Every week, my buddy and world-renowned cranky guy James Randi writes a newsletter about the latest nonsense being spread by fraudulent or self-deluded psychics, antiscientists, and newagers. This week he wrote about a site which tells you how to pray for the "right" results in the upcoming national U.S. election.
Yes, you read that correctly.
My thoughts on prayer are on record. I talked about it extensively in a "Brains on Vacation" segment I did on the "Are We Alone" radio show (available in MP3 and WMV). Intercessory prayer is useless. These results are quite firm. Praying for something doesn’t work; getting off your butt and doing something about it does.
As I have told people before, one pair of hands grasping a shovel will do far more good than a thousand hands closed in prayer.
However, given how antiscience the current administration is, and how the far-right religious groups are egging them on, it would be better for science, our country, and our world if those people Randi talks about really do stay home and pray rather than vote.
October 27th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
I only pray to Joe Pesci and probably get the same results as anyone else 50/50.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
“it would be better for science, our country, and our world if those people Randi talks about really do stay home and pray rather than vote.”
Exactly!!
October 27th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Here’s my chance to plug biologist Richard Dawkins’ new website, which is full of good atheist opinion pieces, with lots of anti-anti-science.
http://www.richarddawkins.net/
It’s also well worth your time to check out his new book ‘The God Delusion’, in which he claims that science really does all but exclude the possibility of a God- as opposed to Stephen J. Gould’s opinion that religion and science form ‘non-overlapping magisteria.’
October 27th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
You know, I believe in God. I’m not sure that He actually cares about the outcome of the American presidential election, but even accepting the premises that 1) He exists and 2) He participates actively in elections, I’m not sure where these people get the idea that an omniscient deity needs THEIR help in deciding whom to support.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Also- Let’s be real. These people do get off their butt and vote come election time. You may not agree with them- but the Christian right has a very organized media machine for getting their followers to vote and to join in activist activities.
The real purpose of this prayer site is to further instill these people with the idea that they can further erode Church-state separation if they vote en masse for the right party. In this- it is very effective.
Fox news, talk radio and a large part of the church are now almost totally devoted to furthering the Republican cause. (Not the conservative or right wing cause- but the party political Republican cause.)
October 27th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Well, at least we can hope that praying for “accuracy in the voting machinery and tabulations” will do something…
October 27th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
No one has mentioned the most disgusting and abusive thing on the PPT’s Pray the Vote website, PPT for Kid’s! Innocent children are being told what to pray for, even if they do not understand the issues. What happens when one of these children grows up to have different beliefs and has to deal with what they prayed for as a child because they were told it was the “right” thing to do. How does a child that grows up homosexual deal with the fact that as a child he/she prayed every day that homosexuals should be treated as second class and denied the rights that others enjoy. People have the right to choose thier actions for themselves, but should not have the right to choose actions for their children that will cause the child pain and trauma when they grow up.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
“As I have told people before, one pair of hands grasping a shovel will do far more good than a thousand hands closed in prayer.”
Reminds me of work I did last week; had to dig a couple of trenches to allow our RV to fit on the side of the house.
Many other analogies work with that statement.
Indeed, I’ve found out for myself how true such a statement is.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
mighty glib there. i’m as skeptical (or more) than the next guy, especially when it comes to religion. but dismissing it out of hand smacks of the opposite camp’s dismissal of the big bang in favor of creationism. maybe you’re right about the uselessness of prayer; you sure seem to believe you are.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
A prayer does more that just express what you want god to make happen.
Besides that it focusses you on something, it reminds you of it.
And if done with others together it aligns all these people to work together for the same thing.
In these ways a prayer is very effective. It makes them not to forget to vote and for whom to vote. Someone who stays at home and does not vote could even go and vote for some extreme group he does not like. Because their members will vote.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Mocky:
Who’s being glib? The latest large scale study on prayer shows that it simply doesn’t work. There is no credible evidence that praying for someone has anything more than chance effects. If there was any evidence- you can be sure that it would be all over the news.
It’s not a matter of belief. BA’s points are backed up by the data. That’s completely different to a creationist’s dismissal of the big-bang- which is done in-spite of the statistics and all modern science.
October 27th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Mocky_puppet, did you read what I wrote? I even put in two links to my radio segment where I quote studies showing intercessory prayer is useless.
I’m not glib. I just have hundreds of years of science, math, statistics, and research backing me up.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
burnham:
i’m no cheerleader for organized religion, let me just pitch that out there so it’s clear before i continue with this devil’s advocate position (i make joke–is nice!). i’m guessing the idea with the study you mention is that there was a group of recovering patients, and half of them were prayed for, the other half not, and there was no difference in recovery. or perhaps the prayed-for group did worse. okay, that’s all fine and good. but let me raise this example: i’m told there are these doohickeys called neutrinos. zillions of them blast through the empty space between the atoms of which i’m made every second. they were once described only by theoretical physics, but they’re now being detected–in complex instruments deep in the earth, and at a slow rate due to their tendency to simply pass through the water in the detector without encountering an atom to smash into. there’s an example of a truth that was confirmed only when the proper detectors were constructed, and even then only a very few at a time.
so there’s this latest large scale study which indicates, based on the parameters of the study and its particular sensitivity, that prayer has no effect. okay, well, cross that off then, i guess we’re done with prayer. because of the latest large scale study, which surely must be absolutely comprehensive and ultimately authoritative because it is both the latest and large in scale. i don’t know, it just sounds like ptolemy declaring the earth as the center of the universe. everyone went along with that idea, plus or minus one person. and i know, science provided the backup for copernicus and all that followed. i got it. i just cringe when i hear snarky statements like “Intercessory prayer is useless,” expressed on a show called “Brains on Vacation.” that’s phil being glib, to answer your opening question.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
the bad astronomer:
did i read what you wrote? yes–well, every other word. just kidding there, man. i do appreciate the fact that you included two links to your radio segment where you quote studies that prove your point. that’s fine. i don’t even disagree with the outcome of the studies–just your interpretation of their level of finality. why do we have particle accelerators? because when Democritus postulated an atom but no one could see one with a magnifying glass, mankind didn’t just say, “well, the latest and largest study concerning atoms indicates that they don’t exist.” i’m suggesting that perhaps it’s a little early in the game to start ruling out things we may not yet be able to measure or understand. just suggesting.
and by the way, i agree with you about the current state of anti-sceince sentiment that seems to be floating around washington. it’s very disheartening. that’s why i read blogs like yours, to keep up with scientists who are dilligently pressing forward and making discoveries.
and you are glib and snarky. some people who posess those qualities are very proud of them. may the force be with you.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Mocky:
The fact that we can’t see atoms with a microscope puts an upper bound on the size of an atom. It must be sub-microscopic in diameter, or else we’d be able to see it with microscopes.
