Double-Blind Prayer Testing

[WinAce]

I'm welcoming input from atheists, theists, polytheists ( ;) ) and anyone else who could offer suggestions, critiques and witty insults. :D

A few days ago, challenged by a friend to "try god" yet again, I decided to conduct a scientific experiment. To be fair, I'm in the middle of trying various gods, not just his. He reluctantly agreed to this compromise.

Feel free to comment on my methodology.

I have a set of index cards on which I printed the following:
1. Zeus
2. Thor
3. YHWH
4. Allah
5. Selune (the Moon Goddess from the Forgotten Realms D&D books)
6. Iluvatar (from J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion)
7. Aslan from C.S. Lewis' Narnia
8. The Easter Bunny
9. My computer's hard drive volume label

Once the cards were done, I shuffled them and printed random symbols on their backs. At this point, I don't know which symbols are associated with which entities, so I'm effectively blind.

Whenever I want something that could be paranormally influenced, such as the rain to stop or an annoying headache to cease, I shuffle and pick a random card. Without looking at the specific entity I picked, I ask "Will the thing whose name appears on this card please do this if it can, thanks".

Then I write down which symbol I picked and what request was made. After the result is in, I also write down whether the request is fulfilled. Later on, I calculate the ratio of requests vs. fulfilled requests for each symbol.

At the end of this charade, I will reveal which symbols were associated with which entities, which will hopefully tell me everything I need to know about the success of invoking their aid.

Before, when I was using a different, methodologically inferior version of the test, Selune was winning, but by a statistically insignificant margin... I found a missing remote control right after asking her once; but otherwise my requests for world peace, a cure for AIDs, and other really unlikely things that would indicate some paranormal element, haven't been granted by any of the things I asked.

There are some flaws in this test, of course. For one, I can't help but feel the deck is stacked against some of the entities by virtue of their areas of expertise. The Easter Bunny, for example, is not the right one to ask for help in finding a lost key, while Zeus is probably exactly the god to ask for a lightning bolt to hit a specific spot. However, this will only have any bearing on the results if they exist, which I doubt.

Additionally, I'm hoping to alleviate that problem by having, in the future, a large set of additional requests in all areas on more index cards to randomly pick. I also plan to add more gods to make it harder for chance to influence the statistics. I'm open to other suggestions.

[seebs]

This is cute, but it runs into an obvious problem.

No one likes to be addressed as "occupant".

So, even if *all* of these entities exist, you shouldn't expect much for results.

[Llyricist]

Originally posted by seebs
This is cute, but it runs into an obvious problem.

No one likes to be addressed as "occupant".

So, even if *all* of these entities exist, you shouldn't expect much for results.
Well then Christians should perhaps find out the name of their god. Simply capitalizing the word "God" isn't much different then calling her "occupant".

[seebs]

Originally posted by Llyricist
Well then Christians should perhaps find out the name of their god. Simply capitalizing the word "God" isn't much different then calling her "occupant".

"You" is at least more personal than something that's obviously being spammed to "Current Resident At ..."

[Doubting Didymus]

A more effective double blinder that is not subject to seebs reasonable objections would be to have a third party doing the praying, and passing their attempts at prayer to the investigator WITHOUT the investigator being aware of which being/object the request was asked of. Ideally the requests should be passed on to a 'fourth' party, who can realay them to the investigator without any intuitive leakage (aha, thats the guy thats praying to my pc). Prayers can thus be made personal while the investigator can independantly and blindly assess the outcomes.

[seebs]

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus
A more effective double blinder that is not subject to seebs reasonable objections would be to have a third party doing the praying, and passing their attempts at prayer to the investigator WITHOUT the investigator being aware of which being/object the request was asked of. Ideally the requests should be passed on to a 'fourth' party, who can realay them to the investigator without any intuitive leakage (aha, thats the guy thats praying to my pc). Prayers can thus be made personal while the investigator can independantly and blindly assess the outcomes.

I think we still have a problem; can you really sincerely pray to all of these?

