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Does God exist? (5 Viewers)

do you believe in god?


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BradCube

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Enteebee said:
Belief in the natural is needed in order to interact with the world. I cannot suspend belief in the natural. Clearly, there are people who can function without belief in the supernatural. It seems apriori more valid based on this necessity. To live is to have subjective experience of the natural.

Of course, you can go ahead and claim we don't know of nature if you really want, but it seems a bit like solipism to me.
I honestly don't see the relevance. Even if we say that belief in the natural is needed in order to interact with the world, the theist could say that belief in the supernatural in required to interact with the supernatural world. To say things like people can function without belief in the supernatural seems a bit misleading to me. People can function without the belief in the natural too. Now there will be consequences for doing so (pain, death etc) but the same could be argued for the supernatural.

I'm not going to argue that we can't know anything. We need to take hold of some properly basic beliefs in order to assert anything. What I am claiming is that just as one can have properly basic beliefs grounded in the natural based on their subjective experiences, so can they have properly basic beliefs grounded in the supernatural based on their subjective experiences. Is there a problem with this?


Enteebee said:
Obviously everything is a subjective experience... but the subjective experience of the existence of china is surely different to the subjective experience of something supernatural?
Well no, I don't think so. Why should one persons subjective experience of the supernatural be any less valid than their experience of the natural? Unless they have reason to doubt their mental faculties, then I don't really see belief in the supernatural in the dismissive way that you do.


Enteebee said:
If you think otherwise then I would suggest that you're either stuck with fairies or you believe we can't know anything. My epistemological method starts off with cognito ergo sum, but then I think we practically need to move beyond that.
Your probably right that under my proposed system of knowledge, we shouldn't say that fairies do or do not exist. Either way it becomes a dismissive question in my mind since it has no relevance factor, we don't know their properties, we don't even know what kind of evidence we would expect to find and we have no reason to assert their existence. Again, this is a very different situation to God who's existence is relevant in every way possible, who's properties we can suggest and who we do see reason for asserting.

I too think we need to at least start from a point of "I think, therefore I am" and then move to some properly basic beliefs. I just don't see good reason for why our experiences of the supernatural should be dismissed and taken not be properly basic.


Enteebee said:
Well if the supernatural is far less plausible an explanation do you accept that it is no longer reasonable to accept it? Obviously you can claim it's more or as plausible, but you need to give reasons why and I think yours are lacking.
If the supernatural explanation is far less plausible than a natural one, than one would be rational in taking the natural explanation.

To your second point though, if the supernatural explanation has equal or far more explanatory power, why must I have the burden of proof to show that it is the case? This suggests that you are asserting that the supernatural is less probable - which is exactly what we are debating.


Enteebee said:
It seems rather unfair of you to place the burden of basically all knowledge on a naturalistic worldview while requiring no knowledge for your own. Surely if you can place such a burden on naturalism I can place the same on the supernatural?
I'm not asking for a naturalistic theory of everything from you. I understand that would be impossible to give (especially if there are supernatural elements after all!). What I'm asking for is any reasons you would have for asserting that something can pop into being uncaused and out of nothing. You can't simply claim "I don't know and you can't prove me wrong" since the burden of proof is on you for the bold assertion that is contrary to what we experience everyday in the natural world.


Enteebee said:
You should have to explain how G-d/whatever does what it does else how is your explanation any better than my saying "I don't know, nature did it" ? In the same way that the 'supernatural works in mysterious ways' perhaps the natural does? Or would you describe a nature that works in mysterious ways as supernatural? If you would then I have no problem with a belief in the supernatural.
Again, I'm not asking for a theory of everything. Also it would be logically impossible for me to provide a naturalistic account and explanation for a supernatural event.

The natural may appear to work in mysterious ways, but that is only because it is unknown to us (as we have already gone through). In much the same way, the supernatural may seem mysterious to us because it is unknown why things may occur. But eh, I think we've already been through this before.


Enteebee said:
If that's how you conceive God then I accept that.
:D Who ever said that in 726 pages we don't make progress?



Enteebee said:
How would you ever prove that something is natural and we can't explain it instead of being something that cannot be explained naturally?
Well, you couldn't - hence why that leap of faith is required. Either way seems a bit troubling to be honest. On the one hand you could be wrong by assuming that it is supernatural (when a naturalistic account becomes plausible) and on the other hand you could forever believe that it is natural when it was actually a supernatural event. I suppose that you at least have the option of being proved wrong when making the jump to belief in the supernatural. Seems to be a jump either way though.


Enteebee said:
I don't see how claiming in a realm of non-causation you need cause is rational.
If you want to hold that the universe popped into being un-caused, from nothing, by nothing and for nothing then go ahead. At this point though, I think you're looking for any explanation apart from one with theistic implications.

I'll probably have to do a bit more reading up on the topic to get a better grasp on causation and its implications to the beginning of the universe :)
 

Enteebee

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the theist could say that belief in the supernatural in required to interact with the supernatural world.
Yes but I think they have to show that it exists, whereas the proof of the natural is all around me... anything you see, that is what I call natural. I have no idea what you mean when you talk of the supernatural, no idea at all, for all I know it could just be empty words.

People can function without the belief in the natural too. Now there will be consequences for doing so (pain, death etc) but the same could be argued for the supernatural.
What are the consequences? You've here admitted that consequences exist for non-belief in the natural, so therefore it must exist... Where is the evidence of consequences occuring from non-belief in the supernatural? The same could not be argued.

If the supernatural explanation is far less plausible than a natural one, than one would be rational in taking the natural explanation.

To your second point though, if the supernatural explanation has equal or far more explanatory power, why must I have the burden of proof to show that it is the case? This suggests that you are asserting that the supernatural is less probable - which is exactly what we are debating.
I have given my reasons. We know the natural exists... if we 'suspend belief' in the natural then there are consequences. If we suspend belief in the supernatural you can't say whether anything happens.

We do not know the supernatural exists, therefore it's far less plausible given that it's such a complex solution.

Who ever said that in 726 pages we don't make progress?
... I accept that we might know some of the abstract properties of your God.

The natural may appear to work in mysterious ways, but that is only because it is unknown to us (as we have already gone through). In much the same way, the supernatural may seem mysterious to us because it is unknown why things may occur. But eh, I think we've already been through this before.
Yes fine, so where I can't explain something I have at least as much right to say 'Nature's mysterious' as you do to say God is when you don't have an explanation. Furthermore as we know the natural exists but do not know of the supernatural, it seems far better to say it's something mysterious in nature.

Well, you couldn't - hence why that leap of faith is required. Either way seems a bit troubling to be honest. On the one hand you could be wrong by assuming that it is supernatural (when a naturalistic account becomes plausible) and on the other hand you could forever believe that it is natural when it was actually a supernatural event. I suppose that you at least have the option of being proved wrong when making the jump to belief in the supernatural. Seems to be a jump either way though.
Then I say that all we know is the natural.

I think you're looking for any explanation apart from one with theistic implications.
Well... yes, I find the 'magic did it' explanation to be a joke. But there is quite possibly no implication for me personally in proving the type of God you're trying to prove i.e. It could be a God that does not care, or died after creating the universe etc etc.

---------------Basically----------------

I assert that we know the natural exists because we cannot escape a belief in its existence without suffering some consequence, it exists as much as anything does for all of us and thus is a priori existant. If you deny belief in the natural then I would be interested in discussing this idea with you.. but I think you accept the natural exists anyway.

From here, is there any evidence of the supernatural which moves it beyond "I don't know?"... since there is not I submit that the natural is all we currently know.

(1) If you believe in nature, but are agnostic about the supernatural: I submit that then when it comes to things such as "How did the universe begin?", plausibility should weigh toward a natural explanation we are yet to know.

(2) If you are agnostic about nature and the supernatural: I submit that you know nothing.

(3) If you reject the existance of the natural in any way: I submit you don't exist.

(4) If you believe in nature and reject the supernatural: I submit you consider that which you know exists to be more likely than that which is possible.
 

BradCube

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Enteebee said:
Yes but I think they have to show that it exists, whereas the proof of the natural is all around me... anything you see, that is what I call natural. I have no idea what you mean when you talk of the supernatural, no idea at all, for all I know it could just be empty words.
Be careful now enteebee, your sounding dangerously close to verificationism.

What method would you like the theist to give you in order to show you that the supernatural realm exists? We already know that they cannot empirically prove it to you.

