So basically, you use the trappings of religion to advance your personal agenda.
How refreshingly honest!
Quote=JohnnyEnigma]That’s how I roll… God knows I’m a player when it comes to this stuff.
[/quote]
How humile of you. :rolleyes:
Although I would hardly characterize it as “humble”.
I don’t care. My point is that lines like this reflect poorly upon the people who say it. It’s not a matter of having faith, it’s arrogance. It’s declaring yourself special because your faith is unwavering. You say you prefer humility, but saying you have faith and that faith is a gift from God is one of the least humble things I’ve ever heard.
Takes one to know one, eh?
How about addressing my point?
If the following happened:
(1) A being appeared out of thin air in the middle of some live televised public event. Appearing halfway between home base and the pitcher’s mound in the middle of a world series game would be a good way to do it
(2) This being displayed supernatural powers (many possibilities discussed already upthread)
(3) This being was incredibly charismatic. People were drawn to this being, and reported great happiness at being around this being. Everyone liked it. It was funny and kind and caring. But people who had been exposed to this being did not (at least apparently) become mind-controlled robots… debate would still rage, even among those who had been directly exposed to this being’s Apparent Radiant Goodness as to the exact nature of this being
(4) After hearing many people I trusted claim that praying to this being would result in prayers being answered, I prayed to this being, and was answered. That is, I assumed a “prayer-ish” mindset, and then felt that I was communicating with another being… and clear two-way communicating took place. I kind of envision the being as being like some kind of super-therapist… not removing free will by telling me what to do at every moment, and in fact refusing to do so, but rephrasing situations and pointing things out that clarified my own thoughts on the topic, and how I could use my own capabilities and tendencies (which the being knew better than I) to solve these issues
(5) When asked who the being was and why it had only now appeared, it claimed to be God, and showed people (via magic) the creation of the universe, and explained why it had only now appeared.
(6) (here’s the key point) All of the above MADE THE WORLD AND MY LIFE BETTER. The advice that this being gave caused the people of the world to love one another at least somewhat more. The influence of this being was clearly benevolent… and I don’t mean into some kind of theocratic god-worshiping world of clones who do nothing but sing hymns morning and night. I mean, the world was actually better… people were happier, crime was down, disease was down, etc. More people were good and fewer people were evil and there was more happiness and more productive fulfillment of the potential for human greatness.
Basically, I want Aslan to come back 
If all of the above happened and continued for long enough that I was certain I wasn’t dreaming, I see no reason why it would be more logical to define that being as either hallucination or super-advanced-alien than “God”.
I an arrangement of stars looks like “Hi” to me and “Hola” to another person, then likely we’re seeing actual different arrangements of stars. If there is no objective arrangment of stars, then we’re not actually seeing a real arrangment of stars, and thus we’re either all seeing personal illusions, or delusion is going on; no stars were moved at all (as far as we could tell).
Now, assuming it’s not delusion, then the event of everyone seeing customized personal illusions could actually be caused by a diety; just one that is perpetrating a spectaular feat of mental control over people, rather than a spectacular physical feat.
What if the stars were writing in Esperanto, smart guy? Huh?
Then I couldn’t read them, thus negating the premise! Gotcha!
It’s a universal language - you’re just not trying hard enough!
Oh boy, just popping back into the thread to say that when I brought out the stars example, I felt that they should be in only one language. If they were written in more than one, it would imply mass hallucination, whereas what I was implying was that the stars had actually been physically moved. Just being written in one language, even an obscure one, isn’t a problem. You’d have English speakers scratching their heads at the Serbo-Croat… but they’d realise it was some sort of Yurpeen language quickly enough… especially when all the phones start jamming with calls from Serbo-Croatian astronomers.
I’ve just realised I’ve no idea if there even IS such a language. Okay… let’s say the message is spelled out in Basque.
Well, I just hope the message in the sky isn’t just about the “doorway out of the physical realm” mentioned earlier.
It’s bad to put all your Basque in one Exit.
I’m a little late to the party, but it wouldn’t take that much - just convincing objective evidence, just the same as there is for everything else that I believe in the existence of. Really, if there were any objective evidence at all, that would be a good start. But there really isn’t any at all.
That’s an excellent test. But how are the rest of us supposed to know if He smites you?
One for the ages.
Daniel
First of all, you are making an error in scientific method by asking that question. What you are really asking is a question that is, I will admit, normally is very valid in scientific thought. You are asking whether a theory is “falsifiable.” The problem with your question is that it assumes that atheism is a “belief” or “theory” of some kind. But it is not. It is merely the normal defaul position when evidence for a laim is lacking. Even Richard Dawkins says that god “probably” does not exist.
For more iformation about the concept of falsifiability of theories, see this excellent Wiki article
A great deal in religion is unfalsifiable. You pray for something and it happens. This allegedly “proves” that God exists and listened to our prayers. Then, you pray for something and it fails to happen. Oddly, this does not disprove the existence of God or prove that he does not listen to prayers. It merely indicates that this is not the will of God.
So prayer to God is completely unfalsifiable.
But here is an idea I can suggest to God and all his believers. Have you ever noticed that with all of the “cures” that God effects on people through faith healers, shrines like Fatima and Lourdes, etc. there is NO KNOWN CASE OF A SEVERED LIMB GROWING BACK?
The wheelchairs and leg braces we see at these shrines could all be explained as having been abandoned by people who did not really need them, and were affected by the power of suggestion, or by the fact that bones had healed very slowly so that all the person needed was the “push” of religious ecstasy to gain enough confidence to walk without them.
There are cases of spontaneous remission of cancer, which medicine does not really understand, but we also know that these things happen to people who have never prayed and to non-beleivers as well.
But what about the regrowth of an amputated limb? We KNOW from biology that this is actually possible for some life forms on Earth, such as lobsters. So it is not as if we were asking God to accomplish a logical impossibility, such as a square circle.
But we also know that while there have been perhaps millions of amputees (given all of the wars and diseases in human history) there is NO KNOWN CASE anywhere in history of a limb growing back.
So, if God were to cause an amputated limb to grow back after someone prayed for him to do so, THERE IS NO WAY any sceptics could say that this was something that could have happened anyway, or that the person was not really stricken with the affliction that supposedly disappeared.
So, does anyone have a documented case of an ampuptated limb growing back as a result of prayer?
I agree that phenomena like this would perhaps not turn me into a theist overnight. But I, Richard Dawkins and other atheists might revise our “probably does not exist” to “may perhaps exist”.
I’ve always wondered about the canes found in my waiting room. We currently have 3 canes in the back room that were left in my waiting room and never claimed. If someone needs a cane, how do they leave it behind after a veterinary visit? Would three canes in 5 years warrant a phone call to Rome? 
Easy; the people were using the canes to beat the dogs. When they brought the injured dogs to your practice to be put down, they didn’t need the canes any more.
Icky, I know, but a plausible alternate theory.
Well, it satisfies occam’s razor.
Also known as Why Does God Hate Amputees. com
If I knew that God had caused the limb to grow back then that pre-supposes that I know there is a God.
But assuming that what you mean is that there becomes empirical evidence that someone (a) stated they went through the thought process they refer to as “praying to a god” and (b) then their limb grew back, I wouldn’t for a moment assume there was a god. I’d just think that now we know that limbs can grow back.
If we then went on to discover that, in general, people who stated they did (a) then underwent (b) while those who didn’t, didn’t, then I’d think that said something interesting about the effect on the body’s healing system of certain types of thoughts.
The type of gigantic leap of faith you are proposing would be like theorising the existence of Atlantis from the discovery of a stone underwater with what might be an “A” scratched into it, if you look at it right.