Science has eliminated God:

Anyone who has disagreed with this argument has discredited and abused science. This is nothing new and has been understood since the time of Darwin.

Guys come on talk of Celestial teapots and invisible dragons (oh you forgot the spaghetti monster) what is it you guys use, Hakims Razor, so lets see have these things been revealed to us at the same time as any other true religion been written about for thousands of years or could it be something that has been invented recently to avoid theism? ummm that’s a tough one. Nonsense.

Philip Pullman:

The most important point I was trying to make was to do with Yeltsin and Stalin (atheists who killed lots of people), its just religion usually gets all the blame for this.

% Of Scientists

To I guess most of you 58% is higher that 42% so there. To me 42% is a remarkably high number for such a group of rational people.

Emphasis mine, but c’mon, a little help from the leather community probably wouldn’t hurt either.

I’d love to see them hold a meeting at the Eagle. HA!

First off, it is not only polite, but a requirement of copyright law, to provide source results when quoting other people’s work. I noticed that this was missing from your post, and was curious about the source myself, so I renewed my friendship with Google. The paper you quoted is titled “The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate,” by Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne, and can be found here.

Is that right?

Okay, I’d be more convinced if it wasn’t a priest, since these pattern things seem to keep happening from priests, but whatever.

The warning bells started going off when I got to the line, “Professionally, scientists aspire to generality, and this makes
many of them unduly wary of the particular.” Um, no. Scientists are human too, so scientists can’t be said to aspire to any particular set of traits, but really, generality? Is this guy serious?

And of course, the old “For many scientists, cosmic fine-tuning came as an unwelcome shock” bit. I read a fair amount in this field, and this is the first I’ve seen anyone putting much stock in the principle. From what I’ve been reading, it seems to be treated as an extension of Paley’s watchmaker argument, and look, Polkinghorne does indeed mention Paley. In fact, the entire tone of the part you quoted tries to show that Paley was right, just on a far greater level.

But what it all boils down to is the same old philosophical yaya that’s been offered for centuries, just in a different form. Basically, “OMG, we couldn’t happen by accident! There must be a plan!” And to establish this, a bunch of numbers are offered.

Prime stumbling block of numbers, here, so pay attention: Until you can effectively outline all of the possibilities, trying to express something in terms of probability is completely and utterly meaningless. You cannot calculate probability without parameters.

One of the most frequent suppositions used is, “If gravity were just a teeny tiny fraction different, stars and planets could not form, no fusion, no heavier elements, and no life.” Sure. But gravity, according to relativity, is a function of space/time. In order for gravity to be different, so would space/time, and thus all of the parameters that entails, which would include fusion itself and indeed, quantum physics and the spin of electrons. So, given a fractional difference in gravity, you may also have a fractional difference in quantum mechanics as well, which may balance out nicely and still lead to a self-replicating chemical reaction we call “life.” And until we know why gravity behaves the way it does, you really can’t say this is either good or bad science.

You see, the argument, “Unless it was just perfect, we wouldn’t be here,” is good only so far as thinking there is something special about us, and that life cannot take many forms. Again, what’s so special about us? In the scope of the universe, hell, in the scope of merely our own sun, we’re a ridiculously small fraction of energy usage. That’s about it. So what possible reason, other than sheer ego, do we have to suppose that we’re special in any way? Demonstrate, in any way that you like, that this is not a product of our own vain minds.

The creation option, in your later post, becomes just funny, in a very sad kind of way. “Widespread human testimony to experience of encounter with the reality of the sacred, can be understood as arising from actual perception of the veiled presence of God.” Except that, apparently, god always takes the form of whatever cultural god the experiencer is familiar with. Funny how that keeps happening that way, isn’t it? No, actually, it’s not funny, it’s really firm evidence that it’s all a product of the mind. And until someone, in their divine contact, manages to produce something that’s outside of human knowledge, a nice prediction of future scientific discoveries, the quote above is a great example of what we see a lot of these days – trying to meld science with the insecure bugaboo in people’s heads that makes them want their Magic Sky Pony.

So now run the numbers for a realm of existence that allows for the creation of a creator, who has the power to bring the universe we know it into existence. How “just right” do you suppose those conditions would have to be? And don’t forget, they would have to include a hyper-extended set of physical laws in and of themselves.

