...(Continued)

I assume the forth example is the one you chose to look at.

[This could be rationally explained by psychophysiology, or it could simply be a co-incidence that your adrenal glands kicked in after you prayed (our bodies eventually release adrenaline to keep going if we hold ourselves awake for long enough).]

The prayer in question was an answer to being tired while driving and worried I would fall asleep or cause an accident. Your explanation might fit if this had ever happened in this manner again when I wasn't driving or praying, but as far as I can tell the only time
I can relate to this is not to do with being so tired I wake up. Instead that I am tired from work but wake up excited to be done with the day and to go home. Perhaps God used my adrenal glands to be a pick me up that day in the car. Or perhaps He just did it on His own. Either way this occurrence has no second comparison to relate to on other late nights that it would have helped to stay awake for. (Studying in college for example). This event is not explained.

The fifth example was one that co-incidence might fit the best. Praying for another to get along with family they were working for. The prayer was answered, though the person said they did not see any changes. Just a different attitude one day. If the person I prayed for had made an effort to change their attitude then it could be counted much more likely as co-incidence. Just good timing. It doesn't fit though because the person said she did not know why she was getting along better. Nothing had changed as far as she was aware.

These were diverse enough experiences to show that answered prayer is not an easy one answer explanation to explain away. But with enough detail so far all of those explanations still don't fit the situations.

Yes, I agree with all of it.]

Good, that will make responding to the points in the article easier. I don't want to juggle too many points at once though, so I'll wait to address the sermon on the mount till after we have some time with these points and the rock question.

[That is a deliberate sidestep and beside the point.]

No it wasn't. It was an answer to your hypothetical question. It's just that the answer includes a fuller view of God. Not just as all powerful, but also all knowing. If He made a rock that He intended not to be moved, then He wouldn't later change His mind and try to move it. He is wiser then that. Nor do I see any reason why He would make a rock "too big for Him to move." As the whole universe is at His command and under His authority I don't think anything in the physical world could become too heavy for Him to lift. The only way for me to cont the question is to replace big rock, with perhaps an unmovable spiritual element. Perhaps a law, a promise, a spiritual being. Or even a landmass in the spiritual realm. Replacing the idea of the large rock with something that could be unmovable for God. My only conclusion is that in His wisdom when he made the "rock," whatever it could be, that rock was intended to never move.

[Do you not understand the concept or purpose of a hypothetical?]

If hypothetical doesn't relate to real life, what benefit can it accomplish? If the person giving the hypothetical doesn't believe in it, what could it do except create a confused state. You now have my answer. It was not a sidestep and was explained.

Not_Now.Soon,

The results of your MRI might have been highly unusual (unheard of, even), but I don’t think either of us is qualified to declare it a miracle. It doesn’t sound like the doctor was too blown away by it if he didn’t ask if you wanted to participate in some research to so that they could gain a better understanding of what it was they had just witnessed.

Your second experience is easily explained. You may not have been able to shake your depression on your own, but if you had requested outside help from a celestial father figure that you are convinced is able to help you and would want to, then it’s hardly surprising that you felt better after praying. Then there’s also the points I raised the last time we discussed this. Saying that the feelings somehow weren’t yours doesn’t eliminated these as explanations.

Your third experience experience is easily explained as just psychological. The brain can do some amazing things, and we still don’t fully understand it. I’ve had similar experiences even as an atheist, only I didn’t pray before they occurred.

As for the experience I most recently addressed, this may still be rationally explained as psychophysiological, even if we could rule out a release of adrenaline from exhaustion.

Your fifth experience could be explained by a simple change of heart, and co-incidence. I’ve had changes of heart which didn’t seem to have any apparent origin, too. I just put them down to maturing. I'm sure they would have felt miraculous, as well, had I prayed moments before them.

Again, though, even if there were no rational explanation for your experiences, all we’d be left with would be unknowns because there is no evidence of anything supernatural and every time, throughout history, where an event or phenomenon was assumed to have supernatural causes the explanation turned out to be perfectly rational.

Continued…

…Continued

I would also add that it is rather arrogant to assume that the all-powerful creator of the universe is tinkering with your life while millions of people starve to death. Apparently your god is not omnibenevolent.

<<If He made a rock that He intended not to be moved, then He wouldn't later change His mind and try to move it.>>

Why not? He changed his mind many times in the Bible. What’s so different about this situation?

Even if you were right, though, this wouldn’t get you around the dilemma because intent doesn’t come into it. You have inserted intent into the dilemma as a means of sidestepping it.

<<He is wiser then that.>>

I'm not so sure about that. Creating Satan, knowing in advance what he was going to do, and then not destroying him now that he's making everyone's lives miserable, isn't exactly wise. It doesn't sound to me like experimenting with rocks would be too far beneath Him.

<<Nor do I see any reason why He would make a rock "too big for Him to move.">>

There doesn't have to be one for the dilemma to work and be valid.

<<If hypothetical doesn't relate to real life, what benefit can it accomplish?>>

But it does relate to real life - as far you’re concerned, at least - because you believe that a god exists and that he is all-powerful. So, if God cannot create a rock so big that he cannot lift it, then he is not omnipotent; if he can, then he is still not omnipotent.

Omnipotence is a logical impossibility. Saying that God wouldn’t do something doesn’t get around that. This is a valid dilemma, and one that has demoted God, in the eyes of many theists, to maximally powerful. You absolutely sidestepped it.

//These were diverse enough experiences to show that answered prayer is not an easy one answer explanation//

Yeah it is: coincidence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1TxH0zf07w

//If He made a rock that He intended not to be moved, then He wouldn't later change His mind and try to move it.//

The question is not 'does God want to do such and such?', it is 'CAN God do such and such?'.

//As the whole universe is at His command and under His authority I don't think anything in the physical world could become too heavy for Him to lift.//

So in that case, he can not create a rock that is too heavy to lift. Which means he can't do everything, which means (by definition) that he's not omnipotent. QED.

"they don't require a cause. Nature is the unmoved mover."
This is which scientific theory ? Moving is a cause . How do uncaused scientific laws arise - by blind religion of Mother Nature?

As mass interchanges with energy , a universal rock is universal energy . Which infinite is the larger? Can an omnipotent god become un-omnipotent so that she's not god ? Your ideas are as contrived as saying nature can't be un-natural and so isn't a universal principle