Similarly, we can put a statistical upper bound to the influence of prayer- depending on the size of the study. So far, statisticians have found the results are consistent with chance- but it’s also true that if prayer only works one time in a thousand then you would need a very very large study to pick up that effect.
What we can say is that given the current sample size- prayer is indistinguishable from being useless. It’s possible that it has a very very weak effect- but it’s clearly too weak to be consistent with any theology. Of the two explanations
i) A supernatural event is happening that breaks all laws of physics and biology, but God only answers prayers one time in a thousand
ii) Prayer doesn’t work- full stop. The perceived power of prayer is down to our ability to fool ourselves.
I know which one I find more credible.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
“I only pray to Joe Pesci and probably get the same results as anyone else 50/50″
Don’t forget about praying to the sun! Answers me about 50/50 too.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
I could tell you I pray to the one true God and invite you all to do the same. But I’m only answering prayers from myself at this time – so you still won’t see an increase in positive results….
jbs
(and for the satire impaired – this is such)
October 27th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
mocky_puppet Says:
…mighty glib there. i’m as skeptical (or more) than the next guy, especially when it comes to religion. but ,b.dismissing it out of hand smacks of the opposite camp’s dismissal of the big bang in favor of creationism,. maybe you’re right about the uselessness of prayer; you sure seem to believe you are. (emphasis mine)
In addition to the replies already written I add a few more. This statement makes the assumption that there has not been sufficient research or evidence to indicate prayer is not responded to as people praying usually believe it is. After reading several websites with lists of supposed research that found prayer worked, I tried to find those studies and any others which supported the claim. There were none that supported the effects of prayer which would meet even a basic research standard. There were several which failed to find any benefit. And as far as the websites claiming research exists which supports the effectiveness of prayer, I could find none that listed a single citation or even researcher names or published titles one could use to verify such research was actually even done. It seems the claim there is any research supporting the effectiveness of prayer is akin to an urban myth.
I would think it was the burden of those claiming prayer works to show evidence of support considering prayer meets the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” category of supernatural events.
Does anyone find credibility in prayers to other gods or beings believed to have the power to influence something tangible? Should we consider the masses of people who feed milk to Ganesha statues while making a request, who ask the ancestors for a favor, who pray to Buddha or who pray to any other number of deities or beings people pray to lends credibility to the effectiveness of such activities?
Why is it those actions can be easily dismissed but somehow the Biblical deity has a different level of credibility? I think not. I dismiss them all out of hand. The fact praying is so common, yet inconsistent with the different deity doctrines would indicate prayer is no more than a ritual of superstition.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
burnham:
i see your points and respect your viewpoint. i think i’m just not quite ready to make a statement as absolute as “intercessory prayer is useless” when the possibility exists that we simply havent devised the test or conditions to properly measure it. faced with the avalanche of phenomena we see in the physical world which cannot yet be explained–and the number of astronomical mysteries alone to me amounts to an avalanche–i’ve developed an attitude of “clearly there is an answer here, but it is quite probably several orders of complexity beyond our current understanding.” i don’t go for the ghosty, chupacabra, rising from the dead stuff (and all that that implies), but to deny the possibility that there is some connection beyond current measure shared by all of us seems premature. but your points are well-made, and i don’t think i’m even trying to convince you out of them.
skepigirl-
what an amazing day. i get to speak to Phil Plait The Bad Astronomer and the girl from the naked smart people calendar in the same thread! i am blushing with some sort of flushing emotion. of course, i guess Phil is in that calendar as well; somehow that didn’t jump to mind as quickly. hm.
i know, i get it, evidence in support of the effect of prayer is anecdotal and unsubstantiated, eveidence against it is iron-clad and we’re done with the whole issue. that’s fine, and it’s of course extremely compelling. i just come back to the thought that if there is some actual, physical-world basis to all this mumbo-jumbo baloney that has accreted and come to be called “religion”, perhaps the tests we’ve been using are simply not correctly formed, sensitive enough, or clever enough to illuminate the truth. maybe they are, don’t get me wrong. maybe it’s mumbo-jumbo all the way down until you get to the first guy who decided “how can i control all those other people over there? i know, baal.” i’m just not comfortable shutting the door. and to your point: “Why is it those actions can be easily dismissed but somehow the Biblical deity has a different level of credibility? I think not. I dismiss them all out of hand.” fair enough; i think that’s a choice you make. personally, i feel i can dismiss none of them out of hand. i mean, the koo-koo stuff is clearly nonsense, but the human mind is complex, and i don’t know that you can say definitively that nutty rituals don’t have the power to open conduits to something we just can’t quite understand in its fullness.
i think of the book flatland a lot. i try to imagine the perceptual shift from two to three dimensions, and duplicate that from three to four, five, eleven. on some level, the arrow of time to which we’re tied is meaningless. mathematically speaking, there are elementary particles which don’t obey that arrow. we’re made up of particles. why are we stuck like we are? moving “forward”? i don’t know, but knowing that not everything experiences time the way we do starts to sound like some of the mumbo-jumbo to which i’ve been exposed, about the “creator” existing outside of time, at all times and places at once.
in the end, none of this really matters. we all have to pay our mortgages and make it to work on time. whatever is, is, and either we’ll find out about it at the omega point or heaven or valhalla or that place where robin williams go in “what dreams may come”, or of course maybe at the end we’ll just blip out of existence and our consciousness will switch off like a tv. i’m not sure that there’s anything to be done about any of this. it’s just so interesting to think about; i guess in the end i just don’t want to discount all of these wild possibilities. i read science fiction for the same reasons. maybe i’ll start a church.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
I think the ancient Greeks had it right, the power of the gods came from the worshipers, not the other way around. The same is true of prayer, this site uses prayer to get everyone on board and as such they can in theory and most likely in reality skew and even change elections. So whence does this power come from? Self fufilling prophecy? Prayer the call to get everyone on the bandwagon? Cloaking ones prejudices in religion by invoking your words as supplicants to God then you must be a force for good (the theocractic real-seal)? I see through the propoganda but I don’t underestimate the power of their own self created delusion. They naively believe their power comes from God, but the practicality and fundamental nontheistic element of bits traveling in cyberspace belies the true power, the power of the heard mentality as these lemmings run off the cliff of reason. The effect itself has no moral bearing it can be good, neutral, or evil–it all depends on the prejudices and the whim and folly of those doing the praying. Effectively the power is real but not magical.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Mocky,
One aspect of the sensitive enough tests that neutrinos and other similarly difficult to detect phenomena is that the theories predicting them offer a way of measuring that we can build toward. When we first didn’t detect them we new the margin for errors was wide and we were in the end of the measurement capability pool they didn’t care to visit. So when we found a way to do those measurements the the lower end of the scale, we found them. Of course the wide margin of error was an indication of how much work the theory still needed. It still needs work, but not as much.
