I've talked to God. He just hasn't talked back. That's why I don't believe he exists. I think people who believe God speaks to them are delusional. Similar to people who believe in ghosts. Superstitious. It's not sad. When you realize how stupid you guys are, it actually feels good.
God answers prayers.
So does a milk jug. The only thing worse than sitting idle as someone suffers is to do absolutely nothing yet think you’re actually helping; in other words, praying.
Belief in the efficacy of prayer is a form of
confirmation bias. Information and coincidences which, by chance, appear to support the belief are favoured and remembered while those that do not are discarded or rationalised. See also:
Cherry Picking.
By incorrectly attributing supernatural
causal relationships to otherwise minor correlations, prayer becomes a form of self-deception known as
magical thinking. See also:
Wishful thinking.
For the conceivably large number of prayers that occur over time there are relatively few ‘answers’ acknowledged by churches and none that are actually demonstrable, such as the
healing of amputees or
moving of mountains.
Studies have failed to find any evidence for benefits from prayer that cannot be ruled out as either the
placebo effect or a form of
cognitive behavioural therapy. In fact, the
most comprehensive study performed thus far found that hospital patients who were prayed for suffered more complications than otherwise.
I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
Argument from personal experience [
2].
A result of our
naturally evolved neurology, made
hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates
pattern with intent.
Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a
set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is
no real meaning behind itand infer causal relationships where
none exist.
Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of
unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by
narcotics or
magnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of
schizophrenia or
psychosis.
Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to
different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that
medical conditions and
other natural processes [
2] can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
People who believe in god are happier.
The claim that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of
credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
