Atheists Only: Would this be proof?

Calling all atheists! :shout Okay, first off, I am not proselytizing, so don't bother getting out the boxing gloves. I couldn't care less that you don't believe in God (for the sake of argument, let's say the Abrahamic God). So, let's get that straight for starters. It's just that I've heard so many atheists say, "Give me proof and I'll believe in God." I don't even bother trying, because I know I can't prove that God exists. Whenever a theist does attempt to come up with proof, you guys refuse to accept it. I can't say that I blame you since I don't find their proof particularly compelling myself. Today, my husband and I were having a conversation that made me think about starting this thread. Basically, it had to do with prayer and with God's will.

I started wondering about a hypothetical, although impossible, situation that, in my opinion, could -- if it were feasible -- be considered proof of God's existence. Let's say we had a group of 500,000 people, all of whom were terminally ill and none of whom were in any way religious. They could be either agnostic or atheist, I suppose, but they definitely would not be the kind of people who would ever pray, asking that God heal them, nor would they solicit the prayers of others on their behalf. Let's assume that they were all close to death and resigned to the fact that the end was near. Now, let's say that these people were split into two groups of 250,000 each. The prayers of all Christians, Muslims and Jews throughout the world were offered up to God, pleading with Him to heal the dying individuals within the first of these two groups. No one, however would pray for anyone in the second group. Within a relatively short period of time (let's say two weeks), every single one of the 250,000 individuals for whom prayers were offered were "miraculously" healed. Without a single exception, all of them were as healthy as they'd been at any time in their lives. On the other hand, during this same period of time, every last one of the 250,000 who had not had anyone pray for them (and had not prayed for themselves) died, as had been expected.

Would these results, if they were exactly as I described them, possibly cause you to re-think you lack of belief in God? Would they, in other words, be sufficient to make you to believe in God? If not, to what would you attribute the results of the experiment? (Please don't start by telling me that such an experiment would be impossible to perform. I may be a theist, but I'm honestly not quite that stupid! Just pretend that we actually could do this experiment and come up with the results I stated and take it from there.)

Since this is not a debate forum, I'm just looking for answers. I may or may not come back with further thoughts of my own.

There have been some studies regarding this issue, such as this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/14/AR2005071401695.html

The results were that Christians prayer had little effect on health, but it says religious people may have a slight less suffering of their illness, yet mostly due to a positive and hopeful attitude, which can help the body work better.


If it did happen, and there was significant evidence showing it, I would definitely consider it

Thanks for your input. That's just what I was looking for. I hope to see a lot of responses because it would really be interesting to me.

Katzpur said:

Okay, first off, I am not proselytizing, so don't bother getting out the boxing gloves.

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Awww, man. I'm always looking for a good fight.

I started wondering about a hypothetical, although impossible, situation that, in my opinion, could -- if it were feasible -- be considered proof of God's existence. Let's say we had a group of 500,000 people, all of whom were terminally ill and none of whom were in any way religious. They could be either agnostic or atheist, I suppose, but they definitely would not be the kind of people who would ever pray, asking that God heal them, nor would they solicit the prayers of others on their behalf. Let's assume that they were all close to death and resigned to the fact that the end was near. Now, let's say that these people were split into two groups of 250,000 each. The prayers of all Christians, Muslims and Jews throughout the world were offered up to God, pleading with Him to heal the dying individuals within the first of these two groups. No one, however would pray for anyone in the second group. Within a relatively short period of time (let's say two weeks), every single one of the 250,000 individuals for whom prayers were offered were "miraculously" healed. Without a single exception, all of them were as healthy as they'd been at any time in their lives. On the other hand, during this same period of time, every last one of the 250,000 who had not had anyone pray for them (and had not prayed for themselves) died, as had been expected.

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Well, come on, guys! What you got against the second group?

Would these results, if they were exactly as I described them, possibly cause you to re-think you lack of belief in God? Would they, in other words, be sufficient to make you to believe in God? If not, to what would you attribute the results of the experiment? (Please don't start by telling me that such an experiment would be impossible to perform. I may be a theist, but I'm honestly not quite that stupid! Just pretend that we actually could do this experiment and come up with the results I stated and take it from there.)

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Would such results make me believe in God? No. Would they make me think? Quite possibly. The thing is, such results where all the members of one group miraculously healed and all the members of another group died would make me very suspicious about the results, as I'd expect there to be some who died and some who lived in each group, taking into account the variable nature of illnesses and that prayer doesn't always seem to work in keeping people alive, etc. I would ultimately conclude bias.

Regardless, I already have heard of studies that show that prayer has little or no effect on recovery of patients.

EDIT: Ah, I see the person who posted before me with the funky name posted a link. Cool.

standing_alone said:

Awww, man. I'm always looking for a good fight.

