Decline of religious in USA: "Nones" now more than evangelicals (priest, pastors)
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Unfortunately, your ilk is just too biased to accept evidence.
And yet we provide the evidence you ask for, and not once do you respond to it. You just ignore it. You are in no position to accuse us of being biased. Nor of hypocrisy. Nor of dishonesty.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If I put it out there, it is rejected immediately.
I spent time looking at your suicide claims. I even cut samples out and posted using bold orange where they did not support your argument. And for my second explanation of your ONE Templeton scientist I even quoted you quoting the scientist, again in bold orange. That is not rejecting anything immediately. And you did not even have the respect to respond to something I spent time checking. You just dismissed it by lying about atheists.
You are in no position to accuse us of rejecting claims immediately. Nor of hypocrisy. Nor of dishonesty. Nor of showing no respect.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
No, you ignored the evidence regarding slavery, stubbornly refusing to examine the culture context, language and other verses that were clearly anti-slavery.
Yes, anti-slavery for the Israelites. As I explained once before. I also quoted the verse in it's cultural context about slaves being taken from non Israeli countries.
You are in no position to accuse us of ignoring evidence. Nor of dishonesty.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Incredibly arrogant for atheists to judge God without knowing all the facts.
Which means it is incredibly arrogant of you to lie about us without knowing all the facts, AND it is incredibly arrogant of you to use the 'mysterious ways' excuse to defend slavery. Again.
Slavery is immoral. Owning people is immoral. Getting out the "God" card does not get you out of this.
You are in no position to accuse us of being arrogant. Nor are you in the position to take the moral high ground.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Atheists can't even agree what atheism is.
And here is where you demonstrate once again you do not know what you are talking about.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
You trot out that it is simply lack of belief due to no evidence yet time and time again, I see atheists boldly claim as FACT that there is no God and the Bible is myth.
And both types do not believe in gods! Atheism 101. One is just certain about their beliefs, the other simply does not believe. It is just degrees of atheism. So we do understand what atheism is. Clearly you do not.
And Iraneus of Lyons admitted that the gospels were mythical so that even the less intelligent who take the gospels literally can be saved.
Very simple test: Take 100 terminal cancer patients who are christians. Let them pray (which they certainly will) and then see what percent are miraculously cured. This is not rocket science.
Thank you for demonstrating limited human thinking again. That's what we want. Everything simple. Black and white. Everyone cut from the same cloth. News flash, life doesn't work that way. Even when medical science tries to run such tests, the results are rarely conclusive. This is why one year, they will say eggs are bad for you, oh wait, we ran the exact same trials again and people started having heart attacks. So eggs are bad again.
If we were all the same, we would have catch the same flu bug, and fight it off. IF there is individuality on the physical layer then it is even more so on the spiritual level. God may choose not to heal someone because that is when their journey in this realm needs to come to an end. Or maybe God didn't heal that person because He knows if they survive, they will meet an atheist in the future who will lead them away from Christ. Spiritual salvation is all that matters. The flesh body is going to die anyways. My friend who was healed from cancer went on to do great mission work. There was a reason for his survival.
Thank you for demonstrating limited human thinking again. That's what we want. Everything simple. Black and white. Everyone cut from the same cloth. News flash, life doesn't work that way. Even when medical science tries to run such tests, the results are rarely conclusive. This is why one year, they will say eggs are bad for you, oh wait, we ran the exact same trials again and people started having heart attacks. So eggs are bad again.
If we were all the same, we would have catch the same flu bug, and fight it off. IF there is individuality on the physical layer then it is even more so on the spiritual level. God may choose not to heal someone because that is when their journey in this realm needs to come to an end. Or maybe God didn't heal that person because He knows if they survive, they will meet an atheist in the future who will lead them away from Christ. Spiritual salvation is all that matters. The flesh body is going to die anyways. My friend who was healed from cancer went on to do great mission work. There was a reason for his survival.
. God may choose not to heal someone because that is when their journey in this realm needs to come to an end. Or maybe God didn't heal that person because He knows if they survive, they will meet an atheist in the future who will lead them away from Christ. Spiritual salvation is all that matters. The flesh body is going to die anyways. My friend who was healed from cancer went on to do great mission work. There was a reason for his survival.
