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The Prayer Experiment Critiques Itself

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I promised in my introduction to the Prayer Experiment to return to the T. J. Mawson paper that was its inspiration. Mawson claims that atheists praying for God to help them is as reasonable as shouting “Is anyone there?” in a certain dark room. Some say that a wise and helpful old man lives in this dark room, though others say that this claim is false.
Later in the paper, Mawson challenged his own position with a reworking of this example. Suppose the hypothesis is now that there are fairies at the bottom of his garden. Should he shout “Fairies, reveal yourselves!” into the garden each morning? He admits that he doesn’t, but why?
First, he says that he’s not especially motivated because the issue of fairies’ existence is not particularly important. This surprises me—wouldn’t this be the scientific discovery of the century? Unless I’m underestimating the value of the wisdom the old man can provide, discovering fairies would be at least as important as discovering him.
Mawson goes on to wonder if fragile and shy fairies would deliberately not respond to remain undetected. Sure, this makes sense—in contrast to the old man who we’ve assumed is eager to make contact and pass on his wisdom. But in making this contrast, he doubles down on the results of the prayer experiment. Getting a negative result (no gods answer the prayers) can’t be dismissed as an unimportant curiosity. He presumes the god(s) are like the wise old man, eager to make contact, not skittish fairies eager to remain hidden.
The other objection a potential fairy-finder might raise is that getting into the habit of talking to fairies might make one “slightly dotty.” He gives as an example the two girls behind the 1917 Cottingley fairies hoax (I wrote about that here). One of the girls maintained throughout her life that some of the photos of fairies were genuine. Is this kind of delusion a risk of an overly earnest search for fairies?
I think that this concern of going “dotty” is a valid one when applied to god belief. The human brain can play all sorts of tricks—confident memories aren’t necessarily accurate, we see patterns where they don’t exist, we have built-in mental biases, we’re tricked by optical illusions, trauma can create PTSD, long periods of solitary confinement can create mental illness, and so on—and I simply have no desire to immerse myself in a belief system unless I think that it’s accurate. If I seriously walked the walk of a Muslim for a year, for example, there’s a chance that I might adopt that belief system, but why would I want to do this?
This self-delusion is what PZ Myers was concerned about in his initial critique of the experiment.

If you tell yourself something every day over a fairly long period of time, will it affect how your mind works? I suspect the answer would be yes. … It could affect somebody who is gullible and impressionable. There’s nothing in this ‘experiment’ that could provide evidence of a god, but there is plenty of stuff to show that plastic minds exist…which we already know.

I believe things the old-fashioned way: because there’s sufficient evidence to convince me that they’re true. What’s the upside of “walking the walk”? So I can believe something for which there’s insufficient evidence?
Mawson responds:

Most agnostics and atheists will be able, quite rightly, to remove from consideration as a serious possibility that they will “project” some fantasy and thus generate false positives by conducting the sort of prayer experiment which I have suggested is otherwise prima facie obligatory on them.

For this low-demand experiment, I agree—there isn’t much of a worry. Nevertheless, a false positive seems a plausible explanation for the conversion of many people immersed in emotional religious environments such as exist in certain cults.
Mawson gives psychotherapy as an analogy, which I think is valid. Only by investing seriously in the psychotherapy process and wanting to change can a patient progress. A tepid involvement will probably produce no results.
Similarly, I could invest seriously in the process of being a good Muslim, and I might change. But while there is evidence that the health claims of psychotherapy are correct, which is the prerequisite of participating in that process, I’ve seen no evidence that Islam is correct.
Mawson claims that his simple experiment is “prima facie obligatory on [atheists].” But why only atheists? The fallacy here is like the fallacy with Pascal’s Wager—it applies to the Christian as well as the atheist. If the atheist is logically obliged to conduct a low-cost experiment just to make sure that he hasn’t overlooked any deities, the Christian is as well.
Let me suggest as a follow-on to this project the Christian Prayer Experiment.

The doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator
to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind
— Herbert Muller

Photo credit: Brenda Starr

Friend Request from Jesus?