Either way, I don't think that is at the crux of the matter, since we are looking at why proof of the natural is more reliable than proof of the supernatural. Since it seems we are unable to know anything at all with 100% assurance, we make the jump to belief. These beliefs are properly basic and form grounds for rational inquiry (ie belief in the existence of the natural world). What I am trying to understand is why we should make the jump to the properly basic belief in the natural word but exclude experiences of the supernatural from being properly basic.


Enteebee said:
What are the consequences? You've here admitted that consequences exist for non-belief in the natural, so therefore it must exist... Where is the evidence of consequences occuring from non-belief in the supernatural? The same could not be argued.
Well one could say that death and pain etc are illusory also, but I'm not really arguing for the non-existence of the world. I'm arguing on how we come to belief in the natural world from believing it doesn't exist at all.

Regarding consequences of the supernatural, I thought it was pretty obvious what I was inferring - ie eternal separation from god, damnation, lack of relationship with God etc. Now, these things aren't empirically verifiable, but we expected that anyway.


Enteebee said:
I have given my reasons. We know the natural exists... if we 'suspend belief' in the natural then there are consequences. If we suspend belief in the supernatural you can't say whether anything happens.
But we don't "know" the natural exists - we make that jump in order to have a basic grounding point for living. I realize this may sound a little odd at first, but I would go so far as to say that we can't say whether anything happens if we suspend or belief in the natural either. There may appear to be consequences, but how do we really know these actually occurred? It seems like we are talking in absurdities here (such is the nature of philosophy I suppose :p).

In the same way we assume there to be a natural world based on our perceptions, does the person that has perception or experience of the supernatural have any rational ground to assume their experience was false?


Enteebee said:
We do not know the supernatural exists, therefore it's far less plausible given that it's such a complex solution.
We don't know that the natural world exists either (just in case I hadn't said that enough already :p). I also don't see how the supernatural is such a complex solution. Doesn't seem that complex to me, it's certainly not an unintelligible theory.



Enteebee said:
Yes fine, so where I can't explain something I have at least as much right to say 'Nature's mysterious' as you do to say God is when you don't have an explanation. Furthermore as we know the natural exists but do not know of the supernatural, it seems far better to say it's something mysterious in nature.
Well, it makes sense to say that nature is mysterious/unknown if we know that the supernatural does not exist. Otherwise it could be a supernatural event that is of course unknown. This seems pretty obvious though.

I think the main point we are looking at is why one would propose supernatural over the natural? I think we have been through this before, and we may be leading back into the same discussion, but where I see situations that seem directly contrary or unlikely under natural laws that we do know, a supernatural answer has more explanatory power and becomes the better explanation.




Enteebee said:
Then I say that all we know is the natural.
I've been through the whole knowing that we know issue, so I'll just say this:

I hope for your sake that your assumptions are correct! It would be a shame of epic proportions to find out that it was the other way round when it was too late.



Enteebee said:
Well... yes, I find the 'magic did it' explanation to be a joke.
Heh heh, I find the uncaused universe worse than magic. At least with magic you have a hat for the bunny to come out of, in the case of the universe, you have nothing at all! :p

To your real concern though, I don't see proposing an intelligent designer of the universe to be a real magic trick at all. Certainly we don't understand how it happened, but its seems a reasonable theory to me in light of the evidence we face.

Enteebee said:
But there is quite possibly no implication for me personally in proving the type of God you're trying to prove i.e. It could be a God that does not care, or died after creating the universe etc etc.
No implications for you? I can't think of anything in the world which would have more implications for you and me both!

If the God that I am trying to defend actually exists, then life suddenly has meaning, purpose, objective moral values, forgiveness and the chance for a personal relationship with God! What could possibly have more implications?



Enteebee said:
I assert that we know the natural exists because we cannot escape a belief in its existence without suffering some consequence, it exists as much as anything does for all of us and thus is a priori existant. If you deny belief in the natural then I would be interested in discussing this idea with you.. but I think you accept the natural exists anyway.

From here, is there any evidence of the supernatural which moves it beyond "I don't know?"... since there is not I submit that the natural is all we currently know.

(1) If you believe in nature, but are agnostic about the supernatural: I submit that then when it comes to things such as "How did the universe begin?", plausibility should weigh toward a natural explanation we are yet to know.

(2) If you are agnostic about nature and the supernatural: I submit that you know nothing.

(3) If you reject the existance of the natural in any way: I submit you don't exist.

(4) If you believe in nature and reject the supernatural: I submit you consider that which you know exists to be more likely than that which is possible.
I am betting on position 2 here. We know nothing, but must assume some properly basic beliefs in order to function. If our jump to belief in the natural world is rational, why isn't our jump to the supernatural also rational?
 

BradCube

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Pacchiru said:
hahahha holy crap, essay after essay.

Give it up boys.
Ha ha. How could we possibly give up that which seems most important in all life to answer? :D
 

KFunk

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BradCube said:
But we don't "know" the natural exists - we make that jump in order to have a basic grounding point for living. I realize this may sound a little odd at first, but I would go so far as to say that we can't say whether anything happens if we suspend or belief in the natural either. There may appear to be consequences, but how do we really know these actually occurred? It seems like we are talking in absurdities here (such is the nature of philosophy I suppose :p).
It depends on where you set the theoretical bar. If you only consent to the authority of irrefutable, a priori truth then you are bound to be dissapointed. Skeptical defeaters will always leave you just short of certainty.

Many would contend that you don't have to know for certain in order to know. I suspect that the dominant view is that in order to know you need a belief backed up by a reasonable level of justification (even if it is not completely air-tight), though some philosophers would admit mere true belief as knowledge and claim that knowledge can then come in degrees of strength.

You can bite the bullet, make some pragmatic assumptions and get on with it or you can wallow in doubt and roll in the direction of Sextus Empiricus (see below). (Or, if you are so inclined, you can claim objective truth of some sort, or tear down the walls of philosophy, etc.. etc...)


Enteebee said:
(2) If you are agnostic about nature and the supernatural: I submit that you know nothing.
Sextus Empiricus, yo (see his Pyrrhonian skepticism).
 

Enteebee

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Be careful now enteebee, your sounding dangerously close to verificationism.

What method would you like the theist to give you in order to show you that the supernatural realm exists? We already know that they cannot empirically prove it to you.
What principle would you have us take for believing in different realms of existance? It seems to me that anyone who becomes semi-conscious of this world around us will be forced into acknowleging the existance of the natural. I must, necessarily, whether the natural realm 'truly exists' or not believe in its existence. I don't think we can say the natural realm doesn't exist without reducing ourselves back down to just 'I exist'.

I don't believe any of these things can be said for a belief in the supernatural.

If the God that I am trying to defend actually exists, then life suddenly has meaning, purpose, objective moral values, forgiveness and the chance for a personal relationship with God! What could possibly have more implications?
No the God you're actually defending could be anything supernatural that created the universe.

I'm arguing on how we come to belief in the natural world from believing it doesn't exist at all.

Regarding consequences of the supernatural, I thought it was pretty obvious what I was inferring - ie eternal separation from god, damnation, lack of relationship with God etc. Now, these things aren't empirically verifiable, but we expected that anyway.
Since they're not empirically verifiable why do you think we should believe they exist?

But we don't "know" the natural exists - we make that jump in order to have a basic grounding point for living.
Yes. But we don't have to make such a jump in order to live for the supernatural. Thus why natures existance is a properly basic believe but the supernatural is not.

I realize this may sound a little odd at first, but I would go so far as to say that we can't say whether anything happens if we suspend or belief in the natural either. There may appear to be consequences, but how do we really know these actually occurred? It seems like we are talking in absurdities here (such is the nature of philosophy I suppose ).
Obviously it COULD not exist, but it's properly basic.

I am betting on position 2 here. We know nothing, but must assume some properly basic beliefs in order to function. If our jump to belief in the natural world is rational, why isn't our jump to the supernatural also rational?
I think we can have rational reasons for positing one thing as a properly basic belief and not another. I am forced to take the existance of the natural realm around me as properly basic in order to interact with it.

Heh heh, I find the uncaused universe worse than magic. At least with magic you have a hat for the bunny to come out of, in the case of the universe, you have nothing at all! :p

To your real concern though, I don't see proposing an intelligent designer of the universe to be a real magic trick at all. Certainly we don't understand how it happened, but its seems a reasonable theory to me in light of the evidence we face.
But supporting naturalism doesn't mean supporting an uncaused universe.. the universe may very well be caused, just by something natural. I don't know how you'd define something as supernatural though... I mean something quite within the bounds of our universe could have made it that however seems supernatural to everything we know.

When, in your opinion, does something become supernatural instead of just a very weird natural occurance?
 
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BradCube said:
The pun I made has seemingly just been lost on me... (I have no idea why that evoked an "eww")
She was implying you were...face deep in your mum. Your sentence was compounded by the smiley with the tongue out...