But the prayer studies are straight forward. People pray and you measure how often the desired effect occurs. Then people don’t pray and you measure how often the desired effect occurs. These are done double blind so that the people measuring the effect and the people being measured don’t know which group they’re in. Then you compare the results. If prayer works, the prayer group should show a significant (statistically speaking) difference from the non-prayer group (and hopefully toward the desired result!). That correlation hasn’t been found. Larger studies reduce the margin of error (chance noise) so that statistical differences are easier to discern.
Of course the prayer group could all be praying to the wrong god. So we have to repeat the study for each instance of god (or goddess).
jbs
October 27th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
sandlin:
“Of course the prayer group could all be praying to the wrong god. So we have to repeat the study for each instance of god (or goddess).” yeah, ha ha, that’s a good one. perhaps lucifer will enjoy your dry sense of humor as he escorts you to the lake of fire. again, just kidding there.
i relent, though. you all make very solid points. just thought i’d play loyal opposition for a bit; it’s been a very illuminating and interesting discussion from my perspective.
October 28th, 2006 at 2:29 am
Twice a week, I pray that I win the lottery. Hasn’t worked yet!
October 28th, 2006 at 3:21 am
Of course prayer doesn’t work. You can see the havoc it wrecks if it did in Bruce Almighty…
October 28th, 2006 at 4:16 am
Uh- maybe a little off-topic- but try to keep the language a bit cleaner. (I don’t know what the rules are, but hopefully this site should be safe for children to read.)
I don’t care- but some parents do and some internet filters do.
An aside- I once had to ask the BA for help because the filter on the internets over in Dublin labeled this site as ‘occult’ of all things.
October 28th, 2006 at 4:24 am
And Bootlady…
Lot’s of smart people have religious beliefs and I don’t mind at all if a believer posts his/her opinions on a BA page that’s explicitly discussing religion- even if they conflict with the majority skeptical view.
As far as I know- people are still allowed to disagree with BA’s opinion and post here. It’s not a matter of masochism- it’s called debate.
I don’t think any of the posts in this thread went so far as trolling- so save the anger.
October 28th, 2006 at 4:34 am
One last thing… (as Columbo says)
Bootlady- This may be over-egging things to point out- but lots of people with science degrees are dumb. I’ve got a PhD in physics and I’m stoopid and ignorant about many things (astronomy being one of them!)
I’ve lost count of the number of science PhD’s I’ve met who don’t believe in evolution. It’s pretty weird to meet someone who understands a lot of quantum theory (for instance) and yet holds creationist views- but it’s not that rare.
IMHO skepticality is not that strongly correlated with intelligence- it’s a skill like driving- which requires some thought- but certainly not a PhD.
October 28th, 2006 at 5:43 am
I prayed to to the FSM, and verily, I will be eating Spag Bol tonight!
October 28th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Here’s aother scientific problem with studies on the effectiveness of prayer:
“The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion,” said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, “Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine.”
This is from a NY Times article dated 3-31-06 on a recent study on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer. The article is titled: Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer. The problem with reducing it to basic elements is that, the fewer elements you use, the greater the chance you ignore something critical to the outcome. This is especially difficult to do with something like prayer because the potential number of factors to consider could be infinite.
Depending on how you read the results of the study in this article, prayer is even potentiall hurtful as opposed to useless. The authors said this could be from patients knowing they were being prayed for: “It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?” Another interpretation says it may indeed be usefull, but we don’t understand how. As such, more research is needed. Both views were from the study’s authors.
Bottome line from this: From a scientific point of view, this particular study indicates there is no evidence prayer is effective, but there is sufficient cause to say more research is required. Other studies cited by the NYT article have ranged from saying prayer may be effective to saying that it is not.
That said, as a minister myself, I’ll keep praying. Science has yet to prove the non-existence of God. Religious belief suggests that God does exist. As such, believing that God doesn’t exist is as much a principle of faith as believing that He does. As someone who studies Christianity academically, I can also say with certainty that the results of this study fall within the bounds of Christian belief about prayer. You have to understand the difference between God’s permissive will and His Divine will, but that’s another discussion…
I’d post a link to the article, but it’s really long and I’m too lazy to use tiny url
. Gogle the info and it will come up.
October 28th, 2006 at 9:36 am
“From a scientific point of view, this particular study indicates there is no evidence prayer is effective, but there is sufficient cause to say more research is required.”
Hmm. I’m not an expert here, but IIRC it is said that prayer studies are about old as studies on astrology and parapsychology. Objectively it should be a dead horse when it still can’t produce positive results. On top of that we have the extraordinary claim business, extraordinarily strong in the form of a couple of solid studies with clear positive results would be needed.
“Science has yet to prove the non-existence of God.”
It obviously does not need to do that to disprove the efficiency of prayer, observations can and have been made and are enough.
“Religious belief suggests that God does exist.”
The burden of proof remains on the believer to convince a skeptic. This is actually a favor to the believer, since observations suggest that gods doesn’t exist, and all other religions beliefs suggest that the abrahamic god or the trinity gods doesn’t exist. If it was merely a question about suggestions, each religion would be debunked immediately. But if we instead pretend that the question is still open, evidence may sway us either way. (Actually, evidence may always reopen a question and invalidate a theory. Ah, the exciting insecurities of the real world!)
But the main problem with the argument is that beliefs doesn’t inform us about objective reality.
October 28th, 2006 at 11:48 am
“extraordinarily strong in the form of” – extraordinarily strong evidence in the form of
“all other religions beliefs suggest”.
Though hinduistic, deistic, and pantheistic beliefs seems pretty indiscriminate inclusive, of course. Amend that to “nearly all”.
