except now you need five more puppies.
and the militant atheist will say it was blind chance.
THere is no atheist in the experiment I designed because they don't pray. They jump in the water and save the puppy because who else is going to do it.
And everyone will immediately see the stupidity of such an experiment and the value of the scientific method.
Well, everyone but you apparently, who can't figure out how to do this at all.
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@ethang5
It's that prayer does not show a discernible outcome on the situation. This is, once again, not a claim that Christian prayer is ineffective.That is exactly what it claims by saying there was no discernible difference whatsoever with the outcomes.
That isn't what it says at all, so how you decide definitively that's what it actually means is questionable at best. No one claimed that, your opinion not withstanding, because the words are the words. I have no reason to believe that the original poster said this and instead mean science disproved whatever whatever, because those words would be there instead if that's what he meant.
No sir. For example, the bible says only the prayers of Christians are heard. If your experiment uses non-christians to pray, the results can say nothing credible about Christian prayer.The narrative does make a difference. It always does in experiments.
That's if you're testing Christianity. I'm testing prayers. Don't get into your "does god even exist!" question, you already said you're bored by that question.
scientifically valid experiments have been conducted on the efficacy of intercessory prayer and have shown inconclusive results, repeatedly, regardless of the narrative.Cite one then.
Each religion has its own narrative that makes some things in the other nonsense. There can be no test for all of them at once. The experiment would be unscientific.
We're not testing religion, remember? We're testing the efficacy of intercessory prayer. JUST PRAYER.
If your test subject is God,
It isn't, it's intercessory prayer.
The bible says God should not be tested. Threatening to drown the puppy to goad God into saving it is a test. One which God would be pre-aware of.
I'm not testing God. I'm testing intercessory prayer.
As soon as the test subject becomes aware that he is in a test, the results become untrustworthy.
As soon as the PRAYER becomes aware it's in a test? BEcause that's the subject of the test. There is no direct reference to any specific God, it's just testing if prayer is efficacious. Please try to keep up.
My argument applies only to Christian prayer. Different religions may have different results.
So different religions' prayers may have different results than Christian prayers, you're saying? So let's say the puppy escapes, and you're pretty sure the god you're talking about, the CHristian god, would have let it drown because it knows you're testing it. But the puppy escapes! So now, someone's prayers WERE answered, but you'd have to say "Well, that's weird, because the one I know about would not grant that prayer, but SOMEONE must have. Hm..." Right? Or do you make some excuse where it's either he was feeling magnanimous rahter than spiteful, duh, and that's why he really is the one who interceded? Notes and questions like that would only lead to the next experiment, and WHAM! You're accidentally doing science for a change!
In Christianity, only certain kinds of Intercessory prayers are acceptable.
We're not testing for Christian prayer efficacy. JUST PRAYER. Then if some are answered, we can start down other paths.
ut I think you're starting to see how difficult it would to fashion a scientifically valid experiment on the efficacy of Christian prayer.
Except it's not difficult at all. What's difficult is demonstrating there's any real reason to participate in it. But again, I'm not testing Christian prayer. Just intercessory prayers. My turn for a question, which, get your dancing shoes on: what happens if the prayer appears answered? What then would you do? You only seem concerned with asserting that unanswered prayers are somehow scientifically invalid even though you claim they're heard. Try the other way. What happens if the prayer is answered. Commence your apopleptic fit in three...two...
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@EtrnlVw
Spirituality-systematic knowledge of the non-physical or non-material (spiritual) world through observation and experimentation.
Please advise the experimentation done on the non-physical, non-material world that would make this even close to analogous to science. Where are these definitions from, by the way?
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@ethang5
Several years ago a comprehensive study was done in the UK using 40,000 to determine the difference of prayer and non-prayer for the same situations.It was found that there was no discernible difference whatsoever with the outcomes.Salixes, Post #26, This thread.you're once again arguing against a position no one's taking. This is a straw man by definition.
The position here in the quote you've provided is not that Christian prayer is ineffective. It's that prayer does not show a discernible outcome on the situation. This is, once again, not a claim that Christian prayer is ineffective. IT's right there in the words that you quoted.
But your test must make sense given the claims of who is being tested! For example, Christians say God doesn't honor prayers made for selfish reasons, thus, an experiment that allows subject to send selfish prayers cannot be used to conclude that prayers are not answered. The experiment must make sense withing the christian narrative if it is going to make conclusions about that narrative.