BradCube said:
If the God that I am trying to defend actually exists, then life suddenly has meaning, purpose, objective moral values, forgiveness and the chance for a personal relationship with God!
Why do you need someone else to give your life those things (besides the relationship with God, obviously)? You can give your own life meaning, purpose and forgiveness. Also, wouldn't morals always be subjective, seeings as there is always more than one way of looking at things? For example, due to my (God-given) free will, I could decide that God's morals are wrong, and mine are right. hence, mine and God's morals are subjective?

Oh yeah, FIRST POST LOLOLOLOL
 

inasero

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well, subjective in the sense that i might be colour blind and believe grass is red and you might believe it's green, but only one of these subjective views are in accordance with objective truth.
 
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KFunk

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inasero said:
well, subjective in the sense that i might be colour blind and believe grass is red and you might believe it's green, but only one of these subjective views are in accordance with objective truth.
Or they may be properly subjective/relative - similar to the way in which there is no objectively correct way to set a table, or to determine whether a painting is beautiful.
 

Tully B.

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I am a mere blip in this mega-thread... whoa...

So, how's it going? Anyone want to give me a paragraph summary of this 727 page conversation?
 

HalcyonSky

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Tully B. said:
I am a mere blip in this mega-thread... whoa...

So, how's it going? Anyone want to give me a paragraph summary of this 727 page conversation?
It's a vicious circle of the same few standard philosophical arguments being recycled over and over again, mainly due to christians coming into the thread without having read any other posts in it and simply stating "i believe god exists".
Currently being featured in this thread: Enteebee pumping out essays into a brick wall. His posts are worth reading, though.
 

melanieeeee.

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The Existence of God

1. How probability works against the big bang theory

Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang theory states that the universe arose from a singularity of virtually no size, which gave rise to the dimensions of space and time, in addition to all matter and energy. At the beginning of the Big Bang, the four fundamental forces began to separate from each other. Early in its history (10-36 to 10-32 seconds), the universe underwent a period of short, but dramatic, hyper-inflationary expansion. The cause of this inflation is unknown, but was required for life to be possible in the universe.

Excess Quarks

Quarks and antiquarks combined to annihilate each other. One would expect the ratio of quarks and antiquarks to be exactly equal to one, since neither would be expected to have been produced in preference to the other. However, miraculously, quarks outnumbered antiquarks by a ratio of 1,000,000,001 to 1,000,000,000. The remaining small excess of quarks eventually made up all the matter that exists in the universe.

Large, Just Right Sized Universe

Even so, the universe is enormous compared to the size of our Solar System. Isn't the immense size of the universe evidence that humans are really insignificant, contradicting the idea that a God concerned with humanity created the universe? It turns out that the universe could not have been much smaller than it is in order for nuclear fusion to have occurred during the first 3 minutes after the Big Bang. Without this brief period of nucleosynthesis, the early universe would have consisted entirely of hydrogen. Likewise, the universe could not have been much larger than it is, or life would not have been possible. If the universe were just one part in 1059 larger, the universe would have collapsed before life was possible. Since there are only 1080 baryons in the universe, this means that an addition of just 1021 baryons (about the mass of a grain of sand) would have made life impossible. The universe is exactly the size it must be for life to exist at all.

Early Evolution of the Universe

Cosmologists assume that the universe could have evolved in any of a number of ways, and that the process is entirely random. Based upon this assumption, nearly all possible universes would consist solely of thermal radiation (no matter). Of the tiny subset of universes that would contain matter, a small subset would be similar to ours. A very small subset of those would have originated through inflationary conditions. Therefore, universes that are conducive to life "are almost always created by fluctuations into the[se] 'miraculous' states," according to atheist cosmologist Dr. L. Dyson.

Just Right Laws of Physics

The laws of physics must have values very close to those observed or the universe does not work "well enough" to support life. What happens when we vary the constants? The strong nuclear force (which holds atoms together) has a value such that when the two hydrogen atoms fuse, 0.7% of the mass is converted into energy. If the value were 0.6% then a proton could not bond to a neutron, and the universe would consist only of hydrogen. If the value were 0.8%, then fusion would happen so readily that no hydrogen would have survived from the Big Bang. Other constants must be fine-tuned to an even more stringent degree. The cosmic microwave background varies by one part in 100,000. If this factor were slightly smaller, the universe would exist only as a collection of diffuse gas, since no stars or galaxies could ever form. If this factor were slightly larger, the universe would consist solely of large black holes. Likewise, the ratio of electrons to protons cannot vary by more than 1 part in 1037 or else electromagnetic interactions would prevent chemical reactions. In addition, if the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational constant were greater by more than 1 part in 1040, then electromagnetism would dominate gravity, preventing the formation of stars and galaxies. If the expansion rate of universe were 1 part in 1055 less than what it is, then the universe would have already collapsed. The most recently discovered physical law, the cosmological constant or dark energy, is the closest to zero of all the physical constants. In fact, a change of only 1 part in 10120 would completely negate the effect.

Universal Probability Bounds

"Unlikely things happen all the time." This is the mantra of the anti-design movement. However, there is an absolute physical limit for improbable events to happen in our universe. The universe contains only 1080 baryons and has only been around for 13.7 billion years (1018 sec). Since the smallest unit of time is Planck time (10-45 sec),4 the lowest probability event that can ever happen in the history of the universe is:
1080 x 1018 x 1045 =10143
So, although it would be possible that one or two constants might require unusual fine-tuning by chance, it would be virtually impossible that all of them would require such fine-tuning. Some physicists have indicated that any of a number of different physical laws would be compatible with our present universe. However, it is not just the current state of the universe that must be compatible with the physical laws. Even more stringent are the initial conditions of the universe, since even minor deviations would have completely disrupted the process. For example, adding a grain of sand to the weight of the universe now would have no effect. However, adding even this small amount of weight at the beginning of the universe would have resulted in its collapse early in its history.

What do Cosmologists say?

Even though many atheists would like to dismiss such evidence of design, cosmologists know better, and have made statements such as the following, which reveal the depth of the problem for the atheistic worldview:
• "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine-tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'."5
• "Polarization is predicted. It's been detected and it's in line with theoretical predictions. We're stuck with this preposterous universe."6
• "In all of these worlds statistically miraculous (but not impossible) events would be necessary to assemble and preserve the fragile nuclei that would ordinarily be destroyed by the higher temperatures. However, although each of the corresponding histories is extremely unlikely, there are so many more of them than those that evolve without "miracles," that they would vastly dominate the livable universes that would be created by Poincare recurrences. We are forced to conclude that in a recurrent world like de Sitter space our universe would be extraordinarily unlikely."

Spectacular Solutions to the Design Problem

The newest "solution" to design in the universe is a belief in the multi-universe theory. This theory requires one to believe that there are more universes in existence than the number of all the subatomic particles that exist in our universe. Our universe just happened to be one of the few that is able to support life. Here is what a recent article from Science says about this hypothetical "multiverse" spinning off an "infinity" of other universes:
"Uncomfortable with the idea that physical parameters like lambda [cosmological constant] are simply lucky accidents, some cosmologists, including Hawking, have suggested that there have been an infinity of big bangs going off in a larger 'multiverse,' each with different values for these parameters. Only those values that are compatible with life could be observed by beings such as ourselves."
What scientific evidence exists to support the multiverse model? None! Not only is there no evidence, the physics of our own universe requires that we will never be able to obtain any evidence about any other universe (even if it does exist). Even secular websites admit that such ideas amount to nothing more than unfalsifiable metaphysics:
"Appeals to multiple or "parallel" cosmoses or to an infinite number of cosmic "Big Bang/Crunch" oscillations as essential elements of proposed mechanisms are not acceptable in submissions due to a lack of empirical correlation and testability. Such beliefs are without hard physical evidence and must therefore be considered unfalsifiable, currently outside the methodology of scientific investigation to confirm or disprove, and therefore more mathematically theoretical and metaohysical than scientific in nature. Recent cosmological evidence also suggests insufficient mass for gravity to reverse continuing cosmic expansion. The best cosmological evidence thus far suggests the cosmos is finite rather than infinite in age."
According to Paul Davies:
"Whether it is God, or man, who tosses the dice, turns out to depend on whether multiple universes really exist or not….If instead, the other universes are relegated to ghost worlds, we must regard our existence as a miracle of such improbability that it is scarcely credible."

