Sunday 18 March 2012

Taking a risk.

Ok, so I'm probably on thin ice here.  But I can't stop thinking about God and the lottery...
Let me explain.

Following Muamba's collapse on the football pitch yesterday, the hashtag #prayformuamba became almost instantly trendy.  Today, Gary Cahill scored for Chelsea and revealed a shirt saying 'pray for Muamba'.  Suarez dedicated his goal in Liverpool's quarter-final victory (just thought I'd slip that in...) to Muamba. 
This general consensus that we should be praying for Muamba led to a backlash against prayer, at least on Twitter, and possibly elsewhere. 
For my part, I responded to a tweet that a follower had retweeted, saying "No, there is no power in prayer. It doesn't work." 
My response was simply to say, "Yes it does, I've tried it loads :)"
The 'conversation' continued:
Him:  "Prayer works. One example would be nice."  (For 'prayer works', read, 'prayer works, yeah right...')
Me:  "I imagine I'd find it almost as hard to 'prove' as you would find it to disprove. My examples wd probably be 'coincidences'."
Him:  "No, I can prove it doesn't work quite easily. But the burden of proof is upon the person saying prayer is efficacious."
Me:  "Intrigued to know how you can disprove it... Do you mean prove that people don't get what they've asked for?"

At that point, it stopped.  Now, I should point out that, given I was shattered and went to bed, there was a time delay of about 20 hours between his last tweet and mine.  I'm not, therefore, pretending that my last tweet dealt the killer blow to his argument (!) because he's probably just not noticed that I responded (or can't be bothered to carry on the conversation, which likewise doesn't equal defeat)
But it does rather leave the conversation hanging...  Having trawled through some of his tweets, he seems like a well-read kinda guy, and he's not just spouting arguments and then running away.  But I'm genuinely wondering what was going to come next.  My best guess (as I said in my tweet) is that he would point to 'unanswered' prayer as proof that prayer doesn't work.
Which brings me onto the lottery.
Some UK punter won £38 million on the lottery this weekend.
It wasn't me.
Does that mean I don't believe the lottery exists?  Or does the lottery just not work?  No, of course neither of them are true.  It simply means I've never won it.  Buying a lottery ticket, and not winning, doesn't mean the lottery doesn't work, anymore than praying and not getting the answer you want means that prayer doesn't work. If that WAS how prayer worked, everyone would be praying!  Clearly prayer can't work like that (although it would be amusing when all however-million praying people won the lottery, and had to share the top prize...)
What amazes me is that prayer so often does work.  And I'm not talking about the 'please Lord, help me to have a lovely day', and then rejoicing at bedtime that the day was wonderful and God answered prayer.  (Though, I have to say, I do rejoice and am grateful to God for good days, though that's another story...)  I mean prayers that seem to go against what one would expect to happen.  I know some people would put these all down to coincidences, but I can't accept such a generalisation.  Someone told me once about a poster they'd seen saying, 'when I stop praying, coincidences stop happening'.
I guess I'd also refer to my relationship with my parents.  And, indeed, with my son.
Asking a parent for something, and getting a 'no' or 'not yet' in response very rarely stops us from asking.  With Big Boy, even a 'don't ask again' doesn't stop him from asking...  But if I get a 'no' from my parents, does that mean they don't do anything for me, or that our relationship doesn't work?  Or does it just mean that, (assuming they're right on this occasion) there's still some stuff in life that I need to learn...?
Isn't it the same with prayer?  An 'unanswered' prayer (by which we normally mean we don't get what we wanted) doesn't mean that prayer doesn't work.
It depends on your point of view, of course.  Like anything to do with faith, where you start out will affect what you conclude.  It's easy for me to believe in the virgin birth, because I believe in a God who created the entire universe.  For someone who believes that God doesn't exist, a virgin birth is outside the realms of possibility. Likewise, for me, so called 'unanswered prayer' doesn't tell me that prayer doesn't work.  It tells me something else.
As a Christian, I can see the value of prayer.  It's not a slot machine - put in request, get what you ask for.  It's part of a relationship. 
I believe that I have a relationship with God.  It would be a bit silly NOT to pray! 
I believe that he loves me (and everyone else!) and has the power to do anything.  It would be silly NOT to pray. 
I believe that he loves to listen to me in much the same way as I love to listen to my kids (except he doesn't have 'off days' where he's super-grumpy).  It would be silly NOT to pray.