That’s the problem with the Anthropic argument. It postulates that something as basic as a law of physics that prevents space/time from being anything other than what we see is so ridiculously low in probability that it could not ever have happened (which is a flaw in logic by itself), but then makes the broad assumption that something magnitudes of times more complicated, a creative being, must therefore be the case. So, what, now the maths don’t count?

A little more poking around led me here, a review of one of Polkinghorne’s books. It came from a page of links located here, which I’m willing to bet is not what you’re really looking to find. But science isn’t about finding a conclusion you’re happy with.

1. Multiverse
It is suggested that maybe there are very many different universes,
each with very different kinds of laws of nature. In this vast portfolio
of worlds, just by chance there is one capable of developing carbon-
based life and that, of course, is our universe, since we are carbon-
based life. An anthropic cosmos is simply a rare winning ticket
in a multiversal lottery.
The most economical version of this idea supposes that these different
worlds are actually large domains within a single physical
universe. The way in which the symmetry of the primordial GUT
was broken as expansion cooled the universe, thereby producing
the forces that actually operate today, need not have been literally
universal. Instead the cosmos could be a mosaic of different
domains, in each of which symmetry-breaking took different
detailed forms. We are unaware of this, because inflation has driven
all the other domains out of our sight and, of course, our domain
must be the one in which the results of symmetry-breaking fitted in
with anthropic necessity. The idea is plausible, but it only modifies
to some degree the requirement of specificity, since it is still necessary
that the aboriginal GUT took a form that, when its symmetry
was broken, could yield appropriate force strengths.
Any suggestion more radical than this, takes one into a realm of
speculation beyond the scope of sober physical thinking. Shaky
appeals need to be made to currently ill-defined notions of quantum
cosmology, together with resort to ad hoc assumptions of radical
differences between the lawful characters of the worlds supposed to
have been generated in this way. The multiverse in this form is no
more than a metaphysical guess of excessive ontological prodigality
– appealed to, it might seem, partly in order to avoid the theism
associated with the second approach.

2. Creation
The theist can believe that there is only one universe, whose
anthropic character simply reflects the endowment of potentiality
given it by its Creator in order that it should have a fruitful history.
This too is a metaphysical guess but, in contrast to the multiverse,
it is one that does a number of other explanatory pieces of work in
addition to addressing anthropic issues. For example, the intelligible
and wonderful order of the world, so striking to the scientist,
can be understood as being a reflection of the mind of its Creator.
Widespread human testimony to experience of encounter with the
reality of the sacred, can be understood as arising from actual perception
of the veiled presence of God. Understood in this way, the
anthropic specificity of our world is not claimed to provide a logically
coercive argument for belief in God that no one but a fool
could deny, but it makes an insightful contribution to a cumulative
case for theism, regarded as the best explanation of the nature of the
world that we inhabit.

The Atlanta NPR affiliate, WABE, has run an updated version of the radio piece I mentioned way up in the middle of the comments. Now it has, tacked on the end, a description of a meeting Sonny Perdue had last summer with agricultural leaders in the state (how does one become an agricultural leader?). At that meeting, they all prayed for help from god for the farmers. WABE’s reporter finally says, with emphasis, that “the next day, it rained.”

There’s your proof!