Theist Solution – Measurable Design

On the other hand, the deist or theist says that God designed the universe with just the right laws of physics. Note that neither the multiverse nor the "God hypothesis" is testable. However, the "God hypothesis" is much simpler. The naturalistic explanation requires the presence of a complicated, unproved super universe that has the capacity to randomly spew out an infinite number of universes with different laws of physics. How does this hypothetical super universe know how to do this? Why would it even want to do this? Ultimately, why should there be any universe at all? None of these questions are logically explained by naturalism. Only an intelligent Being would be motivated and expected to produce any kind of universe such as what we see. If we use Occam's razor, which states that one should use the simplest logical explanation for any phenomenon, we would eliminate the super universe/multi-universe explanation in favor of the simpler God-designed universe model. The evidence for design in the universe and biology is so strong that Antony Flew, a long-time proponent of atheism, renounced his atheism in 2004 and now believes that the existence of a Creator is required to explain the universe and life in it. Likewise, Frank Tipler, Professor of the Department of Mathematics at Tulane University, and a former atheist, not only became a theist, but is now a born-again Christian because of the laws of physics.
 

melanieeeee.

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2. The Bible as Historical Evidence

Quite frankly, I can’t see why the bible can’t be used as evidence to support God’s existence.

IS THE BIBLE TRUE? Extraordinary insights from archaeology and history

The workday was nearly over for the team of archaeologists excavating the ruins of the ancient Israelite city of Dan in upper Galilee. Led by Avraham Biran of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, the group had been toiling since early morning, sifting debris in a stone-paved plaza outside what had been the city's main gate. Now the fierce afternoon sun was turning the stoneworks into a reflective oven. Gila Cook, the team's surveyor, was about to take a break when something caught her eye -- an unusual shadow in a portion of recently exposed wall along the east side of the plaza. Moving closer, she discovered a flattened basalt stone protruding from the ground with what appeared to be Aramaic letters etched into its smooth surface.
She called Biran over for a look. As the veteran archaeologist knelt to examine the stone, his eyes widened. "Oh, my God!" he exclaimed. "We have an inscription!" In an instant, Biran knew that they had stumbled upon a rare treasure. The basalt stone was quickly identified as part of a shattered monument, or stele, from the 9th century B.C., apparently commemorating a military victory of the king of Damascus over two ancient enemies. One foe the fragment identified as the "king of Israel." The other was "the House of David."
The reference to David was a historical bombshell. Never before had the familiar name of Judah's ancient warrior king, a central figure of the Hebrew Bible and, according to Christian Scripture, an ancestor of Jesus, been found in the records of antiquity outside the pages of the Bible. Skeptics had long seized upon that fact to argue that David was a mere legend, invented by Hebrew scribes during or shortly after Israel's Babylonian exile, roughly 500 years before the birth of Christ. Now, at last, there was material evidence: an inscription written not by Hebrew scribes but by an enemy of the Israelites a little more than a century after David's presumptive lifetime. It seemed to be a clear corroboration of the existence of King David's dynasty and, by implication, of David himself.
Beyond its impact on the question of David's existence, however, the discovery provided a dramatic illustration of the promise and peril that come into play whenever the Bible is weighed on the scales of modern archaeology. In one moment, the unearthing of an inscription or artifact can shed new light or cast a shadow on a passage of Scripture and in the process shatter the presuppositions of biblical scholarship. One kind of truth is confirmedñor replacedñby another. In extraordinary ways, modern archaeology has affirmed the historical core of the Old and New Testaments -- corroborating key portions of the stories of Israel's patriarchs, the Exodus, the Davidic monarchy, and the life and times of Jesus. Where it has faced its toughest task has been in primordial history, where many scholars find the traces of human origins obscured in theological myth.

IN THE BEGINNING

Ever since Copernicus overturned the church-sanctioned view of Earth as the center of the universe and Charles Darwin posited random mutation and natural selection as the real creators of human life, the biblical view that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" has found itself on the defensive in modern Western thought. Despite the dominance of Darwin's theory -- that human beings evolved from lower life forms over millions of years -- theologians have yielded relatively little ground on what for them is a fundamental doctrine of faith: that the universe is the handiwork of a divine creator who has given humanity a special place in his creation.
These apparently conflicting explanations have played a divisive role for centuries. In modern times, the supposed incompatibility of the scientific and religious views of creation have sparked bitter clashes in the nation's courtrooms and classrooms. Often the modern debate has amounted to little more than a shouting match between extremists on both sides -- fundamentalists, who dismiss evolution as a satanic deception, and atheistic naturalists, who assert that science offers the only window on reality and who seek to discredit religious belief as ignorant superstition.
Listening to some of the rhetoric today, one might easily assume that the views espoused by creationists -- that God created the universe in six 24-hour days, as a literal reading of Genesis 1 would suggest -- represent the historic position of Christianity and of the Bible, and that it is only in modern times, with the rise of evolutionary theory, that creationism has come under siege. Yet this is hardly the case.
As early as the 5th century, the great Christian theologian Augustine warned against taking the six days of Genesis literally. Writing on The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine argued that the days of creation were not successive, ordinary days -- the sun, after all, according to Genesis, was not created until the fourth "day" -- and had nothing to do with time. Rather, Augustine argued, God "made all things together, disposing them in an order based not on intervals of time but on causal connections." Sounding like an evolutionist, Augustine reasoned that some things were made in fully developed form and others were made in "potential form" that developed over time to the condition in which they are seen today.
Now, a growing number of conservative scholars embrace theistic evolution -- a view that considers evolution, like all other physical processes known to science, to be divinely designed and governed. They understand Genesis as speaking more of the relationship between God and creation than as presenting a scientific or historical explanation of how and when creation occurred. "Creation and evolution are not contradictory," explains Howard Van Till, a professor of physics and astronomy at evangelical Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. "They provide different answers to a different set of questions."
Much the same may be said of disputes over the meaning and intent of the biblical story of the Flood. Those who take it as literal history believe that God unleashed a worldwide deluge that destroyed all air-breathing life on Earth except for those creatures taken aboard the ark in divine judgment against a creation gone bad. When God finally allowed the waters to recede, the ark was emptied and the world was repopulated by the creatures that disembarked. Based on biblical genealogies, all of this would have happened less than 10,000 years ago.
While most biblical scholars consider the story of the Flood a myth, many conservatives have little difficulty imagining that God could pull off precisely what the Genesis story describes. As with the Creation narrative, however, the evidence and arguments from science stack up overwhelmingly against a literal interpretation of the Flood story. Where, for example, would such a volume of water have come from, and where would it have gone afterward? How would mammalian life have re-emerged on isolated islands and landmasses that emerged from the receding flood waters? While some scholars allow the possibility that a catastrophic regional deluge may underlie the flood legends of the ancient Near East, conservatives argue that there is, indeed, geological evidence consistent with a universal deluge. But such arguments have found little support within the scientific mainstream.
AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS
The book of Genesis traces Israel's ancestry to Abraham, a monotheistic nomad who God promises will be "ancestor of a multitude of nations" and whose children will inherit the land of Canaan as "a perpetual holding." God's promise and Israel's ethnic identity are passed from generation to generation -- from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob. Then Jacob and his sons -- the progenitors of Israel's 12 ancient tribes -- are forced by famine to leave Canaan and migrate to Egypt, where the Israelite people emerge over a period of some 400 years.
Modern archaeology has found no direct evidence from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 B.C.) -- roughly the period many scholars believe to be the patriarchal era -- to corroborate the biblical account. No inscriptions or artifacts relating to Israel's first biblical ancestors have been recovered. Nor are there references in other ancient records to the early battles and conflicts reported in Genesis.
Moreover, some scholars contend that the patriarch stories contain anachronisms that suggest they were written many centuries after the events they portray. Abraham, for example, is described in the 11th and 15th chapters of Genesis as coming from "Ur of the Chaldeans" -- a city in southern Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq. But the Chaldeans settled in that area "not earlier than the 9th or 8th centuries" B.C., according to Niels Peter Lemche, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and a leading biblical skeptic. That, he says, is more than 1,000 years after Abraham's time and at least 400 years after the time of Moses, who tradition says wrote the book of Genesis.
Yet other scholars, like Barry Beitzel, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., are neither surprised nor troubled by the apparent lack of direct archaeological evidence for Abraham's existence. Why, they argue, should one expect to find the names of an obscure nomad and his descendants in the official archives of the rulers of Mesopotamia? These are "family stories," says Beitzel, not geopolitical history of the type one might expect to find preserved in the annals of kings.
While there may, indeed, be no direct material evidence relating to the biblical patriarchs, archaeology has not been altogether silent on the subject. Kenneth A. Kitchen, an Egyptologist now retired from the University of Liverpool in England, argues that archaeology and the Bible "match remarkably well" in depicting the historical context of the patriarch narratives.
In Genesis 37:28, for example, Joseph, a son of Jacob, is sold by his brothers into slavery for 20 silver shekels. That, notes Kitchen, matches precisely the going price of slaves in the region during the 19th and 18th centuries B.C., as affirmed by documents recovered from the region that is now modern Syria. By the 8th century B.C., the price of slaves, as attested in ancient Assyrian records, had risen steadily to 50 or 60 shekels, and to 90 to 120 shekels during the Persian Empire in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. If the story of Joseph had been dreamed up by a Jewish scribe in the 6th century, as some skeptics have suggested, argues Kitchen, "why isn't the price in Exodus also 90 to 100 shekels? It's more reasonable to assume that the biblical data reflect reality."