October 28th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Prayer as a communal effort brings people together in a common cause. Let us now all pray that reason will rule.
Either God is a rational being or it’s nutty as a fruit cake. I prefer rational, but that may not be the case.
A rational test might be to pray that certain plants grow well, with the gardener being unaware of the prayers. If the plants grow better than those unprayed for, there might be something going on. Thus we eliminate the extraordinary effects of the brain/immune system interaction.
I predict there will be no measurable effect. Such is the power of the Scientific Method. Collect data, formulate hypothesis, make predictions,,,test them.
As to the existence of God,,,until such time as we can define what we mean by that, no test is possible. At least our theories of nuclear physics had a well defined description of neutrinos, so we knew what we were looking for.
Gary 7
October 28th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Why do I keep getting an invalid regex string every time I post to the site?
GAry 7
October 28th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Chris Williams,
Your statements are easily parodied:
Science has yet to prove the non-existence of XXX. Belief in XXX suggests that XXX does exist. As such, believing that XXX doesn’t exist is as much a principle of faith as believing that XXX does.
Where XXX could be substituted for fairies, gnomes, Thor, a flying spaghetti monster or God.
I suggest reading ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins to see why science makes the existence of XXX at least very very improbable given our current understanding of nature and the universe.
October 28th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Gary: Are you using Safari on a Mac for the internets and the Google?
Every time I post (on this site only) I get this error (or something similar):
Regex ID: 18261 () appears to be an invalid regex string! Please fix it in the Blacklist control panel.
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-content/plugins/SK2-/sk2_util_class.php:208) in /home/badastro/domains/badastronomy.com/public_html/bablog/wp-comments-post.php on line 55
October 28th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
I added some text to the spam filter, and it’s freaking out. I cannot figure out how to fix it. Patience, please! I’m working on it tonight.
October 28th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I use Mozilla Firefox.
Gary 7
October 28th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Does prayer work? Check out http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com/god13.htm
October 28th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
“As such, believing that God doesn’t exist is as much a principle of faith as believing that He does.”
No it’s not. Non-belief in something doesn’t require faith. I hate it when religionists use that argument. It’s so stupid on its face. Sorry Chris Williams, nothing against you, it’s just a pet peeve of mine. I enjoyed your post otherwise. Non-firebrand believers are always refreshing
October 28th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
I use Netscape 8.1.2 (based on Firefox). I had trouble until I indicated that I trust this site.
October 28th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
I use Netscape 8.1.2 (based on Firefox). I had trouble until I indicated that I trust this site.
Edit: Oops, spoke to soon!
October 28th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Very interesting material in that link, Bette.
October 28th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
skepigirl-
what an amazing day. i get to speak to Phil Plait The Bad Astronomer and the girl from the naked smart people calendar in the same thread! i am blushing with some sort of flushing emotion. of course, i guess Phil is in that calendar as well; somehow that didn’t jump to mind as quickly. hm.
You’re not implying I’m in the calendar are you? I’m flattered but whoever is in the calendar isn’t me. Now I’m curious.
October 28th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
So you’ve probably all figured out when you post and get the bizzaro message you just hit the back arrow and refresh to see your post was posted.
If there is an easier method let me know.
October 28th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Any god that interacts with the Universe should be detectable. So while the scientific process can’t prove the negative generally, and the argument is always brought out that the scientific process doesn’t apply to the ‘paranormal’, my point of view on this short of discussing science philosophy, is people are not typically referring to a god that does nothing, and, ‘paranormal’ is claimed to be an explanation for real phenomenon which the scientific process could be used to investigate.
In other words, it’s a tap dance around a sensitive subject to dismiss the gods of each/any religion by stating science doesn’t deal with the paranormal. Philosophically speaking that is true, but if the Bible says praying results in something, then that something ought to be detectable and you can use the scientific process to test for evidence of a god interacting with things on the Earth.
The other way to look at religion and belief in gods is to do what we do with every other social-cultural aspect of the human race. We look for real world explanations for beliefs and ritual behaviors. When you take that approach, it becomes more clear how these beliefs developed. The evidence is overwhelming that religious beliefs are a man made construct. No gods are needed to explain human belief in gods.
It may be hard to dismiss as superstition and imagination something so many people believe in. It’s easier to claim science doesn’t go there. And for those who do recognize what the evidence actually shows, it can still be uncomfortable to dismiss the existence of gods altogether.
In the case of prayer having an effect, one need merely look at something like the behavior of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and any other number of disasters people often pray about. You see natural phenomena, explicable, predictable within limits, and you do not see divine intervention.
You see people claiming to see signs that god wants this or that. What logic is there in a belief that an omnipotent being would need to send mystery clues to communicate with people? You see people in dire straights claim prayer reversed their misfortune yet no mention is made of the fact if a god is saving a person, wasn’t that same god in control of the misfortune in the first place?
The bottom line, yes you can dismiss intercessory prayer as useless.
October 28th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Mockey_Puppet said: “… the naked smart people calendar.”
I couldn’t help chuckling at that. Yay, for naked smart people!
October 28th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
skeptigirl said: “You see people claiming to see signs that god wants this or that. What logic is there in a belief that an omnipotent being would need to send mystery clues to communicate with people? You see people in dire straights claim prayer reversed their misfortune yet no mention is made of the fact if a god is saving a person, wasn’t that same god in control of the misfortune in the first place?”
This reminds me of a tv show I saw a decade ago (or thereabout) dealing with angels and how they are a true part of our daily lives, interceding when we need (and are of the proper faith, of course). One of the stories it presented was about a woman who was saved by her “guardian angel” when it warned her not to go into a building… lo and behold, a different woman who went into the building instead was brutally murdered. I instantly thought “What about the murder victim? Why wasn’t she spared? For that matter, why was ANYONE murdered, if an angel or God Himself knew about what was about to happen?!”
The tv show never even addressed the issue, as though the woman who was saved and could now profess that she really believed in God & angels was the only important facet of the story.
Disgusting, really.
October 28th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
skeptigirl:
Ah, sorry! i thought you were the girl from skepchicks who is part of the calendar with naked smart people (including phil, who is smart). http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2005/12/14/amazng-naked-skepchicks/
even though you’re not in the calendar, you seem very smart as well.
October 29th, 2006 at 4:58 am
God. An emergent phenomenon of a complex system.
