Chapter 10 - Why do battlefield prayers sound so convincing?

Rather, "Chapter 10 - Why does nothing about your argument sound convincing?"

If you have taken the time to read the preceding chapters [read "struggle through"], you may be starting to notice a pattern. It would be hard not to notice a pattern. You repeat yourself in six hundred different ways, so much so that you HAVE to notice a pattern. If we assume that God is imaginary, then the world makes far more sense than it does if God is real. For example:

• Why won't God heal amputees? Because amputations aren't life threatening, but instead, are life saving. Because amputations are merely an inconvenience. God has healed amputees before, but doesn't make a regular habit of it because it is very showy. Lastly, because he will heal them after death. If God is real, it is a mystery. There's nothing mysterious about it. If God is imaginary, it makes complete sense. Rather, the fact that someone is there at all to get an amputation seems to be a complicated thing for atheism to explain.
  
• Why is there no statistical advantage to praying if you are sick? Because prayer depends entirely on what God's will is for your life, not anything you can do about. If God is real, it is a mystery. Yet Christians have known this simple fact ever since the beginning. If God is imaginary, it makes complete sense. Rather, all of the prayers that ARE answered make no sense if God is imaginary. Unless you repeatedly apply the "coincidence" card, which is of course something the atheist can do liberally, but chastises the believer for doing.
  
• Why can't you move a mountain? Either because no one has the faith of a mustard seed, or because moving mountains was an ancient Jewish metaphor for accomplishing what was difficult. Why does God never answer impossible prayers? Because they're impossible. There's a reason for that. If God is real, it is a mystery. There's nothing mysterious about it. If God is imaginary, it makes complete sense. Rather, the documented accounts of people doing extraordinary things seem to make no sense if God doesn't exist.
  
• Why do the laws of probability in Las Vegas apply to believers in exactly the same way that they do for everyone else? Why haven't believers prayed all the money out of Vegas? Because God doesn't answer prayers that support sinful activity. If he did, it's likely that we'd all be dead by now: some lunatic would have prayed that God destroy all of the [insert race/group/personality type here] hundreds of years ago. If God is real, it is a mystery. If God is real and God is just, it makes complete sense. If God is imaginary, it makes complete sense.
  
• Why do bad things happen to good people? Because of our free ability to screw things up, and also because of God's common grace. See my video here. If God is real, it is a mystery. If God is imaginary, it makes complete sense.
• Why to bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people? If God doesn't exist, it is a mystery. If God is real, it makes complete sense.
• Why is there a remarkable amount of evidence that a man named Jesus rose from the dead? If God doesn't exist, it is a mystery. If God is real, it makes complete sense.
• Why are there billions of people that claim to experience God as a reality in their lives...daily? If God doesn't exist, it is a mystery. If God is real, it makes complete sense.
• Why does life exist in this universe, considering how the odds of a life-permitting universe existing are so astoundingly against us? If God doesn't exist, it is a mystery. If God is real, it makes complete sense.
• Etc.
  

Let's look at one more example that confirms this trend: The Battlefield Effect. There are no atheists in foxholes......Ha. I guess now's not the right time for jokes, huh?

The "battlefield effect" is one reason why so many people believe in the power of prayer. By understanding how it works, you can understand a great deal about how prayer works.

Let's say that a general sends 10,000 soldiers into a fierce battle. Although the general does not know it at the time, the 10,000 men end up marching into an ambush. The enemy has 30,000 troops, artillery support plus close air support and is able to decimate the 10,000 soldiers in short order. Sounds like the General should have paid more attention to the intelligence. Once the enemy is finished, they leave 100 survivors out of the original 10,000 to limp and crawl back to base.

You may have heard that there are no atheists in foxholes. I promise you, I didn't read ahead. Before they died, we can assume that every single one of the 10,000 soldiers who marched into the ambush prayed fervently and deeply for God to spare his life. Why can we assume that? Even if there are people who believe in God, that doesn't mean they are going to pray. Despite those prayers, the enemy proceeded to attack with deadly force. 9,900 of those who prayed wasted their breath -- they died. Well, that's what happens in war. This is no surprise.