One solution would be to have people of different faiths, and try to have different ones pray for different things. However, this introduces a new control - what if you get a telekenetic Jew and a perfectly ordinary Christian?

Anyway, there's a more indirect problem: It's perfectly consistent with several of these theories for the entities in question to, knowing the context, ignore these prayers while granting others.

I still think it's a cool idea, but it runs into the same problem that most psych testing runs into; the subject can resist the test.

[Ojuice5001]

Well, if you'll pardon the presumption, I read between the lines and got the idea that I was an influence on this test.:cool: So if my ideas are correct, here's something that would help the test to show it. This version of the test doesn't account for fluctuations in the gods' influence over your life. The gods' spheres of influence aren't just thematic, like a grocery store next to a bookstore. They're also based on happenstance, like my house being next to yours. This means that you could pray to Thor that the rain would stop, and the reason it didn't happen would be not that Thor doesn't exist (or even that he didn't care, though that's just as much a possibility), but that Yahweh preferred a longer rain, and his influence was a lot stronger at that moment.

Solution? It would mean abandoning the double-blind control on the test, but if I were doing this test, I'd try to figure out which god's influence was strongest anyway. For instance, say that in all cases I'm asking for my headache to go away. The choice of god, I would base on the general events that have been happening recently in the vicinity. For instance, if it's a storm out, pray to Jupiter or Thor. If it's the full moon, make it Selune (or possibly Allah). If it's Easter, focus on the Easter Bunny and Yahweh. If a documentary on Tolkien or Lewis just aired, make it Iluvatar or Aslan respectively. You get the idea.

That would make failure harder to write off (to some degree) as due to the current arrangements of divine influence, and success more obviously connected with the deity in question.

Also, what part of the US do you live in? A clear corollary of this kind of thinking is that that is quite likely to make a difference.

[Wayne Delia]

Originally posted by Llyricist
Well then Christians should perhaps find out the name of their god. Simply capitalizing the word "God" isn't much different then calling her "occupant". That always struck me as similar to someone owning a dog named "Dog."

WMD

[Thesto Neroses]

God doesn't like tests, dude - he always forgets to revise.

That's why his results always resemble bovine faecal matter.

[demoninho]

And for a comical interlude here's col311 on RR asking other people to pray for him/her to overcome his/her lazyness

Please pray that I will overcome lazyness!! There are MANY obsticles that are hindering me from being Employed. Believe me when I say Many. The list is so long, I would be here until tomorrow listing the things that's wrong. But i'll just name one big problem for now. I have allowed these stumbleing blocks to over come me. I already acted as if I am defeated. Most of the days I don't even get out of Bed until the After noon! I am so lazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please pray that I over come my lazyness and start looking for work on a regular basis again. Thank you
From here (http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?threadid=109842)

Any IIRC there have been some studies on prayer and outcome in cardiovascular patients in the Mayo which showed no effects at, maybe I'll look it up later..

[Thesto Neroses]

Originally posted on RaptureReady by col311:
Please pray that I will overcome lazyness!! There are MANY obsticles that are hindering me from being Employed. Believe me when I say Many. The list is so long, I would be here until tomorrow listing the things that's wrong. But i'll just name one big problem for now. I have allowed these stumbleing blocks to over come me. I already acted as if I am defeated. Most of the days I don't even get out of Bed until the After noon! I am so lazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please pray that I over come my lazyness and start looking for work on a regular basis again. Thank you

Yeah, I'm so lazy I can't even be bothered to pray for myself :rolleyes:

Do the prayer obsessed realise how self-parodying their behaviour can be?

[sakrilege]

A better way to do the cards so noone can cheat and know which god is represented is to have one set of god cards and 2 sets of symbol cards. The set of god cards is shuffled and 1 set of the symbol cards is shuffled. In the presence of multiple people 1 card from each shuffled deck is picked (without looking at them) and put into an envelope that is then sealed. There would be as many envelopes as there are gods and 'safety' envelopes with patterns to prevent see through are best. No one should have seen either card. Then the remaining deck of symbol cards is used to pick which god to pray to. At the end of the test, the envelopes are opened to decide the results.

