Arcanus Wrote:First, genuine prayers are never unanswered. Period. Second, it's not a No True Scotsman fallacy, because the problem is not a logical one but an empirical one—such that even a genuine prayer can appear to go unanswered, even though it wasn't. God can answer a prayer in a way that is either not immediately obvious (e.g., what was prayed for occurs later) or perhaps not expected (e.g., the answer was no), leaving the one who prayed feeling, in that moment, as though the prayer went unanswered. Christians who treat God like Walmart and prayer like a shopping cart are frequently left disillusioned because the answer they are looking for, in both content and timing, blinds them to the answer actually given. A prayer may seem unanswered, but was it really? The problem is not a fault in logical reasoning but in empirical reasoning; i.e., there is no empirical test for evaluating whether the prayer was unanswered or only appeared to be.
I understand that genuine prayers don't go unanswered. My problem was then that going by that alone, if a prayer isn't answered you can just say it's because it's not genuine. Which is NTS...
...But I understand now that you're not actually committing NTS, because you have now made it clear that you're not saying that a prayer isn't genuine if it doesn't appear to be answered. It isn't simply said to be genuine but if you seemingly get no response then it "wasn't genuine". Because it could be answered even if it doesn't appear to be.
So what I'm wondering is, how do you ever have any idea at all, if your prayers are ever "answered" - do you ever?
(September 29, 2009 at 7:58 pm)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: And no, this doesn't display my ignorance on the subject. It just displays that I haven't found any evidence, regardless of whether there is any or not.
Arcanus Wrote:What evidence exactly are you looking for? If you say "any evidence at all," that may be your problem; i.e., without identifying what evidence you're looking for, how could you expect to find it?
I'm not looking for evidence. That would be, from my point of view, as futile as searching for Celestial Teapots. But how can I know that no evidence could possibly come to reveal that a celestial teapot exists? Even if it is completely invisible and intangible and undetectable by any telescope and science at all? I can't know. And I can't know there can never be evidence for God at all.
I'm just interested in why theists (and deists) believe, and I am interested in questioning them on it, and questioning them on what they think is evidence for their God(s).
I accept I could be wrong, but no, I don't expect to be.
Quote:FRODO: What are you doing?
EVIE: Looking for something.
FRODO: What, exactly?
EVIE: Anything.
FRODO: Then how will you know when you've found it?
Actually, from my perspective, it's more like:
FR0D0: What are you doing?
EVIE: Questioning as to why some people (and so many people for that matter), such as yourself, believe things that from my perspective (as far as I can tell...) - there is no evidence for whatsoever.
FR0D0: What, like God?
EVIE: Yes, or anything else of that nature from my perspective:Anything lacking in evidence, and especially when it comes to the supernatural, paranormal, unfalsifiable, etc - especially when it's any extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence basically.
FR0D0: Well what kind of evidence do you expect for God?
EVIE: As with any of these (at least seemingly) unfalsifiable things - I do not know what evidence there can be, or even if there can be any at all. I just sure as hell know that without evidence, I'm not going to believe in either case. I'm not actually expecting there to be any in any way. As I said: What I'm interested in is questioning why people such as yourself, believe things that from my perspective, there is no evidence for. I'm questioning you, because you actually believe in these things, and I myself can't find any reason whatsoever to believe in them.
fr0d0 seems to think that because there can be 'no evidence', then that means that's somehow a reason to believe without it for 'another reason' of some sort...or 'reasoning' as he has said. But then other times he has said that there can be evidence, just not empirical evidence. So I don't know what to believe when he speaks about evidence sometime. That's why we created our debate...If I'm going to mention "Evidence" to him here, outside our debate, I'm certainly not going to mention "Faith" along with it - and vice-versa.
EvF