Relating to the prayer thread, this would verify that it's a pretty useless exercise except for the "thy will be done" part
Arq, It is clear you do not recognize the problem with your non-rocket science belief about the essential requirements of control variables.
Mystic, it is clear that you are playing the 'you don't understand' trick. And it Is a trick. If I was wrong you would have explained why. Instead you simply wave it away.
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Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Mystic, you're deliberately making this more complex than it has to be simply to muddy the water and confuse the situation. Phetaroi had it on the money:
Exactly! Its not rocket science. It's as simple as pie. Send a 100 Christian "prayer warriors" into a children's cancer ward. Pray for 100 cancer patients. Wait a week--and that's giving God a generous amount of time. Then see whether any of the children's cancer has regressed or disappeared. Why are you getting into all this crap about "some indicator of devoutness, method, and frequency of prayer". One prayer ought to do it, right? Or is God that fickle that He has to be preened with prayers until He's in just the right mood to start answering them???? Ridiculous! Mystic, sometimes I wonder about you. You can be so intelligible one moment and then make absolutely no sense the next.
Another one who isn't fooled by you, Mystic. The Thrill can see the matter, which isn't so hard, and is no more fooled by your attempt to obfuscate with attempts to over-complicate and employ impressive -sounding jargon than I am.
Now an atheist sees this as an innate sense that arises in us as social animals.
But I see it as God not caring whether you are an atheist or not---He will help if you pray!!!! Sometimes it just boils down to who is interpreting data!
That's odd. The whole point of the Thread is that tests of this kind showed that prayer did Not work. Ate we up against conflicting results is different tests?
I'm thinking through the implications id that was the case or if in fact prayer worked, or grass as well as cancer -patients.
Does it work in India as well with prayers to Vishnu? Why does it work? Let's have some blind controls.
But here we are and science is not declaring that prayer does seem to work, and they are researching to find out all about what it can do and how. But the research isn't going on.
The thread's been more about the believers trying to reject the research that prayer has no effect by wagging this or that Inexplicable healing about, which even if it isn't just bias confirmation, is just -not explained.
I'll try to find time to look into this scientific American claim, since we seem to have conflicting evidence.
Hey - hang on mate. That was about self -control through prayer. God knows why you needed a couple of professors to find that out. Mental control through meditation - any kind of mental focus - is familiar enough. But where are the studies on increasing corn - yield through prayer?
Sorry -I though we were on the 'prayer -fails' thread. But I had a look. The study hasn't set the world alight, not even amongst the religion, because the Prof. Malt Friese and Michaela Wanke work rather shows that it is human mentality that is at work here, and there is no reason the drag a god into it. Whichever one is believed in.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-09-2019 at 08:12 AM..
Thank you for demonstrating limited human thinking again. That's what we want. Everything simple. Black and white. Everyone cut from the same cloth. News flash, life doesn't work that way. Even when medical science tries to run such tests, the results are rarely conclusive. This is why one year, they will say eggs are bad for you, oh wait, we ran the exact same trials again and people started having heart attacks. So eggs are bad again.
If we were all the same, we would have catch the same flu bug, and fight it off. IF there is individuality on the physical layer then it is even more so on the spiritual level. God may choose not to heal someone because that is when their journey in this realm needs to come to an end. Or maybe God didn't heal that person because He knows if they survive, they will meet an atheist in the future who will lead them away from Christ. Spiritual salvation is all that matters. The flesh body is going to die anyways. My friend who was healed from cancer went on to do great mission work. There was a reason for his survival.
Here's a piece of advice Jeff: Don't tell a man with two degrees in the natural sciences (in my case geology) how science works. Don't tell a man who won awards teaching high school science for 13 years how science works.
But you're right...science doesn't always have the right answers because it's a process where knowledge is built on...rather than a bunch of fables from a few thousand years ago.
You christians would be better off if you stuck with discussing the principles the babble...I mean bible...teaches, rather than the "facts" in the bible...many of which are unsupportable.
And I also will point out that scientists -- as new data comes around -- can admit that previous interim conclusions were incorrect. That's something I've never seen you do. You claim to bve a seeker of knowledge. Which is untrue. You've already come to all your final conclusions. It's a dead end.
Here's a piece of advice Jeff: Don't tell a man with two degrees in the natural sciences (in my case geology) how science works. Don't tell a man who won awards teaching high school science for 13 years how science works.