THe test is only about prayer, and only about intercessory prayer. It's not about any given narrative, that makes no difference at all, and the person being tested, their claims are meaningless to the science of the experiment. It's prayer being tested, not the person, not the narrative.
Christianity doesn't agree that ANY prayer is acceptable. Placing puppies in a sack and having a kid pray that it not die is certainly not an acceptable prayer in Christianity.
This is pointless, because the experiment I designed isn't about Christianity. It's about prayer efficacy. How do you know that's not an acceptable prayer, though, exactly? Is it selfish to pray that an innocent puppy is spared from intentional drowning somehow? Where is this spelled out in the bible? I don't need to re-invent the wheel, scientifically valid experiments have been conducted on the efficacy of intercessory prayer and have shown inconclusive results, repeatedly, regardless of the narrative.
Thus, Joe Christian is going to dispute the results of the test because he'll say, "The one I was praying to, knew it was an experiment, and that skewed the results." What would be the experiments response to that?
This presumes the prayer appears unanswered or ignored to Joe Christian. The response would be "the prayer appears unanswered." That's all you're testing for. THe more interesting question is if the prayer appears answered, and Joe CHristian, Muhammad Muslim and Hari Hindu all take credit for the prayer being answered, how do you experiment to decide which one is correct? You seem hesitant to approach it from this angle. In this case, the experiment says "Prayer appears to be answered, three test subject claim their chosen deity is the reason. Need more data," which then leads to the next experiment. This is how science works.
The best way would be a double blind test, where neither you or the girls know an experiment is going on. We could simply secretly observe you in your natural element and note how many times you approached girls and what race she was.
Agree, this is the best way to do it, but you'd have to do it repeatedly in order to filter for chance or error. And you'd have to observe brain patterns or physiological responses, not my verbal report, because you're testing for a specific measured response.
Now what if, you knew that the girls had been hired to test you in an experiment? Could the results be trustworthy?
No, as this is no longer a double blind experiment, in fact it's a no blind experiment, which is very difficult to garner valid data from, but that's why you wouldn't use such a format to test for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. But how does this translate to the effect of intercessory prayer to unspecified deity? Are you saying some gods spitefully deny the petitions, even if they're entirely altruistic and otherwise within the guidelines of 'acceptable prayer' (which you'd have to lay out in detail, as you might lay out in detail exactly how to pray, word for word, for the experiment, to make sure everyone is praying exactly the same thing), because they know they're being tested? First of all, how would you know that? Are they all that way, the deities being prayed to?
Prayer tests that allow any prayer are like preferences tests that allow any gender.
Intercessory prayer. It's pretty common among the faithful of any stripe. Not "any prayer."
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@ethang5
That isn't even close to claiming that "scientific experiments have proven Christian prayer ineffective." I know words aren't like super important to you or anything, but they're kind of key in a written communication format. This post asserts (either correctly or incorrectly, I don't care as this person's posts are almost all pointless nonsense anyway) that you've conceded prayer is ineffective. Do you have any links to anyone, either on this forum or in the scientific community, actually saying "Scientific experiments LIKE THE ONE LINKED HERE have proven definitively that Christian prayer is ineffective?" Because without this substantiation, you're once again arguing against a position no one's taking. This is a straw man by definition.Where does it claim that scientific experiments have proven Christian prayers ineffective?...by default, you concede the fact that prayer does diddly squat. - Sal in post #6
A valid scientific experiment would not assume anything. This has already been addressed. Please, give the, "does God exist?" drone a rest.
We agree, valid scientific experiments assume nothing, they form a hypothesis and then test against it, but there's literally no reason you cannot do a valid scientific experiment that deals with "does intercessory prayer effect outcomes in an observable way.". I have made no inroads into the assertion "does god exist" because that's a step further back, like when you figure out if intercessory prayers are effective or not, once you figure that out, you can start trying to test for what heard and answered them if anything. I have given you two experiments already that do not assume any specific deity, and do not aim to prove any existence of deities, merely to see if intercessory prayer has an effect on the world. For all we know, the prayers may be effective, but if they are, our next experiment then needs to rule out "collective telekinetic effect" or something before we move on to "And was it Jesus or Vishnu that helped here." You can absolutely study the impact of intercessory prayer, you can do it with control groups, you can do double blinds, I don't get it, why do you think you CAN'T? THere's no connection to any specific deity in the question posed. You don't need to assume any exist, either. For all you know, collective intercessory prayer may change the behavior of those engaging in it in such a way that a real world outcome is affected. What it can't prove is what you don't want to talk about, but no one is claiming that, either. Well, maybe Salixes, but I skip most of the bickering between you and him, but I doubt it's in there addressed in any way.