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You don't want to fight with me. I fight dirty.

Would such results make me believe in God? No. Would they make me think? Quite possibly. The thing is, such results where all the members of one group miraculously healed and all the members of another group died would make me very suspicious about the results, as I'd expect there to be some who died and some who lived in each group, taking into account the variable nature of illnesses and that prayer doesn't always seem to work in keeping people alive, etc. I would ultimately conclude bias.

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I see. Well your answer doesn't exactly take into account that all 250,000 of the one group lived and got well; all 250,000 of the other group died as expected. I'm talking about results that were clearly delineated along the lines I described. There weren't a handful of exceptions.

Regardless, I already have heard of studies that show that prayer has little or no effect on recovery of patients.

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Yeah, I've heard those, too, but I've also heard the opposite results. But, that's all beside the point as I've tried to state it.

Katzpur said:

Well your answer doesn't exactly take into account that all 250,000 of the one group lived and got well; all 250,000 of the other group died as expected.

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Yeah, I did. And that's what would make me, personally, suspicious. I could see there being a significant difference between both groups, like most of the unprayed for dying, but not all, but when it's 100% survival for the prayed for and 100% death for the unprayed for, I'm going to be suspicious. I'd expect there to be some deaths and some living in both groups. Not a 100% success/failure rate like that. That just draws my suspicion.

I would first want extensive research done by trustworthy organizations and doctors to prove there was no funny business going on. If the general consesus is approval, I would further investigate the subject to ensure I hadn't misread any information. Then upon finding no other theory of reasonable merit I would finally consider God to be a very real possibility.

Katzpur said:

Would these results, if they were exactly as I described them, possibly cause you to re-think you lack of belief in God? Would they, in other words, be sufficient to make you to believe in God? If not, to what would you attribute the results of the experiment?

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No, this wouldn't be sufficient, since it could be evidence of the existence of psychic healing powers that are fully owned by human beings in a godless universe. I'm afraid it would be a far cry away from establishing the existence of a universe-creating superbeing, but it would certainly shake up my worldview, though like the others I would be suspicious of fraud.


eudaimonia,

Mark

In short, no it wouldn't make me believe in a god. It would only make my belief in possitive thinking stronger!

Heya Katzpur,
If the experiment that you descibe were carried out and ended in the way that you state then that would certainly be incredibly statistically significant and deserving of an explanation of some kind.

However, it does not seem like that the answer "God did it" actually explains what has happened. Lets say I drop an apple and you tell me that the explanation for why it falls is "God did it". I then offer the alternative of actually explaining what causes the apple to fall and it seems that this explanation can survive on its own without the need of God. Similarly, if prayer were shown to produce results (and there is at least some statistical evidence to suggest that it does not compared with a complete lack of evidence in its favour) then it would be far simpler to come up with an explanation that did not rely on a phenomena of which we had no other evidence and who is very improbable himself.

To improve your experiment you would need to show that there was a link between believing in God and the prayer working. For example, it might be a result of "positive thinking" or some other natural mechanism in the brain. At best, and if the experiment were improved upon significantly, then I would be quite happy to admit that was evidence of some external influence but whether that was God or aliens or something else entirely...

eudaimonia said:

No, this wouldn't be sufficient, since it could be evidence of the existence of psychic healing powers that are fully owned by human beings in a godless universe. I'm afraid it would be a far cry away from establishing the existence of a universe-creating superbeing, but it would certainly shake up my worldview, though like the others I would be suspicious of fraud.


eudaimonia,

Mark

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Yep. I totally agree.



One could conclude that it's the prayers, the devotion, the compassion that the people felt, and not God that healed. I've heard storied of this happening (and I believe them), but there have been a lot of stories coming from Buddhist circles of healings from prayers and mantras alone. Most of us are non-theist, too.



So, sure..........the power of prayer need not be snubbed. It's the source of the effects that is debatable, and I do not see any evidence that points to a creator-God as that source.



Peace,
Mystic

GeneCosta said:

I would first want extensive research done by trustworthy organizations and doctors to prove there was no funny business going on. If the general consesus is approval, I would further investigate the subject to ensure I hadn't misread any information. Then upon finding no other theory of reasonable merit I would finally consider God to be a very real possibility.

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Of course, this would be a double blind experiment. The doctors wouldn't know which group was which - and neither would the patients. Those praying would be praying just for either group I or group II - they wouldn't know who was in either group.

Dear Katzpur,

Scientists are finding some "proof" of "something," but they tend to refrain from calling it "god." Many now refer to Princeton's Global Consciousness Research Project when talking about quantum entanglement and the possibility for a higher level of global consciousness.