This doesn't take into account the objections of seebs or Ojuice though.

[Magic Primate]

Originally posted by Llyricist
Well then Christians should perhaps find out the name of their god. Simply capitalizing the word "God" isn't much different then calling her "occupant".

Its name is 'YHWH', sometimes pronounced Yahweh, sometimes Yehovah.

Also, Allah is supposedly the same entity, contrary to what a surprising number of people think - Islam and Christianity are effectively branches of the same religion along with Judaism.

Another thing, the Easter Bunny is actually an incarnation of Astarte/Ishtar/Isis?/Astaroth a fertility goddess who was once worshipped alongside Yahweh by the Israelites and later transformed into a demon and later a rabbit by the Yahwists.

[Thesto Neroses]

Originally posted by Magic Primate
Another thing, the Easter Bunny is actually an incarnation of Astarte/Ishtar/Isis?/Astaroth a fertility goddess who was once worshipped alongside Yahweh by the Israelites and later transformed into a demon and later a rabbit by the Yahwists.

Mmmmmm! Chocolate demons.

[christ-on-a-stick]

The parameters were simple. When I wished for something to happen, I decided that, instead of praying to an invisible, unknowable God, I would rub the tummy of a stuffed animal, in this case a penguin. This was no ordinary stuffed animal, mind you. This was given to me by a very special person for a very special reason. So, whenever I had a thought that in my Christian years would have prompted a prayer, I just closed my eyes, thought intently about the problem, and rubbed the penguin's belly. It was a most interesting exercise. It brought back memories of praying, and I realized that at this point in my life the two activities seem equally sane and equally silly.

Anyway, I kept this up for about three weeks, and here are the results: My penguin failed to bring peace to the Middle East or Northern Ireland; world hunger was not eliminated; inner city drug dealing did not disappear; and a beloved, ill, elderly dog died in spite of my actions.

However, on the positive side, my Grand Penguin lowered the crime rate in a major city; ended the UPS strike; reunited a married couple on the brink of divorce; cleared up a friend's sinus infection; and helped a good friend find much needed employment. I'd certainly call that remarkable. So then, what's to be learned from my efforts? Well, if you're allowed to count only the "hits" while ignoring the "misses," as do all the people who extol the power of prayer, then it turns out that my fuzzy little penguin is one hell of a miracle-worker.

From The Power of Penguins (http://www.thehappyheretic.com/9-97.htm) by Judith Hayes (The Happy Heretic).

[Ojuice5001]

Aha. The good old concept of an object like a stuffed penguin that has spiritual power. And I definitely think you should count the hits while ignoring all those misses, for a simple reason: All of those "misses" were merely the continuation of a stable condition (except the dog not dying, which is in an even worse position; dogs can't live forever any more than humans). The typical social problem is an "immovable object," while the spiritual power of a lucky charm is certainly not an irresistible force.

Yes, if those examples are the only prayers offered to the penguin, it succeeded whenever a workable form of supernaturalism would have expected it to.

[Stormy]

Winace: It does not matter what name you give to God. You only need to speak to the one who created you and have FAITH that he is there.


Without faith you are playing the game of chance. You are bound to end up with a raw deal.

[Thesto Neroses]

Originally posted by Stormy
Winace: It does not matter what name you give to God. You only need to speak to the one who created you and have FAITH that he is there.


Without faith you are playing the game of chance. You are bound to end up with a raw deal.

My sister's called Faith - but I am without her, because she lives in Copenhagen. By a curious coincidence, her husband is called Christian. Their son is called Theo.

None of them is a practising xtian:p

Can I bestow the name "Raymond Luxury Yacht" on the deity, and will he know how to pronounce it correctly without being anti-semitic?:D

[WinAce]

Originally posted by seebs
This is cute, but it runs into an obvious problem.

No one likes to be addressed as "occupant".

So, even if *all* of these entities exist, you shouldn't expect much for results.