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@ethang5
I have not claimed prayer is effective, or that God exists. My claim is that experiments to prove prayer is ineffective are unscientific nonsense. I'm contradicting the claim of the OP, not trying to prove God exists.
Scientific experiments, real ones, not the ones you're making up as straw men, generally don't set out to prove a negative. There are certainly ways to apply the scientific method to the efficacy of prayer, I just showed you one. The conclusion would be "results are at best inconclusive." You could, however, modify the experiment to make it harder for any chance. Like, sew the puppy into a bag with a brick and throw the bag into a pool instead of a river. If the puppy survives, you'd definitely rule out "chance" by going to see if the puppy had clawed or chewed his way out of the bag, and if you found the bag sealed and in otherwise untampered with condition, you'd have to make your next experiment "Determining if this puppy is an escape artist, or if a god intervened." Just because you can't think of one doesn't mean there isn't one, but every one that presumes a god exists is flawed in that it invites confirmation bias.
This threads OP claims that scientific experiments have proven Christian prayers ineffective.
Really? This is the original post (isn't that what OP means?). Where does it claim that scientific experiments have proven Christian prayers ineffective?
Perhaps we could build a 100% natural, faith healing hospital ....we could call it "The Holy Hospital of Kindness".* Instead of operating theatres we shall have prayer rooms.* Instead of professional doctors, nurses and surgeons, we'll have naturopaths, chiropractors and accupuncturists.* Instead of drugs we will have holy water.* And of course, we would need to erect a morgue that's larger than the hospital itself.
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@EtrnlVw
So in a sense Ethang and Rosends are correct, any study about prayer will always be inconsistent and not one you could ever observe some sort of perfection because again, it's actually based around the individual and whether or not they abide and live in accordance with this framework and matrix of laws
In yet another sense, it's a way of saying "Applying true scientific method to this proposition will provide results that are inconclusive at best, and therefore cannot be said to be in any way scientifically verified as effective."
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@ethang5
It cannot be done via the scientific method, and it doesn't matter if a God exists or not.
Why, exactly? And why doesn't it matter if God exists or not? If you're testing if god is listening and answering prayers, it seems like that's a pretty big detail (you seem to have skipped the part about the satellite dish and the signal).
The scientific method assumes nothing.
Exactly, so any experiment that sets out to prove the Christian god is listening and answering prayers in any way assumes that god exists. In this way you are inviting confirmation bias, and you're not using a truly scientific method, you're simply saying "I think this is the god that's there, now let's prove it's listening to me."
Just like every atheist, you want to change this into a "Does God Exist" topic. Some of us have broader interests.
I knew this was going to be your belly ache, which is why I sketched out an experiment that doesn't bother with "Does god exist." You didn't even begin to address it, so I can presume you find it confounding at best, confusing at worst. How would you be able to tell whose prayer was answered if the puppy survives?
His prayer will always line up with the priorities of God.
Then why pray for intercession at all?
the old atheist clunker about science having disproved the efficacy of prayer is nonsense
More accurately, there is no proof that intercessory prayer is effective at changing outcomes.
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One of the problems is as I pointed out, you must distinguish in some way between "unheard / ignored" and "no." They aren't the same answer, yet they have the same outcome. In any case couldn't an experiment on the efficacy of intercessory prayer (there's no effect of 'thankful' prayers or 'guidance' prayers that is really measurable, only externally verifiable events can be considered) be done as follows:
--Hypothesis: "Praying to a presumed deity for a specific set of outcomes, if done under certain circumstances, should affect the outcome of events."
--Experiment (in theory): Gather five different children of differing, and contradictory, religious beliefs (such that child A should only believe in religious set X, which cannot include as a subset what child B believes), and give them time together with a puppy, say four or five hours a day, enough to grow a bond with the dog. So for example, a Christian (who will pray to Jesus), a Scientologist (Xenu), an Australian Aboriginee, a Hindu and an Amazonian tribe child.