FLIGHT FROM EGYPT

The dramatic story of the Exodus -- of God delivering Moses and the Israelite people from Egyptian bondage and leading them to the Promised Land of Canaan -- has been called the "central proclamation of the Hebrew Bible." Yet archaeologists have found no direct evidence to corroborate the biblical story. Inscriptions from ancient Egypt contain no mention of Hebrew slaves, of the plagues that the Bible says preceded their release, or of the destruction of the pharaoh's army during the Israelites' miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. No physical trace has been found of the Israelites' 40-year nomadic sojourn in the Sinai wilderness. There is not even any indication, outside of the Bible, that Moses existed.
Still, as with the patriarch narratives, many scholars argue that a lack of direct evidence is insufficient reason to deny that the Exodus actually happened. Nahum Sarna, professor emeritus of biblical studies at Brandeis University, argues that the Exodus story -- tracing, as it does, a nation's origins to slavery and oppression -- "cannot possibly be fictional. No nation would be likely to invent for itself . . . an inglorious and inconvenient tradition of this nature," unless it had an authentic core. "If you're making up history," adds Richard Elliott Friedman, professor at the University of California-San Diego, "it's that you were descended from gods or kings, not from slaves."
Indeed, the absence of direct material evidence of an Israelite sojourn in Egypt is not as surprising, or as damaging to the Bible's credibility, as it first might seem. What type of material evidence, after all, would one expect to find that could corroborate the biblical story? "Slaves, serfs, and nomads leave few traces in the archaeological record," notes University of Arizona archaeologist William Dever.
The dating of the Exodus also has long been a source of controversy. The book of 1 Kings 6:1 gives what appears to be a clear historical marker for the end of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt: "In the 480th year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord." Biblical historians generally agree that Solomon, the son and successor of David came to the throne in about 962 B.C. If so, then the Exodus would have occurred in about 1438 B.C., based on the chronology of the 1 Kings passage.
That date does not fit with other biblical texts or with what is known of ancient Egyptian history. But the flaw is far from fatal. Sarna and others argue that the time span cited in 1 Kings -- 480 years -- should not be taken literally. "It is 12 generations of 40 years each," notes Sarna; 40 being "a rather conventional figure in the Bible," frequently used to connote a long period of time. Viewing the 1 Kings chronology in that light -- as primarily a theological statement rather than as "pure" history in the modern sense -- the Exodus can be placed in the 13th century, in the days of Ramses II, where it finds strong circumstantial support in the archaeological record.

THE RULE OF DAVID

The reigns of King David and his son Solomon over a united monarchy mark the glory years of ancient Israel. That period (roughly 1000 B.C. to 920 B.C.) -- described in detail in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles -- marks the beginning of an era of stronger links between biblical history and modern archaeological evidence. Before the discovery of the "House of David" inscription at Dan in 1993, it had become fashionable in some academic circles to dismiss the David stories as an invention of priestly propagandists who were trying to dignify Israel's past after the Babylonian exile. But as Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein observes, "Biblical nihilism collapsed overnight with the discovery of the David inscription."
In the aftermath, another famous ancient inscription found more than a century ago has attracted renewed scholarly interest. The so-called Mesha Stele, like the stele on which the Dan inscription is etched, is a basalt monument from the 9th century B.C. that commemorates a military victory over Israel -- this one by the Moabite king Mesha. The lengthy Tyrian text describes how the kingdom of Moab, a land east of the Jordan River, had been oppressed by "Omri, king of Israel" (whose reign is summarized in 1 Kings 16:21-27) and by Omri's successors, and how Mesha threw off the Israelites in a glorious military campaign.
But the name of another of Mesha's conquered foes may lie hidden in a partially obliterated line of text that, transliterated, reads b[ñ]wd; the remainder of the inscription is missing. The French scholar André LeMaire, after carefully re-examining the inscription, has suggested that the line should be filled in to read bt dwd -- "beit David," or "house of David" -- a reference to the kingdom of Judah. "No doubt," says LeMaire, "the missing part of the inscription described how Mesha also threw off the yoke of Judah and conquered the territory southeast of the Dead Sea controlled by the House of David."
As significant as they are, these two inscriptions -- both still contested -- remain for now the only extrabiblical references to David's dynasty. And both were written more than a century after the reigns of David and Solomon. Given the grandeur of the Israelite monarchy under the two kings as described in the Bible, how could such an influential and popular regime have attracted so little notice in ancient Near Eastern documents from the time?
The answer, suggests Carol Meyers, professor of biblical studies and archaeology at Duke University, may lie in the political climate in the region at the time, when, she says, "a power vacuum existed in the eastern Mediterranean." The collapse of Egypt's 20th dynasty around 1069 B.C. led to a lengthy period of economic and political decline for a nation that had exerted powerful influence over the city-states of Palestine during the Late Bronze Age. This period of Egyptian weakness, which lasted for over a century (until around 945 B.C.), saw a "relative paucity of monumental inscriptions," says Meyers. "The kings had nothing to boast about."
Similarly, the Assyrian empire to the east was unusually silent from the late 11th to the early 9th century B.C. regarding the western lands it once had dominated. Assyria was preoccupied, says Meyers, with internal turmoil following the death of one of the greatest of its early kings. Another major power in the region, Babylonia, also was uncharacteristically quiet. For centuries following a raid on Assyria in 1081 B.C., it seldom ventured beyond its own borders, says Meyers, "and thus its records would hardly have mentioned a new dynastic state to the west."
The reign of David was a time of territorial expansion for the united Israelite kingdom and was marked, according to the Bible, by a series of military victories. Twice the Israelite armies repulsed invasions by the Philistines, a belligerent horde of pagan marauders who occupied Canaan's Mediterranean coastal plains. While the Bible depicts the Philistines as a frequent nemesis of the Israelites, their name does not appear in ancient nonbiblical sources before 1200 B.C. Some minimalist scholars have suggested that the biblical stories of run-ins with the dreaded Philistines were invented by priestly scribes in the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. to dramatize the military prowess of the mythical Davidic dynasty.
But modern archaeology has uncovered a wealth of information regarding the Philistine "sea people" thoroughly consistent with their portrayal in the Bible. For example, sources including numerous Egyptian inscriptions indicate that the Philistines most likely originated in the Aegean area, probably on the island of Crete. That fits with biblical passages (Jeremiah 47:4 and Deuteronomy 2:23, for example) linking them with Caphtor, a location most scholars identify with Crete.
Additionally, the Bible depicts the Philistines as expert metallurgists, and archaeologists have found material evidence that the Philistines were, indeed, expert metalworkers. Trude Dothan, a Hebrew University archaeologist who has excavated many of the Philistine sites, says this superior knowledge no doubt gave them a military advantage in their early battles with the Israelites. She notes that in the famous story of the duel between David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, the giant Philistine warrior is described as wearing a bronze helmet and bronze body armor and carrying a spear with a shaft "like a weaver's beam" and with a head of iron. "The Bible compares Goliath's spear to a weaver's beam," Dothan says, "because this type of weapon was new to Canaan and had no Hebrew name." Once again, the Bible and archaeology are in agreement.