Interpretation.
All scientists agree that the physical fabric of the universe had to
take a very particular form if carbon-based life were to be able to
evolve within its history. Where disagreements begin is in discussing
what might be the significance of this remarkable fact.
For many scientists, cosmic fine-tuning came as an unwelcome
shock. Professionally, scientists aspire to generality, and this makes
many of them unduly wary of the particular. Their natural inclination
is to believe that our universe is just a fairly typical specimen
of what a cosmos might be like. The Anthropic Principle showed
that this is not so, but rather that our universe is special, one in a
trillion, so to speak. Recognising this seemed like an anti-
Copernican revolution. Of course, human beings do not live at the
centre of the cosmos, but the intrinsic physical structure of that
world has to be constrained within narrow limits if the evolution of
carbon-based life is to be feasible. Some also feared that they
detected here an unwelcome threat of theism. If the universe is
endowed with fine-tuned potentiality, this might indicate that there
is a divine Fine-Tuner.
A quite new form of the argument from design had been brought
onto the agenda. Darwinian insight had taken away the force of the
old style design argument for the existence of God, pursued in the
past by people such as John Ray and William Paley. They had
appealed to the functional aptness of living beings, but evolutionary
thinking had shown how the patient accumulation and sifting of
small differences could give rise to the appearance of design without
calling for the direct intervention of a divine Designer.
Theologians came to recognise that the former kind of natural theology
had made the mistake of setting itself up as a rival to science
in the latter’s legitimate domain, seeking to deal with questions
such as the origin of the optical system of the mammalian eye,
whose answering properly lay within biological competence. This
criticism could not be made about the new argument, appealing to
anthropic potentiality. The new natural theology sought to be complementary
to science, rather than in competition with it. Its concern
was the laws of nature themselves, something that an honest
science cannot explain since it has to assume them as the unexplained
basis of its detailed account of occurrences. David Hume
had urged acceptance of the properties of matter as a brute fact, but
nature’s fine-tuned character makes it intellectually unsatisfying to
stop the quest for understanding at this point. Hume had criticised
the old-style argument from design as being too anthropomorphic,
as if the work of the Creator could fittingly be compared to that of
carpenters building a ship. This criticism does not apply to anthropic
arguments, since endowing matter with intrinsic potentialities
has no human analogue. In terms of Hebrew words used in the Old
Testament, fine-tuning corresponds to bara (a word reserved for
divine activity), rather than ’asah (‘making’, used of God and
humans alike).
The first step in argument about interpretation was to distinguish
between various formulations of the Anthropic Principle. The most
modest was the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP), simply stating
the tautologous insight that the character of the universe that we
observe must be consistent with our presence as observers within it.
At first sight, that might not seem a very exciting point to make. It
is clear, for example, that it is no surprise that we see a universe
about fourteen billions years old, since beings of our complexity
could not have emerged on its scene at an earlier epoch. However,
we saw in the previous section that scientific investigations have
shown that full anthropic conditions are far from trivial, for they
include such constraints as setting narrow limits on the values of
the constants of nature that define the physical fabric of the world.
Some people were then led to define a Strong Anthropic
Principle (SAP), alleging that the universe necessarily had to have
such properties as would allow life at some time to develop within
it. The problem with that is to see what could be the source of the
asserted necessity. SAP is a strongly teleological statement. The
religious believer will be happy to ground necessity in the will of
the Creator, but the status of SAP as a purely secular claim is mysterious.
It certainly does not seem to be grounded in science itself.
Two other forms of Anthropic Principle are sometimes discussed.
The Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP) asserts that
observers are necessary to bring the universe into being. Some sort
of appeal is being made here to a contentious interpretation of
quantum theory which speaks in terms of ‘an observer-created reality’
5, but it is difficult to believe that the universe did not ‘exist’
until observers appeared. There is also the Final Anthropic
Principle (FAP), claiming that once intelligent information-processing
has started in the universe, it must continue for ever. Once
again, a secular source of the alleged necessity is hard to find. PAP
and FAP seem even less satisfactory than SAP.
Another line of attack on anthropic reasoning attempted to
defuse the claim of cosmic particularity by pointing out that actually
we only have one universe to study, and how could one conclude
much from a sample of one? Yet, with our scientific imaginations
we can visit other possible universes that are reasonably similar to
ours. The consideration in the previous section of worlds whose
constants of nature take different values from those in this universe,
would be an example. In this notional collection of neighbourly
worlds, we found that only a very narrow set could share anthropic
potentiality with our actual world. Surely that is enough to establish
a degree of specificity that calls for some sort of metascientific
understanding of anthropic particularity.
Another approach suggested that in fact there might only be one
possible world, a universe in which, of necessity, the force
strengths took the values that we actually observe. Proponents of
this view appealed to the difficulty found by physicists in successfully
combining general relativity and quantum theory, and they
suggested that maybe there was a unique Grand Unified Theory
(GUT) that achieved this and which determined the values of all the
constants of nature. Even if this were so – and it seems to many that
it would be unlikely that a GUT would be wholly free from scale
parameters – one would still have to explain why relativity and
quantum theory are to be treated as givens. They certainly seem to
be anthropic necessities, but they are by no means logically
inevitable. Moreover, if there really were a unique GUT, the greatest
anthropic coincidence of all would surely be that this theory,
determined on grounds of logical consistency, also proved to be the
basis for a world capable of evolving beings able to comprehend
that consistency.
A more modest and realistic proposal suggests that some
anthropic coincidences may be consequences of a deeper theory, so
that they do not require fine-tuning. An actual example of this happening
is probably provided in the case of the delicate balance
between expansive and contractive effects in the very early universe
that we discussed earlier. It is now believed that when the
universe was about 10-35 seconds old, a cosmic phase transition took
place (a kind of boiling of space), which for a short while blew up
the cosmos with astounding rapidity. This process, called inflation,
would have smoothed out the universe and created the close balance
between expansive and contractive tendencies that we now
observe. Yet, inflation itself, if it is to act satisfactorily, requires that
the GUT operating in the universe is restricted in form, so that
anthropic particularity has not been lost, but pushed deeper into the
fabric of the world.
One might look instead at a kind of Moderate Anthropic
Principle6, which notes the special character of the universe and
acknowledges that this should not be treated as a happy accident,
for it calls for some explanation.
Two contrasting metascientific approaches have been pursued.
John Leslie, who likes to do philosophy in a parabolic fashion, told
a story that graphically illustrates the issues7. You are about to be
executed and the rifles of expert marksmen are levelled at your
chest. An officer gives the order to fire … and you find you have
survived! Do you just walk away, saying, ‘That was a close one!’?
Certainly not, for so remarkable an event surely calls for an explanation.
Leslie suggests that this must take one of two forms. Either,
a vast number of executions are taking place today and, since
marksmen occasionally miss, you by chance have been lucky
enough to be in the execution where they all miss. Or, more was
going on in the single event of your execution than you had been
aware of – the marksmen were on your side and they missed by
design. This charming tale translates into the following two
approaches to taking anthropic issues with appropriate seriousness.

