Evidence God Exists

[tackattack]

I apologize for the delay, work became.. well.. work for a bit.

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1- God was allowing me to have free will to stray from the path he preferred for me. I agree the meeting and reward would have taken place regardless. I asked my boss this morning what caused him to submit the paperwork. He said, “something just told me I needed to”. And he’s moderately religious. That’s not the point though. Please explain how the timing of everything as well as the quantities matched up so exactly to my request.
2- One and a half to 2 weeks and it was day 2 or 3. I’m aware it could have been a placebo, then a few months ago he scraped his knee and leg rally bad falling off his Bike. He wanted me to pray for him, but honestly he was doing stupid tricks and while I felt bad that my son was in pain, I had told him not to play on the bike ramp with the big boys. I prayed with him, letting him do most of the talking and my only thoughts regarding his wounds were “you did it to yourself” mentality. The pain didn’t instantly cease, despite the fact that verbally the 2 prayers were practically the same, merely the intents and causes were different. Would the same placebo affect worked on him a second time?

Firstly, to thebigfudge you said that it happens 'quite often' that people pray for a sick kid to get better and they do. This may be the case but all that's really saying is 'a lot of people pray for sick kids'. Also what happens a lot is they don't get better at all and they die after enduring a lot of agonising pain. Cancer goes into remission sometimes. The prayers are absolutely incidental to the recovery. By ignoring all the times the prayers don't 'work', that is confirmation bias. It's fine to say 'cumulatively, all these times prayers get answered and the kid gets better is indicative that prayer works', as long as you also knock points off every time nothing happens. It's not a fair test, it's rigged.

Now onto your two ridiculous stories. The timing appears to be a thing known as COINCIDENCE. However, it's actually also another example of your confirmation bias. You're saying 'oh how brilliant, a few days after I failed to give my church money I got some money' - surely it would have been more impressive if you'd got the bonus the week before and didn't have to miss paying your dues in the first place? Or if God had helped you manage your money better beforehand so you weren't in the financial shit? You're ignoring all the places where things went wrong and only picking the good. Praise God!

Finally, this addendum to the second story tells you all you need to know. Just because you didn't pray to make your kid's leg better, your son did. And nothing happened. I cannot believe this needs pointing out to you. So does God ignore the pleas of children in pain, so it's only adults he listens to? Or have you personally got a hotline to him not afforded to your son and others?

It's almost like....get this...sometimes good things happen to you, and sometimes they don't! Sometimes pain goes away quicker than expected, and sometimes...IT DOESN'T!

Finally, would you mind telling me when you last prayed to Shiva?

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A) You’re correct in that it was improper for me to state “quite often people” as that’s a generality and means nothing when speaking from a subjective perspective. It is also argumentum ad populum. From my perspective I know of no prayer I expected a result from that hasn’t gotten an affirmative result. Let me give an example:

Most people when you’re in a shooting range and hand them a gun and tell them to shoot the target will aim and pull the trigger. Skeptics will check to see if there’s ammo in the clip. If you pull the trigger (with ammo) and nothing happens what do you assume? Do you assume that the ammo is faulty, that they were dummy rounds? Do you know if the firing pin is installed?

B) Excluding negative results would be an unfair comparison. I have never felt the inner need to pray, prayed, expected a result, and trusted in that knowledge with something that was used to glorify God without out a positive result. I have prayed when asked to, expecting a result, trusted in that knowledge and gotten mixed results (almost entirely negative). I have also felt the inner need to pray, prayed without expectation, trusted that it was taken care of, at a time when I was doing something “in God’s will” for my life and also gotten mostly positive results. I have also felt the inner need to pray, prayed, expected a result, and trusted in that knowledge with something that wasn’t used to glorify God and got affirmative results that were temporary or negative results.
C) If you’re going to use phrases like “ridiculous stories”, you might as well just call me a liar or a cook because it’s just as much an emotion appeal to discredit my position rather than address the point unemotionally. It also shows your bias in this case. It’ll be a short conversation if this is just going through the motions.
D) And what are the exact probabilities of those exact events happening in that timeframe? I’m not a mathematician so I can’t answer that. I believe they exceed reasonable probability, unless you can show otherwise.
E) As to your alternatives for the first instance; without acknowledging you have a problem, or a problem existing, there would be no testament to God, reliance on a higher power, testament to God’s plan. Basically, without a need existing, there’s no possibility to be genuine in a request for saving from God.
F) “So does God ignore the pleas of children in pain, so it's only adults he listens to? Or have you personally got a hotline to him not afforded to your son and others?” Most of the time, not all of them, a predominant amount of the time. I believe that prayer have to be asked by one who knows and understands God to a minimum of accepting Jesus as their savior. Children can’t do that, nor can unbelievers. Now some children it’s supposed can see angels or something like that, so I don’t discount that children could know God more on a natural instinctual level and thus have their prayers answered, but I have no personal support for that stance.