I'm not expecting anything like a cure for cancer or stuff like that, but at least some of those entities, if they exist, might have a vested interest in demonstrating they have empirical effects above that predicted by their non-existence.

Especially if I ask them nicely. I'm sure, for example, that gods could understand why we humans would want to perform a test that cut down on the confirmation bias and selective validation...


Originally posted by Doubting Didymus
A more effective double blinder that is not subject to seebs reasonable objections would be to have a third party doing the praying, and passing their attempts at prayer to the investigator WITHOUT the investigator being aware of which being/object the request was asked of.

That still runs into the problem of insincerity possibly affecting the results. Seriously, is there a single person alive who wouldn't feel ridiculous asking the Easter Bunny for something? People might actually not do that, but say they did, or pray to a different god.

With the prayee being blind to who he's invoking, this problem is alleviated because he'll be equally sincere regardless if asking God, aliens or the kitchen table for help.

Originally posted by Ojuice5001
Well, if you'll pardon the presumption, I read between the lines and got the idea that I was an influence on this test.:cool:

I have no clue what gave you that idea :D

So if my ideas are correct, here's something that would help the test to show it. This version of the test doesn't account for fluctuations in the gods' influence over your life. The gods' spheres of influence aren't just thematic, like a grocery store next to a bookstore. They're also based on happenstance, like my house being next to yours. This means that you could pray to Thor that the rain would stop, and the reason it didn't happen would be not that Thor doesn't exist (or even that he didn't care, though that's just as much a possibility), but that Yahweh preferred a longer rain, and his influence was a lot stronger at that moment.

True, but statistically, there should be a discernible effect if there's anything out of the usual going on. If you consistently get the opposite of what you ask from a specific god, that tells you as much as getting what you did ask for from a different god. Something weird is going on, in that case.

Solution? It would mean abandoning the double-blind control on the test,

Egad! I actually thought of that, to tell you the truth, but that brings back the very real possibility of human bias affecting the statistical data. Removing the blinders, unfortunately, introduces more problems than it solves :(

but if I were doing this test, I'd try to figure out which god's influence was strongest anyway. For instance, say that in all cases I'm asking for my headache to go away. The choice of god, I would base on the general events that have been happening recently in the vicinity. For instance, if it's a storm out, pray to Jupiter or Thor. If it's the full moon, make it Selune (or possibly Allah). If it's Easter, focus on the Easter Bunny and Yahweh. If a documentary on Tolkien or Lewis just aired, make it Iluvatar or Aslan respectively. You get the idea.

That might be worthy of a separate experiment in and of itself.

That would make failure harder to write off (to some degree) as due to the current arrangements of divine influence, and success more obviously connected with the deity in question.

But it would also introduce the very real possibility of post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacies and other psychological quirks. They can be extremely convincing to even the most skeptical minds if not controlled for.

Also, what part of the US do you live in? A clear corollary of this kind of thinking is that that is quite likely to make a difference.

New York. In what way would that matter?

Originally posted by sakrilege
A better way to do the cards so noone can cheat and know which god is represented is to have one set of god cards and 2 sets of symbol cards... No one should have seen either card. Then the remaining deck of symbol cards is used to pick which god to pray to. At the end of the test, the envelopes are opened to decide the results.

I didn't really understand how that's a superior methodology to the one I have. In both cases, you reveal which god was invoked only after the request was made and/or fulfilled, removing the possibility of an observer bias. Sorry if I didn't get this (I'm not particularly good at statistics and double-blind tests), but what does an additional deck introduce?

Originally posted by Stormy
Winace: It does not matter what name you give to God. You only need to speak to the one who created you and have FAITH that he is there.

Without faith you are playing the game of chance. You are bound to end up with a raw deal.

In all cases worth considering, no a priori belief in the validity of a hypothesis is required before you encounter evidence for it. In fact, this sounds exactly like an evangelization tactic that exploits confirmation bias and other human psychological quirks to great effect.