- At the end of the week, take the puppy and the children for a walk in a park.
- Come to the bridge that crosses the river that splits the park. Pick up the dog, take off its leash, and tell the children you're going to throw it into the fast moving river below. The only way they have to save the dog is to pray, fervently, to whichever deity they believe in.
- This ensures a proper level of sincerity and upset, as the children really don't want their friend, the dog, to drown.
- All five children pray as hard and as loud and as properly as they can.
- Two outcomes are possible:
- The dog survives. In this case, someone's prayers were answered! Great! Intercessory prayer works! Now, how do we figure out WHICH PRAYER did the trick, to which god?
- The Scientology kid says "Thenk you Xenu, you definitely intervened to save that puppy!" and the Christian kid says "No, JESUS did it, because I prayed to him!" WHat are the next steps in this experiment?
- This presents another problem, it's the problem that's baked into the experiment: you presume there is a deity in the first place, which means you should be able to determine which one was listening and whose prayer was in fact answered. How can you rule out that nothing but the dog's survival instinct helped it swim ashore?
- The dog drowns. How do we figure out if every one of those gods heard and denied this plea?
- Can we confirm that any deity at all heard it? How? Is it possible that the deities all heard and ignored this request?
- How do we determine if the answer was "no" if "no" and "Ignored" look so similar?
Obviously the experiment has a design flaw, one which ethang's also has: it presumes the existence of a deity in the first place, without demonstrating that's the case. You can do prayer experiments with control groups, sure, these have been done before, but you can't seem to hone in on which god is the right one to pray to in the first place. You'll never know for sure if your prayer signal is pointed in the right direction, in other words, or it just isn't reaching the antenna. You wouldn't, for example, take a satellite dish and point it out at some random point in the sky and then complain "Why am I not getting any television channels? Something must be wrong with this dish!" You'd do more work to find where the satellite was and once you were sure you were on it, you'd start troubleshooting why you can't watch HBO.
It's imperfect but it's a start. To apply scientific method to prayer you ought to be able to prove that a deity exists in the first place, not presume one does.
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@ethang5
Will do, thanks. Let me know if you ever decide to have an intellectually honest discussion, I'll be glad to have a look at it, otherwise I'm pretty sure you're just looking for another sandbox fight, I'll pass as I prefer acting like an adult.
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@PGA2.0
Most definitely and the Word of God says to train a person up in the faith when they are young so that they will not easily depart from it.
Seems insidious to me, like a touch brainwash-y, and that it lacks the confidence to withstand someone who can reason for themselves, unencumbered by the naivete of youth.
How well does it answer the ultimate questions of life? It fails miserably.
You've said this in so many topics, yet you have never once demonstrated that you have answers through Christianity for these "ultimate questions." You also never explain why these "ultimate questions" are "ultimate questions," but that's a separate question.
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@ethang5
I'm discussing the topic just fine, thanks. I have no idea what you're on about with the stalking victim or rape victim analogy, I just know that you seem to be embroiled in a lot of idiotic feuds and your posts that deal with the topic directly seem to be outnumbered by your impertinent to topic posts by about ten to one. Including that last one, and I'm sure the one after this. Plus naming your topic "stupidity experiment", while on brand, does not exactly sound like anything I'd be interested in.
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@ethang5
Great, it looks more like another one of your pointless feud threads, though. And the title needs work. I'm doing fine in this thread, thanks for the invite.
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@rosends
<br>faith teaches that the prayer communicated to the desired ear the wish of the individual and the purpose of prayer is that communication, so it is, by definition, effective
Interesting. In order for prayer to be effective (presuming the effect is not the same as say simple meditation), it simply has to communicate something, to something or someone. Can we independently confirm, regardless of prayer efficacy, that communication was in fact received? For example, we can confirm a signal being received someplace, this would be 'communicated' regardless of response.
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@rosends
I think belief teaches that all prayer is necessarily effective (conditions permitting) but the effect is not always discernable or desired.
This is answering a different question, of course that's what belief TEACHES, but that doesn't mean it's true. I'm not sure how you'd credit prayer with efficacy if in fact the 'effect' is indiscernible from not praying, or the effect is not what you prayed for (desired).
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@rosends
Do you think there's no way to measure it at all, efficacy of prayer?
