Couple of clingers in my de-converting

[robvalue]

Coming back to the story on my website, yes I experienced prayer for the first time without being given any preconceptions about it first. My parents never told me about it, they certainly didn't make me believe it was pointless. I was coming to my own conclusions. I wasn't indoctrinated, nor was I told to be atheist.

What I experienced was people doing something very strange which I could see no point to. When I found out what the point was supposed to be, it made no sense. No one has since convinced me otherwise. I was 5 at the time, so I hope you agree that's a pretty blank slate. But regardless, I stand by the judgement I made even back then, and scientific studies have confirmed my suspicions. Of course I can't prove God isn't listening, if he exists. But that is again an unfalsifiable and therefor useless premise. However I can state that no scientific studies have demonstrated any benefit of prayer beyond the placebo effect, as far as I'm aware. The point of this is that if you haven't been fed information about a subject before experiencing it, then you are more likely to come to an objective conclusion. If you want to call me at age 5 a biased atheist militant bastard, then go ahead

Funnily enough, I did lose my shit once as a child and decided to pray. What I prayed for happened. However it was something that could quite easily have happened on its own. This is the trap of confirmation bias, and why I don't put any weight on my own anecdote. Also a sample size of 1 is not sufficient to draw any conclusions. I have since prayed for many other things, none of which would happen on their own, and none of which have happened. I didn't have any sincere belief what I was doing would work, or that anyone was listening, on any occasion. So there's examples of me being irrational by my own standards

Remember, I don't claim that there is no God, I don't claim Christianity is wrong, I don't claim prayer doesn't do anything. I have no need to, any more than I need to claim the sun isn't going to explode in 5 seconds. I simply don't have any reason to believe these things are correct. But I'm always open minded to further evidence, at least I try to be.

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I thought I'd add a bit more about prayer. It falls under the general problem of not being falsifiable.

I pray for something to happen. If it happens, at any point, then the prayer "worked" and so God exists and is listening. If it doesn't happen, then either I didn't pray hard enough, didn't believe enough, it wasn't the right time, God has a better plan, etc... but god exists and is listening. So there is no way it can be falsified. There is a pre drawn conclusion no matter what happens.

Also, if we pray for stuff and God alters what he was going to do based on our prayers, that means he either didn't know what the best thing to do was, or wasn't intending to do it until we asked. That should raise some serious concerns, either way.

Another example is praying generally to God. I pray to him to reveal himself to me. If I have an experience, say a rush of emotion, or something unexpected happens around me, or anything I can view as "success" then yay God exists and he has shown himself to me. But if I get nothing, then I didn't pray hard enough, I don't believe enough, it wasn't the right time... conclusion, God still exists. Again, it's a pre drawn conclusion either way.

For any kind of "test" to make sense, there must be a way of proving a claim wrong. Otherwise, all you have is a pre drawn conclusion and what actually happens is irrelevant.

I could similarly decide before hand God doesn't exist. If I get any emotions, weird occurrences, or anything that might indicate he exists, I put it down to coincidence, a hallucination, unreliability of emotions etc. Conclusion: he doesn't exist. If I don't receive any sign, then he also doesn't exist. So you see either way, you end up with the conclusion you already drew, because the test is not falsifiable.