She turned me into a newt.
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I got better.
202020
The world would be a much odder place if there were never any coincidences.
Besides . . . what of all the unanswered prayers throuought history?
Let us examine the Holocaust as an example. Approximately six million Jews (among many other ethnic groups, such as the Romani) were herded into concentration camps and systematically murdered. Many of these people were pious, led mostly blameless lives, and several were rabbis. How many of these people were praying? Probably a lot . . . right?
The idea that prayer worked to save the poster’s cat is an example of “counting the hits and disregarding the misses” or–possibly–a “Texas sharpshooter” fallacy.
An even better example is the lottery. One person out of several million wins the big prize of millions of dollars, yet how many of the millions of losers prayed to win? Prayer–at least in this case–only works once out of several million attempts.
Prayer doesn’t do shit.
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Makes me think of the film “bruce almighty” where the character traded places with god. He transferred all the prayers onto a computer, and could click yes or no to answer the prayers. He got tired of going through them, and just said Yes to all of them.
In the end several thousand people won the lottery! with the pot being split equally, they all got $11. Who is to say that couldn’t happen? It seems very, very unlikely, the probability is extremely, low and the numbers are stacked against that happening, but yet it could happen.
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Theists can sometimes shift the conversation away from these arguments. I can totally see a Christian saying something about Jews praying to the wrong version of god, and they had a chance to accept the correct version, but chose not to. Or saying something about such events as being a spiritual lesson for one’s eternal good.
Or someone that believes in karma, and reincarnation could say that that was their karma to win or loose the lottery. Or even to die under a certain time and set of circumstances.
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Yes . . . they do that. They shift the goal posts to support their position when an interlocuter shows them that they’re wrong.
But if all of these Jews (during the Holocaust) were praying in the wrong way to the wrong god, then what Jesus? He was a Jew and a rabbi. Did God permit the Holocaust because of a small legal technicality when Jews prayed in the wrong way? Isn’t God supposed to be bigger than that?
He’s said to “bless the righteous and confound the wicked”. That’s pretty “big” and suggestive it’s not like, say, applying for disability in the US, where the decision is purposely biased to find a reason to say “no” to at least the initial application. No, these promises are always lavishly explicit. “Taste, and see that the Lord is good”. And yet, the taste test always fails. “Ask, and see if I don’t open the windows of heaven … pressed down, shaken together in good measure …” and yet everyone that’s praying, even for absolutely crucial things like salvation from fatal cancer for a child … the whole zeitgeist is more one of scarcity, of the need to grovel and beg and plead to MAYBE be WORTHY of a PARTIAL response.
This was the beginning of the end for me as a believer. I never claimed to be a paragon of virtue, but by any reasonable standard I was a good and decent person, yet, I was the one confounded all too often – the fate supposedly reserved for the “wicked”. Then, it was I that had to deal with the cognitive dissonance and disappointment. It pretty quickly trained me out of the notion that I was in any way chosen or special in god’s regard, which is what this is really all about – it’s the whole appeal, really.
If there is any causal link between the cat being healed (allegedly) and the prayer, then it’s not been presented here? This is correlation not causation, which are often confused in poorly reasoned arguments, and that one event was caused by another because it came straight after is of course fallacious, it’s called a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, as of course is arguing that it was a miracle, just because we lack an alternative explanation, which is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
Basically all we have is an anecdotal claim, and some fallacious arguments.
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The Christian perception of Jews varies. Some accept that jews worship god under a different perspective, and a different name. Other Christians just think jews are as wrong as any other religion that isn’t Christian. Some, it seems also very narrowly define the correct religion as their own personal belief.
Others may accept any faith in god can merit a response, because they believe in something. That is probably the most liberal of Christians. So its hard to say if Christians believe god is big enough to heal anyone of any faith. Depends on the person.
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Can an atheist claim experience as to why they don’t believe in god? Say one had a bad experience with x,y or z religion, Or failed to get healed? or some love one failed to get healed? could this also be an anecdotal claim?
And is starvation, or any other bad or unpleasant event in the world evidence that there isn’t a god?
