(October 14, 2013 at 12:30 pm)Hey313313 Wrote: I can't force any religion on you, but I swear to you this, if you pray to God earnestly, he will show you the way and He will answer. try it once as an experiment, sincerely pray, not out of anger or mockery, and you will Hear. can't hurt to try right?You presume that many of us were never theists? Or perhaps you assume that we were, since I note that you loaded your challenge with qualifiers. This isn't the first time it's been suggested that if we simply pray, god will respond. But like your challenge, the other suggestions make sure to tell us that we must do it "earnestly" and "sincerely" and "not out of anger or mockery."
I grew up a believer, and spent many years praying earnestly, sincerely, and without a hint of anger or mockery. No god. Whenever I explain this, it is implied that I may have thought that I was earnest and sincere (or whatever particular qualifiers were being offered) but I really wasn't. The fact that this paints god as remarkably small and petty does not bother the theist. The important thing is keeping the illusion alive.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