THE DAYS OF THE FALL OF THE TEMPLE

Compared with the earlier eras of Old Testament history, the days of the fall of the temple are a fleeting moment. A life span of just three decades and a public career of only a few years leave a dauntingly narrow target for archaeological exploration. Yet during the past four decades, spectacular discoveries have produced data illuminating the story of Jesus and the birth of Christianity. The picture that has emerged overall closely matches the historical backdrop of the Gospels.
In 1968, for example, explorers found the skeletal remains of a crucified man in a burial cave at Giva'at ha-Mitvar, near the Nablus road outside of Jerusalem. It was a momentous discovery: While the Romans were known to have crucified thousands of alleged traitors, rebels, robbers, and deserters in the two centuries straddling the turn of the era, never before had the remains of a crucifixion victim been recovered. An initial analysis of the remains found that their condition dramatically corroborated the Bible's description of the Roman method of execution.
The bones were preserved in a stone burial box called an ossuary and appeared to be those of a man about 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 24 to 28 years old. His open arms had been nailed to the crossbar, in the manner similar to that shown in crucifixion paintings. The knees had been doubled up and turned sideways, and a single large iron nail had been driven through both heels. The nail -- still lodged in the heel bone of one foot, though the executioners had removed the body from the cross after death -- was found bent, apparently having hit a knot in the wood. The shin bones seem to have been broken, corroborating what the Gospel of John suggests was normal practice in Roman crucifixions: "Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs" (19:32-33). While one later analysis drew some different conclusions about how the man died, [some] similarities to the biblical account were affirmed.
The discovery also posed a counterargument to objections some scholars have raised against the Gospels' description of Jesus's burial. It has been argued that the common practice of Roman executioners was to toss corpses of crucified criminals into a common grave or to leave them on the cross to be devoured by scavenging animals. So it hardly seems feasible, the argument goes, that Roman authorities would have allowed Jesus to undergo the burial described in the Gospels. But with the remains of a crucified man found in a family grave, it is clear that at least on some occasions the Romans permitted proper interment consistent with the biblical account.
A find at another Jerusalem site added to the list of Gospel figures whose existence has been verified by archaeology. Workers building a water park 2 miles south of the Temple Mount in 1990 inadvertently broke through the ceiling of a hidden burial chamber dating to the 1st century A.D. Inside, archaeologists found 12 limestone ossuaries. One contained the bones of a 60-year-old man and bore the inscription Yehosef bar Qayafa -- "Joseph, son of Caiaphas." Experts believe these remains are probably those of Caiaphas the high priest of Jerusalem, who according to the Gospels ordered the arrest of Jesus, interrogated him, and handed him over to Pontius Pilate for execution.
A few decades earlier, the name of another key figure in the days of Jesus turned up in the archaeological record: During excavations in 1961 at the seaside ruins of Caesarea Maritima, the ancient seat of Roman government in Judea, a 1st-century inscription was uncovered confirming that Pilate had been the Roman ruler of the region at the time of Jesus's supposedly crucifixion. Italian archaeologists working at the city's magnificent Herodian theater found the inscribed stone slab in use in the theater's steps. Experts say it originally was a 1st-century plaque at a nearby temple honoring the emperor Tiberius. The badly damaged Latin inscription reads in part, Tiberieum . . . [Pon]tius Pilatus . . . [Praef]ectus Juda[ea]e. According to experts, the complete inscription would have read, "Pontius Pilate, the Prefect of Judea, has dedicated to the people of Caesarea a temple in honor of Tiberius." The discovery of the so-called Pilate Stone has been widely acclaimed as a significant affirmation of biblical history because, in short, it confirms that the man depicted in the Gospels as Judea's Roman governor had precisely the responsibilities and authority that the Gospel writers ascribed to him.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Modern archaeology may not have removed all doubt about the historical accuracy of the Bible. But thanks to archaeology, the Bible "no longer appears as an absolutely isolated monument of the past, as a phenomenon without relation to its environment," as the great American archaeologist William Albright wrote at midcentury. Instead, it has been firmly fixed in a context of knowable history, linked to the present by footprints across the archaeological record.
Just as archaeology has shed new light on the Bible, the Bible in turn has often proved a useful tool for archaeologists. Yigael Yadin, the Israeli archaeologist who excavated at Hazor in the 1950s, relied heavily on its guidance in finding the great gate of Solomon at the famous upper Galilee site: "We went about discovering [the gate] with Bible in one hand and spade in the other." And Trude Dothan notes that "without the Bible, we wouldn't even have known there were Philistines."
Much work remains for the archaeological explorers of the next century, and many more mysteries of the Bible wait to be solved. Where, for example, are the lost "Annals of the Kings" of Israel and Judah cited as literary sources in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, and the five books of Papias mentioned in early church writings as a collection of the sayings of Jesus? Will further discoveries of hidden scrolls from the Dead Sea reveal new insights into the birth of Christianity? Scholars are convinced there is much more out there waiting to be found. It's just a matter of time. (From Is the Bible True? by Jeffery L. Sheler)
 

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tl;dr, but i assume its satire after reading the 1 billion quarks part
 

melanieeeee.

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3. Having Faith has its Rewards

Experiment on Prayers

A Report on the Papers:

1. "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population"2
2. "A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit"3
3. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.4

1. "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population"

Methods

Cardiac patients from the San Francisco General Medical Center were randomly divided (using a computer-generated list) into two groups. The names of the patients in the "test" group were given to a group of Christians, who prayed for them while they were in the hospital. The intercessory prayer team members were chosen on the following basis:

1. Born again Christians on the basis of John 3:35
2. Led an active Christian life on the basis of
1. daily devotional prayer
2. fellowship in a local Christian church

The "placebo" group received no prayer. Neither the "test" nor the "placebo" group of patients knew if they were receiving prayer. Likewise, the hospital staff, doctors, or nurses were "blinded" since they did not know which patient belonged to which group.

Results

Statistics were acquired from the prayer and placebo groups both before and after prayer, until the patients were discharged from the hospital. There were no statistical differences between the placebo and the prayer groups before prayer was initiated. The results demonstrated that patients who were prayed for suffered "less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, had fewer episodes of pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests, and were less frequently intubated and ventilated." Statistics demonstrated the the prayer group had a statistically significantly lower severity score based upon the hospital course after entry (p < 0.01). Multivariate analysis of all the parameters measured demonstrated that the outcomes of the two groups were even more statistically significant (p < 0.0001). In science, the standard level of significance is when a "p value" is less than 0.05. A value of 0.01 means that the likelihood the result is because of chance is one in 100. A p value of 0.0001 indicates that in only one study out of 10,000 is the result likely to be due to chance. Table 2 from the study is reproduced below. The remarkable thing which one notices is that nearly every parameter measured is affected by prayer, although individually many categories do not reach the level of statistical significance due to sample size. However, multivariate analysis, which compares all parameters together produces a level of significance seldom reached in any scientific study (p < 0.0001). The author points out that the method used in this study does not produce the maximum effect of prayer, since the study could not control for the effect of outside prayer (i.e., it is likely many of the placebo group were prayed for by persons outside of the study). It is likely that a study which used only atheists (who had no Christian family or friends) would produce an even more dramatic result. However, since atheists make up only 1-2% of the population, it would be difficult to obtain a large enough sample size.
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/7669/proofsx6.jpg

2. "A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit" Methods

Cardiac patients from the CCU at the Mid America Heart Institute (MAHI), Kansas City, Mo, were randomly chosen and assigned to control or prayer groups. In this study, patients were not told about the prayer study and doctors did not know which patients were assigned to which groups. According to the paper, "The intercessors represented a variety of Christian traditions, with 35% listing their affiliations as nondenominational, 27% as Episcopalian, and the remainder as other Protestant groups or Roman Catholic. Unlike the Byrd study, the intercessors of the MAHI study were given no details about the medical conditions of the patients, but were only given their first name.

Results

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/517/proodqi8.jpg

The main table of results, reproduced from the study appears as Table 3 below. Because of the small sample size of each individual component, only one of the individual components reached statistical significance. However, the overall effect was statistically significant, with a P value of 0.04, meaning that the result was likely to occur by chance in only 1 out of 25 times the experiment was repeated.

* PTCA indicates percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty.
3. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.

This study involved 3393 patient subjects whose bloodstream infection was detected at the hospital from the years 1990�*1996. Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was said for the well being and full recovery of the intervention group. Results were measured through mortality in hospital, length of stay in hospital, and duration of fever. Mortality was reduced in the intervention group (28.1%) compared to the control group (30.2%) although the difference did not reach statistical significance. However, length of stay in the hospital and duration of fever were significantly shorter in the intervention group than in the control group (P = 0.01 and P = 0.04, respectively). According to the author of the study:

"Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer said for a group is associated with a shorter stay in hospital and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection and should be considered for use in clinical practice."

Implications of the studies

Obviously, science has demonstrated in three separate studies the efficacy of Christian prayer in medical studies. There is no "scientific" (non-spiritual) explanation for the cause of the medical effects demonstrated in these studies. The only logical, but not testable, explanation is that God exists and answers the prayers of Christians. No other religion has succeeded in scientifically demonstrating that prayer to their God has any efficacy in healing. In fact, studies that have used intercessors from multiple religious backgrounds have failed to prove the efficacy of prayer.6 The Bible declares that Jesus Christ has power over life and death and sickness and is able to heal us, both physically and spiritually. He gave this power to His disciples and those who follow Him.

