[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Apparently, when you say “fail to understand” you really mean, “read the words I posted and accepted them in good faith, not reealizing that I was going to shift my position all over the board in order to keep on witnessing for atheism rather than participating in a debate.”
[/QUOTE]
Tom, it is funny how it is atheists who draw your ire, and make you flex your moderating muscles. I believe I am not the first to have noticed this, judging from a number of other posts.
Oakminister basically admits to bullying me in one of his posts, but when I tell him to stop bullying me, I get your warning!
Secondly, where do you get off reinterpreting what I said? If I did that would I not once again draw your disapproval?
If I say Ouija Board is useless, I mean it has no power to predict anything. Any reasonable person would understand that. Pointing out that it can serve as firewood or a doorstop is nit-picking. And endless nit-picking works out to bullying, pure and simple.
I clearly said in my opening post that the study in question dealt with intercessory prayer for cardiac patients. I gave the essential features of the study, and reported them correctly.
I then went on to give MY opinion that this is yet another reason not to believe in God. AT NO POINT did I contend that the study showed that there was no God. The study was my staring point for my post, which contained my proposition that there is no God. Surely there is room for expression of a view that does not come from a study. Why do you call it Great Debates anyhow if one cannopt advance propositions?
I did indeed, in later posts, shorten “intercessory prayer” to “prayer”, which seemed to rile Oakminister to no end. Any reasonable person reading it in the context of the thread and my original post would understand, as far as I can see.
Besides, at the moment in which I mentioned “prayer” in the post, the point I was making is that previous studies that allegedly showed some effect of prayer on the health of patients are received warmly and uncritically by Christians. But this study is attacked and its methodology assaulted.
The point I was making is that Christians seem to have an odd double standard of scientific rigour when it comes to studies about the efficacy of prayer on the health of patients. Once again, when you speak about the efficacy of prayer on the health of patients, you are naturally asking your reader to suppose that your mean “intercessory” prayer. I made that clear in my OP.
However, Tom, if this will keep you and Oakminster happy, I will never again simply refer to it as “prayer” in this thread. I will call it "the form of intercessory prayer for the sick whose efffects were experimentally tested in the study reported in the American Heart Journal.
Since that becomes kind of tiring to type over and over, I will shorten that, if I may, to " (FIPSEWETSRAHJ)."
Now then, one of the chief criticisms from a number of my honourable opponents on this thread has been the contention that the study was flawed because it inposed restrictions by asking the people praying to add a specific set of words to their prayers (FIPSEWETSRAHJ), or because the prayers (FIPSEWETSRAHJ)went on for a set period (the night before surgery to two weeks after).
Such restrictions cannot be imposed on prayers (FIPSEWETSRAHJ), I was angrily told. This would throw off the whole effect ! One post even implied that two weeks was not enough.
Which certainly sounds like an odd objection to me, considering that for 2,000 years, Jesus Christ, (who I believe has some right to speak for the doctrines of Christianity) is on record as saying in Matthew 21:22 “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive?”
And later in James, 5:15 we read “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up;”
Those sound like pretty catergorical assurances. No mention of minimum length of prayer time. No conditions. No ifs or maybes. No mention that you cannot have a standardized formula in your prayer. Indeed, if a standardized formula repeated over and over is all that offensive to God, what are we to make of the rosary?
Is it possible that the carmelites and the monks, as well as the protestant prayer group who participated, were not “believing” or offering “prayers of faith”?
After all, Jesus is pretty clear. “And all things, **whatsoever ** ye shall ask in prayer” are his words. Whatsoever is whatsoever. Now please, please, do not try and tell me that it means something else. You know how angry it would make Tomndeb if someone were to expect me to read the words of Jesus “and (accept) them in good faith, not realizing that (a theist) was going to shift (his) position all over the board in order to keep on witnessing for theism.”
Or is it only atheists who must not do that, Tom?