I can’t speak for any atheists but myself, and of course you’d have to accurately define what experience and why.
It could. or it could be factual, either way it looks like a poisoning of the well fallacy, or a hasty generalisation fallacy.
It is too generic a claim. If someone claims a deity exists that is perfectly benevolent / moral, and is omnipotent, then one can obviously infer this argument contradicts the existence of unnecessary suffering. In religious apologetics the study of this paradox is called theodicy. The fact it has never been satisfactorily solved in theology after millennia, speaks for itself. Generally they either tap dance around it, or hand wave it away, with appeals to mystery.
A cat gets (allegedly) sick and then is prayed for and (allegedly) recovers, and this is triumphantly declared a miracle, but when a baby dies in agony, with it’s praying begging parents looking on, in worse agony, then god is suddenly declared mysterious. You can’t dent that sort of “reasoning”.
It is very difficult to prove a negative, and I don’t believe that we should “prove” that there is not a god.
The burden of proof is on the interlocutor to prove that there is a god . . . not for me to prove that there isn’t a god.
Maybe one of these days I might figure out how to stop being angry about what organized religion has done to the world.
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You seem to be comparing apples to oranges. One person says an anecdote proves the existence of a god and the other says an anecdote led me to stop believing in a god. Very different things.
There is a scale to the level of confidence one has in anything reputed to be evidence. Folks can set the bar high / low overall or adjust it as high for one thing, low for another.
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Yes and no.
One clue that a system of thinking or framing is valid, is that it works … in some reasonably objective way anchored in actual lived experience.
A basic problem with Christian fundamentalism (which is what I have by far the most experience with) is that it sets the expectations of its adherents ridiculously high – especially when proselytizing or encouraging higher levels of adherence to the ideology. An extreme example is the “prosperity gospel”, or other variants of “name it and claim it” “theology”. But more broadly there’s just a strong thread of triumphalism that runs through it – constant talk of the “victorious Christian life” as a goal, etc.
The actual reality is that such believers don’t sustainably feel any better than the next person, don’t have overall better experiences, etc. But they then have to avoid admitting to this fact (at a minimum) or even act like they are “victorious” when they aren’t. And then the cognitive dissonance gets bad. REALLY bad.
And then, out of sheer exhaustion, they may stop believing. They may “quiet quit” (just stop participating) or they might try to “burn it down” on their way out.
But this serves as little more than a crisis to force them out of the “bubble” (or “reality distortion field”, to borrow a phrase from Steve Jobs). To question. To doubt. And that’s a high bar to clear in fundamentalism, because doubt is the greatest of sins.
Once you’re free to think the unthinkable, you find far better reasons not to believe than “I tried really hard and it just didn’t work”. You find them because now you can see them.
In my case, the proximal reasons for me to question the faith were experiential disappointments and painful tragedies. But the answers to those questions are the reason I now cannot afford belief to the Christian deity or belief-system. Because after all, there were alternatives. Liberal Christianity. Other religions. Other esoteric beliefs. I rejected all those religious and religious-adjacent options because they all had the same failed epistemology – religious faith or some variant of it.
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This is it in a nutshell, religious faith is defined as “strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.”
Since this can produce belief in virtually anything, it is worthless in ascertaining the truth, so it can form no part of my epistemological evaluation required in reaching my threshold for credulity. For this the most reliable methods gather objective and objectively verifiable evidence, and subject it to continuous critical scrutiny, experiment and testing.
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Isn’t atheism actually a claim? Its a negative claim, but still a claim. And seems like it should be easier to prove that, rather than a positive theistic claim. Theists will claim that disbelief can deactivate some metaphysical working, like healing, or receiving divine messages. So, wouldn’t this favor atheism, as skepticism and critical examination seems to shut down religion?
I am not sure I understand how these are very different things.
How are you defining atheism?
If you think that if I, as an atheist, say that I don’t believe assertions that gods exist is a claim then yes, that is correct.
If you think that I, as an atheist assert there are no gods then you are incorrect.
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One is about knowing and one is about believing.