The 100 who return from the battle, however, feel as though their prayers were answered. They have been through a horrific firefight, and they are deeply grateful to have escaped with their lives. At the time they prayed, they were absolutely and totally terrified and desperate. To have survived seems like a miracle. Which is essentially an exact duplication of your argument about the man who's house was apparently saved from a fire, just put in a new costume. This is not a new argument, Mr. Brain.

The 100 survivors fan out with their personal stories of answered prayers rather than going back onto the field of battle and finishing what they started. They tell their soldier buddies how they prayed for their lives and their prayers were answered without realizing the irony. Oh, those Christians! When they arrive home they tell their families and friends about their harrowing experiences on the battlefield and how nothing but their prayers saved them. Yeah, right. I don't think any real soldier would seriously say that "nothing but their prayers saved them." Have you ever even talked to a soldier who has seen combat? They give testimonials at church, give speeches in the community, write articles for magazines, etc. Millions of people are exposed to the positive, powerful, personal testimonials of the 100 survivors.

This is great advertising for prayer. And it works. People hear the stories of the survivors and they believe. The real power of this approach, however, comes from the fact that the 9,900 dead soldiers never get to tell their side of the story. Ninety nine percent of the soldiers died, and only one percent survived. Far more men prayed and died, but they never get to tell anyone about their disappointment. They're disappointment with dying? If all of these ninety-nine hundred hypothetical soldiers are Christians, they're in Heaven at this point, and I really doubt they're caring about not getting to tell stories to people who are alive about their death.

So the 100 personal testimonials FOR prayer are strong, loud, frequent and compelling. Meanwhile the 9,900 personal testimonials AGAINST prayer are silent, because the dead soldiers never get a chance to speak. Therefore, to a casual observer, it appears that prayer works. Every story that you hear is positive. The reality is that 99% of the praying people died. It is another perfect example of God's Ratio (see Chapter 2). "God's Ratio" is a pathetically selfish, misguided view of prayer that you have concocted that is totally not Biblical.

Dropping like flies

Let's say that you listen to a person tell this story: "There I was in a horrific firefight on the battlefield. All of my friends around me were dropping like flies. But I prayed to God and he saved me." And, once again, no real solider would solely attribute his survival to prayer. The question that any normal person [he would have you read "normal" as "atheist," of course, despite the fact that the average person in the world is not] would ask is, "Why did God let all the others drop like flies? And why aren't you running away from a God who killed 99% of your friends instead of answering their equally fervent prayers?"

The answer is because God didn't kill anyone in this case. Humans caused the war, humans made the guns, humans made and loaded the bullets and artillery shells and land mines, and humans killed those people. That's simply how war is. We all know that God doesn't seem to be too keen on stopping war just by gleaning over the Old Testament.

What's more likely is that those 100 guys were either lucky, or fought better than the others. God may have answered their prayers, because he may have an ultimate plan for those people. It may also be true that God planned for those 9,900 soldiers to die. But again, there's simply no way to measure. I think it's more likely that this is a totally independent matter from God.

The fact that 9,900 praying people died while only 100 survived should be plenty of evidence to indicate that prayer does not work. Only if one doesn't consider the possibility that God actually did answer those one hundred prayers and refuse the others. A 99% failure rate is significant. This is not "failure" by any means. It's only "failure" if God tried to answer their prayers and was unsuccessful. Your word choice is absurd. But for some reason, believers do not seem to think about the 9,900 who died. Believers don't usually tend to think. They instead celebrate the "answered prayers" of the 100. The 9,900 who died are swept under the carpet. Those people are mourned and honored as fallen soldiers of the United States Army. They are given the glory they deserve. And assuming they're Christians in this hypothetical army, they're being celebrated in Heaven too.

It should be becoming obvious to you what actually happens on any battlefield. The survivors benefit from random luck and nothing more. And, probably training too. Their "answered prayers" are simply coincidences. Well, war is a pretty Godless thing, isn't it?