GAry 7
October 29th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Have we got a minyan for the election?…
Bad Astronomy and Pharyngula, both point us to the Presidential Prayer Team web site. It\’s easy to say — and true — that it\’s just the right-wing nutters claiming yet again that God\’s on their side, but I find this interesting from another a…
October 29th, 2006 at 7:57 am
Hm. Trackbacks appear to be handled a little oddly here. That previous (Staring At Empty Pages) comment is a trackback to my comments on this. Click the “Staring At Empty Pages” link to get the full post.
October 29th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I love the old Shrodingers cat in a box paradox. Such a perfect example of the rediculous. How can reality be in two states simutaneously?
I contend it says a great deal more about the probabalistic state of the observer, ie, the observers waveform collapses into certainty when they open the box,,,I think that’s what Shrondinger was really trying to show. The same can be applied to the God paradox. Those who have actually looked at the “box”, ie the evidence, have collapsed into a particular quantum state,”Look, the box is empty,,,”.
GAry 7
October 29th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
You know, if they’re busy praying their little hearts out, they’re not:
-Shooting doctors who practice abortion
-Killing homosexuals
-Parading at funerals with signs that say dead soldiers got what they deserved
-Petitioning the government to restrict more rights and freedoms in the name of family/the children
-Annoying people with door-to-door proseletyzing
-etc. you get the idea
Frankly, I think all the people who believe prayer works, and cannot be convinced otherwise by logic and reason should spend as much time as humanly possible praying. Eat, sleep, use the lav, go to work, come home and pray for the rest of your waking hours.
October 29th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
You see people claiming to see signs that god wants this or that. What logic is there in a belief that an omnipotent being would need to send mystery clues to communicate with people? You see people in dire straights claim prayer reversed their misfortune yet no mention is made of the fact if a god is saving a person, wasn’t that same god in control of the misfortune in the first place?
Indeed… have you ever noticed that what god wants always involves some incredible shaft: virgin sacrifices, some portion of your winter food store, etc. God never wants a bag of Doritos and a beer. God never pops in to watch the game and BBQ some ribs. God seems incapable of smiting the producers of “Survivor” no matter how much they appear to desperately deserve it for their ongoing assault on entertainment and good taste. I can go to some guy in robes and a hat and he’ll take my hard-earned cash in god’s name, but if I throw that cash in the air myself, god never takes any. Strangely enough, those hat-guys never seem to want a bull from the field burnt on their property.
In fact, if a god is omnipotent, why would it WANT anything at all? Kind of silly to want some virgins killed off when you can just manifest all the dead virgins your little perverted heart could possibly desire (aside… is it even POSSIBLE to manifest non-virgins, live or dead? Think about it… there’s a test of omnipotence).
Why do athletes from godless countries do just as well as the god-fearing athletes that pray all the time? Surely a god wouldn’t stand for being upstaged by heathens and would smite the infidels with some locusts or some such thing. Russian national anthem starts… whammo, lightning bolt to the head.
October 29th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
“Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Give him a religion and he’ll starve to death praying for a fish.” – Anonymous
October 29th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
The main problem in studies testing prayers is the assumption that God will play fair…
(Now I have Roger Waters’ “What God Wants…” in my head… nice…)
October 29th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Science has yet to prove the non-existence of God. Religious belief suggests that God does exist. As such, believing that God doesn’t exist is as much a principle of faith as believing that He does.
In order for that last statement to be true, one has to assume that religious believe has the same logical and rational value as scientific evidence.
Since it does not, your assertion is necessarily false. Religious belief cannot be held as equal to the weight of scientific evidence because religious belief requires that the believer uphold an irrational, untestable conjecture as the basis from which an entire system of thought grows. Science requires that the thinker weigh and analyze available evidence and form a conclusion.
Those things are not equivalent. Therefore, although religious belief may require faith, reaching a conclusion that mystical, invisible pink unicorns do not exist based on:
a) a complete lack of evidence that they do exist, after thousands of years of searching;
b) a complete failure of any test for such a being;
c) the complete failure of religious belief to put forward any testable or accurate prediction about anything; and
d) the logical and philosophical inconsistencies in all world religions when compared against each other, let alone against anything science can dream up;
is not faith by any measure. Such a conclusion may, however, be incorrect, and it is subject to reevaluation when new evidence is discovered that contradicts previous evidence. For some reason, faith never gets reevaluated when contradicting evidence rears its little head.
It is unfortunate that faith is the only frame of reference for so many believers. It is because of this frame of reference that it is so easy to mistakenly conclude that not believing in an IPU of some sort is just as much faith as believing in an IPU, in fact, it’s even somewhat excusable. However, that conclusion is simply and obviously an error in thought, and the error must be pointed out.
October 30th, 2006 at 1:50 am
Well said, Evolving Squid, though I would also add e) humans’ unique trait to make up stories; studies of human behavior, i.e., psychology and sociology. Though not hard sciences, they provide observational utility that add further weight to your a), b), c) and d).
Laguna 2 said: Besides that it focusses you on something, it reminds you of it. And if done with others together it aligns all these people to work together for the same thing…In these ways a prayer is very effective. It makes them not to forget to vote and for whom to vote.
True, in the sense that prayer is meditative, it can help a person focus and perhaps resolve to do something, even if they believe it is God giving them the strength to do so. As an atheist I can do the same thing, take a quiet moment, but instead “pray” to myself in such a way as, “Please, Melusine, find the strength within yourself to do the right thing…” or whatever. I’m just cutting out the middleman. If I were to pray to a god, to say, help me through a rough patch of sickness, I might unconsciously start taking better care of myself, and then attribute it to the god’s grace. But it’s just a self-motivation mind game I’d be playing. Praying with a group of people is, in a way, making an unconscious and conscious committment to that group–as you say, they are more likely to carry out the desired task, which in this case is voting. The efficacy of prayer is only within oneself as a means of peace of mind and motivation, imho. It’s not going to make those cancer cells disappear, but it might motivate a person to get to a doctor.
However, I find this kind of political parading of religion and prayer to be “cheesy.” It doesn’t even annoy me anymore, I just shake my head and recall the movie Saved!. (Funny stuff that pokes at some of the excesses of organized religion, not religion itself.)
October 30th, 2006 at 2:57 am
Evolving Squid: “the logical and philosophical inconsistencies in all world religions when compared against each other, let alone against anything science can dream up;”
Not to mention all the logical and philosophical inconsistencies *within* the religion.
