Fallacies in an "Answered Prayer" explanation?

[Neo-Scholastic]

You're a stitch, robvalue. Of course amputees aren't going to grow back limbs. Prayer can only have influence over outcomes that are indeterminate and even then only move the probability spread within the range of what is possible, assuming those outcomes are consistent with the divine plan.

[Surgenator]

You're a stitch, robvalue. Of course amputees aren't going to grow back limbs. Prayer can only  have influence over outcomes that are indeterminate and even then only move the probability spread within the range of what is possible, assuming those outcomes are consistent with the divine plan.

(bold mine) So god can create a whole human being. But when it comes to an arm or leg, that is out of the question. What kind of weak god is this?

[Nope]

I'm have a no-thinky kind of week, or maybe my brain is just mush because of the rest of the email I've been dealing with, but I received this from my theist penpal and I know there's shit wrong with it but I can't exactly put my finger on it yet.

The topic being discussed here is how you know when something constitutes an "actual" answered prayer.

Then penpal's answer is as follows with the part making my brain hurt being italicized (by me):

- If there's something I want and the answer is 'no' then my emotions probably didn't interfere. 
- Conversely, if it's something I don't want and the answer is 'yes', then my emotions can safely be ruled out
- If there's something I want and the answer is 'yes' then I have to be more careful and I usually ask multiple times in different ways
- Ditto with something I don't want and the answer is 'no'
- If I don't get an answer, I know I didn't put enough study into the matter and I have to repeat the process or it is something that I don't need an answer for.

My thought as it currently stands is that this amounts to an argument against self-interest: "It has to be answered prayer otherwise I would have gotten the answer I wanted!" but to the best of my (admitted drained) abilities right now, I can't figure out if that's a fallacy or not.

My other thought is that it's some kind of round about Begging the Question fallacy wherein the suppressed premise is something like "I want a particular answer" and the conclusion is "because I didn't get the answer I wanted, God must be real!"

Thoughts?

Ug, my brain hurts.

My guess is that she isn't talking about praying for something concrete. Instead she believes that god tells her things through her emotions. So, she might pray for god to let her know if she should apply for a certainjob, for instance. The bible says that the heart(emotions)is deceitful so she can't trust that god is actually talking to her unless she tests what she feels. The way she determines the validity of these messages is if the 'answer' goes against her inclination then she assumes it must be correct. So, if she wanted to apply for a job and felt god said not to then she would trust she heard god right. If she feels god gave a positive answer then she will become uncertain and ask the same thing again and again

That seems like a situation that would cause someone a lot of stress. Please ask her for specific examples

[robvalue]

Clueless: it seems your friend is well aware that God either can't or won't do anything that can't happen anyway. In other words, stuff is happening, and she is randomly labelling some of that stuff as "gods work" and retrofitting it to her prayers.

Maybe ask her to stop praying to God for a week, and instead start praying to a door knob. She can do exactly the prayers she would have done to God, ie. stuff that can happen anyway. Then she can see which prayers get "answered", thus proving the magical powers of the door knob.

[Angrboda]

That seems like a situation that would cause someone a lot of stress. Please ask her for specific examples

I used to occasionally get in a mood where I thought my god was trying to tell me something, but I was unclear as to exactly what it was. Same sort of thing. I would thrash, trying to figure out what my god wanted. Those episodes are one of the reasons I gave up believing. It just seemed like the story of Skinner's superstitious pigeons.

http://io9.com/5746904/how-pigeons-get-t...erstitious

[Esquilax]

You're a stitch, robvalue. Of course amputees aren't going to grow back limbs. Prayer can only  have influence over outcomes that are indeterminate and even then only move the probability spread within the range of what is possible, assuming those outcomes are consistent with the divine plan.

Or, in real person speak: "An answered prayer is indistinguishable from chance!"

[Clueless Morgan]

My guess is that she isn't talking about praying for something concrete. Instead she believes that god tells her things through her emotions.