Here are several other examples of the same coincidental phenomenon. Imagine that you hear the following stories from four survivors:

• "I was a prisoner in a concentration camp, and in the morning we were marched to the death chambers. I knew that I could not die -- I had to live so that I could see my baby again. I began praying the most intense prayers I have ever prayed as soon as we started marching. When we got to the gas chambers, an amazing miracle occurred -- I somehow had moved to the end of the line, and there was no room for me in the chamber! I was told to join a nearby work group, and I survived. God heard my prayers, and I was saved!"
• "It was the most amazing flood in the history of Honduras. An immense wall of mud cascaded down the mountain and through our city, killing 20,000 people. I was caught in the tide of sludge and sucked deep into the bowels of the torrent. In just a few seconds I would drown and die in a sea of mud. But I prayed to the Virgin Mary, and not one second later my head popped to the surface, I was able to grab a nearby branch and pull myself out. The virgin Mary answered my prayers!"
• "There is no way to explain the miracle that happened next. I said a quick prayer before my car slammed into and then underneath the truck in front of me. As if by magic, the entire car crumpled like a wad of paper -- the entire car, except for the passenger area where we were sitting! God heard and answered my prayers by using his power to protect the interior of the car and save our lives!"
• "I was on a business trip. I got drunk and had a one night stand with a stranger. It is totally unlike me, but it happened. In the morning I realized what I had done and I was wracked with guilt. I got down on my knees and said a very sincere prayer: "Dear God, please don't let me have AIDS. I cannot die of AIDS. The embarrassment and pain would be too much for my spouse, my children and my parents. It only happened one time, and I promise that it will never happen again. If you will grant me this prayer, I will do ANYTHING that you ask. Amen." I waited three months and I was a nervous wreck. I went to my doctor to get tested and I was clean. The relief that I felt was incredible, like a huge burden being lifted from my soul. God personally answered this prayer for me!" Oh, PLEASE. You really think this is a legitimate prayer?
  

Believers seem to love these stories. We hear miraculous personal testimonies like these all the time. They are supposed to show the "power of prayer" and the "love of God" in our world today. And, depending on how you interpret prayer, they could very well be. It could be true that God would pick out that one Holocaust victim, or the one landslide victim, etc. I'm not sure that's so, however.

However, what I would ask you to consider is both sides of the story. Look at both the successes AND the failures of prayer, and what we see is extremely uncomfortable. All of them display God's ratio as described in Chapter 2. If God let millions of people die in the Holocaust, but then "heard the prayers" of one person and saved him, what sort of God is that? To say that God killed millions and saved one is a terrible ratio. Word games, once again. God didn't "kill" anyone. God would have to be a monster. Killing millions of people is an unimaginable atrocity. Hitler killed millions of people, thank you.

Believers seem to be completely comfortable with the sort of schizophrenia shown here. They are happy about the one person saved from the Holocaust by a prayer -- they actually celebrate his story and tell it with glee. They do not seem to care that, if it was God saving the one, then it must also have been God who killed the millions of others by completely ignoring their prayers. Rather, it is precisely the rarity and magnitude of the situation that makes the story so incredible. Kind of like miracles. Out of all the people to die, very few have come back to life. Is God being unfair in this example, then?

With your common sense you can examine all of these situations and see what actually happened by looking at both sides of the story:

• In the case of the Holocaust survivor, it was not a "miracle" that saved him. To believe that is to believe that God killed millions of others by specifically withholding his blessings from them. I wonder what you would think of people like Maximilian Kolbe who sacrificed themselves to save others in death camps, precisely because of their religion. What actually happened was dumb luck and coincidence. Possibly. Possibly not. I'm in no position to judge.
  
• In the case of the mudslide, do you believe that Mary heard the prayers of one person while purposefully ignoring the prayers of 20,000 others and killing all of them? Well, no. Mary is not someone that is supposed to be prayed to. Catholics have that completely wrong: it's totally unscriptural. Of course not -- that is ridiculous. This man's survival involves luck and coincidence as well. If the man's story were actually true, it would make Mary a capricious demon guilty of mass murder. Seems like you have a lot of things confused here. God didn't cause the mud slide, nor did he kill anyone.
  
