Mormon prayers get answered all the time, at least according to Mormons. Does that prove that Jesus was in North America? If Tom Cruise prays for a box office hit next summer, and gets it, would that mean Scientology is true? People in ancient Rome prayed and surely some of them believed that the gods answered their prayers on some occasions. If a Christian prayer can be called proof of Jesus, then a Roman prayer must be proof of Neptune.
Couldn't it be that believers simply are making the honest and common error of selective memory when they review their personal prayer histories? Mistakes of this kind are easy to make. It seems to be human nature to focus on the few hits and forget all about the many misses when it comes to something we want to be true. Psychologists even have a term for it and actually call it "confirmation bias" and psychics know all about it. Because it is very much like when psychics claim to talk to dead people or predict a customer's future, they know that they only have to be right a few times because most people will forget the incorrect statements.
I mean if any prayer works, one would think it would be a mother's prayer for the health of her baby.Few prayers are more sincere or more passionately delivered, especially if the baby is seriously ill. Unfortunately, these prayers do not seem to work well at all. This is obvious because there are many highly religious nations with horrible infant mortality rates.
Couldn't it be that believers simply are making the honest and common error of selective memory when they review their personal prayer histories? Mistakes of this kind are easy to make. It seems to be human nature to focus on the few hits and forget all about the many misses when it comes to something we want to be true. Psychologists even have a term for it and actually call it "confirmation bias" and psychics know all about it. Because it is very much like when psychics claim to talk to dead people or predict a customer's future, they know that they only have to be right a few times because most people will forget the incorrect statements.
I mean if any prayer works, one would think it would be a mother's prayer for the health of her baby.Few prayers are more sincere or more passionately delivered, especially if the baby is seriously ill. Unfortunately, these prayers do not seem to work well at all. This is obvious because there are many highly religious nations with horrible infant mortality rates.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
