msid Wrote:i see that most of you believe what you do because of lack of evidence that there is a God. Personally i am a christian because of all the evidence ive seen and the ways ive seen him answer prayers. ive had people come up to me and pray for problems that i was having that i hadnt told anyone. ive had many prayers awnsered in ways that could only be explained by God. I also completely understand everyone heres point of view
I appreciate your civility.
Members of other religions make exactly the same claims about deities mutually exclusive to yours. I think your experience is largely the result of confirmation bias (remembering the hits and forgetting the misses) and incorrect assessment of the odds of something happening regardless of whether or not you prayed. What you've actually 'seen' is desired events occurring after someone prayed for something, which is not the same thing as seeing God answer prayers. There are a lot of other possibilities which you've excluded. I have just as many good things happening to me now that I don't pray as happened when I did.
If you think about it, Christians getting prayers answered above the rate of probability would constitute at least weak evidence of their claims. We would all take notice if, all other factors being equal, Christians had notably higher rates of remission from cancer than, say, Shintoists. It wouldn't prove God, but it would be worthy of attention. If Christians could get back missing limbs by praying, it would defintely be evidence of something mysterious favoring them, because no one gets those results in the real world.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.