Why we believe

[robvalue]

Strawdawg: I'm very sorry to hear of your imminent operation, I wish you all the best and hope you come through it with flying colours.

It makes me very sad to hear how "God" has provided such false hope, and seemingly increased torment rather than helping. There is absolutely no evidence that prayer does anything other than a placebo effect. For those that don't know, it has been scientifically studied (read: studied properly) and it has been shown to have no effect. None. It only seems to work if you are already of the mindset that any response is acceptable continued evidence of prayer working. If it works, great! If it doesn't, it's God plan. God can't fail, with the bar set so low as to be actually on the floor. It preys (pun intended) on people's confirmation bias, and their desire to see patterns in everything.

It makes me sick the idea that if God isn't helping you, you're not "trying hard enough". I honestly think that what really happens is that a person gets so invested in the myths, so obsessed with the idea that it is real, wants so much for it to happen... Eventually they train their mind to just believe it, regardless of what actually happens. Maybe it's through hallucinations, dreams, imagined sightings, misinterpretations of perfectly normal events, assigning significance to random events... If the mind wants to believe something badly enough, it can find a way to convince itself. And once you're in that deep, anything that happens is acceptable continued proof of God. See the problem? If anything at all is good enough proof for God, then you can prove he exists even if he doesn't. That would be a concern to me.

Ironically, being told to dive into the bible and really study it is about the quickest way to start someone on the path to atheism. Especially if you take the time (as I expect almost no christians do) to study it objectively, to find out its history, gauge its accuracy and see if other sources can confirm anything it is saying. If you do that, with an open mind, you will see it is all utter tripe. Only a zealous desire to believe no matter what could get you through all those glaring problems.