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@rosends
It's impossible it would seem to me to confirm that the prayer was answered in either way, as you pointed out, you can't be sure the Chiefs would have won without the praying. Once you say a prayer, anything that's remotely like what you wanted, you can take full credit for, right? Use the lost keys example, if you lose your keys, spend ten minutes looking all over for them, then pray to find them. They don't turn up in spite of your searching, so instead, you decide you'll use your spare this time and find them later with Jesus's help. Then you put your jacket on, and what do you know, there are your keys, exactly where you left them. Is it ONLY because your prayer was answered that you found them? How can we work to confirm it?
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@rosends
Yeah, that was pretty much how the discussion went: what's the point of trying to change god's plan with intercessory prayer, basically. Also, I think there's a material difference between "no" and "unanswered," but I think Christians largely see things like (to use a lighter example) "praying for the 49ers to win the superbowl" and then having the Chiefs win a "no" response to the prayer. To me, if you didn't receive a direct response of 'no,' then that prayer seems unheard at worst, heard and ignored at best. I think that's different than no.
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@rosends
When you are ready to have an actual conversation about what prayer is, not just what you think it is, let me know.
I wouldn't hold your breath! Actual conversation about topics is suddenly in extreme short supply around here these days. I'd love to participate in a thread about prayer efficacy (I did one a while ago specific to intercessory prayer that was pretty lively), but it's fking tedious to sift through the various internet characters who would rather just insult each other. You can trace the downhill slide of this place to the arrival of about three different people, the joker who started this topic is one of them, as is his apparent nemesis. It's a shame.
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@Stephen
I've had this discussion about six times with him, don't get him started . His claim is that he can make sense of who are we, why is there something rather than nothing, why are we here, what started the universe, why is right right and wrong wrong...except he doesn't make any sense of them. He simply says "because Jesus is real," which in no way explains anything. "Why is the universe here?" answer "Well because Jesus put it here so we can worship him and he can threaten us with torture!"
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@PGA2.0
Not in the slightest, no, but it does differentiate it from the null position and perhaps as importantly it doesn't differentiate it from any other religion on earth. You presuppose Jesus, a hindu presupposes whatever the hindu pantheon looks like, an aboriginee presupposes aboriginal gods, and greeks presupposed their pantheon. These would all start from exactly the same starting line. It goes to my question of how do you choose which presupposition is the right one to start from.That, however, does not disqualify it from being true.
The null position that you're calling a pre-supposition is not taught this way, almost at all. The null position often comes from ideas like "Well, if I'm a Christian and I'm going to heaven, and my girlfriend is Jewish, she'd be going to hell, wait, how do I know I'm right and she's wrong?" lines of questioning. In other words, I find that religious positions and presuppositions are taught at a fundamental time in a person's development, while atheist / null positions are almost uniquely arrived at through independent thought. I don't think 'null' is presupposed in almost any case, it's almost always concluded, whereas religious positions, Christians or otherwise, are often the result of childhood inculcation.Sure, that can be the case. The heart of the issue is where a person stands with God and what they truly believe. Do they truly trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior? Many people profess but not everyone trusts Jesus for who He is and what He has done on behalf of those who will believe.
Well, if one presupposes Jesus. If one doesn't presuppose anything (or perhaps in your lexicon, presupposes nothing), then that's in no way the heart of any issue. It's certainly not an issue for hindus, jews, muslims, aboriginees, scientologists...
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@Dynasty
You say scholarship, but you seem to ignore for every one of the books that say it happened like it says in the bible, there are 50 that say the bible's wrong. For every scholar that says creationism is correct, there are 100 scientists with peer reviewd research that demonstrates otherwise. Saying "Scholarship" in your context really just means the limited number of scholars that you already agree with.
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@PGA2.0
Your cultural environment could influence you; your parents; reading; hearing from a close friend; through education; the media; entertainment, etc.
Would "actively taught at a very suggestible age" be among these reasons? This is often how american Christianity is transmitted. The null position that you're calling a pre-supposition is not taught this way, almost at all. The null position often comes from ideas like "Well, if I'm a Christian and I'm going to heaven, and my girlfriend is Jewish, she'd be going to hell, wait, how do I know I'm right and she's wrong?" lines of questioning. In other words, I find that religious positions and presuppositions are taught at a fundamental time in a person's development, while atheist / null positions are almost uniquely arrived at through independent thought. I don't think 'null' is presupposed in almost any case, it's almost always concluded, whereas religious positions, Christians or otherwise, are often the result of childhood inculcation.