She makes an arbitrary distinction between "emotional impulses" and "spiritual promptings."  Here is are two quotes from her elucidating this "distinction:

We are also warned to be careful about the spiritual experiences that we receive. Our emotions are closely linked to our spirits and if not careful and discerning, we can mistake an emotional impulse for a spiritual prompting.

Here is the portion of the quote directly prior to the "five options" I quoted in the OP:

A note: I inadvertently grouped confirmation and prompting together and just called it promptings. Promptings are easier to discern. A sudden thought, usually encouraging some type of action, is easy to test: act on it and examine the results. Promptings involving the imparting of knowledge is more difficult and may require extra study and/or patience.

Confirmations can be trickier because emotions are usually more involved. There are five possible scenarios:

That seems like a situation that would cause someone a lot of stress. Please ask her for specific examples

I'm gonna have to.

Clueless: it seems your friend is well aware that God either can't or won't do anything that can't happen anyway. In other words, stuff is happening, and she is randomly labelling some of that stuff as "gods work" and retrofitting it to her prayers.

Maybe ask her to stop praying to God for a week, and instead start praying to a door knob. She can do exactly the prayers she would have done to God, ie. stuff that can happen anyway. Then she can see which prayers get "answered", thus proving the magical powers of the door knob.

[my bolding]

While I agree with the idea of telling her to pray to a door knob or garden gnome or hair brush, her answer for why this wouldn't work would be that her prayers are still being answered by her god because he "knows" she's not "really" praying to the hair brush or door knob.  She in deep, this one.  Real deep.

I kind of wish she were active in the threads here; she'd learn some shit.  (She made an account for PMing purposes, but the conversation has since left the forums and moved to email)

I used to occasionally get in a mood where I thought my god was trying to tell me something, but I was unclear as to exactly what it was.  Same sort of thing.  I would thrash, trying to figure out what my god wanted.  Those episodes are one of the reasons I gave up believing.  It just seemed like the story of Skinner's superstitious pigeons.

http://io9.com/5746904/how-pigeons-get-t...erstitious

I was going to send her QualiaSoup's Superstition video which uses this exact example.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWo3kTYb8W0

[Wyrd of Gawd]

You're a stitch, robvalue. Of course amputees aren't going to grow back limbs. Prayer can only  have influence over outcomes that are indeterminate and even then only move the probability spread within the range of what is possible, assuming those outcomes are consistent with the divine plan.

(bold mine) So god can create a whole human being. But when it comes to an arm or leg, that is out of the question. What kind of weak god is this?

A surgeon has a plan to swap a guy's head off of his defective body onto a "healthy" corpse.  If he's successful should he be considered to be greater than the God character?

[Neo-Scholastic]

You're a stitch, robvalue. Of course amputees aren't going to grow back limbs. Prayer can only  have influence over outcomes that are indeterminate and even then only move the probability spread within the range of what is possible, assuming those outcomes are consistent with the divine plan.

Or, in real person speak: "An answered prayer is indistinguishable from chance!"

Not what I said. Typical Esq...trying not to understand because if he he did he might have to repent.

[Esquilax]

Or, in real person speak: "An answered prayer is indistinguishable from chance!"

Not what I said. Typical Esq...trying not to understand because if he he did he might have to repent.

Um, I'm sorry you don't comprehend what you wrote, but when you claim that prayer can only happen within the scope of what is physically possible, and in which the outcome cannot be concretely predicted, then what you are describing is something identical to the effects of chance, which is characterized by being limited in exactly the same ways. You might feel like it's somehow special, you always assume that what you believe has some ephemeral leg up on readily demonstrable things which you never bother to justify yourself, but the actual content of what you wrote is such that, if one were to remove all references to miracles from it, you would essentially be describing a run of the mill dice roll.

But hey, this must all be my fault somehow, because I secretly believe in your god, right? You keep that up, you'll be reported; the majority of what you've posted in response to me lately has been little more than one sentence misrepresentations of my position, used as an excuse to dismiss me out of hand. I'm happy to tell you to fuck right off there, but it is also against the rules, you know, and as a mod I'm bound to report it if I perceive a pattern. Maybe try responding to what I actually say, instead of dodging like that in future, hmm?