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It’s surprising how much can go through your mind in three minutes. Here are some of the thoughts that came to me in my three minutes of daily prayer during Week 2 of the Atheist Prayer Experiment.
What if God’s persona is like an ordinary guy, like George Burns in Oh, God? … Please show yourself; please show yourself; please show yourself … Maybe the right metaphor is of an antenna trying to pull in a weak signal … If God exists, my brain is to be used, not set aside so I can accept nonsense … It’s hot in here … Maybe God will paint something interesting in phosphenes in my closed eyes … Why in Buddhism is there the Aha! of satori, but it doesn’t work that way in Christianity? … This is a chore … Why do people look up when they pray? God is like neutrinos; you face him just as much when looking down at the earth as up at the sky. … The gulf between me and a molecule might be about as vast as between God and me, so why should God care? … Hey—am I talking to myself here?? … Maybe God answering my prayer would feel like sticking a fork into an electric outlet.
One time I let the local church group prayer (I’ve been attending a small group once a week for a couple of months) be my prayer one day. Small group prayers are lo-o-o-ong.
One time I was in an agitated mood—I’d been arguing online about God and genocide—and it occurred to me that I’m praying to this guy. Do I actually want him to notice me? That sounds like poking a mean genie.
One time I prayed while driving and asked God to direct my attention to anything significant. Almost immediately, I saw a church-shaped house with a string of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags. What was the message behind that?
A nice discovery was that praying (or at least being meditative) while driving made me feel substantially nicer. I took it as an opportunity to be calmer, stop early at yellow lights, draw wisdom from the bumper stickers of nearby cars, and telegraph well wishes to the people I saw around me. I felt gratitude for hearing a favorite song. I saw a panhandler and reminded myself to be nonjudgmental.
I need more of that after the experiment is over.
I’ve received a lot of comments on the experiment. One person suggested singing the prayer.
Another noted that, as a Christian with waning faith, she prayed for God to show himself. She desperately wanted to keep her faith, but God didn’t oblige. So now I’m trying the same thing, but if God didn’t much care about someone already in the fold (someone who really wanted this), why should he care about my unenthusiastic prayer?
Other bloggers have weighed in. In a rare and noteworthy moment of concord, atheist PZ Myers thinks the experiment is a stupid idea, and Catholic Mark Shea agrees.
I’ve gotten more support from Dwight Longenecker and Elizabeth Scalia, and Rebecca Hamilton says that she’s warmed to the idea. (Okay—Rebecca says that it wasn’t her but God who pushed her in that direction, but let’s not ruin this moment of harmony.)
Leah Libresco suggested the Litany of Tarski, a prayer template that can be adapted to say:

If there is a god, I desire to believe there is a god.
If there is not a god, I desire to believe there is not a god.
Let me not become attached to belief I do not want.

Nice. That’s a sentiment that I can get behind.
Let me relate one more outside conversation. Justin Brierley, the organizer of this crazy experiment, asked what it would take to convince any of the atheist subjects that our prayer had been answered—that the supernatural had made itself known to us.
That’s a good question, because a lot of what a Christian would point to, I might chalk up as coincidence or dismiss for some other reason. How do I keep myself honest and ensure that I don’t discard the signal with the noise?
On the other hand, how do I trust myself to perceive the supernatural correctly? The human mind is unreliable—confident memories aren’t necessarily accurate, we imagine patterns where they don’t exist, we’re subject to mental biases, we’re tricked by optical illusions, neurosis or psychosis can appear, and so on. Is that God talking to me or just me?
Science gets around this problem by using a community to duplicate and validate its findings. There are too many excuses I could make if the experience were all my own, so I’d want to crowdsource it in the same way. Have God speak to everyone. For example, maybe the entire world has the same spiritual dream where God gives them instructions or insights, or maybe we see “YHWH” spelled out in stars. That is the kind of evidence I’d like to see—something where I have some corroboration that it is valid.
This still isn’t perfect, and “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Sufficient-advanced aliens could dupe us into imagining the supernatural when we were just seeing technology. Still, this would be a lot more evidence than we’ve seen to date.
This points to what I think is Christianity’s biggest challenge. Thoughtful Christians often say that it’s the Problem of Evil (why would a good god allow so much bad in the world?). But no, I think it’s the one that hobbles this experiment: the Problem of Divine Hiddenness. If an omnipotent God exists and wants us to know him, what’s stopping him? Why is the existence of God not as obvious as that of the sun?

