When Can You Call It a Prayer Answer?

In my recent story about two churches becoming united, I attributed much of what has happened to God's work. Our week-long scheduled cooperative mission came to a close a few hours ago, on just as positive a note as it has played out all week. What an experience it has been!

But "doctor(logic)," in comments following that blog entry, took exception to my belief that God was at work here. In summary, his point is that the things I (and others here) attributed to God, would have happened anyway, with or without God, and there's no rational basis for believing God intervened in any way. We who think he did are just superstitious; we're falling into a confirmation bias trap.

doctor(logic) believes that we should apply statistical reasoning to events like this, and that we should never conclude that God was at work unless we can show statistically that natural explanations do not suffice. I have a few responses to this.

One, doctor(logic)'s approach guarantees that God will never get credit for anything except for the most incredibly extraordinary events. He starts from a very skeptical position, and will credit nothing whatsoever to God without massive overwhelming proof. His definitions seem to preclude the very possibility of God, however; he defines God out of existence, without any regard to evidences. Some excerpts:

"If I have a system that's consistent, I can describe it in terms of a mathematical system. The only time I cannot do that (in principle) is if the system is inconsistent.

...

"So you can't claim that the world cannot be modeled unless you also claim the part of the world we're modeling is inconsistent and illogical.

...

"You're still left with two options. You can say that the part of the world you're looking at is incoherent and incomprehensible and you won't talk about it, or else you can claim that it has some coherent logical structure from which conclusions can be drawn.

"The fact that you claim divine intervention (and the way in which you claim it) means that you accept that the system of facts about the world and prayer and God are logical, and thus, can be modeled mathematically."

It seems he's saying that God only exists, and can only be shown to exist, if God is consistent enough to be modeled mathematically. I can't think of any reason to suppose that, though. We can't model individual humans' behavior mathematically. We have a very difficult time modeling groups of humans mathematically, in even the most simple interactions. Why should we be able to model God's behavior mathematically? Why should he have to be mathematically consistent? Why should he have to be so perfectly comprehensible? What kind of God would he be in that case? If we could understand God fully, then it would be more fitting for him to worship us--an impossible thought, of course.

Maybe doctor(logic) means something different, though. Maybe he means that we ought to be able to model the behavior of nature mathematically, and conclude that God has intervened only when something happens that is so extraordinary it must be a miracle. There is some value in this line of thinking. The miracles that Jesus did were seen to be miracles just because they were so out of the ordinary.

One problem with this is that it can be made impervious to evidence. The one who takes this position can always move the marker farther and farther down the line, until their interpretations allow no work of God ever to be acknowledged. doctor(logic) appears to have made it this way. He can take newspaper stories of miracles (such as were brought up in this comment thread), and ignore them or call them fakery. He can write off a Ph.D. philosopher from USC as a "preacher" (which Christians consider a term of honor, but which doctor(logic) intended disparagingly, as an indicator of zero credibility). He can always find a safe place to retreat to. This does not strike me as fully rational, in the sense of being open to where evidence may lead. He has an unfalsifiable position.

But this hardly even applies to the kind of claim I was making in that story, or to the basis on which I was making it. I was not starting from a completely skeptical position as doctor(logic) always does. I do not need absolute statistical assurance that no God-less natural explanation could account for any of what I wrote about. I am not in the position of wondering whether there was a God, and observing patterns of rainfall (as I reported in that story) and concluding "Yes, now I see, there must be a God after all."

No, I (and others like me) have sufficient reason from many prior experiences and from prior knowledge to believe that God exists, and we know from God's own self-revelation (and from experience) that he answers prayer. So when we pray, and see answers, we find it quite natural to attribute those answers to God. That doesn't mean we never obtain a false positive, calling something a prayer answer, that would have happened with or without prayer. But we have ample knowledge of God's character to believe that there are a significant number of true positives, genuine prayer answers. I see a pattern of prayer answers in my life, consistent with my knowing that God really answers.

Now, we admittedly have no definite way to tell individual instances of false positives from true positives, except of course when God answers in extraordinary ways. I think the rainfall pattern last Wednesday night was clearly the work of God. It's not statistically strong enough to prove that God exists; but I did not intend it to carry that weight--that would be ridiculous. The rain was timed perfectly enough, that I'm quite satisfied to conclude that God did answer prayer then. The whole coming together of our two churches is extraordinary, another quite remarkable sign that God was involved. I can say these things with great confidence, because I already know (I'm not trying to prove) that God answers prayer.

doctor(logic) says this kind of thinking is irrational. I disagree. It's a realistic and rational way of understanding the events of life, in light of prior knowledge that God exists and answers prayer. Yes, we take the risk of false positives. Conversely, by his terribly constrained (and poorly based) standard of what counts as rationality, and by his absurd requirement that God's behavior fit into mathematical models, doctor(logic) takes the very real risk of false negatives: falsely concluding that God never works in the world (does not exist). Is that more rational? How so?

Finally, to respond to this:

"Of course, the real reason [that I don't subject prayer answers to rigorous statistical testing] is that if you were to look for an inference to divine intervention using probability methods that will eliminate your own bias, you will come up empty. It always has. Your bias is necessary to the whole affair."

Scientific studies of prayer answers are impossible, methodologically, because you cannot control for the behavior of a real person with real knowledge of the outcomes. Medical studies are usually done in a double-blind manner because it's well established that a person's knowledge of the treatments and outcomes can influence that person's interpretation. If a person involved in delivering a treatment knows the details of what's going on, they can consciously or unconsciously behave in a way that alters the outcome. But double-blind studies are impossible where the treatment just is something done by a person. You can't have a test of chiropractic in which doctors are left unaware of whether they are doing a spinal manipulation. A prayer study is one in which the person delivering the treatment--God--is not blind to the outcome.

But it gets worse than that. A chiropractic manipulation is a manipulation of the spine. A prayer is an entreaty offered toward influencing God. We can suppose (for purposes of research) that a spinal manipulation is a spinal manipulation. The spine is not asking, "Is this manipulation being done with the right motives? Does it have the right eternal outcome in mind? How will it affect the second generation after me? Is there some character improvement, some sense of growing in grace or mercy for example, that would be better accomplished if I don't do what the chiropractor hopes I'll do?" You can't design a prayer study in which God takes such a predictable, impersonal stance. Sorry, doctor(logic), but I'm not even going to attempt it. You're welcome to write up a research protocol for Christians to try, though, if you think you can do it.

On the other hand, proper studies do not "always come up empty." There are thousands of research studies with results like these, topics on which real research actually is possible And in spite of doctor(logic)'s skepticism, there is good historical and philosophical reason to believe in the reality of God.

As I already asked, how is a Christian's position less rational than the radical skeptic's?

Posted: Sat - July 14, 2007 at 05:19 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

When Can You Call It a Prayer Answer?

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson