xeren

I remember when i was a christian, I used to pray really hard for certain things to come true, and they would! Every time!

...Of course, I started realizing that I was conveniently forgetting about the majority of the times where what I prayed for didn't come true.

Ahhh, selective thinking at it's best.... Read up on it Christians!

-xeren

luvluv

Prayer is not a magic wand. God does actually have a say in whether or not He gives you something you ask for. He may actually have a good reason for granting the prayers He does grant and for not granting those He doesn't. Your parents probably said no to your requests once or twice, too. (I would hope).

There is plenty of room in the Christian worldview for unanswered prayer. It's consistent with my belief that God is benevolent that He would not give me something that was bad for me just because I prayed for it. I think we've all prayed for things that we are glad we didn't receive. You guys are dealing with the weakest possible examples of what actually constitutes religious experience. Lets try tackling the most difficult problems with our philosophies, instead of knocking down strawmen.

Philosoft

This seems uncomfortably close to hard determinism. Suppose I am a Christian and I pray for my (hypothetical) cancer-ridden mother to survive. If God declines my prayer request and my mother dies, does this mean God has made his "decision" based on some event or events that will obtain in the future if my mom survives? If so, is this not God actualizing a potential outcome? Is this not determinism?

But this is all question-begging and, I guess, hindsight bias, to proclaim that every unanswered prayer resulted in a state-of-affairs that is better than the SOA that would have obtained had the prayer request been granted. I mean, of course it's consistent with your belief - your belief can apparently account for any SOA by declaring that had an unanswered prayer been granted, the SOA that would have obtained would be worse.
Where did you indicate the argument was a strawman?

luvluv

Philosoft:

No, it could simply mean that no one lives forever, regardless of how hard we pray. A better SOA could be one reason that prayers aren't answered, there are probably dozens of them. I imagine God does not answer my prayers quite often because they are selfish. I'm just pointing out to everyone that there are two agents involved in prayer.

I'm not saying that this actually is the case, only that such is possible and as such unanswered prayer is not evidence for or against the existence of God. Both Christianity and atheism both predict that some prayers will go unanswered. Atheism, however, predicts that NO prayers will be answered. So the fact that some prayers are answered and some aren't would seem to be a point gained for theism.

Strawman was the wrong word I suppose. Sitting duck might be more accurate. I'd just like to see the person persuing the argument take on the most inexplicable examples of religious experience and try to debunk that. For example, my experience like the one I described above happen all the time. That wasn't even the most explicit example, it was just the one that popped into my mind. After I've had probably literally hundreds of strong internal impressions varified by external experience, aren't I justified in believing that there is a something to them?

beyelzu

i just dont see how if you pray everyday and one in a thousand prayers comes true that that is proof of god. i pray eveyday and nothing comes true, is that proof of no god.

i pray everyday to the ipu, yesterday, i prayed to find some money. today i found money. long live the ipu?

Philosoft

Hmm. So it's possible that an ungranted prayer might have resulted in a better overall SOA had it been granted?

Putting my Camus face on briefly - are there any prayers that are truly unselfish? Do not all prayers, almost by definition, require the desired SOA to be something the prayor(?) wishes to see obtain?

This is an egregious mischaracterization. Statistics predicts some outcomes that are consistent with prayed-for SOAs will inevitably obtain. That, all else equal, granted prayers and ungranted prayers will have a more-or-less random distribution.

Not remotely. The SOA that we observe is consistent with both your particular brand of Christianity and atheism.
Put away the checkered flag, we're not done with this line of reasoning yet.

Jobar

OJuice5001:
specific examples of directed chance

Now, waitaminute. Run that by me again.

specific examples of directed chance

"Directed" and "chance" are opposites, OJuice. Used together this way they are meaningless, contradictory. If something is directed, it cannot be a chance occurance. If something is random- by chance- it can't be directed.

Luvluv, I am glad you got to meet a nice young lady, but to say that it's an act of God is just ludicrous. As Defiant Heretic points out, you are taking an impulse you experienced for some reason- staying at your friend's office- and, just because it was of benefit to you, ascribing it to God.

Tell me this. We atheists do not seem to live any worse lives than Christians. If we are not listening to these little heavenly messages you claim you get all the time, how come we aren't having a considerably tougher time living day to day, than we are? If God guides Christians for their own good, then we should be able to see positive results from that guidance, and negative results for we godless ones who deny that guidance. Yet we don't.

luvluv

As I said, this is not an isolated incident. Things like this have happened to me literally hundreds of times. How many times should they have to happen before I believe there is something behind them?

To me, their argumentative force of this "impulse" as you call it is augmented by the fact that I quite often have a strong desire to disobey it. I didn't WANT to stay at the office that day. I was HUNGRY. Some of the most extreme examples of this regard things I wanted LEAST in the world. I have been asked by God to give up things which were EXTREMELY painful to surrender. Yet, looking back, I am far better for having given up what God asked me to give up than I would have been if I had gotten what I wanted at the time.


I don't think this is quite right. The question is not whether you are living a better life than I, the question is are you living a better life than you would be if you were a Christian obeying the Spirit of God. Or whether my life as a nonbeliever would be better than my life now. Comparing one person to another is apples and oranges.

I'm sure you are getting along fine (God is gracious, after all ) but I'm also sure you could be doing better.

Family Man

17 posts and not one even touches the thesis I put forth: that these personal experiences are nothing but self-fulfilling prophecies. Instead we get more testimony that good things that happen because, well, it must be God.

And great thing about these stories is that they can be embellished ex post facto. Luvluv is VERY HUNGRY but he gets the feeling DO. NOT. LEAVE. All for a girl he might marry. Did he have this experience exactly as related, or is he adding a bit to the story to make it more impressive than it really was? Stories that grow in the telling, especially when defending a closely held belief, are not unusual. Exactly, Luvluv, are we supposed to know that these things happen to you as described?

It doesn't matter if these "experiences" of yours happen thousands of times. Nearly everyday something positive happens to me I could ascribe to God if I were inclined to do so. But the bottom line is that good things happen to nearly everyone. There is no good reason to ascribe them to a diety.

Family Man

It isn't good evidence whether I believe in supernaturalism or not. If you set up an expectation, you are likely to find that expectation fulfilled. That's what a self-fulfilling prophecy is. And if you set the bar low enough, as Christians by their writings clearly do, the fulfillment becomes a certainty.