I find this amusing mostly, but occasionsally frustrating how many time have I mentioned this and no one seems to understand the meaning?

I may not understand the maths, but I always understand the meaning.

And yeah, talking nonsense about things you (by your own admission) don’t understand does tend to annoy people who do understand them.

It has been established that this Universe is one in a trillion. I just dont understand the maths.

I am just trying to put a more rational view across, unless there is some real evidence for string theory I have to just believe in this universe and the incredible one in a trillion chance of life.

Science has eliminated God:

No, not at all, and anyone versed in scientific principle or even logic knows this to be false. What science has done, however, is find methods to explain many of the things we considered manifestations of a higher being, and show them to be under no apparent outside influence. And it has turned up an awful lot of evidence that virtually all scriptures considered “holy” got the beginning(s) wrong.

About the closest anyone has gotten to disproving god has been Carl Sagan (if I remember correctly) pointing out that the universe demonstrates exactly what we would expect from random, undirected development.

Faith is not blind trust in the absence of evidence. A good Christian definition of faith:

[Faith] affects the whole of man’s nature. It Commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence, it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and its is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.

Francis Collins, again, if I remember right. About the only key part in there is the inclusion of the word “adequate” before “evidence.” While this can be taken many ways, I have to feel that the modifier of “adequate” indicates that what may be considered evidence is up for grabs, and more of a personal decision. But that just opens the door for a presupposed outcome: if you want to find god, you will. Coming from a scientist, this is pretty lame. Science works from a standpoint that the evidence is convincing because it stands up to the tests, even before the skeptical. Arbitrarily picking a point to say, “That’s good enough” only means you already know the answer. Nothing deep there.

The rest of it is doubletalk. “Confidence based on conviction.” Well, duh. “Consent of the will.” Aren’t they one and the same?

The final bit is what becomes downright amusing: “…by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.” I would seriously like to see someone, anyone, who conducted themselves in total accordance with their religion, whatever it might be. I haven’t yet. Religion is more often used to dictate other people’s conduct than one’s own.

But overall, who cares? “Faith” isn’t particularly an issue to anyone, except to point out the rampant hypocrisy. If someone has a problem with religion, it isn’t with faith, it’s with the shamelessly antisocial behavior under the claim of divine guidance.

This is a schoolboy argument. There is no serious empirical evidence that people regard God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as being in the same category.

Well, yes and no. I agree with you to a point, in that the analogy differs on too broad a level to be useful.