As we all know, Christianity (and probably others too) have loads of contradictions within itself, without needing to compare it to other religions (or reality). And despite 2ka of apologetics, the religious philosophers still haven’t come up with rationalisations that don’t sound like, well, rationalisations!
October 30th, 2006 at 8:31 am
You can never have a double-blind study of God. The results will always be exactly what he wants them to be at that place and time. He can desire different outcomes for reasons that we do not know. Oh well.
Richard Dawkins does the greatest dis-service to the study of Evolution of anyone I know. Many in the anti-evolution communitty are not necessarily anti-evolution, they are anti-Dawkins-conclusions-on-religion. I wish that evangelists like Richard Dawkins and Franklin Graham would stop preaching trying to make others draw the same conclusions that they have drawn.
Sceptics are good. Most of the ideas on this page are not written from a sceptical point of view– they are written based on the assumption that there is a final absolute truth that God does not exist. This is bashing people who have some belief in God. This is not sceptical.
October 30th, 2006 at 10:07 am
skeptigirl says: Any god that interacts with the Universe should be detectable.
This is a false assumption. If an entity is truly omnipotent it could certainly make its interactions undetectable.
/2 cents…
October 30th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Evolving Squid said:
> In fact, if a god is omnipotent, why would it WANT anything at all? Kind of silly to want some virgins killed off when you can just manifest all the dead virgins your little perverted heart could possibly desire
Amusing observation. A not-so-flippant response: it isn’t necessarily the object itself that God wants, but the act of sacrifice. The surrender or giving up of something meaningful/valuable to you as a tribute is a sign of your obedience and submission. Just like the story of Abraham and Isaac, where God supposedly asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. The premise of the story is it is a test of Abraham’s faith in the Lord. Thus, the sacrifice is something most dear to Abraham, to see how far he’s willing to go. If God had only asked Abraham to sacrifice the leftovers from a mutton dinner, that wouldn’t have been much of a test. It takes something truly important for you to demonstrate deep commitment. (I have a lot of issues against that particular story, but understanding the point of sacrifice isn’t one of them.)
> (aside… is it even POSSIBLE to manifest non-virgins, live or dead? Think about it… there’s a test of omnipotence).
Depends on your definition of “virgin”. If said definition involves the physical condition of “hymen intact”, then a non-virgin could be manifested. If said definition is the more literal form, then no matter how slutty, a first incarnation being would by definition be a virgin.
Of course now you have to argue over what is meant by “omnipotent”.
October 30th, 2006 at 11:58 am
L Ron Hubbub said:
>This is a false assumption. If an entity is truly omnipotent it could certainly make its interactions undetectable.
But not the results of those interactions! If the results are indetectable, then they are indistinguishable from no action. What you appear to be arguing over is the “fingerprints” aspect. Is it a miracle if a mechanism can be determined? A true miracle would be exactly as you say – no fingerprints, no explanation possible, a true *poof* out of nowhere event.
However, let’s consider this thought experiment. Let’s take the hypothetical case of a person walking on water. In our modern scientific mindset, we see a person-presumed-God walking on water. We ask him for an explanation of how he accomplished said task. He responds that he locally increased the intermolecular cohesion to raise the surface tension sufficiently to support his weight. That’s something we could test, if he’s willing to stand around and perform on cue. Okay, the next scientific question is how did he change the intermolecular cohesion. Suppose he states that he shifted the intensity of the electron charge. That may also be something testable. But then the next question is how did he do that. His next response might be by tweaking the vapizzle on the schnooktering. Okay, he could say something about fiddling with the quantum signatures and/or string harmonics, or something equally bizarre and fairly meaningless. But 500 years from now humanity might increase our scientific knowledge enough to know what that means and how to do it. Does that make it less miraculous?
The point is that it is a condition that it highly improbable to occur without outside intervention – i.e. it won’t happen no matter how many tries you make. Okay, so that’s the premise behind ID. ID has a lot of flaws, many of them in misrepresenting what Evolution actually states. The concept I’m illustrating is the question, if the mechanism is knowable, does that make the event non-miraculous? What if we discover what “tweaking the vapizzle on the schnooktering” means but have no theoretical or physical means by which to duplicate said effect, such as the case with traveling faster than light speed? Does that reduce the miraculous nature of said event?
October 30th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Perhaps Irishman misunderstands the meaning of omnipotent. An omnipotent entity could walk on water simply because it wills it – quantum states and intermolecular cohesion notwithstanding. The process by which it happens would be undiscoverable because there would be no process.
October 30th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Jim-
I’m sorry you feel that way.
You are wrong to think that questioning religious beliefs is done out of some need to ‘bash’ other people’s deeply held convictions.
It may hurt, but we need to discuss these things. Religion has a large effect on our lives (whether we believe or not) and it’s necessary to ask questions.
October 30th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
A not-so-flippant response: it isn’t necessarily the object itself that God wants, but the act of sacrifice.
non-flippantly, I agree that this is what the sacrifice is about. However there are a few problems with this…
First and foremost, if god is omnipotent, he’d already know the strength of the faith of the sacrificer, so at best this is a wasteful act. Depending the specific god and sacrifice terms, it might even be a murderous act. An omnipotent god that “tests” its followers is really just taunting its followers, since with omnipotence would come the ability to know the outcome of the test.
If we assume, then, that a god is not omnipotent (certainly this is the position of most religions, in particular multi-theistic religions), then there is room for this type of testing… but it’s still rather wasteful, almost sadistic. It’s the kind of thing a tyrant dictator does to his followers to weed out the disloyal. That doesn’t speak highly of such a god.
On a more flippant note, why do gods always want virgin sacrifices. Why not sacrifice some skanks? God would have an awesome opportunity to do some “cleaning” with some well timed, well selected sacrifices.
If said definition is the more literal form, then no matter how slutty, a first incarnation being would by definition be a virgin.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking as I wrote the previous message. I suppose it’s more of a linguistic trick than anything else, but it’s intereting nevertheless.
October 30th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Irishman-
Not sure that you’re right. A truly omnipotent God could do all sorts of things to make herself untestable. She could make you suddenly want to eat ice-cream instead of investigating her actions. She could make any scientist fall down a mine-shaft- or change the data in their notebooks etc. etc.
If you assume that a God is constantly messing with our reality in such ways- then it would truly be impossible to prove/disprove her existence.
She could also have made the universe 6000 years ago- but craftily made it look indistinguishable from a universe billions of years old.
Of course, such arguments are particularly useless. It’s also possible that the universe is resting on the back of a giant invisible turtle. It just doesn’t seem very probable.