If something exists, belief or lack of belief should not affect results of legitimate inquiries into its existence. Unless, of course, there's no real evidence for it in the first place...

I still need some more god names. I'm working for a healthy selection of all the pantheons around the world, not to mention fictitious ones as experimental controls and non-deity magic things to yield further insights into the paranormal.

[seebs]

Originally posted by WinAce

In all cases worth considering, no a priori belief in the validity of a hypothesis is required before you encounter evidence for it. In fact, this sounds exactly like an evangelization tactic that exploits confirmation bias and other human psychological quirks to great effect.

If something exists, belief or lack of belief should not affect results of legitimate inquiries into its existence. Unless, of course, there's no real evidence for it in the first place...


This also happens with people. If you "test" someone's love or affection a lot, you'll find that the tests come out negative more often than you would have expected...

Any god which is other than a predictable and hard-coded force of nature will be very hard to "test" for, since the god can always decide not to respond to a given prodding.

[Llyricist]

Originally posted by seebs
This also happens with people. If you "test" someone's love or affection a lot, you'll find that the tests come out negative more often than you would have expected...

Any god which is other than a predictable and hard-coded force of nature will be very hard to "test" for, since the god can always decide not to respond to a given prodding.
Frankly, the best argument you have is that in ALL cases, whatever deity you pray to for intervention would require actual belief in her/himself before responding. The argument you are promulgating here, is that God is a petty vindictive sort (yeah he is DEFINITELY this sort in the OT), which is not really compatible with the "God" most Christians promulgate.

[Singerian]

Couldn't the test be strengthened in a way by simply recording the results of similar prayers by those of different faiths. That way, the prayer itself isn't a test. Thus, Jesus' famous refusal to Satan would have no relevant implication.

[Singerian]

To clarify, these are prayers that were made of the religious people's own accord. They're just observed and recorded by the one doing the study.

[seebs]

Originally posted by Llyricist
Frankly, the best argument you have is that in ALL cases, whatever deity you pray to for intervention would require actual belief in her/himself before responding. The argument you are promulgating here, is that God is a petty vindictive sort (yeah he is DEFINITELY this sort in the OT), which is not really compatible with the "God" most Christians promulgate.

Not so much "petty and vindictive" as "not mocked".

I can do lots of things that I won't do in response to someone saying "yeah, well, if you're so cool, why don't you ...".

In fact, resisting the urge to show off for people has been strongly recommended ever since Puss-in-boots managed to trick an evil ogre into changing into a mouse.

[Calzaer]

Seebs:
Anyway, there's a more indirect problem: It's perfectly consistent with several of these theories for the entities in question to, knowing the context, ignore these prayers while granting others.

Then what's the point of praying?

If he'll either answer, or not answer, depending on factors that TO HUMANS seem completely and utterly random, what's the difference from how the situation would turn out by not praying? You've got just as much of a shot at getting what you want.

You'd think a God who really loved us and really wanted to keep us out of hell would be more amiable towards someone simply setting out to find him in the best way that person knows how.

WinAce:
One problem with your experiment - you need a control. A card that's blank on the "god" side. Your computer harddrive could be omnipotent too, or the name of your hard drive could be the name of some forgotton lonely god trying to get more recognition. Similarly, Tolkien did a lot of research into the mythos of the norse and others, his gods could be related to gods that people actually worshipped. As for Selune, well, there's the computer hard drive problem there too. Forgotten Realms has a tendency to plagerize ancient history occasionally.

So you should have a blank card as a control.

[seebs]

Originally posted by Calzaer

Then what's the point of praying?


A good question.

For a related question, consider this: Doesn't "asking for things" prayer imply that God is not, in fact, omniscient, and that it may have slipped His notice that something would help?

One imagines a cheerful, friendly, and fairly absent-minded deity. He's toodling along, playing Celestial Golf, and the pager beeps. A little text message shows up:

LITTLE GIRL TEXAS WANTS VERY MUCH NOT DIE, THX!

God stops, checks His calendar, and says "Oh, yeah. That tornado. Totally slipped my mind." and rescues the girl.

