From LG's #146, p8;
“ Originally Posted by spidergoat
Prayer is supposed to work at least some of the time. This should make a statistically significant difference between praying and randomness. ”
If you work out of a wrong understanding of the purpose and functioning of anything, all you will see is randomness
What else can the devious, deceitful theist write in response when there is nought to say, but..............."You don't understand..........."
The reader will note that no attempt is made to ameliorate an alleged misunderstanding. Mainly because the decrepit LG has no better an understanding, but has in fact an equally incredible and unrealistic understanding that, given expression, would invoke howls of laughter and guffaws from his rational audience.
It is in fact the aversion to derision and martyrdom, what the rational audience brands as cowardice at the whiff of gunpowder, that drives the theist to scuttle like a cockroach for the comfort of the dark crevice the while flinging back with faint affect the futile, "You don't understand..."
The phenomenon that LG is manifesting is that hiatus in scriptural interpretation wherein there are several equally ridiculous and derisively conspired interpretations but not one yet has been contrived to be even moderately credible to even a modestly intellectual theist of LG's ilk!
Theists demonstrate with cartoonish eclat that dumb, glazed-eyed, thin-lipped, self-embarassing silence, knowing they appear utterly stupid and harking desperately for a tiny corner of their mind where they may find refuge in a bat-squeak of divine approval.
In their obsequious supplications they manage to convey to the rational, the logical and the reasonable how evolution has been haphazzard in the bestowing of its benefits, how many have somehow missed the evolutionary train and diverted on to a brach line to Oblivion, which is the last stop.
However those who are better evolved might rationalise and reason the whys and wherefors, this capacity for self-deception, wilful as it is, is a clear indication that this tiny corner of the Cosmos is not the site from where the next great colonial exploration begins.
Not all that long ago I was convinced [in somewhat cynical manner] that the all-pervasive background microwave radiation in our universe was not, as some say, a remnant of the Big Bang, but the echo of laughter at humankind's consuming presumption of self-importance from beings ineffably more advanced who know that the Cosmos will prevail whether humankind likes it or not and [galling though it must be to theists] will prevail with or without humankind.
When one scales the posturing of theists against the incalculable vastness and complexity of the Cosmos, the atheist is permitted a wry smile and a despairing sigh.
Biggles, Prime