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(Just to declare, as I was writing this, the tweeter in question responded, but I decided to go ahead and finish this (I'm rubbish at concentrating on one thing at a time...) and then allow comments to update it
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Dear fellow tweeter, if my guess is wrong, I apologise :)  I would welcome your comments if you fancy writing them here, but would appreciate it, given my intended audience, if you weren't ... uh ... crude.  I'm not saying I don't want you to disagree, in fact, I sort of expect you would.  But I don't want people to be offended by how anything's said.  Thanks!

8 comments:

  1. I'm @vaughanjones82 the tweeter that Nick is referring to. I'll reply in sequence to your points:

    YOU "At that point, it stopped. Now, I should point out that, given I was shattered and went to bed, there was a time delay of about 20 hours between his last tweet and mine."

    ME: I think nothing of delays of less than 3 days because I know that twitter is not the be all and end all of life. So no problem there.

    YOU: "Having trawled through some of his tweets, he seems like a well-read kinda guy, and he's not just spouting arguments and then running away."

    ME: I like to think I am well read and I'm not what one would call a "troll". I defend my opinions robustly and only tend to drop the level of my courtesy depending on what I receive back. I have no need to remain on high ground in debates.

    YOU: "My best guess (as I said in my tweet) is that he would point to 'unanswered' prayer as proof that prayer doesn't work."

    ME: Well this is a mistake and the rest of your comment is, what one would call, a strawman argument. You have essentially rallied against a position that I have not taken. But you raise some interesting analogies I am happy to respond to.

    YOU: "Some UK punter won £38 million on the lottery this weekend.
    It wasn't me.
    Does that mean I don't believe the lottery exists?"

    ME: This is a bit of a red herring. The fact you are aware of the lottery makes the posed question meaningless. It's also confusing cause and effect; that someone else has won something does not mean that it was never there to be won by you.

    YOU: "I mean prayers that seem to go against what one would expect to happen. I know some people would put these all down to coincidences, but I can't accept such a generalisation."

    ME: The fact you do not accept the generalisation does not mean that it is not true. Confirmation bias is quite a significant factor to consider when a person wants to be a critical thinker. It's the reason the Mayan's carried out their sacrificial rituals for example

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    1. D'oh. Always embarrassing when one's best guess is completely wrong. Hey ho. As for the lottery red herring, I guess it's sort of a fair point. It's not a perfect analogy, certainly, but I just wanted to challenge people who say, in effect, prayer is a load of rubbish, because I never get what I ask for. Like most analogies, there are numerous flaws :) (Well, most of MY analogies, anyway!)
      And as for the generalisation point, no, it doesn't mean it's not true. You're quite right. However, I'm just stating my p.o.v. I think (can't remember precisely - I was tired then and am tired now...) I suppose confirmation bias works whatever angle one approaches something from. It's not surprising, perhaps, that people on both sides of the argument can cite studies that have 'proven' their p.o.v.

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    2. No, I don't think people can cite "studies" that prove a POV. Facts are always objectively true.

      For example, if you stood on a flat plain you could argue the earth is flat. If you were sailing around the world in a straight line you could argue that the earth was spherical (because you end up where you started). These are two points of view.

      However, the only objective fact is that the earth is spherical (slightly flattened at both poles of course). One can argue for a flat earth but it would always be objectively wrong. Therefore it cannot be held that both points of view carry equal validity.

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  2. YOU: "I believe that he loves me (and everyone else!) and has the power to do anything. It would be silly NOT to pray. "

    ME: Let's put together an argument:

    1) God is omnipotent (all powerful)
    2) God knows all events before they happen (omniscient)
    3) Therefore God cannot change events that he has already anticipated acting upon
    4) Prayer therefore has a negative effect on "God's will" as he already knows all of the events that will ever transpire

    I doubt you will argue with 1 & 2. Number 3 might be hard for you to accept but it's the paradox of omniscience. If god already knows how everything is going to turn out, he cannot foreseeably change those events as he will already have acted upon it using his omnipotence.

    God cannot be "all knowing" and also "in the dark" about events which are due to transpire. Equally if he was going to intervene and change the natural order, this would not be dependent upon a person's prayers or how much faith they are demonstrating because he will have already known whether that event will be changed in a person's favour. Number 4 then follows as a natural consequence.

    I have also directed you to, in my tweet, that monotheism is the most prevalent religious construct in the 21st century. Discard polytheism for a moment (both past and present) and think for a moment that people in those religions all believe that their prayers are answered.

    How is it logically convincing that all of these religions can be validated by the positive power of prayer? We can only answer this in one of two ways. Either these people are delusional or confirmation bias is the ultimate cause. Not all religions can be true (I think you would accept being a Christian).

    I'll leave you with a question; if a Muslim living the perfect Muslim life claimed that their prayer was answered, why would this not be convincing enough for you to change your religion?