Implausible? Certainly not consistent with the general image of God most theists have.

There are a number of answers to this question, and every time I ask it, I get a new one.


If he'll either answer, or not answer, depending on factors that TO HUMANS seem completely and utterly random, what's the difference from how the situation would turn out by not praying? You've got just as much of a shot at getting what you want.


Not necessarily.

Imagine that the rule is this:
1. If you sincerely pray, and are not trying to test anything, and no one is going to check your results, you have a one in twenty chance, rolled on a fair die, of getting a reasonable prayer answered.
2. If you are testing anything, or don't pray, your needs are ignored.

Now, I don't believe for a minute that it's like that, but were it like that:
1. No tests would ever show anything.
2. There would be a reasonable benefit to praying.


You'd think a God who really loved us and really wanted to keep us out of hell would be more amiable towards someone simply setting out to find him in the best way that person knows how.

I suspect so, but I'm not sure that "verifying that prayer works" does anything at all towards finding God. On the other hand, maybe it does. I don't know. Turns out I'm not "in the loop" on most of this stuff.

[Calzaer]

Well, if prayer works, that's a pretty big coup when it comes to "evidence for the existence of God".

[seebs]

Originally posted by Calzaer
Well, if prayer works, that's a pretty big coup when it comes to "evidence for the existence of God".

Not really. Quantum entanglement could produce a similar effect without any divine influence whatsoever.

[WinAce]

I doubt quantum entanglement could respond like an intelligent entity, though. You know, like having only prayers addressed to a specific entity being answered, or answering specific requests associated with an entity's traditional god powers, but not others... etc.

It should be trivially easy to demonstrate whether a powerful disembodied intelligence or mechanistic phenomenon is responsible for answered prayers. Just as independent manufacture and evolutionary design leave different patterns of evidence, so too will different mechanisms that could answer prayer.

[seebs]

Originally posted by WinAce
I doubt quantum entanglement could respond like an intelligent entity, though. You know, like having only prayers addressed to a specific entity being answered, or answering specific requests associated with an entity's traditional god powers, but not others... etc.

It should be trivially easy to demonstrate whether a powerful disembodied intelligence or mechanistic phenomenon is responsible for answered prayers. Just as independent manufacture and evolutionary design leave different patterns of evidence, so too will different mechanisms that could answer prayer.

That depends. For instance, what if some not-yet-known physical law has begun answering prayers, but only prayers fitting a format established by the consensus beliefs of a billion or so people?

Even assuming answered prayers, I don't think you can prove much about who's answering them. Maybe God doesn't answer prayers, but Satan does, knowing that people who think their prayers are being personally answered are more likely to fall to pride...

[AJ113]

Originally posted by Stormy
Winace: It does not matter what name you give to God. You only need to speak to the one who created you and have FAITH that he is there.


Without faith you are playing the game of chance. You are bound to end up with a raw deal.

Yeah see Winace you're doing it all wrong. If only you'd believe, THEN you'd believe.

[AJ113]

Originally posted by seebs
This is cute, but it runs into an obvious problem.

No one likes to be addressed as "occupant".

So, even if *all* of these entities exist, you shouldn't expect much for results.

Why not? It's the perfect chance for any real deity once and for all to prove its existance. If I were one of these deities, answering Winace's prayers as part of a program for proving my existance would have my highest priority.

[beyelzu]

Originally posted by AJ113
Why not? It's the perfect chance for any real deity once and for all to prove its existance. If I were one of these deities, answering Winace's prayers as part of a program for proving my existance would have my highest priority.

unless, of course, the other gods dont want you to prove your existence out of jealousy and are just fucking with to keep your godhood not visible.

[seebs]

Originally posted by AJ113
Why not? It's the perfect chance for any real deity once and for all to prove its existance. If I were one of these deities, answering Winace's prayers as part of a program for proving my existance would have my highest priority.

Why would you have a program for proving your existance?

Seems to me that people who are totally sure there's a God have a lot less faith in Him than people who just think there probably is.

