What Exactly Does the Holy Spirit Do?

[robvalue]

I see this all the time with religious arguments, "affirming the consequent". Maybe I need to add it to my website.

I prayed to God to feel better
God can make me feel better
I felt better
Therefor, God exists and listened to my prayer

Nope. You're using logic backwards. What this misses is that there any number of other reasons why you might feel better, or whatever the consequence is. Including, and this is the big one, believing your assumed causation is really happening, in cases where the placebo effect could be sufficient.

For something unrelated to placebo, like say getting a cheque for lots of money after praying for money, then you need to consider other possible causations. Maybe it was an error. Maybe the person felt generous. Maybe you did something to deserve it. And so on. To just jump to the causation you want it to be is the fallacy.

Of course, for those utterly uninterested in honesty or logic, you can just say "well God was responsible for whatever other causation there was". Unfalsifiable, and useless. It also strangely limits god's powers to influencing people's free will and getting them to do what he wants. I thought he wasn't supposed to do that.