Now I want you to try the [coin-flipping] experiment again, but this time I want you to pray to Jesus Christ instead of Ra. Pray sincerely to Jesus like this:Of course this example has a common justification, which is that we are testing the lord. So here is a mean trick you can use to screw over any Christian who thinks their normal prayers get answered, but not their "test prayers".
"Dear Jesus, I know that you exist and I know that you hear and answer prayers as you promise in the Bible. I am going to flip this ordinary coin 50 times, and I am asking you to cause it to land heads-side-up all 50 times. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen."Now flip the coin. Once again, after the fifth or sixth flip, the coin will land tails.
Invalidate a Christian's Prayer's
All you have to do is periodically ask them what they are praying for, and follow up by asking whether it works. You are doing this for the purpose of comparing their results with the normal statistics about these kinds of things. Now all their normal prayers are test prayers!
The whole "testing the lord" line reminds me of when you're playing a game of Horse and you miss a basket, so you call it a practice shot. But if you sink a nice shot, you sure as hell are not going to give up the credit for that sucker on a technicality. A Christian who defends prayer is just like a cheap Horse player, clinging tightly to anecdotes about effective prayers, while shrugging off any meaningful studies of the phenomenon.
If you are a good Christian who believes in prayer, I bet you'd still feel a little uncomfortable openly praying for God to strike you dead. But what's the biggie? It's obviously a test, so he won't do anything, right? I would certainly have no problem shouting any self-destructive prayer you like, because I have real confidence in my knowledge that they are useless.
The truth is that people who believe prayer works don't know the conditions under which it does. It's easy to make up rationalizations for individual incidents after they happen, but that's exactly what they are -- rationalizations. Do your Christian acquaintances a favor and invalidate their prayers with this handy technique so they stop wasting time on them.
4 comments:
Hey Liron Shapira,
I'm going to pray that 3 of your family members get very ill. Since prayer is a superstition it doesn't matter right? Even if 3 of your family members became ill - you would still not believe in God. So after they get better, 2 of your closest friends will be injured in separate accidents - on the same day. When this happens read John or the whole NT and believe and be baptized. Trust me, you don't want to test God. I have enough faith to ask for the above. Hopefully after this you will change where you spend your energies as Saul/Paul did.
- GV (in faith)
Hey GV,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. While I certainly will not lose any sleep over your malicious prayers, I find it troubling that you would wish a terrible illness on three innocent people like that.
I appreciate that you took the time to warn me, but I do in fact wish to test God as I test any other meaningful proposition -- with the scientific method.
Oh dear, I rather thought that Chistians believed in being kind to people and hoping some innocent person suffers does not seem all that kind.
Still, why not pray for me to drop dead instead of hurting some people who might be devout Christians.(Friendly fire?)
God after all is omnipotent and should have no trouble finding an anonymous poster.
Hey Will:
Stunning idea! I'll pray for his house to catch fire and his dog to get run over!
And I'll get my pal to pray that he loses at bowling really bad! If we use an infinite number of prayers, one of them will have to be answered and THERE IS NO WAY THAT IT COULD BE COINCIDENCE.
Reminds me of the chain letters that say 'x bonkers thing will happen to you' along with one testimonial from the millions of people that it got sent to that says 'yeah that actually happened to me.'
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