[lpetrich]

Originally posted by Stormy
Winace: It does not matter what name you give to God. You only need to speak to the one who created you and have FAITH that he is there. I'm afraid I'm not into ancestor worship.

And Mark Twain once noted that faith is when you believe something when you know it isn't true.

[Ojuice5001]

WinAce,

No doubt the double-blind aspect is valuable. There is a lot of danger of bias, even if someone is trying not to be biased. I mean, if it weren't, both sides would have a greater amount of agreement in regard to the non-double-blind prayer experiments that have been done.

Regarding my Thor and Yahweh example, I didn't just have in mind a god who opposes proofs of Thor's existence. It is also possible that the god who does control the weather at a given moment wants a long rain because of the grass, or to keep someone from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc, but cares little or nothing for the experiment. Not that Yahweh is likely to be neutral in that regard, but I did have both a deceptive deity and an indifferent one in mind.

You say you live in New York? New York should be a good place It's very much a kind of melting pot. By the principle of "as above, so below," there should be all kinds of divine influence in NY just as there are all kinds of human influence. On the other hand, it is kind of close to Boston--which is not a good thing. Still, New York seems like a place where the spiritual environment doesn't bias the results in the direction of either materialism or a particular religion--at least as much so as the average geographic location.

[WinAce]

Originally posted by seebs

This also happens with people. If you "test" someone's love or affection a lot, you'll find that the tests come out negative more often than you would have expected...

Obviously, I don't expect this test to yield amazing results such as it could be expected to get if I was praying for something really important. However, there's a reasonable chance at least some statistically significant result should be discernible if the entities in question exist, can understand requests, have the ability to paranormally influence phenomena, and have the most remote interest in revealing their existence. If any of these assumptions should fail, I don't see how you could justify the existence of 'gods' as traditionally formulated.

Originally posted by Singerian
Couldn't the test be strengthened in a way by simply recording the results of similar prayers by those of different faiths. That way, the prayer itself isn't a test. Thus, Jesus' famous refusal to Satan would have no relevant implication.

Too complicated. Unfortunately, I'm but a lone guy conducting the experiment. While a full-blown prayer study involving hundreds of people, the interest of various religious leaders, and a university grant might be more effective, this will have to do for the time being.

Originally posted by seebs

That depends. For instance, what if some not-yet-known physical law has begun answering prayers, but only prayers fitting a format established by the consensus beliefs of a billion or so people?

And this physical law just happens to mimick, in precise detail, the actions of an intelligent agency capable of understanding our requests and selectively responding to them exactly as it would if it were a god?

At some point, explanatory and predictive power, not to mention parsimony, needs to be considered. This seems to be an ad hoc rationalization meant to save atheism from falsification, kinda like the ones about God putting fossils of evolving creatures in the rocks to fool us. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and acts predictably like a duck...

As an analogy, what if no one but yourself exists, and every other person you're currently interacting with is just a figment of the imagination based on some mechanistic law that precisely mimicks the behavior of yourself, the only human to exist?

Even assuming answered prayers, I don't think you can prove much about who's answering them. Maybe God doesn't answer prayers, but Satan does, knowing that people who think their prayers are being personally answered are more likely to fall to pride...

Maybe, and maybe it's not seebs that's replying but rather some kind of automatic posting script. Without independent evidence of either, though, there is no reason to accept this hypothesis. If a god identifies itself by name and is otherwise consistent in its probable behavior, its testimony is innocent until proven guilty.

That's not to say one couldn't suspect it was lying--I certainly wouldn't trust much of what it said if it claimed to be the YHWH of the Old Testament, and admitted authoring some of the nastier Mosaic laws--but I wouldn't be too paranoid about the gods initially. If they exist, they're just another, perfectly natural (if esoteric) part of the world, after all, no different than the counterintuitive world of subatomic particles.


Originally posted by Ojuice5001
Regarding my Thor and Yahweh example, I didn't just have in mind a god who opposes proofs of Thor's existence. It is also possible that the god who does control the weather at a given moment wants a long rain because of the grass, or to keep someone from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc, but cares little or nothing for the experiment.

