As others have said, confirmation bias.
People tend to remember the hits, and forget the misses.
And lets say, for arguments sake, you really did see these "rare' things after you prayed to see them as a sign.
How would you be able to demonstrate that there was a connection between your prayer and seeing them?
This is known as a "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. It basically translates to "after this, therefore because of this". But it means, since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.
It's the fallacy behind almost every dumb superstition there is.
People tend to remember the hits, and forget the misses.
And lets say, for arguments sake, you really did see these "rare' things after you prayed to see them as a sign.
How would you be able to demonstrate that there was a connection between your prayer and seeing them?
This is known as a "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. It basically translates to "after this, therefore because of this". But it means, since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.
It's the fallacy behind almost every dumb superstition there is.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
