Lost and Found

[Melanie]

Can science explain immediate answers to prayer like the one in this 4 minute CBS News story?
Coincidence? Not a chance. Watch as this atheist becomes a believer before your very eyes:
http://www.faithit.com/atheist-heroi...sYN3e.facebook
Coincidence? What's the scientific explanation for a coincidence like the one seen in this video?
Why does God answer the prayers of some and not others? (post#19)

[cafolini]

Can science explain immediate answers to prayer like the one in this 4 minute CBS News story?
Watch as this atheist becomes a believer before your very eyes:
http://www.faithit.com/atheist-heroi...sYN3e.facebook
Coincidence? What's the scientific explanation for a coincidence like the one seen in this video?

Nice video, Melanie. Indeed.
Atheists are poor people like all of us, always driving in reverse until we find first gear. Thank God.

[mal4mac]

It might be coincidence. Why think it would be anything else? Coincidences like this happen all the time, prayers or not. Scientists have considered whether prayer is effective or not, and actually gone to a great deal of effort to test the efficacy of prayer in controlled experiments. Conclusion:

"The largest and most scientifically rigorous study of prayer's efficacy, the 2006 STEP project, found no significant difference whether subjects were prayed for or not..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer

[cafolini]

It might be coincidence. Why think it would be anything else? Coincidences like this happen all the time, prayers or not. Scientists have considered whether prayer is effective or not, and actually gone to a great deal of effort to test the efficacy of prayer in controlled experiments. Conclusion:

"The largest and most scientifically rigorous study of prayer's efficacy, the 2006 STEP project, found no significant difference whether subjects were prayed for or not..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer

You misunderstood this. It is the person praying for him/herself that has the effect, not being prayed for, although we believe that also helps. But obviously it might not help if the person refuses to accept God.

[YesNo]

Nice video, Melanie. Indeed.
Atheists are poor people like all of us, always driving in reverse until we find first gear. Thank God.

Nice video, Melanie. And that's a nice way of putting it, cafolini, about driving in reverse until we find first gear.

[Melanie]

Thank you for your comments everyone. But, mal4mac, your Wikipedia link about a scientific study on the effects of prayer admittedly states, "The philosophical controversy on this topic even involves the basic issues of statistical inference and falsifiability as to what it may mean to "prove" or "disprove" something, and the problem of demarcation, i.e., as to whether this topic is even within the realm of science at all". So we agree that the efficacy of prayer falls outside the realm of science. If science has no alternative explanation then that only leaves God.

[mal4mac]

"The philosophical controversy on this topic even involves the basic issues of statistical inference and falsifiability as to what it may mean to "prove" or "disprove" something, and the problem of demarcation, i.e., as to whether this topic is even within the realm of science at all". So we agree that the efficacy of prayer falls outside the realm of science. If science has no alternative explanation then that only leaves God.

The scientists who performed the STEP experiment certainly believed it was in the realm of science, and I agree with them. It seems something amenable to science. Why not? The wikipedia paragraph you quote doesn't reference any sensible material, and is one of the many bits of wikipedia that should be ignored. But if you dig down into the published articles from that wikipedia page you'll see the scientific results, which show that there is no good evidence that prayer works. I wouldn't be surprised if there were millions of people praying to get some money each day, it's hardly surprising that a few of them actually get some. This isn't a miracle, it's a coincidence that happens quite often because of the millions hoping/praying/wishing for money and the fact that people do quite often get unexepected windfalls. For example, I recently got a tax rebate "out of the blue", for no reason I can make out. If I had lost my rationality, maybe through drug use, and had prayed the day before, I might be running around shouting, "It's a miracle!" and some alcohol powered news hack, short of sense & story, might have picked it up.

[YesNo]

But if you dig down into the published articles from that wikipedia page you'll see the scientific results, which show that there is no good evidence that prayer works.

I haven't read the article, but I suspect all it shows is that prayer doesn't work under the conditions of that experiment. That's useful information, but not the message that you are presenting.

If you like statistical studies, you might want to consider those done by Dean Radin and others on PSI phenomena that he summarized in Entangled Minds. I'm mentioning this because prayer and psi phenomena seem similar to me, and the results that Radin reports show significance and so show "good evidence".

I wouldn't be surprised if there were millions of people praying to get some money each day, it's hardly surprising that a few of them actually get some.

Getting well or getting rich or getting anything specific does not seem all that significant from an eternal perspective that a praying theist might view reality. I can see how an atheist might be looking for a repeatable technique to time the market correctly. I doubt that one exists or that works all the time.

This isn't a miracle, it's a coincidence that happens quite often because of the millions hoping/praying/wishing for money and the fact that people do quite often get unexepected windfalls. For example, I recently got a tax rebate "out of the blue", for no reason I can make out.

As a side note regarding the unexpected rebate, you might want to check with that taxing authority to make sure they did not make a mistake. They may request that money back.

If I had lost my rationality, maybe through drug use, and had prayed the day before, I might be running around shouting, "It's a miracle!" and some alcohol powered news hack, short of sense & story, might have picked it up.

Viewing a coincidence as if it showed a causal relationship is not irrational. It is just thinking causally and looking for a rule that might be applicable. People who trade the markets come up with many of these.

I'm puzzled by what you mean by losing your "rationality". I assume everyone is rational. If they weren't, why bother arguing with them?

What I see in Melanie's video is someone whose act of unexpected kindness might have helped change another person's life. Both of these people have adequate free will, so one should not expect a deterministic cause to be at work here. That other person has probably had many acts of kindness throughout his life and nothing happened, but for some reason this time he might have made a choice to change.