Yeah, but I think I took that into account by analyzing the collective trends instead of individual requests. If prayers to a specific god are statistically worse off to occur than a control, it indicates either a malicious response or some other, hostile entity interfering. Similarly, unless no entity ever responds to any of these requests, there should be statistically detectable effects, even if unimpressive or 1 in 50 prayers is answered. The increasing number of trials should rectify the possibility it's due to chance alone, although it may take a great many before a real effect is seen.

You say you live in New York? New York should be a good place It's very much a kind of melting pot. By the principle of "as above, so below," there should be all kinds of divine influence in NY just as there are all kinds of human influence. On the other hand, it is kind of close to Boston--which is not a good thing.

I'm glad New York is a good place to test religious beliefs, but that last part about Boston cracked me up for some reason. :)

[WinAce]

Originally posted by Calzaer
One problem with your experiment - you need a control. A card that's blank on the "god" side. Your computer harddrive could be omnipotent too, or the name of your hard drive could be the name of some forgotton lonely god trying to get more recognition. Similarly, Tolkien did a lot of research into the mythos of the norse and others, his gods could be related to gods that people actually worshipped. As for Selune, well, there's the computer hard drive problem there too. Forgotten Realms has a tendency to plagerize ancient history occasionally.

So you should have a blank card as a control.

What if I accidentally invoke the Nameless Bard from the Finder's Stone series by doing that? Ever since he destroyed Moander the Darkbringer in Song of the Saurials and stole his god powers, there might be a problem :p

[AJ113]

Originally posted by seebs
Why would you have a program for proving your existance?

Winace's test sample is limited to gods that purport to have some sort of interaction with humans. If I was a type of god who existed, but whom nobody knew about, then Winace would not praying to me, because he would not even know about me.

Therefore within the test sample, I would be a god who is keen to make his presence known to humans, so that they will worship me. It follows that if I have an opportunity to reinforce people's faith in me by illustrating that I do, actually exist, then I am going to deem that opportunity to be very high priority.

Seems to me that people who are totally sure there's a God have a lot less faith in Him than people who just think there probably is.

Good point, but I posit that anyone who is losing faith in his god is having doubts about that god's existence, regardless of verbal affirmations to the contrary.

[sakrilege]

Originally posted by WinAce
but what does an additional deck introduce?
The additional deck is the 'working' deck, the decks in the envelopes are the reference decks that nobody has the possibility of seeing. Good double blind studies ensure that no participant is able to determine the specifics either on purpose or accidently. Having a single deck of cards means you might inadvertantly see who you are praying to and this has the potential of altering the result.

[WinAce]

Originally posted by sakrilege
The additional deck is the 'working' deck, the decks in the envelopes are the reference decks that nobody has the possibility of seeing. Good double blind studies ensure that no participant is able to determine the specifics either on purpose or accidently. Having a single deck of cards means you might inadvertantly see who you are praying to and this has the potential of altering the result.

Ah, good point. I'm not big on double-blind studies, so I forgot that part.

So, basically, you take two identical symbol decks and a single god deck. You pick random cards from a symbol deck and a god deck, and without checking seal the two in an envelope. Repeat until all gods and random symbols are associated.

Then you have a mirro deck of symbol cards that doesn't even have the name of the gods on it, so you can't accidentally reveal it even by turning them over. Later, you reveal which god was associated with which symbol.

Is that basically it?

[Colander of Truth]

bump for WinAce

[espritch]

Prayer is inherently unfalsifiable. Any failure of prayer can be explained by one of the following convinient excuses:

1. You didn't have enough faith. This assertion is automatically proven by the fact that the prayer failed.
2. God had a different plan (God answered your prayer - he said no).
3. God doesn't like to be tested. I can imagine no test of prayer where an omniscient God would not know he was being tested and therefore refuse to answer the prayer.

So it is perfectly acceptable to count the hits and ignore the misses since the misses can all be explained away.