I find [praying] really difficult,
like being told to push very hard on a nonexistent wall.
I have some sympathy for mimes.
— a participant in the Atheist Prayer Experiment

Photo credit: Church Sign Maker

Public Challenge: Show Me a Miracle

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I recently listened to an interview with Dr. Gary Habermas on the “Christian Meets World” podcast. Habermas talked excitedly about the evidence for miracles. He claimed that eight million Americans have had near-death experiences. And if you’re open to this evidence, why not that for the resurrection of Jesus? They’re the same afterlife, after all.
Habermas cited Dr. Craig Keener’s Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2011), in which are documented hundreds of recent miracle claims. Some miracles have MRI evidence documenting the before and after medical conditions. In one instance a spleen was surgically removed but then reappeared after prayer. He guesses that there are 100 million miracle reports from around the world.
When Habermas debates atheists and brings up this evidence, famous atheists have no comebacks. They’ll handwave but have nothing better than, “Well, people report crazy things.”
These are bold statements. Provocative statements. In fact, I feel a challenge coming on.
I publicly challenge Drs. Keener or Habermas to pick their favorite miracle claim and submit it for public analysis.
Gentlemen: out of the hundreds of claims in this book or the millions of claims worldwide, take your best-evidenced claim for a miracle. This wouldn’t be something that’s a known puzzle for modern science (cancer that went away for no obvious reason, for example) but something that science says can’t happen—maybe an amputated limb that grows back. Forget the hundreds of claims; bring the evidence for just your best one.
I see four possible outcomes of such a public critique.
1. The evidence is not researchable. Not all of the evidence exists or it’s impossible to access, or for some other reason a complete story can’t be put together. Maybe records have been destroyed, red tape prevents them from being accessed, the documentation is written in Turkmen or Quechua or some other inaccessible foreign language, or witnesses are inaccessible or deceased.
2. The evidence crumbles. We have a complete story, but the evidence isn’t sufficiently reliable. We can’t be sure that records weren’t deliberately tampered with or memories haven’t faded. Maybe we have the statement of just one person without corroboration or a claim from someone without the relevant qualifications (a layman making a medical diagnosis, for example). Maybe human error can’t be ruled out (inadvertently putting the x-ray from patient X into the folder for patient Y, for example).
3. We find a plausible natural explanation. That story about the spleen that was removed and then reappeared? Spleens can grow back. Amputated limbs that regrow? There have been such claims—the 1640 “Miracle of Calanda” is one example—but, as Skeptoid has shown, natural explanations are sufficient to explain the evidence for this claim. Prayer that stopped an epidemic? As I reported a few months ago (“Claims that Prayer Cures Disease”), the epidemic had run its course by the time prayer started.
Any plausible natural explanation defeats the miracle claim.
4. We have a complete case, and natural explanations are less plausible than a miraculous explanation. This is the happy outcome that Habermas expects.
After public analysis of the Best Claim, I predict that we would see outcome 1, 2, or 3. And once we do, my next prediction is that Messrs. K. and H. will drop that claim like a used tissue and burrow through their files for another one.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Over and over. “Oh, you don’t like that claim? Not a problem—I got plenty more.”
As with UFO sightings, lots of crappy evidence doesn’t equal a little good evidence. It’s just a big pile of crappy evidence.
Gentlemen, may I encourage you to respond to my challenge? You know how to reach me.

Messrs. K. and H. assure the public
their production will be second to none.
— The Beatles, “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite”