But you're right...science doesn't always have the right answers because it's a process where knowledge is built on...rather than a bunch of fables from a few thousand years ago.
You christians would be better off if you stuck with discussing the principles the babble...I mean bible...teaches, rather than the "facts" in the bible...many of which are unsupportable.
Thank you for demonstrating limited human thinking again. That's what we want. Everything simple. Black and white. Everyone cut from the same cloth. News flash, life doesn't work that way. Even when medical science tries to run such tests, the results are rarely conclusive. This is why one year, they will say eggs are bad for you, oh wait, we ran the exact same trials again and people started having heart attacks. So eggs are bad again.
If we were all the same, we would have catch the same flu bug, and fight it off. IF there is individuality on the physical layer then it is even more so on the spiritual level. God may choose not to heal someone because that is when their journey in this realm needs to come to an end. Or maybe God didn't heal that person because He knows if they survive, they will meet an atheist in the future who will lead them away from Christ. Spiritual salvation is all that matters. The flesh body is going to die anyways. My friend who was healed from cancer went on to do great mission work. There was a reason for his survival.
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.... Of course people are all different. That is why human remedies don't all work the same way. But Jesusgod can do anything. It's a miracle, right? So if prayer worked, they'd all be cured. That's the problem with a an omnipotent god - if it can do anything and everything, why does the world look like we have no such god in it?
What's more, with this whole prayer thing, the believers know this; they know that it doesn't work as it should, and as promised in the Gospels. So rather than saying that prayer works as it ought to, it's a question of excuses why it doesn't.
Heela was throwing out an example of evidence, not a fully developed proposal.
Correct. Jeff asked for an example of evidence that would be acceptable and convincing, complaining that everyone ducked that request. I threw out an example, but only in broad strokes for a lay audience (e.g., Jeff). Details of any study, including controlling for variables, will always have to be tailored and refined to the question at hand.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
As evidenced here and in other threads about testing the efficacy of prayer, it seems that a little knowledge about the scientific method truly is dangerous.
I refer you back to your own recent admission that your position on the spectrum may make it difficult for you to recognize when you are reverting to insults, in order to establish intellectual superiority (i.e., "you're doing it again").
As for my own qualifications, I don't wish to disclose my identity. Suffice to say that I have spent 40 years at some of the best academic medical centers in the world, applying that scientific method to difficult questions, and publishing in leading journals. As a result, I feel pretty well equipped to engage in discussion on approaches to gathering evidence.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
None of your suggestions address the fundamental flaw in your vetting process. How do you determine their ability to effectively wield prayer in support of an objective? The answer is you can't. None of the characteristics you can divide them by address the ability you purport to control i.e, "some indicator of devoutness, method, and frequency of prayer" that is a viable substitute for their ability to wield prayer effectively. In one religion, the strength of belief is supposed to be the controlling factor in prayer effectiveness. How do you measure that any more effectively than we can measure the content of consciousness (we can't)?
Perhaps you can't control for all variables, but then neither can we control for every possible variable in designing studies on "cancer," which is not a single disease, and has a host of complicated factors that will affect what and how we study it. You control what you can, and make your comparison groups as similar as possible, to allow valid conclusions to be drawn.... unless you're going to fall back on "it's just too complicated" and not study it at all. If a given variable (strength of belief, in your example) is difficult to control, that may translate into a larger sample size required for study, so that characteristics across the group become more representative (i.e., average out with larger numbers in each group).
Having acknowledged the difficulty in controlling the inputs, what we CAN measure effectively are OUTCOMES. People getting better (or not) is something we can measure. It's a cop-out to say we can't study these phenomena.
Bottom line, if it works (whatever "it" is), we should be able to observe and confirm that... beyond personal experience. If we can't, there is little reason to believe it works.
Last edited by HeelaMonster; 04-09-2019 at 10:56 AM..
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Ridiculous! Mystic, sometimes I wonder about you. You can be so intelligible one moment and then make absolutely no sense the next. 
Sometimes it just boils down to who is interpreting data!
Of course people are all different. That is why human remedies don't all work the same way. But Jesusgod can do anything. It's a miracle, right? So if prayer worked, they'd all be cured. That's the problem with a an omnipotent god - if it can do anything and everything, why does the world look like we have no such god in it?