2006 American Heart Journal study

A widely publicized study from 2006 failed to show the efficacy of intercessory prayer. However, the design of the latest study was somewhat unusual.10 The researchers used three patient groups. Two groups were advised of the study, but were not told whether they were in the prayer group or placebo group. The third group knew that they were being prayed for. The study was performed at six hospitals. Out of 3295 eligible patients, 1493 (45%) refused to participate, which is very high, although they did not explain the reasons for non-participation. The intercessors were composed of three groups. Two were Roman Catholic and one was a Protestant group (Silent Unity, Lee’s Summit, MO). Unlike in previous studies, the intercessors were not allowed to pray their own prayers. The prayers were given to them by the study coordinators to "standardize" the prayers. The discussion section of the paper suggested that at least some of the intercessors were dissatisfied with the canned nature of the prayers. In attempting to standardize prayer, I believe the study introduced a serious flaw, since most intercessors tend to pray as they are led by the Spirit, instead of praying prepared scripts. Jesus told His followers not to pray repetitiously, since God would not hear those kinds of prayers.11

Ultimately, the results showed that groups 1 (prayer) and 2 (no prayer) were identical, whereas group 3 (those who knew they were being prayed for) did worse than the other two groups. The lack of efficacy of intercessory prayer in this study could be due to theological problems with the study design.

A Few Testimonies

Scientific studies over the last four decades have examined the role of both public and private religious expression on health and longevity. The studies have shown that the practice of religious activity improves health and increases longevity. The effect is seen even when other social/psychological differences are taken into account. For example, one 16-year study examined mortality rates in 11 religious vs. 11 secular kibbutzim in Israel. Although both communities were demographically-matched and provided similar levels of social support, three time more people died in the secular kibbutzim compared to the religious kibbutazim. The following is a short list of some recent studies that have shown the positive influence of religion on health and longevity.

Tully J, Viner RM, Coen PG, Stuart JM, Zambon M, Peckham C, Booth C, Klein N, Kaczmarski E, Booy R. 2006. Risk and Protective Factors for Meningococcal Disease in Adolescents: Matched Cohort Study. BMJ 332: 445-450.

A study of meningococcal disease in adolescents in the UK showed that religious observance was as effective as meningococcal vaccination for preventing meningococcal disease.

O'Connor P.J., N.P. Pronk, A. Tan, and R.P. Whitebird. 2005. Characteristics of adults who use prayer as an alternative therapy. Am. J. Health Promot. 19:369-375.

A study of prayer use by patients showed that 47% of study subjects prayed for their health, and 90% of these believed prayer improved their health. Those who prayed had significantly less smoking and alcohol use and more preventive care visits, influenza immunizations, vegetable intake, satisfaction with care, and social support, and were more likely to have a regular primary care provider. The study concluded that those who pray had more favorable health-related behaviors, preventive service use, and satisfaction with care.

Krucoff, M. W., et al. 2005. Music, imagery, touch, and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II randomised study. Lancet 366:211-217.
This double blind study used prayer in combination with music, imagery, and touch in four randomly assigned groups of cardiac patients. Intercessory prayer groups included Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist religious traditions. Overall, the study found no significant effect of prayer. However, major adverse cardiac events were reduced in the prayer group (23% to 27%), as were death and readmission rates (33% to 35%). The inclusion of intercessors of multiple religious traditions may have reduced the effectiveness of prayer, especially since Buddhists (who do not believe in God) were included in the study.

D'Souza, R.F. and A. Rodrigo. 2004. Spiritually augmented cognitive behavioural therapy. Australas Psychiatry 12: 148-152.
This study used spiritually augmented cognitive behavior therapy in a mental health study. The study demonstrated that spiritually augmented cognitive behavior therapy helped reduce hopelessness and despair, improved treatment collaboration, reduced relapse, and enhanced functional recovery.

Palmer, R. F., D. Katerndahl, and J. Morgan-Kidd. 2004. A Randomized Trial of the Effects of Remote Intercessory Prayer: Interactions with Personal Beliefs on Problem-Specific Outcomes and Functional Status. J. Alt. Compl. Med. 10: 438-448.

A randomized clinical trial found a significant reduction in the amount of pain in the intercessory prayer group compared to controls. In addition, the amount of concern for baseline problems at follow-up was significantly lower in the prayer group when the subject initially believed that the problem could be resolved. Those who did not believe that their problem could be resolved did not differ from controls. Better physical functioning was observed in the prayer group for those with a higher belief in prayer. However, better mental health scores were observed in the control group with lower belief in prayer scores.

Krucoff, M. W., S. W. Crater, C. L. Green, A. C. Maas, J. E. Seskevich, J. D. Lane, K. A. Loeffler, K. Morris, T. M. Bashore, and H. G. Koenig. 2001. Integrative noetic therapies as adjuncts to percutaneous intervention during unstable coronary syndromes: Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training (MANTRA) feasibility pilot. Am. Heart J. 142: 760-767.
A pilot study8 (limited to 150 patients) examining the efficacy of noetic (non-pharmacological) therapies (stress relaxation, imagery, touch therapy, and prayer) found that "Of all noetic therapies, off-site intercessory prayer had the lowest short- and long-term absolute complication rates." The results did not reach statistical significance due to the small sample size, but a full study is planned.

Pargament, K. I., H. G. Koenig, N. Tarakeshwar, J. Hahn. 2001. Religious Struggle as a Predictor of Mortality Among Medically Ill Elderly Patients A 2-Year Longitudinal Study. Arch. Intern Med. 161: 1881-1883.
A study examined the effect of "religious struggle" (defined by such things as being angry at God or feeling punished by God) was predictive of poorer physical recovery and higher mortality. According to the authors, "Our findings suggest that patients who indicate religious struggle during a spiritual history may be at particularly high risk for poor medical outcomes. Referral of these patients to clergy to help them work through these issues may ultimately improve clinical outcomes; further research is needed to determine whether interventions that reduce religious struggles might also improve medical prognosis."

Hughes M. Helma, Judith C. Haysb, Elizabeth P. Flintb, Harold G. Koeniga and Dan G. Blazera. 2000. Does Private Religious Activity Prolong Survival? A Six-Year Follow-up Study of 3,851 Older Adults. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 55: M400-M405.

A six year study of 3,851 elderly persons revealed that those who reported having rarely to never participating in private religious activity had an increased relative hazard of dying over those who participated more frequently in religious activity. Whereas most previous studies showed a positive effect for organized religious activities, this study showed that personal religious activity was also effective at reducing mortality.

Koenig HG, Hays JC, Larson DB, et al. 1999. Does religious attendance prolong survival? A six-year follow-up study of 3,968 older adults. J Gerontol Med Sci. 54A: M370-M377.

Hummer R, Rogers R, Nam C, Ellison CG, 1999. Religious involvement and U.S.Demography 36: 273-285. adult mortality.

This study examined the effect of religious attendance on mortality. People who never attended religious activities exhibited 1.87 times the risk of death compared with people who attend more than once a week, which results in a seven-year difference in life expectancy at age 20 between those who never attend and those who attend more than once a week. People who did not attend church or religious services were more likely to be unhealthy and, consequently, to die. However, religious attendance also increased social ties and behavioral factors to decrease the risks of death.

Koenig, H.G. 1998. Religious attitudes and practices of hospitalized medically ill older adults. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 13: 213-224.

When a random sample of 338 hospitalized patients were asked an open-ended question about what the most important factor was that enabled them to cope, 42.3% mentioned their religious faith.
Koenig H.G, et al. 1998. The relationship between religious activities and blood pressure in older adults. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine 28: 189-213.

The relationship between religious activities and blood pressure was examined in 6-year prospective study of 4,000 older adults. Among subjects who attended religious services once a week or more and prayed or studied the Bible once a day or more, the likelihood of diastolic hypertension was 40 percent lower than among those who attended services and prayed less often (p<.0001, after controlling for age, sex, race, smoking, chronic illness and body mass index).
Koenig, H.G., Pargament, K.I., and Nielsen, J. 1998. Religious coping and health status in medically ill hospitalized older adults. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 186: 513-521.

The authors concluded that religious coping behaviors related to better mental health were at least as strong, if not stronger, than were non-religious coping behaviors. A survey of 577 hospitalized medically ill patients age 55 or over examined the relationship between 21 different types of religious coping and mental and physical health. Religious coping behaviors that were associated with better mental health were re-appraisal of God as benevolent, collaboration with God, and giving religious help to others. Re-appraisals of God as punishing, re-appraisals involving demonic forces, pleading for direct intersection, and spiritual discontent were associated with worse mental and physical health. Of the 21 religious coping behaviors, 16 were significantly related to greater psychological growth, 15 were related to greater cooperativeness, and 16 were related to greater spiritual growth.