The Prayer Experiment, Week 1

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It’s been seven days. Since seven is the number of completion, I’d like to review how Week 1 of the Atheist Prayer Experiment has gone since I started.
I’ve been keeping a diary in which I’ve jotted the thoughts that came to mind during each prayer. There’s little to report, though the experienced Christians may be amused at my inexperienced approach.
It’s tough to stay focused, and items from my to-do list often float by … a TV in the next room is distracting … I prayed while driving to a church small group meeting, and it made me a more considerate driver … how is simply making myself open to the Deity’s input different from making a specific request? … What if someone saw me—would I be embarrassed? … I imagine calling out to the man in the dark room (from Mawson’s paper).
I’ve been trying to avoid criticisms of the process of prayer itself. I’ve posted about that before and have more to say, but this isn’t the place.
My original post has gotten a lot of comments, and many are from people who object to the entire experiment. What’s been a little surprising are the negative comments from Christians. Do they not know that a Christian organization is behind this? Are they anticipating no conversions and trying to downplay the quality of the experiment so they can tell us, “I told you so” when nothing happens?
They may be jumping the gun. Organizer Justin Brierley (“Atheist Prayer Experiment – Day 4 Update”) reported that one of the participants dropped out because the very act of researching the experiment made her conclude that, “I need Christ in my life.”
About 70 atheists are participating. As an actual scientific experiment, I’ll agree with most of the criticisms raised. But still—could a Christian ask for anything more? Given that I can’t say, “Father, I believe; help my unbelief,” what would a Christian propose instead? From the Christian standpoint, this sounds a lot better than any practical alternative.
The experiment is more than just praying. It asks participants to remain “as open as possible to ways in which that prayer could be answered.” The closest I’ve come was on Day 5, where I was working with a volunteer team at a local Boys and Girls Club. When I came home, I realized that I’d lost my red plastic “Good Without God” wristband that I’ve worn continuously for a couple of years.
Hmm—was God telling me something? But if so, what was it?
Maybe God was saying, “You can’t be good without God!” Maybe he was saying, “That’s what you get for helping a worthy organization! Do it again and I’ll punish you worse.” Maybe this was a general caution to be more attentive to my surroundings so that I don’t lose things like this again.
Even if this was a divine action, we haven’t established that this was the work of the Christian god, and an action as vague as this might mean different things coming from different deities. For example, red in Hinduism is associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and beauty. If she did this, maybe the message was, “Thank you for the red wristband. You will be rewarded.” And so on.
Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. I’m not satisfied with finding a pleasing interpretation and running with it. Most intellectually appealing is the option that there is no supernatural message at all.
This reminds me of the numerology behind the predictions of our old friend Harold Camping (I’ve written about Brother Camping here and here). He concluded that the time from Jesus’s death until the beginning of Armageddon on May 21, 2011 (oops!) was 722,500 days. But 722,500 factors nicely into 5² × 10² × 17². Jumping into the highly accurate (or completely nonsensical, depending on the authority) science of numerology, 5 = atonement, 10 = completion, and 17 = heaven. So May 21 was the day of (Atonement × Completeness × Heaven) squared. Pretty cool, eh?
But even if you’re on board with Camping’s nutty project, how do you interpret this curious factorization? How about: Since Jesus atoned for everyone’s sin, and the human project is now completed, welcome into heaven, everyone! Why is this any worse than whatever Camping imagines?
And who’s to say what these numbers mean? Why doesn’t the 5 bring to mind the number of stones David picked up before he battled Goliath and suggest his doubt that God was going to help him? Why doesn’t 10 refer to plagues?
I’d rather stay on firm ground. I’ll leave the interpretations to the Jungians and the Tarot readers.
As a parting thought, let me share Mr. Deity’s admission that he doesn’t answer prayer.

Look—if somebody prays to me and things go well, who gets the credit? Me, right? But if they pray to me and things don’t go well, who gets the blame? Not me!
So it’s all good. I’m going to mess with that by stepping in? Putting my nose where it doesn’t belong?

Good deeds are the best prayer
— Serbian proverb

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Dr Johnson: Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA)

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Can science say anything about religious claims? Does religion have anything to say in the domain of science?
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) a paleontologist, biologist, and popularize of science wrote of many things, and one was this clash between religion and science (Rocks of Ages, 1999).
Like Rodney “Can’t we all get along?” King, Gould tried to get everyone to play nice. Science and Religion, he said, are two magesteria—areas of authority—that don’t overlap. He described the different domains of these two Non-Overlapping Magesteria (NOMA) this way:

Science gets the age of rocks, and religion the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, and religion how to go to heaven.

No one steps on anyone’s toes, and everyone’s happy.
I heard a variation of this in a lecture by Oxford mathematics professor John Lennox a year ago (“John Lennox Responds to Stephen Hawking”). Lennox argues that the two domains overlap but overlap contentedly. For example, Isaac Newton had no problem accepted both gravity and God. Gravity could both be studied scientifically and also be the product of God’s hand.
Yet another reaction is by Richard Dawkins. About Gould’s make-nice accommodation, he says in The God Delusion, “Gould carried the art of bending over backwards to positively supine lengths.” About Gould’s quote above, Dawkins says:

This sounds terrific—right up until you give it a moment’s thought. What are these ultimate questions in whose presence religion is an honoured guest and science must respectfully slink away?

Lampooning NOMA further, he imagines that scientists discover DNA evidence that Jesus really did lack a biological father. Would Christian apologists who favor NOMA say that the magesteria don’t overlap and that scientific evidence is irrelevant to the study of theology? Would they dismiss the scientists with their useless evidence?
Of course not. Within certain circles of Christianity, this would be the discovery of the century. Given the choice of NOMA or evidence, they’ll take the evidence. Faith is nice as far as it goes, but it’s second best when the alternative is hard science that supports the Christian position.
Most Christians have learned from the Galileo fiasco and have no problem with evolution, though Dawkins sides with the other Christians. He agrees that they are rightly concerned that evolution and Christianity are incompatible.
NOMA is a nice idea, but given the continued clash between science and science deniers with a religious agenda, it has had little impact.

The Holy Spirit intended to teach us in the Bible
how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go
— Galileo

See all the definitions in the Cross Examined Glossary.