October 31st, 2006 at 3:18 am
L Ron Hubbub Says:
["skeptigirl says: Any god that interacts with the Universe should be detectable."]
“This is a false assumption. If an entity is truly omnipotent it could certainly make its interactions undetectable.”
And
“Perhaps Irishman misunderstands the meaning of omnipotent. An omnipotent entity could walk on water simply because it wills it – quantum states and intermolecular cohesion notwithstanding. The process by which it happens would be undiscoverable because there would be no process.”
Irishman understood what I said and you did not.
You are just describing the philosophical argument why science doesn’t test the god concept. There is always some round about way of claiming a god could exist that hides its tracks. It’s a thought exercise and nothing else. Is there a religion which has clear tenants claiming that particular god hides its existence?
There are none I’m aware of. The religion of the Bible may contain a claim of omnipotence in its god, but it doesn’t claim its omnipotent god hides its tracks. Quite the opposite, the religion claims its god’s presence can be seen all around. All you are saying is you can describe a scenario where science cannot detect the invisible flying spaghetti monster. I acknowledged that. Its meaningless unless philosophy is your thing.
If you take the god of the Bible or the god of any other religion you can make some determination what the religion claims the god does. Unless it does nothing, you can test for what it supposedly does.
There is nothing in the Bible (since that is the religion I would guess those of you protesting the fact there is no evidence of gods and there is sufficient evidence gods are a man-made construct) that indicates any origin other than it was written by the people in a specific area of the world a few thousand years ago. The writers had no idea the rest of the Earth was populated. They didn’t understand the germ theory. They had no concept of the Moon reflecting the light of the Sun. They didn’t recognize evolution. They had no idea about the Universe beyond their personal experience. Had the Bible truly been some magically inspired text, one would expect to see something in it which could not have been known by the writers at the time it was written.
The evidence is overwhelming the Bible was written by men who were no more inspired by a god than the Greeks were when they wrote about Zeus and Aphrodite. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but the facts are what they are.
October 31st, 2006 at 6:56 am
I’m not protesting anything, Skeptigirl. Any claims by a particular religion about the entity it worships are filtered by the limits of understanding of the believers.
Oh, and you brought up the flying spaghetti monster! LOL!!1!1eleven!! I guess that effectively shuts down all discourse…you win the Internets!
October 31st, 2006 at 7:55 am
One slight problem with the argument that if the Bible were some sort of magically inspired text, it would have something outside the understanding of your average neolithic sheepherder:
I get in my time machine, pop on down to 5000 BC, and show it to Akhmed the Semitic Sheep Watcher. Poor Akhmed boggles, and the conversation goes thusly:
“Look at my time machine. Isn’t it awesome?”
“Indeed. You must be a very powerful demon… I know what time is, what’s a machine?”
Remember Clarke’s rule of technology; anything sufficiently advanced /in relation to the observer/ is indistinguishable from magic. Cellphones today would be magic talking boxes to poor old smart-but-nontechnological Akhmed because the most complex ‘mechanism’ he’s ever been exposed to is a cart. And that’s only a mechanism because a wheel-axle system necessarily has four major parts (two wheels, an axle, and the joints connecting it to the static cart). In that way, the fancy burning wheels-within-wheels in the occasional Biblical story may actually be energy-based re-entry pods of time travelers of the future, or the vamanas of the Vedas may actually be atomic rocketships or whatever.
Or it could be a bunch of pseudospiritual hooey, or hallucinations, or an outright lie. As it stands, the only evidence for any of it happens to be what was written down, and a lot of what /is/ written down doesn’t make a lot of sense either through translation error, bad fiction, or exactly what you were trying to point out wasn’t there–things that the writers had no real conception of. Neolithic cultures have no time for philosophy if they’re sheepherders and therefore the /logical/ consistency portion sorta gets dropped for the base attempt at oral history–they didn’t sit around and figure “hey, our mountain god really has to cover His tracks or else that’ll disprove our arguments that He is omnipotent and omnsicient.”
I can’t deny that there’s nothing in any holy text that couldn’t have been written by some ancient peon; probably because they were probably written by ancient peons. However, coming to any sort of value judgement beyond that (i.e. nothing at all happened except for some mad ramblings) is likewise somewhat quick to come to judgement because the evidence (said incomplete and badly translated potentially trying to describe what Banks would call Outside Context Problems) is decidedly insufficient. Even the Aztecs, for all their civilization, considered those crazy white Spaniards /big-G-Gods/ for a short time.
October 31st, 2006 at 9:11 am
The thing that strikes me about what God supposedly wants is the foreskins of babies … How sick is that??
As a ratherpoor taste joke I once heard goes :
Moses comes back down from the Mountain and talks withAaron .. Aaron heras him out, pauses a bit, knocks back some wine then says : “Okay Moses, tell me again the Arabs get all the oil and we have to cut the ends off our *What*!!??”
Actually the most repulsive things in the Bible seem to come in the Old Testament with all this “Chosen People” and “Promised land” stuff ..very convenient and God actuallys commands the Isrealites to committ genocide against the Canaanites and others. Not tomentionthestory of interanl Jewish warfare against tehtribe of Benjamina sparke dbya gangrape and murde of ayoung slave girl and the apparently condoned incest of Lotwith his daughters ..
Then there are the nice little commands of love, tolerance and impossibility to get right like : “Thall Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live” which when youccombine it with ‘Thall Shalt NotKill” means you’re prettymuch stuffed – kiling a witch violates the commandmant, not killing her doe stehsame and so .. AARGGH!!!
When you actually think and read the Bible its really a pretty sick book – Focused on a “Good and Merciful” God that deliberately selects ten tribes over everyone else, orders them to commit genocide, punishes people left right and centre for the smallest offences (Lot’s Wife, Jepath) describe sHimself as jealous and onatleast one occassion decides tokill everyone except one small family of fanatics (Noah akla Utnaptishtim) Yet you have people praying in the name of that sort of God or their belief of that sort of God and finding themselves “moral” and thinking they’re so superior to those who say worship nature or nothing at all .. Funnyworld, funny species
———
“We’re just fine pink-faced baboons
Inside we’re all dark MWah-haa
But we can reach for the Moon!”
-Sabotaged song lyrics to the tune of & with apologies to ‘Roxette’s ‘Fine June Afternoon’ song.