Leave the belief and build on another one or live with it knowing that it is not true. Sometimes people prefer the latter because they have invested so much into that belief system and it is a crutch for them.I don't think many choose by feeling alone although I am not saying this can't be the case.
Are you saying you think many people who living with a belief knowing it's not true are doing so out of personal discomfort with the alternative?
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@PGA2.0
All worldviews start with presuppositions.
How do we choose which to start with? And what accounts for the change in the way people assess their own suppositions, given that many people move from one to another (allowing of course that "I don't know" is in fact a presupposition according to your terms, which I disagree with)?
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No, there is absolutely no reason to ban religion at all, it is an individual form of expression.
I really wish you'd take your whack ass provocateur act and the cast of douchebag characters you've dragged over here from your former home someplace else. This place might not have had the most activity but at least what was here was thoughtful for the most part (Mopac excepted). Now we're treated to you workshopping your 'bits' or whatever followed by enthang draggin up year old threads from your other username, then a bunch of insults between you, him, and various other non-contributing knuckleheads. You're going to kill this board, too. You'd do better DMing each other to get whatever charge you all do from thinking you're really crushing the other person or winning the forum or whatever. None of you could find a thought provoking topic if it landed on your face. Imagine what any of you, yourself, ethang, dynasty, others, imagine what you'd accomplish if you didn't spend so much time curating some internet personality you've created, trying to be some character we know none of you actually are in real life. Read a book, you assholes.
/rant.
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@Dynasty
Are you referring to the entire book of Genesis, or just the part with the creation myth?
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@Dynasty
"Basing scholarship"? How does that make them compatible?
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@Mopac
Thou hast to knowest when to hold them...knowest when to foldeth them. Know thou when to walk away...and when to run. Above all thou shalt not counteth thy money, whilst thou are sitting at the table. For verily I say unto the, there shalt be time enough for counting whe on the dealing is done.
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Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.[paraphrase]
--St. Han Solo of Corellia
There is but one god. His name is Death. And the only prayer we offer him is "not today." [paraphrase]
--St. Syrio of Braavos
There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese
--Coach Finstock the Blessed
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@Mopac
That doesn't address my questions about your prior post.
if god is in fact just reality, and churches, songs and prayers don't make a difference to reality, then what is the point of calling reality god?
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@Mopac
If buildings and prayers and songs don't make the slightest difference to what you're both calling "ultimate reality," then how is the ultimate reality god? God in the book issues a bunch of commandments, three of which if I recall are about how to worship him and not blaspheme him, etc. Your own church traditions, the ones you're always crowing are the only real ones and are the best and make your church the most catholicky, they're meaningless too. In other words, if god is in fact just reality, and churches, songs and prayers don't make a difference to reality, then what is the point of calling reality god?
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@ethang5
Actually the point I was making is that some CHRISTIANS do not believe jesus was sent to save everyone. Maybe read the whole sentence where I refer to Christian s and then cited you as an example next time. It wouldnt have been accurate to say some Christians about myself, I'm not a Christian. Congrats on proving I dont believe jesus was sent to save everyone, I guess that's a typically obtuse way for you to say that I dont believe in jesus at all though. Well done.
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@ethang5
If I mischaracterized your position feel free to clarify, but you won't. Youd rather preen and posture and feel like you win the internet or whatever. My position is I'm pretty sure the entirety if the bible is fiction/ myth, that jesus wasn't real, that no one has had superpowers, that he was not "sent" from whatever dimension to "save" anyone from the wrath of some unseen, undemonstratable and completely impotent god. You knew that though. Commence your usual slice and dice apoplepsy, addressing as little as possible with as much words and you can muster.
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@ronjs
So then you do not in any way believe in evolution, correct, you believe all current life on earth was put here in its final form by god directly?
wherever it touches on scientific subjects it is 100% accurate.
What's the biblical reading for pi?
Most Jewish scholars consider Genesis as being a literal account of creation
This is either patently false or poorly stated. I think you mean most people who believe the Old Testament, right? Not like a Jewish professor of science, but a scholar who is way into Judaism as their scholarly pursuit.
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@Mopac
If evolution is true, it does not negate God or the fsct that God created everything.
Would it negate the creation story in the bible, where basically God creates everything in its current form in a matter of days?
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