What Makes a Good Prophecy (and Why Bible Prophecies Aren’t)

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What makes a good prophecy?
Most of us are pretty skeptical of bad prophecies and can spot them easily—tabloid predictions by psychics such as Jeane Dixon or Sylvia Browne, for example. Not even many Christians are sucked into the end-of-the-world predictions by such “prophets” as Harold Camping. (There’s a great infographic of Christianity’s many end-of-the-world predictions here, and I write about Harold Camping’s ill-advised venture into prophecy in 2011 here and here.)
And now there’s the (new ’n improved!) prediction by Ronald Weinland that Jesus will return on May 19, 2013.
I’d like to propose some rules for good prophecies against which we can compare the gospel prophecies.
1. The prophecy must be startling, not mundane. “Barack Obama will be re-elected president” isn’t very startling. “Michelle Obama will be elected president” would be startling.
We regularly find big surprises in the news—earthquakes, wars, medical breakthroughs, and so on. These startling events are what make good prophecies.
2. The prophecy must be precise, not vague. “Expect exciting and surprising gold medals for the U.S. Olympic team!” is not precise. “A major earthquake will devastate Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 12, 2010” is precise.
Nostradamus is another example of “prophecies” that were so vague that they can be imagined to mean lots of things. Similarly, the hundreds of supposed Bible prophecies are simply quote mining. You could also apply the identical process to War and Peace or The Collected Works of Shakespeare to find parallels to the gospel story, but so what?
3. The prophecy must be accurate. We should have high expectations for a divine divinator. Edgar Cayce could perhaps be excused if he was a little imperfect (that he showed no particular gift at all is damning, however), but prophecy from the omniscient Creator should be perfect.
4. The prophecy must predict, not retrodict. The writings of Nostradamus predict the London Great Fire of 1666 and the rise of Napoleon and Hitler … but of course these “predictions” were so unclear in his writings that the connection had to be inferred afterwards. This is also the failing of the Bible Code—the idea that the Hebrew Bible holds hidden acrostics of future events. And maybe it does—but the same logic could find these after-the-fact connections in any large book.
5. The prophecy can’t be self-fulfilling. The prediction that a bank will soon become insolvent may provoke its customers to remove all their money … and make the bank insolvent. The prediction that a store will soon go out of business may drive away customers. The prediction that Harry Potter would kill him drove Voldemort to try to kill the infant Harry first, but in so doing he inadvertently gave Harry some of the abilities that Harry used later to kill Voldemort.
6. The prophecy and the fulfillment must be verifiable. The prophecy and sometimes the fulfillment come from long ago, and we must be confident that they are accurate history.
7. The fulfillment must come after the prophecy. Kind of obvious, right? But some Old Testament prophecies fail on this point.
Isaiah 45:1 names Cyrus the Great of Persia as the anointed one (Messiah) who will end the Babylonian exile (587–538BCE) of the Israelites. That would be pretty impressive if it predicted the events, but this part of Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah) was probably written during the time of Cyrus.
Or take Daniel. Daniel the man was taken to Babylon during the exile, but Daniel the book was written centuries later in roughly 165BCE. Its “prophecies” before that date are pretty good, but it fails afterwards. There’s even a term for this, vaticinia ex eventu (prophecy after the event).
8. The fulfillment must be honest. The author of the fulfillment can’t simply look in the back of the book, parrot the answers found there, and then declare victory. For example, that Mark records Jesus’s last words as exactly those words from Psalm 22 could be because it really happened that way, or that Jesus was deliberately quoting from the psalm as he died, or (my choice) Mark knew the psalm and put those words into his gospel.
I think that any of us would find this a fairly obvious list of the ways that predictions can fail. We’d spot these errors in a supermarket tabloid or in some other guy’s nutty religion.
But the Jesus prophecies are rejected by this skeptical net as well. Consider Matthew: this gospel says that Jesus was born of a virgin (1:18–25), was born in Bethlehem (2:1), and that he rode humbly on two donkeys (21:1–7). It says that Jesus predicted that he would rise, Jonah-like, after three days (12:40) and that the temple would fall (24:1–2). It says that he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (26:15), that men gambling for his clothes (27:35), and it records his last words (27:46).
Are these the records of fulfilled prophecy? Maybe all these claims in Matthew actually did happen, but if so, we have no grounds for saying so. Because they fail these tests (primarily #8), we must reject these claims of fulfilled prophecy. The non-supernatural explanation is far more plausible.

In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated
is a refusal to be educated
— Margaret Halsey

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