Alright, I'm sick of theists bringing forth useless anecdotal stories that don't actual show anything, so I want to see how a theist responds to a proper scientific study that clearly demolishes one of their most cherished claims, namely prayer (which their anecdotal stories seemed to be based on):

http://www.ahjonline.com/article/PIIS0002870305006496/abstract

In this study, cardiac bypass surgery patients were divided into three groups:

1 - Told they may or may not be prayed for, and were prayed for (604 patients)
2 - Told they may or may not be prayed for, and were not prayed for (597 patients)

nobody believed me, well here it is. the entire thing is in 3 parts, i couldn't splice it into 1

My friend brandon,
This man has went through quite a storm. It started with ultimate financial difficulties, he cannot hold a job for the life of him because nobody will allow him to work in his church schedule with a full time job, then his fiance left him just last week cuz she felt that she wasn't ready for marriage (she left the church as well), their wedding was supposed to be next week.

Ill let him testify for you:
The Day My Heart Broke in Two

08/Jan/07

Yesterday I was hurt beyond imagination, a pain that I would wish upon no enemy great or small. The love of my heart walked out and left me in the dark with no visible cause, I wondered and speculated on the reason for this atrocity only to find myself plummeting into an endless black-hole of imaginations. As I take counsel from my pastor and peers I find myself with a death grip on God, trusting in His absolute control of things. The pain continues but a certain mercy and grace flow round about me only given by the Lord God Almighty. I only pray that He will guide me through this enormous storm, but as Peter walked on his storm that God was in, I know He will bid me to walk upon this storm as well.

Someone told me today that the eye of the needle (Matthew 19:23-24) is not really the eye of a needle. I know it’s a saying intended to make a point, but this guy said that the eye was actually an entrance to a palace...

Is it just me or is this guy crazy?

I'm now officially bored.

I guess I've seen one to many posts asking for proof / evidence as if the existence of God in 2007 could be discovered by a team of CSI's. It just goes round and round in circles.

Or as if they would believe evidence even if it was possible to produce it (St Thomas actually witnessed the miracles and still he was skeptical - yet somehow 2,000 years later, we're going to produce "something" and all of the atheists are going to pause and then readily accept the existence of God..!! - it's actually very funny when you think about it).

Hundreds of millions of people around the world - despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary - believes that it was Bush / Cheney / Rumsfield / Rice et al who were responsible for 9-11 - they engineered the events of the day and the massive cover up.

Shouldn't God already know what your wants and needs are? And why bother thanking God? He should already know you're thankful.

Seems like you're just wasting time praying and thanking.

Hey everyone,

Not sure if this is the right forum for this. This is a paper a just typed up describing a stats project I did last semester regarding religious affliation among prison inmates compared to the general population. I also posted this in a blog that I just made, it might be formated better there and therefore easier to read: http://scientificinquiry.blogspot.com/

Please give me your thoughts/feedback/constructive criticism. Thanks.

-Matt

Atheists in Prison

There seems to be a general belief among atheists that the amount of atheists in the US prison population is proportionally much smaller than the amount of atheists in the general US population. I myself am an atheist and have read this interpretation of the statistics on many atheistic websites. I never really found those accounts convincing, since they seemed to declare that anyone categorized as “No Religion” in the general population was an atheist. During my previous semester at school I had to complete a project for my statistics class. For my project I decided to compare the religious affiliations of inmates in the US prison population to the religious affiliations of the overall US population. My goal for the project was to discover any existing correlations between a particular religious affiliation among the US prison population and the overall US population. I will summarize the results here, but you may also download the power point I made for the class if you prefer here (it contains graphics that may make it easier for you to interpret the data): http://www.fileshack.us/v/4757391/Matt_Benjamin_Final_Project_Presentation.ppt.html

I'm not submitting this just yet, as I might feel like adding extra paragraphs. But I am posting this here to see how people like what I've written sofar. This one, of course, fits in the 'write something like letter to a Christian nation' catagory.

A note to believers.

Everytime you conclude, that there has to be “more out there”, and that there must be “more to life”, you’re essentially throwing the towel in the ring, because you weren’t done with exploring yet. Not by a long shot. Impossible.
There’s more to do than you or I or anyone could ever preform within our lifetime, and more to experience and examine than any individual ever could, so may I suggest that perhaps your desire for “something more” doesn’t stem from a sense of defisciency at all, but -on the contrary- from being overwhelmed by it all. That sometimes it’s just too much to cope with, and hense you need “something more” to escape in.

St Michael (or anyone else who can authoritatively answer this question for me)

Am I correct in remembering that the Catholic church officially discarded limbo from it's dogma? When did that happen?

Also, where do dead babies go now?

Also, what is the church's position on when a person becomes self aware enough to be responsible for original sin?

Also, what is the church's position on severely mentally handicapped people who can't understand the concepts of religion?

Thanks

Christian theology teaches us that he is. I'm sure someone will disagree with me and tell me that the true scotsman... err... Christian doesn't actually believe that god is everywhere, but I know when I was in bible school they taught me the word "omnipresent" and made me memorize it in conjunction with "Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent." That last one was always the one I couldn't remember...

Anyway, there's a point to all this. What is hell? Many a theist on this site has said that hell is the complete removal of god's presence. Hell is total separation from god.

How is that again? If god is everywhere, then hell can't exist... but if god is in hell, then what exactly is hell, and why would god want to hang around for eternity looking at billions of his creations suffering? Sounds like a masochist to me.