But the comparison does bear some examination. Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy have specific behaviors or actions, and these are ones we see easily and can test. Funny how Santa brings cheap toys to the impoverished families, isn’t it? Even as a child, we notice these things. Supreme beings are a lot more vague. Most of their “actions” take place once someone is dead – no tests there. You get to know of their existence only if, as indicated in the “faith” bit above, you try not to pin down their existence. This is supposedly “free will” in that, should a god prove its existence, we’d be “forced” to believe. But basically, it’s an attempt to legitimatize wishful thinking and fantasy by calling it faith. Examined further, that’s simply denial.

The comparison comes about because we have no problems with not believing in the Tooth Fairy, but struggle mightily against not believing in a supreme being. There is no logical difference between them, though.

A Scientific account of Music would be unsatisfactory to me and would probably go something like neural response to the impact of airwaves on the eardrum. The deep mystery of music – how a temporal sequence of sounds can speak of an eternal realm of beauty – total eludes its grasp, in the same way that the Big Bang is unsatisfactory, of course I believe this theory but there must be much more.

Not sure what your point is here. Are you saying god made music because describing it in scientific terms takes away its emotion? Or that music could not exist in a random universe?

You see, when you talk of the “deep mystery” of anything as an argument for religion, you’re making an argument called, “god of the gaps.” This basically says that god exists in the realms we don’t comprehend. That’s all well and good, but it misses two very important points. The first is, in those same areas dwell honest politicians and the perfect hot fudge sundae. And everything else you really desire to exist. Why not? But it’s not really a useful argument. The second is, those gaps become smaller every day as our scientific knowledge grows, and the gods are getting pretty small now. We’ve gone from floods and plagues of locusts to faces on tortillas.

It is anachronistic to press scientific meaning on to Genesis, as the first scientific journals did not appear until the seventeenth century.

Creationism happens when you try to interpret Genesis without Theology.

Science is not defined by its documentation, it is merely recorded with it. Gravity did not spring into being after the theory was written down. Science is merely our attempts to understand how the world works. As we learn more, we recognize that it does not work as the scripture says. I can not seriously fault anyone who doesn’t hesitate to say that when truly vast numbers of experiments and outright laws of physics disagree with a single book, then the book is wrong. I would blatantly call them an idiot if they didn’t, to be honest.

Creationism happens when you think theology is worth any effort whatsoever.

Dark Materials – Philip Pullman:

Nothing to say, I have no experience with Pullman.

Anthropic Principle:

The math’s on this one goes waaaay over my head, but I have managed to understand that when the Big Bang happened the required elements (and amounts of them) for life would not necessarily happen. In fact it seems our universe is extremely ’special’ and an enormous amount of fine tuning would seem to be the answer or there were previously a trillion big bangs and it just so happens that we reside in this one?!

There are a lot of problems with discussing this. The first and foremost being, we really do not know how life started in the first place. We’ve got some meaningful speculation, but it’s way too far back in our past to ever pin down definitively. Even if we manage to observe that crossover point in a laboratory experiment, it doesn’t mean that’s how it happened for us.

The second thing is, with just one example of a life-bearing planet, we can’t extrapolate odds from that accurately. We’re still finding new species right here at home, and have gotten no more than a peek even at our own satellite – we’re not in a position to judge whether there’s “fine-tuning” or not.

And again, life evolving only where it can be supported is not anything special. That’s like saying water crystallizes only where the temperature drops below zero celsius – ice must be something magical, because the universe is perfect for it! What would be more impressive is exactly the opposite: if we existed where the conditions were wrong for us. That’s a great indication that someone is messing with the rules. But chemical binding reactions when chemicals are in a fluid state, and gravity keeping things clumped? Those are simple things in our universe.

The fact of the matter is, the universe is incredibly hostile to life as we know it. And a very small change to our environment will wipe us out for good. We live a tiny fraction of the age of the universe, and contribute nothing, alter nothing. Even with our own technology, from an outer planet in our own solar system, I don’t think we could determine that Earth has life on it. And that’s provided we were looking for life as we define it. It’s really hard to look at all that and say there’s any fine-tuning going on.

The anthropic principle relies on parsimony, the idea that the simplest explanation is also the likeliest. Random factors are so unlikely to lead to life that it must not be random. But the problem with this is, a supreme being, existing outside of the known universe, is far more complicated than the random factors within. Where did this supreme being come from, and in what laws of physics does it exist? How do those laws dictate what happens in the universe that we know it? How can this being outside of those laws affect them? It’s easy to just wave your hands and say some superlative is responsible, but that isn’t supported by either evidence or logic, and it requires entirely new sets of rules to support.

