C.S. Lewis answers neither of the questions I posed. His wordy, muddled and fallacious arguments hold no sway. His ‘Trilemma’ argument for the validity of Jesus is a great example of his confused thinking.

While we’re on C.S. Lewis, the celebrated ‘atheist’ who converted to Christianity – he was raised as a Christian, claimed to have become an atheist at age 13 and yet he later said that during his atheist years he was “very angry with God for not existing”. That is not an ‘atheist’. He also replaced his supposed loss of Christianity with fantasy and mythology. Again, that’s not an atheist, just someone who has a gap in their personality that needs to be filled with some non-reality.

The Efficacy of Prayer,

Drivel.

“…you need not, unless you choose, believe in a causal connection between the prayers and the recovery. The question then arises, ‘What sort of evidence would prove the efficacy of prayer?’ The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? Even if the thing were indisputably miraculous, it would not follow that the miracle had occurred because of your prayers. The answer surely is that a compulsive empirical proof such as we have in the sciences can never be attained.

Some things are proved by the unbroken uniformity of our experiences. The law of gravitation is established by the fact that, in our experience, all bodies without exception obey it. Now even if all the things that people prayed for happened, which they do not, this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable ’success’ in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic – a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.

…We make requests of our fellow creatures as well as of God: …we ask for a raise in pay, we ask a friend to feed the cat… Sometimes we get what we ask for and sometimes not. But when we do, it is not nearly so easy as one might suppose to prove with scientific certainty a causal connection between the asking and the getting… Your employer is never so likely to grant your request for a raise as when he is aware that you could get better money from a rival firm and is quite possibly intending to secure you by a raise in any case…Thus in some measure the same doubt that hangs about the causal efficacy of our prayers to God hangs also about our prayers to man. Whatever we get we might have been going to get anyway. But only, as I say, in some measure. Our friend, boss, and wife may tell us that they acted because we asked and we may know them so well as to feel sure, first that they are saying what they believe to be true, and secondly that they understand their own motives well enough to be right. But notice that when this happens our assurance has not been gained by the methods of science… It is born out of our personal relation to the other parties; not from knowing things about them but from knowing *them*.

Our assurance – if we reach an assurance – that God always hears and sometimes grants our prayers, and that apparent grantings are not merely fortuitous, can only come in the same sort of way. There can be no question of tabulating successes and failures and trying to decide whether the successes are too numerous to be accounted for by chance. Those who best know a man best know whether when he did what they asked, he did it because they asked. I think those who best know God will best know whether He sent me to the barber’s shop [a reference to a previous story about a troubled friend] because the barber prayed.”

Despite your impressive IQ / Ivy League claims, your reading ability leaves a little to be desired. I wrote:

“It shuts down, for many, critical thinking, … ”

Note the ‘many’. In other words, not ‘all’. Of course there are intelligent, decent people who have been suckered in to religion – that still doesn’t mean I need to respect their delusional *belief*.

I note you chose to ignore my observation that your choice of god “is a pure accident of time and geography”. If you focus your intellect on this issue, and you are honest to yourself, there is no other conclusion to reach – it’s all one big wish-fulfilment, fairy story.

Gene,

I can have no respect for a belief that offers no evidence whatsoever, and is based on the error-strewn scribblings of ignorant, superstitious Bronze Age men. In the same way, I can have no respect for a belief that ‘Chief Chimp’ has been a great president. I try to avoid name-calling these people, but both are delusional by the strict definition of that word and many are simply dishonest and dumb as dirt.

Ask yourself why you (presumably) reject Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Jim Jones, David Koresh, L. Ron Hubbard and Michael Travesser. Once you’ve got that worked out, you’ll understand why I reject Jesus and Yahweh.

Tech will liberate religion…

I’m waiting for the Raphaels and Michalangalos of the web to emerge…

Peace to you all…

Believers as well as non-believers are equally capable of being close minded and only listening to half of the debate. If you’re serious about finding truth, give each side their time.

Peace.

I find it ironic that you claim not to disrespect the person but then accuse people like me of having shut down critical thinking, rational discourse, and scientific inquiry (I see no conflict between scientific inquiry and Christianity); of entertaining a delusional belief; of having no grip on reality; of being arrogant and ignorant; and of having no rational thought. You may want to look up the meaning of “respect.”

I do my best to not disrespect the person, but the belief is not deserving of respect.

I, like many atheists, find religious belief laughable and offensive in equal measure. It’s a Bronze Age fairy story that makes ugly promises of eternal bliss or ever-lasting torture, depending on getting lucky and choosing the right version of the fairy tale to believe in. It’s divisive. It shuts down, for many, critical thinking, rational discourse and scientific enquiry. It’s a delusional belief that causes many to really lose a grip on reality (e.g. belief that a magical being waved his magic wand to create the universe in 7 days about 6000 years ago, that a man built a wooden boat and stuffed every one of the ~1,700,000 species on board for 150 days – including ~2800 species of termite (lol)).

I think the tide is turning towards a new Enlightenment, and those who believe in superstitious nonsense had better get used to the ridicule, or turn off the internet, turn off the TV and only read the one book.

@Larry (#27) – good point. It demonstrates the arrogance and ignorance of many religious that their god is the one, true god. If only they realised that the god they believe in is a pure accident of time and geography … if they’d been born in another part of the planet and / or at another time, they’d be certain that Odin or Zeus or Anubis or Thor or Jupiter or Morrigan or Quetzalcoatl or [endless list of gods] were The Real Deal. And this is one of The Big Clues – they can’t all be true … so it takes very little rational thought to recognise *none* of them are true.

At the same time your joke post on their prayer wall was very tasteless. And your offering it up to the entire TechCrunch community as a joke, inviting other non-believers to perhaps go to the site and leave other tasteless ridicule – was also in very poor judgment.

Pretty disappointing post. You can do better than this Michael. Really.

We are all entitled to our viewpoints – we need to remember and respect that.

WRT the original post, I personally enjoyed the humor in it and thought that overall it was respectful.

Peace.

I don’t think Michael was trying to hurt anyone with this, on the other hand, I think he was acknowledging that pray is usefull (even if he think only for some). I commend him on trying another Christian focused post, and in the end he is helping to spread God’s word. I wonder how much GodTube’s traffic went up with this post.

Anyway, keep the dialog up with God Michael, and you just might see what you really want come true.

God Bless

I am a Christian:
- not because I’m a conformist; on the contrary I rebel against our culture daily
- not because it makes me a better person than I would be otherwise (note, I’m not comparing myself to anyone else here – I just know what I would be without my reliance on Christ, and it wouldn’t be pretty); though this is a good secondary reason
- primarily because I believe it to be TRUE! Plain and simple. There is evidence for it’s truth, and after weighing this evidence with that of other religions and with the non-belief alternative, I have come to the conclusion that it is simply true.

I have a deep respect for all who are sincerely in search for truth. And my heart goes out to all who are in pain and have suffered at the hands of misguided and hateful people – whether they be believers or non-believers. I just want to let you know that there is a real peace and pure joy that can be found in this life.

Peace.

You went too far with this post.

You may have offended one of the largest religions in the world, including myself.

I find what you wrote here very offensive and as a personal attack. Christianity is not something to be made fun of.