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    1. My brain is a little mushy (football match earlier had an adverse affect, I reckon) but I was wondering how my belief that God is outside of time would affect this argument. Does the fact that he's not operating in a chrono-linear fashion (I just made that word up...) have any bearing on this.
      I suppose in terms of 1) and 2), yes, I would argue that God is omnipotent, but only within certain bounds, such as the bounds of logic. Classic example being that I am not sure that God could make a square circle. Does 3) come into this? I'm afraid I'm not thinking very clearly, so probably am not explaining myself very clearly...

      As for the Muslim question, I would not be convinced (predictably!) enough to change religion. Prayer is only one part of my faith. I believe that Christianity is the only right religion because of the life of Jesus. I am not aware that anyone has disproved the resurrection (the last book against it I picked up in Waterstones was so pathetically, uh, pathetic, that I put it down after reading a few pages (I know, Waterstones isn't a library - I should have bought the book...)) I'm sure others have written more eloquently and logically than that author... So I suppose I would have to say that I believe the package, rather than just the 'proof' of prayer. Does that make sense?
      And thanks so much for responding, I do appreciate it. I wasn't trying to patronise you with either the 'well-read' comment or the 'avoid crudeness' comment. I just wanted to point out that you weren't one of those 'Oh-you're-so-stupid-believing-all-that-rubbish'-without-any-sort-of-intelligent-follow-up sort of people. Equally, I didn't want innocent members of the public blushing as a result of something they saw on my blog :)
      As you can see from the blog name and twitter name, I'm not claiming to have it all sussed. I wish that, when people communicated with me, I was able to offer them something of what God would say to them, but frankly my own voice tends to be so loud much of the time, that that's not always going to happen.
      Nick.

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  3. "I was wondering how my belief that God is outside of time"

    One cannot be omniscient and not know what the future is. It's a paradox. And I think you would also admit that saying "god is outside of time" is a guess without any evidence to back that up?

    "I would argue that God is omnipotent, but only within certain bounds, such as the bounds of logic"

    Whose logic? From the biblical record there have been multiple suspensions of the natural order which defy logic. Either an omnipotent being is able to suspend the natural laws of physics or he is not; if he is not then naturalist arguments are all that exist within the confines of logic.

    "As for the Muslim question, I would not be convinced (predictably!) enough to change religion... I believe that Christianity is the only right religion because of the life of Jesus."

    And yet it cannot be proven that Jesus ever existed. Nor could it ever be proven that he was divine let alone had powers that, again, defied the logic you claim such omnipotent beings are bound by.

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  4. Hmm... Your comment that 'it cannot be proven that Jesus ever existed' seems to me to go too far down the skeptical route. It's a historical fact, unless you wish to rule out all history as not 'provable'... But surely not.
    As for time: If God created all, then this includes time, which would allow us to say that God is in some way outside of it.
    And as for logic, I guess I mean logic that wouldn't be self-contradictory, such as the square circle. Equally, God, having created, could not choose to have not created, having already created. He could wipe out creation, but he couldn't not create, because it's already happened... Does that help?
    "One cannot be omniscient and not know what the future is." I don't think I said that this was the case...
    I think I'd also come back to revelation, though, of course, that's open to the same criticism of confirmation bias. Equally, I wouldn't be open to believing people from other faiths who 'really believe' that 'their' god has revealed himself to them. So maybe that's a bit unfair :)

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    1. All of the accounts of Jesus derive from hearsay. This is well admitted by biblical scholars too. This is why they use the common argument "well you cannot prove that Socrates ever existed yet his words are still used today".

      This is true but it makes no difference whether Socrates existed or not; no divine claims or instructions governing our life depend upon his existence being verified.

      "As for time: If God created all, then this includes time, which would allow us to say that God is in some way outside of it."

      This is special pleading and I think you well know it. It's part of the "god of the gaps" fallacy too. I was rather hoping you would avoid these.

      "And as for logic, I guess I mean logic that wouldn't be self-contradictory, such as the square circle."

      And yet you refuse to accept the self-contradiction that is an omniscient deity that does not know what is going to happy in the future. You cannot claim that one argument is logically self-contradictory and another isn't without providing a reason.

      ""One cannot be omniscient and not know what the future is." I don't think I said that this was the case..."

      Well you queried whether it was possible that god was operating in a chrono-linear fashion. This could either be read as 'god has everything on tape but will rewind and watch in current time dipping in when necessary' or 'god is not omniscient in that way'.

      Perhaps you were veering towards the "god works in mysterious ways" line?

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