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TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:Right now, I have no reason to believe that the 'certain state of mind' is 'unquestioning faith.'
That is because you don't have it.
Quote:And this is different from self-determination, how?
Define self-determination.
Quote:So how exactly is "the answer is within you and god will guide you to it" different from "the answer is within you and you can guide yourself to it"?
It's one of those things you take on faith...when you have faith you can see the bigger picture for what it is. You can see God's path, at least here and there. And when you see it, you follow it...or not. But that doesn't usually lead anywhere good.
Quote:The idea of god appears to be entirely superfluous.
Without faith, it would seem that way to you.
Quote:I'm sure that means you've a great deal of self-determination, even if you think it means that you think it's because your invisible friend is helping you.
... and I am eternally greatful that I'm not that blind.
Watson Wrote:Define self-determination.
Self determination defines the ability to choose one's own path.
Nations can choose their own sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference or people to make their own choices and act on them.
Watson Wrote:It's one of those things you take on faith...when you have faith you can see the bigger picture for what it is. You can see God's path, at least here and there. And when you see it, you follow it...or not. But that doesn't usually lead anywhere good.
When you have faith without reason, all you're doing is painting a picture of reality instead of living a reality. It's living a lie based on fantasy.
I have no reason to believe that these "paths", as you call them, only exist through total and unquestioning devotion to some supernatural uberbeing that obfuscates his own existance.
Watson Wrote:Without faith, it would seem that way to you.
Without faith, I see the same picture as all those without a religious faith. Those with religious faith see whatever their own minds paint for them, which can be different from those of other faiths, such as hinduism and the untold number of variations of christianity, or Islam, or whatever.
I have the exact same view on the world as all those whose sole duty in life is to pursue the truth.
Watson Wrote:I think it's a little bit of both.
I'm sure you see it that way.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
January 15, 2011 at 2:00 am (This post was last modified: January 15, 2011 at 2:11 am by AngelThMan.)
Thor Wrote:We can't DISPROVE the existence of "God". How many times do we have to say this? We CAN, however, disprove the effectiveness of prayer. In fact, WE HAVE! http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health....html?_r=1
And how many times must Christians point out that the effectiveness of prayer cannot be proven with scientific studies or tests? God will not allow it to happen. Think about it: If God wants belief in him and prayer to be based solely on faith, why would he allow any scientific test to yield accurate results? In fact, even if a test wasn't specifically conducted, but a random sample was taken later of people who prayed and people who didn't, God would know ahead of time and would nullify such study by equalizing the results.
AngelThMan Wrote:You pointed to the 9/11 disaster to demonstrate that prayer doesn't work, since there must've been many Christians among those who died. But you're failing to acknowledge that while many people died, many others also got away.
Thor Wrote:Yes, many people escaped the disaster. And people like you see a plane crash where three people survive and 197 die, and point to the three people as evidence of "God's" miraculous powers.
Even if everyone died, it's because God had determined that their time on earth was up. If God wanted to save you, he would have found a way to keep you from getting on that plane.
AngelThMan Wrote:I was just countering his claim by providing possible scenarios that could've occurred during that tragedy which do not contradict or deny the existence or God and the power of prayer.
Thor Wrote:Yeah, "possible scenarios" for which you have no evidence...
Uhh... 'possible scenarios' don't need any evidence because they are in fact... 'possible scenarios.'
DoubtVsFaith Wrote:How do you know these things?
Faith is mentioned quite a lot in the bible, particularly referring to prayer. Therefore, faith is very important to God. If someone joins some sort of clinical study to test the power of prayer, then they are no longer praying with faith. Their purpose is no longer to earnestly ask God for something, but to participate in a study. If God were to answer their prayers, God too would be participating in a scientific study which he doesn't want in the first place.
As a former atheist, I did plenty of prayer or other acts to test the effectiveness of prayer or the existence of God. Whenever I did this, I was not answered. Only when I've prayed with faith have my prayers been answered.
January 15, 2011 at 2:35 am (This post was last modified: January 15, 2011 at 2:44 am by AngelThMan.)
TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:You do understand how these tests work, don't you?
The tests for prayer are simple - if prayer is effective, it'll yield results. Which is to say either prayer will work or it will not. The only way for god to foil these results are to NOT ANSWER THE PRAYERS (all of them) and have the results of praying be exactly the same as not praying...
No, that would be too obvious, and it would fuel the notion of someone being behind the results. It would defeat God's purpose of withholding any kind of usable results from scientists. A more subtle way is to have the people who prayed fare a little worse, which seems to be what happens in a lot of these studies.
TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:You do understand how these tests work, don't you?
The tests for prayer are simple - if prayer is effective, it'll yield results. Which is to say either prayer will work or it will not. The only way for god to foil these results are to NOT ANSWER THE PRAYERS (all of them) and have the results of praying be exactly the same as not praying...
No, that would be too obvious, and it would fuel the notion of someone being behind the results. It would defeat God's purpose of withholding any kind of usable results from scientists. A more subtle way is to have the people who prayed fare a little worse, which seems to be what happens in a lot of these studies.
... and what purpose would that serve, exactly? Other than uselessly and pointlessly obfuscating his own existance.
Praying still becomes no different than not praying in terms of whether or not it works at all.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Quote:Because it [faith] has proven itself to be beneficial to me throughout life
I would like to know how.
Quote:in fact, it has worked.
Can you prove this?
Quote:Not only that, but lacking faith has proved to me in the past to be detrimental to me as a person.
And yet I've never had any faith and yet my life runs rather well. I've done so many things over such a short period of time and it seems my life runs well if I put time and effort into my life, instead of asking some imaginary friend to do it all for me. So lacking faith effects you negatively but not me? Maybe faith has nothing to do with it.
When I don't come on here, I really do forget that there are theists in the world. I forget that religion exists. It's because where I am you just never see or hear of it. I could spend months doing whatever and not once notice something religious. One of the really good things about living in England.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - Carl Sagan
Mankind's intelligence walks hand in hand with it's stupidity.
Being an atheist says nothing about your overall intelligence, it just means you don't believe in god. Atheists can be as bright as any scientist and as stupid as any creationist.
You never really know just how stupid someone is, until you've argued with them.
AngelThMan Wrote:If God were to answer their prayers, God too would be participating in a scientific study which he doesn't want in the first place.
Why? If God exists and cares about his creation as you claim he does why doesn't he want to show faith and prayer work? Why is he afraid of a little scrutiny from us ants when he's the big bad daddy emperor of the universe?
Quote:As a former atheist, I did plenty of prayer or other acts to test the effectiveness of prayer or the existence of God. Whenever I did this, I was not answered.
Well that was totally unexpected.
Quote:Only when I've prayed with faith have my prayers been answered.
So the point you're making is you prayed to your faith god for more faith because you can never have enough faith?
If a Christian is about to fall off the edge of a skyscraper and faithfully prays to his god to save his pitiful life, only to fall to his death anyway, what was that?
1. A demonstration that prayer is ineffective?
2. God never answers prayers that are a matter of urgency?
3. God is afraid of scientists confirming prayer works?
Or
4. He didn't have enough faith?
You and I both know the obvious implication faced by the first answer, the second means your god is a twat, the third renders god a coward AND a twat, and the seemingly-desirable fourth refutes your proposition that prayer + faith = magic since you've never established this arbitrary standard whether someone has "just enough faith" to make mountains move and other miracles happen.
January 15, 2011 at 6:58 pm (This post was last modified: January 15, 2011 at 7:07 pm by AngelThMan.)
Welsh cake;114396 Wrote:
AngelThMan Wrote:If God were to answer their prayers, God too would be participating in a scientific study which he doesn't want in the first place.
Why? If God exists and cares about his creation as you claim he does why doesn't he want to show faith and prayer work?
Because then believing in him and prayer would not require faith. They would be a proven fact, hence what is the need for faith?
Welsh cake;114396 Wrote:Why is he afraid of a little scrutiny from us ants when he's the big bad daddy emperor of the universe?
God is not afraid of anything humans can throw at him. But he is God and therefore commands the respect of being treated and believed in like a god. A god doesn't make his presence known through clinical tests or scientific studies which would unequivocally prove his existence. If God did, he would no longer be a god. He would be a dictator, or a president, or a king. By definition, a god is a spirit which humans cannot see and must believe in solely by faith.
TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:
AngelThMan Wrote:
TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:You do understand how these tests work, don't you?
The tests for prayer are simple - if prayer is effective, it'll yield results. Which is to say either prayer will work or it will not. The only way for god to foil these results are to NOT ANSWER THE PRAYERS (all of them) and have the results of praying be exactly the same as not praying...
No, that would be too obvious, and it would fuel the notion of someone being behind the results. It would defeat God's purpose of withholding any kind of usable results from scientists. A more subtle way is to have the people who prayed fare a little worse, which seems to be what happens in a lot of these studies.
... and what purpose would that serve, exactly? Other than uselessly and pointlessly obfuscating his own existance.
Praying still becomes no different than not praying in terms of whether or not it works at all.