For those of you who may be unaware of Princeton's Global Consciousness project, you can visit this link: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/index.html

Using random number generators (nicknamed EGGs), Princeton students have been observing anomalies immediately before, during and shortly after major events, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks and even mass prayer sessions and concerts for world peace!

The project has been running for nearly a decade; and their most striking results came shortly before, during and after the attacks of 9-11. During the height of the attacks, the random number generators--which continually generate numbers--ceased to be random throughout the world. The results were shocking. Read more here: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/terror.html

Many other events, as can be found listed on Princeton's website can be seen here: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/results.html This is NOT a complete list of events, but is a good starting point for examples.

As I said, many scientists hesitate to call what they are learning and observing as "god," but "proof" of "something" is becoming more and more evident.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for your great post.

Mel.

Strange question? If the half that was prayed for healed and those who were not prayed for died, of course it would be necessary to dig deep to find out why! It could be that those who died had a worse health condition. But, medical experiments have been conducted of this type and those who were prayed for did NOT do any better than the rest.

I assume you have some point to make over what seems simple to me. Why not tell us what your point is?

charles, http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com (hits running this month at 455 per day average).

yuvgotmel said:

The project has been running for nearly a decade; and their most striking results came shortly before, during and after the attacks of 9-11. During the height of the attacks, the random number generators--which continually generate numbers--ceased to be random throughout the world. The results were shocking.

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As a computer programmer, myself, who knows something about computers and random number generators, I call fraud, or at best a generous fudging of their interpretation of the evidence.

Random number generators use simple mathematical algorithms to generate each successive "random" number. There isn't actually anything random about it -- the proper term is "pseudo-random". The value of such algorithms is that the numbers generated are unexpected, but they are fully deterministic -- one can predict the outcome of the number generation if one knows the seed value, just as one can, in theory, predict the behavior of any computer program by knowing the initial conditions.

For a random number to produce values that it shouldn't be able to generate -- to violate the math underlying the operations of the processor -- it would be necessary for only certain exact bit elements out of possibly thousands or millions in the computer to change state at just the right times, and no one would ever know which elements the random number generator would be using for this variable! Flipping the wrong bits would likely crash the computer.

How can even the most psychic people influence precisely the right computer bits and never make a misstep that would crash the computer? And a much better test would be to see two different computers generate two different sets of pseudo-random results using the same seed values. It boggles my mind that anyone would take this seriously as a test of psychic powers. There must be better tests.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I'm not an atheist but I tend not to believe in what is called "intercessory prayer". (That is praying to God for some tangible purpose.) So I would work for your purposes.

There are two problems: First as someone mentioned the positive effect or placebo effect perhaps. We know, for instance, that sugar pills do treat pain, perhaps not as well as some active drugs, but they do work. Why is that? It is quite complex but there several reasons one having to do with "belief" in an agent, and another perhaps in some effect of endorphins on the body. But this neither proves (nor disproves) the existence of god(s).

Another is that while certain conditions seem to have been cured by prayer, there are other conditiosn that have never been cured by prayer. Why woud that be? There is an amusing webpage google something like "God hates amputees". It is actually serious and atheistic. It doesn't prove or disprove the existence of God(s), but more what might be termed the power of prayer.


Your question really has nothign to do with the existence of God, imo. But whether or not prayer to God works and if it works why or why not.



--des

des said:

There are two problems: First as someone mentioned the positive effect or placebo effect perhaps. We know, for instance, that sugar pills do treat pain, perhaps not as well as some active drugs, but they do work. Why is that? It is quite complex but there several reasons one having to do with "belief" in an agent, and another perhaps in some effect of endorphins on the body. But this neither proves (nor disproves) the existence of god(s).

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The double blind structure removes the placebo effect - so that you would expect it to be seen in both groups if there was one.

I agree you cannot prove or disprove that a higher power exists. I do belive, however, that you can prove through logic, that the higher power as described in the Bible and by Christians cannot exist. I can't really get into it (cause I suck) but there is a book called The Impossibility of God that does this.

The only thing that would produce a belief in God (any god, not just the christian one) would be him/her/it-self appearing to me and telling me the secrets of the universe. And then I'd be dubious and have myself tested for illicit substances.

SoyLeche said:

The double blind structure removes the placebo effect - so that you would expect it to be seen in both groups if there was one.

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Ok, of course this is a hypotheical experiment, so how do you make sure it is really double blind?

DO you have one group issue phony prayers? Or do you just pray anonymously over one group (say out of contact with them)? Do you rotate the beds around so one group doesn't think anything is different? I'm just not sure how you would get this true double blind structure.

Even if you could, I don't think this would prove the existence of god(s), but perhaps the power of some type of positive thought or powers of someone

--des