Koenig, H.G., George, L.K., Peterson, B.L. 1998. Use of health services by hospitalized medically ill depressed elderly patients. American Journal of Psychiatry 155: 536-542.

Found that depressed patients who had a strong intrinsic religious faith recovered over 70% faster from depression than those with less strong faith; among a subgroup of patients whose physical illness was not improving, intrinsically religious patients recovered 100% faster.
Koenig, H.G., and Larson, D.B. 1998. Use of hospital services, religious attendance, and religious affiliation. Southern Medical Journal 91: 925-932.

Found an inverse relationship between frequency of religious service attendance and likelihood of hospital admission in a sample of 455 older patients. Those who attended church weekly or more often were significantly less likely in the previous year to have been admitted to the hospital, had fewer hospital admissions, and spent fewer days in the hospital than those attending less often; these associations retained their significance after controlling for covariates. Patients unaffiliated with a religious community had significantly longer index hospital stays than those affiliated. Unaffiliated patients spent an average of 25 days in the hospital, compared with 11 days for affiliated patients (p<.0001); this association strengthened when physical health and other covariates were controlled.

Koenig, H.G., et al. 1998. The relationship between religious activities and cigarette smoking in older adults. Journal of Gerontology A Biol Sci Med Sci 53: 6.

Substantially lower rates of smoking among persons more religiously involved is likely to translate into lower rates of lung cancer, hypertension, coronary artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Cigarette smoking and religious activities were examined in a 6-year prospective study of 3,968 persons age 65 or older in North Carolina. Both likelihood of current smoking and total number of pact years smoked were inversely related to attendance at religious services and private religious activities. Higher participation in religious activities at one wave predicted lower rates of smoking at future waves. If persons both attended religious services at least weekly and read the Bible or prayed at least daily, they were 990% less likely to smoke than persons involved in these religious activities less frequently (p<.0001, after multiple covariates were taken into account).

Oman, D., and Reed, D. 1998. Religion and mortality among the community-dwelling elderly. American Journal of Public Health 88: 1469-1475.

In a 5-yer prospective cohort study of 1,931 older residents of Marin County, California, persons who attended religious services were 36% less likely to die during the follow up period. When the variables (including age, sex, marital status, number of chronic diseases, lower body disability, balance problems, exercise, smoking status, alcohol use, weight, two measures of social functioning and social support, and depression) were controlled, persons who attended religious services were still 24% less likely to die during the 5-yer follow up. During the 5-year follow up, there were 454 deaths. Subjects were divided into 2 categories: "attenders" (weekly or occasional attenders) and "non-attenders" (never attend).
Idler, E.L., & Kasl, S.V. 1997. Religion among disabled and nondisabled persons II: attendance at religious services as a predictor of the course of disability. Journal of Gerontology 52: S306-S316.
A longitudinal study of 2,812 older adults in New Haven, CT, found that frequent religious attenders in 1982 were significantly less likely than infrequent attenders to be physically disabled 12 years later, a finding that persisted after controlling for health practices, social ties, and indicators of well-being.

Koenig HG, et al. 1997. Attendance at religious services, interleukin-6, and other biological parameters of immune function in older adults. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine 27: 233-250.
Findings suggest that persons who attend church frequently have stronger immune systems than less frequent attenders, and may help explain why both better mental and better physical health are characteristic of frequent church attenders. Reported that frequent religious attendance in 1986, 1989, and 1992 predicted lower plasma interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels in a sample of 1,718 older adults followed over six years. IL-6 levels are elevated in patients with AIDS, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, and other serious medical conditions, and is an indicator of immune system function.

Strawbridge, W.J., et al. 1997. Frequent attendance at religious services and mortality over 28 years. American Journal of Public Health 87: 957-961.

Frequent church attendees were more likely to stop smoking, increase exercising, increase social contacts, and stay married; even after these factors were controlled for, however, the mortality difference persisted.
Study reports the results of a 28-year follow-up study of 5,000 adults involved in the Berkeley Human Population Laboratory. Mortality for persons attending religious services once/week or more often was almost 25% lower than for persons attending religious services less frequently; for women, the mortality rate was reduced by 35%.
Kark, JD., G Shemi, Y Friedlander, O Martin, O Manor and SH Blondheim. 1996. Does religious observance promote health? mortality in secular vs religious kibbutzim in Israel. American Journal of Public Health 86: 341-346.

Even after eliminating social support and conventional health behaviors as possible confounders, members of religious kibbutzim still lived longer than those in secular kibbutzim. A 16-year mortality study, where 11 religious kibbutzim were matched with 11 secular kibbutzim (n=3,900); careful matching was performed to ensure that secular and religious kibbutzim were as similar as possible in characteristics that might affect mortality (social support, selection and retaining of members, etc.), and controlled for conventional risk factors (drinking, smoking, plasma cholesterol levels. Of the 268 deaths that occurred, 69 were in religious and 199 in secular kibbutzim; hazard ratio was 1.93 (95% CI 1.44-2.59, p<.0001).
Oxman, T.E., Freeman, D.H., and Manheimer, E.D. 1995. Lack of social participation or religious strength and comfort as risk factors for death after cardiac surgery in the elderly. Psychosomatic Medicine 57: 5-15.
The mortality rate in persons with low social support who did not depend on their religious faith for strength, was 12 times that of persons with a strong support network who relied heavily on religion; even when social factors were accounted for, persons who depended on religion were only about one-third as likely to die as those who did not. Followed 232 adults for six months after open-heart surgery, examining predictors of mortality.
Bliss, J.R., McSherry, E., and Fassett, J. 1995. NIH Conference on Spirituality and Health Care Outcomes
Chaplain Intervention Reduces Costs in Major DRGs. Patients in the intervention group had an average 2 day shorter post-op hospitalization, resulting in an overall cost savings of $4,200 per patient. Randomized 331 open-heart surgery patients to either a chaplain intervention ("Modern Chaplain Care") or usual care.

Propst, L.R., et al. 1992. Comparative efficacy of religious and nonreligious cognitive-behavioral therapy for the treatment of clinical depression in religious individuals. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 60: 94-103.

Religious therapy resulted in significantly faster recovery from depression when compared with standard secular cognitive-behavioral therapy. Study examined the effectiveness of using religion-based psychotherapy in the treatment of 59 depressed religious patients. The religious therapy used Christian religious rationales, religious arguments to counter irrational thoughts, and religious imagery. What was surprising was that benefits from religious-based therapy were most evident among patients who received religious therapy from non-religious therapists.

Pressman, P., Lyons, J.S., Larson, D.B., and Strain, J.J. 1990. Religious belief, depression, and ambulation status in elderly women with broken hips. American Journal of Psychiatry 147: 758-759.

Reported that among 33 elderly women hospitalized with hip fracture, greater religiousness was associated with less depression and longer walking distances at the time of hospital discharge.
McSherry, E., Ciulla, M., Salisbury, S., and Tsuang, D. 1987. Social Compass 35: 515-537.

Heart surgery patients with higher than average personal religiousness scores on admission and post-op had lengths of stay 20% less than those with lower than average scores.

Chu, C.C., & Klein, H.E. 1985. Psychosocial and environmental variables in outcome of black schizophrenics. Journal of the National Medical Association. 77:793-796.

Studying 128 Black schizophrenics and their families, investigators reported that Black urban patients were less likely to be re-hospitalized if their families encouraged them to continue religious worship while they were in the hospital (p<.001).
Zuckerman DM, Kasl SV, Ostfeld AM, 1984. Psychosocial predictors of mortality among the elderly poor. Am J Epidemiol. 119:410-423.
Thist study examine mortality among 400 elderly poor residents of New Haven, Hartford, and West Haven, Connecticut, in 1972-1974. Results, controlled for demographic variables, showed that religiousness reduced mortality.
Florell, J.L. 1973. Bulletin of the American Protestant Hospital Association 37(2):29-36.
Crisis-intervention in orthopedic surgery: Empirical evidence of the effectiveness of a chaplain working with surgery patients. Randomized patients either to a chaplain intervention, which involved chaplain visits for 15 minutes/day per patient, or to a control group ("business as usual"). The chaplain intervention reduced length of stay by 29% (p<.001), patient-initiated call on RN time to one-third, and use of PRN pain medications to one-third.
 

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