October 31st, 2006 at 9:35 am
Re-posted from above in corrected form since I can’t edit there and hate seeing my post so typo-plagued.
(Is someone out there praying for that?;-) .. )
————————————–
October 31st, 2006 at 9:11 am
The thing that strikes me about what God supposedly wants is the foreskins of babies … How sick is that?? Male or female, what decent God would order genital mutilation of any kind – & if he doesn’t want those bits on us why’d he supposesdly create us _with_ them?
As a rather poor taste joke I once heard goes :
Moses comes back down from the Mountain and talks with Aaron .. Aaron hears him out, pauses a bit, knocks back some wine then says :
“Okay Moses, tell me again, the Arabs get all the oil and we have to cut the ends off our *WHAT*!!??â€
Actually the most repulsive things in the Bible seem to come in the Old Testament with all this “Chosen People†and “Promised land†stuff ..very convenient. Worst of all as faras I’m concerned is that God actually commands the Israelites to committ genocide against the Canaanites, Amalekites and others. Perhaps that’s where modern Israel gets its ideas on what to do with the Palestineans?
Not to mention the story of internal Jewish warfare against the tribe of Benjamin sparked by a gang rape and murder of a young slave girl, theJewish warrior Jeptah sacrificing his own daughter -yes, human sacrifice to to Yahwah – and the apparently condoned incest of Lot with his daughters .. (Most of that is in ‘The Book of Judges’ somewhere if you want to check on me.)
Then there are the nice little commands of love, tolerance and impossibility to get right like : “Thall Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live†which when you combine it with ‘Thall Shalt Not Kill†means Divine Catch-22 : Killing a witch violates the commandmant, not killing her does the same and so .. AARGGH!!!
When you actually think and read the Bible its really a pretty sick book – Focused on a “Good and Merciful†God that deliberately selects ten tribes over everyone else, orders them to commit genocide, punishes people left right and centre for the smallest offences (Lot’s Wife, Jepath) describes Himself as jealous and on at least one occassion decides to kill everyone except one small family of fanatics (Noah akla Utnaptishtim) Oh and to top it off and save everything, he deliberately subjects his only son to torture, humiliation and the most brutal form of capital punishment.
Well excuse me for being objective & rational about beloved mythology but if God really is that Merciful and Good you’d think He’d find a better way and do things a bit differently wouldn’t you?
Yet you have people praying in the name of that sort of God or their belief of that sort of God and finding themselves and their beliefs “moral†and thinking they’re so superior to those who say worship nature or nothing at all ..
Just like in US politics where a consensual sexual affair by one President is considered grounds for impeachment but lying the nation’s way into a needless, bloody war that destroys a nation and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people is all a-ok….
Its the same mob of people each time folks and they’re the ones praying here and running your country -and, pretty much, the rest of the world. Like it or not. I don’t care if people pray but I sure do hope enough sane people VOTE to change the course we’re headed in.
Funny world, funny species, funny beliefs.
———
“We’re just bright, pink-faced baboons
Inside we’re all dark
MWah-haa
But we can reach for the Moon!â€
-Sabotaged song lyrics to the tune of & with apologies to ‘Roxette’s ‘Fine June Afternoon’ song.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:03 pm
L Ron Hubbub said:
>Perhaps Irishman misunderstands the meaning of omnipotent.
Perhaps I do, but I doubt I’m the only one, given that people seem to mean different things by that word. For instance, does omnipotence include the power to violate logical impossibilities – the old “could God make a rock so large he couldn’t move it?” argument.
>An omnipotent entity could walk on water simply because it wills it – quantum states and intermolecular cohesion notwithstanding. The process by which it happens would be undiscoverable because there would be no process.
I see my example was misleading. Skeptigirl saw my point. Whatever actions God takes in the world are discernable in the world. If God cures and amputee by growing a limb back, then there’s a limb on a person where there previously wasn’t one. We may not be able to discern the process, there may not be a process we can understand, but the changed condition of the world is present for study.
Evolving Squid Said:
>First and foremost, if god is omnipotent, he’d already know the strength of the faith of the sacrificer, so at best this is a wasteful act.
I think you mean “omniscient”. All knowing is different from all powerful.
Christian Burnham said:
>Not sure that you’re right. A truly omnipotent God could do all sorts of things to make herself untestable. She could make you suddenly want to eat ice-cream instead of investigating her actions. She could make any scientist fall down a mine-shaft- or change the data in their notebooks etc. etc.
I did explicitly state that the God had to be willing to stand around and perform on cue. There are plenty of ways the God could prevent testing. My example was intended to look at how to measure effects in the world. Perhaps it wasn’t a great example.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Centipede, I’ve heard those arguments many times. They don’t hold up to scrutiny as anymore than a rationalization for why the Bible does not appear to be god inspired.
Take the germ theory. One doesn’t need to understand microorganisms to understand contagion. Yet there is more attention paid to washing feet than to washing hands. Both may have been important, but hand washing most certainly was.
To think men of the time the Bible was written couldn’t comprehend the Earth moving around the Sun but they could comprehend the Sun moving across the sky seems a stretch. How hard would it be to look at light shining on a ball and showing that was the same thing happening with the Moon? To acknowledge people in distant lands shouldn’t have been hard.
The claim it must have been a god telling people something they weren’t ready to understand sounds good until you look more closely at the actual details.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:28 pm
L Ron Hubbub Says:
[â€skeptigirl says: Any god that interacts with the Universe should be detectable.â€]
“This is a false assumption.
How is this to be interpreted if it isn’t “protesting anything”?
As far as filters, see my post above.
If all the gods of men supposedly do things and therefore should be detectable, then what other gods are there bedsides philosophical ones which hide their presence and are not detectable?
May 7th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
In his last book, Carl Sagan talked about prayer in the chapter entitled “Newton’s Sleep”. I’m paraphrasing his argument, but it goes something like this: Prayers are often invoked to correct some calamity or to right some perceived wrong. The example he gives is of the Bishop who prays for God to intervene and end a devastating dry spell. The question he then asks is: Why is the prayer needed”? Was God unaware of the hardship on the parishioners? Also, is God more likely to intervene if many people pray? Would an omnipotent or omniscient God need the prayer to right the wrong? Why does one need to ask before a correction is made (if it ever is)? What does this say about the omnipotence/omnicience of such a God, or for that matter, his ethics?
June 13th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
[...] why bother anyway? Prayer doesn’t work. If they are willing to base their decision in a trial on evidence, why not look to the evidence [...]