The best acts of kindness are done for their own sake without expectations of any deterministic results.

[Melanie]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were millions of people praying to get some money each day, it's hardly surprising that a few of them actually get some.

The video didn't say what he prayed for. He was a "deadbeat" heroin addict. The news anchorman doing the narrating guessed that the argument with his girlfriend was over money, but it was a guess. The girlfriend suggested he try prayer…she didn't say about what. The gift of cash wasn't about money at all. When the Secret Santa gifted him the money, the heroin addict said, "I didn't earn that". The secret santa said, "Yes you did, because you're a good person; when did anyone ever tell you that?". To know that someone believed he had worth, when no one else did (including himself) was when the heroin addict broke down. The answer to prayer was love, not money. That's what it was all about. God loves all sinners (not the sin). The money is here today, gone tomorrow but God's love is forever. That immediate and specific answer was from a "higher power", as CBS news said. There is something called a "stop-gap" where scientists have no answers. This is one of them, "coincidences".

[Volya]

I am not a religious person, nor am I an atheist. And although what happened in that news story may well be a miracle, I don't really see any reason to think it was God who did it, not a lucky coincidence. If a guy goes around handing out money to people every Christmas then it's only really a matter of time before it 'answers' a prayer.

[mal4mac]

What I see in Melanie's video is someone whose act of unexpected kindness might have helped change another person's life. Both of these people have adequate free will, so one should not expect a deterministic cause to be at work here. That other person has probably had many acts of kindness throughout his life and nothing happened, but for some reason this time he might have made a choice to change.

But how many junkies have taken the free handout and shot it up their arm? It would be much better if the rich dude gave the money to health & welfare programmes. Then the money would, more likely, be put to good use. You don't see Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Barack Obama scattering money around at Christmas. They've made a more considered response to the problems of the disadvantaged.

[mal4mac]

The video didn't say what he prayed for. He was a "deadbeat" heroin addict. The news anchorman doing the narrating guessed that the argument with his girlfriend was over money, but it was a guess. The girlfriend suggested he try prayer…she didn't say about what. The gift (aka answer to prayer the night before) wasn't about money at all. When the Secret Santa gifted him the money, the heroin addict said, "I didn't earn that". The secret santa said, "Yes, you did because you're a good person; when did anyone ever tell you that?". To know that someone believed he had worth, when no one else did (including himself) was when the heroin addict broke down. The answer to prayer was love, not money. God loves all sinners (not the sin). The money is here today, gone tomorrow but God's love is forever. That immediate and specific answer was from a "higher power", as CBS news said. There is something called a "stop-gap" where scientists have no answers. This is one of them, "coincidences".

OK but the words of kindness,and the love, came from "Secret Santa". Why postulate a God from which that love came? You could easily imagine an atheist "Secret Santa" having the same impact, indeed I've seen atheist millionaires having a similar impact on the reality show "Secret Millionaire".

[MorpheusSandman]

Coincidence? What's the scientific explanation for a coincidence like the one seen in this video?

Coincidence? Seriously, the fact that crap like this impresses people makes me ill. Most people have problems, a majority of those people pray for relief from those problems, and when you have a guy going around doing "random acts of kindness," the probabilities are astronomically high that at least ONE of those people would be in a dire situation and would've been praying for relief. So this isn't even coincidence, it's something that's highly probable would happen!

On the other hand, go visit, say, 100 addicts; let them pray for some miracle to "save them;" and then keep track of how many receive anything remotely similar. People who want to believe cherry-pick the examples that reinforce their faith, and ignore all of the other hundreds, if not thousands or millions of prayers that go unanswered. They ignore the countless addicts that destroy themselves, their families, and kill others around them, even after having prayed themselves. It's about the grossest example of selection bias I can think of, and I find its cheap, manipulative, blind, ignorant sentimentality disgusting.

[Melanie]

OK but the words of kindness,and the love, came from "Secret Santa". Why postulate a God from which that love came? You could easily imagine an atheist "Secret Santa" having the same impact, indeed I've seen atheist millionaires having a similar impact on the reality show "Secret Millionaire".

Yes, the Secret Santa in the video may well have been an atheist because his spiritual persuasion was never mentioned. But the heroin addict prayed to God (not santa), and God can use an atheist to deliver an answer to prayer if he wants to. Let's say, hypothetically, that the Santa was an atheist, then the man he helped shares that he had prayed to God the night before. The Santa is touched and becomes a believer through it. That's how God works. You don't realize it while it's going on but God could be working on both of them.

...go visit, say, 100 addicts; let them pray for some miracle to "save them;" and then keep track of how many receive anything remotely similar. People who want to believe cherry-pick the examples that reinforce their faith, and ignore all of the other hundreds, if not thousands or millions of prayers that go unanswered….Most people have problems, a majority of those people pray for relief from those problems, and when you have a guy going around doing "random acts of kindness," the probabilities are astronomically high...

You couldn't be further from the truth. You can't "keep track" of when and if prayers are answered because you don't know when God's perfect timing is. You don't know when those 100 addict's hearts are ready. Some addicts haven't hit rock bottom quite yet, and may need to in order to admit they're sinners in need of a savior. Only God knows when each individual is ready to repent. And yes, the probability of one in a hundred receiving an answer to their prayer IS astronomically high because God is just and faithful to open the door to a heart that's ready and willing to deny himself and follow Him.

[mal4mac]

Only God knows when each individual is ready to repent.

How do you know this? How do you know there even is a God? If the junkie says, "I prayed to God and he answered me", why on Earth would you believe him? Hallucinations are a noted side effect of taking junk!