Proof #9 - Understand ambiguity

Let's imagine that you have cancer and that you are a believer. You pray to God for a cure, you undergo surgery and chemotherapy, and the cancer does in fact go into remission.

What cured you? Was it the chemotherapy, or was it God?

In other words, is there any way to know whether God is playing a role or not when we pray?

The problem is that, in this imagined case, there is ambiguity. The Christian believes that God answered the prayer, but it could also be a simple coincidence.

All scientific evidence clearly indicates that it is, in fact, a coincidence. Whenever we do a scientific experiment on the efficacy of prayer, the data shows no effect from prayer (see this proof). Scientific evidence indicates that "answered prayers" really are coincidences every single time.

So how do we figure this out? Is God answering prayers as Christians believe, or is it coincidence as science indicates?

The way to answer that question is to remove the ambiguity. We make it impossible for the "answered prayer" to be a coincidence, and then we see what happens.

The way to remove the ambiguity is to say a prayer that cannot be answered (or is highly unlikely to happen) by coincidence. For example, instead of praying that God cures one person's cancer, pray that God eliminates all cancer tomorrow. The fact that prayers like that are never answered shows us something important about God.

What we find whenever we perform an unambiguous experiment like this is that God never answers unambiguous prayers. Jesus promises in many places in the Bible that he will answer prayers -- even impossible prayers. But what you find whenever you put Jesus to the test is that Jesus is making a false promise.

What we find is that God never answers impossible prayers - even if the prayers are incredibly worthy. For example:

  • Pray to God to levitate a car and hold it floating in the air for ten minutes. It will not happen, even if you are praying to levitate the car because a drunk driver has run over a college freshman and she is currently pinned under one of the wheels.

  • Pray to God to let you fly through the air like Superman. It will not happen, even if you are praying to fly like superman so that you can rise up to a tenth story window and save two children from their burning apartment.

  • Pray to God to fill your basement with $100 million in small unmarked bills. It will not happen, even if you plan to donate the $100 million that God gives you to a worthy and deserving charity.

  • Pray to God to restore the amputated limbs of a deserving, penitent believer. It will not happen, no matter how sincere you are in your prayer.
None of these prayers will ever be answered. We know that with certainty. If they were answered, we would see people flying thought the air like Superman on the evening news. We would see amputated limbs regenerating all the time. Every Christian charity would be fully funded and there would not be 10 million children starving to death every year. [ref]

These unambiguous prayers are how we know, for sure, that God/Jesus are not actually answering prayers. The scientific evidence is correct. "Answered prayers" are nothing more than simple coincidences every single time. The whole idea of "God answering prayers" is a complete illusion because God is imaginary.

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by Marshall Brain

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