And of course, this superlative being seems inordinately interested in the diddly-crap little ol’ us gets up to. The entire freaking universe, stars exploding, dust clouds coalescing, and some little rodents on one little satellite are worth the effort to play with. Right.

To believe that this is just some happy accident is too much in the realm of the fairy’s even for me.

When mankind is on the verge of being entirely wiped out by a virus, tell me how happy that accident is.

We think life is pretty cool, and that we’re special. We really don’t like it when we find out we’re not. That pretty much says it all right there. Supreme beings are just manifestations of our insecurity.

But we have no reason to believe we’re special, in any way. I would imagine cats think they’re pretty special too. We can’t get them to clean up after us now, can we? So who’s right?

Oh yeh even in America 42% of Scientists believe in God.

Which god?

But even better, tell me how many of them offer evidence.

This would assume that you agree that there are at least four different ways of getting a “best hand” – one royal flush for each suit. That would be akin to conceding that there could be more than one special arrangement in which human life could have been possible even if some of the variables were tweaked.

But that’s not event what I’m talking about. The “royal flush” is a preconceived notion that humans have invented and assigned a special value to. Mathematically, a hand made up of 10, J, Q, K, A and all hearts, is just as likely as any other assortment of five cards you can name. Also, any straight flush is just as likely as any royal flush because both are determined by the same rules (five cards in sequence of the same suit). Some hands are even less likely but aren’t considered very valuable. This hand (9 of clubs, 6 of diamonds, 2 of hearts, 4 of spades, 3 of clubs) is even LESS LIKELY than having a royal flush because there can only be one of the former but four of the latter. The only difference is that we don’t view that first hand as particularly special. In fact, it’s one of the worst hands you can get, but it’s extremely rare to get EXACTLY those specific cards in one hand.

In that sense, we are making the rules about what WE think is special. There are probably other combinations of physical laws that are equally or less likely than those we are familiar with. It just so happens that we believe that a universe capable of supporting us is special. Just like there are specific combinations of cards in a poker game that are equally or less likely than a royal flush that we wouldn’t care about, there are different arrangements of universal constants that we wouldn’t care about simply because we assign value to conditions that we are comfortable with.

To play advocatus Diaboli (advocatus Dei?) the usual argument is that God wants humanity to choose to believe (and be saved) as a matter of free will. Should God prove Its existence, everyone but the mad would instantly believe and the issue of choice and the concept humans being the underlying arbiter of their own fate fails miserably. One could still choose to disbelieve, yes, but it would be as irrational as disbelieving in the sun or in the ground one walks on.

A better argument to make is why, if God wants people to believe in It, would God create evidence that would seem to contradict Its existence (in terms of fundamentalism and creationism)? If the fundamentalist creationists are right, why would God plant evidence that the universe is, what, thirteen billion years old? If the active theistic evolutionists are right, why would God plant obvious design flaws throughout all of guided creation (the human birth canal, for one)? If the inactive theistic evolutionists are right… well… that hardly classifies as theistic evolution because God plays no role in it and so it becomes equivalent to believing in invisible pink unicorns, a completely unscientific belief.

These questions naturally bring up the possible answers of no God (of course), trickster Gods, or perhaps even malevolent Gods.

Why not try:
http://www.maaf.info/ or http://www.atheistfoxholes.org/welcome2.php. There’s more, despite the discrimination given to the atheists who serve this country (I’m leaving out the rest of the world here).

I’m surprised more theists don’t take offense at that suggestion that it is only through fear that people can “find god”. Is that why so many fundies like war – they think it will increase the number of believers?

Anyway, the real reason I wrote – with the leather groups involved, maybe they will be praying for “Golden Showers”?

I guarantee that minutes after any god gives conclusive proof of its existence, millions of skeptics around the world will be putting on their “You go God!” shirts and heading to the appropriate church.

God has nothing to lose and everything to gain

I’m as much of an atheist as you are, but you CAN’T test whether or not prayer works no matter how hard you try all studies into it are automatically invalid.
If God exists then he’s a sentient self aware entity and all knowing to boot
It doesn’t matter what tricks you pull on the suckers sat in church mumbling away to keep them from knowing its a test.
God would know that you’re pulling the wool over the flocks eyes and could rig the test anyway he (or should that be He) chooses.