• In the case of the car, it is not a miracle that the passenger compartment remained intact -- that is how the car is designed. It is called a passenger safety cage. God had absolutely nothing to do with it. In the United States, 40,000 people die every year in car accidents. If God actually saved this driver, then it is an atrocity that God let the other 40,000 people die by ignoring their prayers. Or, the other way around. If God lets those forty thousand die, why doesn't he make ALL of us die in car crashes? Since we all know that God is totally in the business of treating everyone equally, right?
  
• In the case of the AIDS survivor, God did not answer the prayer. Tens of millions of people have died of AIDS. To believe that God answered the prayer is to also to believe that God killed tens of millions of other praying people. What actually happened is random luck. Despite all the media attention AIDS gets, in the United States less than one percent of the sexually active adult population has the HIV virus. [ref] And it is not guaranteed that HIV will be transmitted during every sexual encounter. So the odds are excellent that, after one sexual encounter, the person will not get AIDS. It does not matter whether the person prayed or not -- it was simply luck through the normal laws of probability. To me, it's ridiculous that you even bring AIDS up in this.
  

The unconscionable arrogance of the blessed

Let's assume that a tremendous hurricane like Hurricane Katrina hits Louisiana. It does an incredible amount of damage, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, killing thousands of people and wiping entire towns off the map. Why are we assuming anything? Isn't that exactly what happened?

Your sister, a devout believer, happens to live in Louisiana, and a week later when cell phone service is restored she gives you a call. The first words out of her mouth are:

"Oh, God has blessed us so much this week! We prayed all through the storm, and he answered our prayers. The next town over was completely decimated, but our house is still standing. We are so blessed! God answered our prayers!"

What I would like you to do is step back for a moment, look at this statement, and think about the remarkable arrogance that it represents. What your sister is saying is this, "I am so special and God loves ME so much that God heard MY prayers and personally helped ME. All those millions of other people who God cursed -- obviously God hates THEM. I am cool in the eyes of God, and all those other wretched people out there are, obviously, uncool in the eyes of God. Otherwise he would have helped them just like he helped ME." As if my hypothetical sister would actually be thinking such nonsense. Spare me.

For a beliver to talk about his or her blessings in a huge natural disaster like Katrina is to implicitly ignore the damage and suffering that are plainly visible for all to see. Again, not so. Precisely the fact that there's so much devastation makes the blessing all the more profound. If God "blessed" one, while completely ignoring millions of other believers caught in exactly the same predicament, it says nothing about blessings. It says everything we need to hear about blessings: if God blesses everyone equally, it's not a blessing at all. It's would simply be how God treats people. A blessing, by it's very definition, is a special gift, and it's not special if everyone receives the same thing, is it? It says that God is an insane demon. For anyone to believe that God personally helped her while at the same time wreaking havoc on millions of others is a supreme arrogance. Once again, I doubt that God wreaked havoc on anyone. Yet believers seem to be completely comfortable with this arrogance.

The truth of the matter is easy to see if you will take the time to look at both sides of the equation. The hurricane hit, and God neither blessed nor cursed anyone. The hurricane did its damage according to the laws of nature. The fact that one house is undamaged while thousands of others are swept into the sea is not a blessing. It is random luck, nothing more.

The hurricane did its damage because, quite honestly, humans aren't very intelligent. We build a teacup below sea level and wonder why it caused so much damage.

When you hear people discussing their personal experiences with the power of prayer, simply listen to the stories they tell and ask to hear both sides and of course then tell them that your side is the right one, make sure to do that. Look for God's Ratio, which is a silly concept that I made up. In every case, the prayer's power can be explained by coincidence, luck, normal probabilities, the laws of physics, human design or some other normal, non-miraculous process. And God's Ratio will be terrible, just as it was on Steve Homel's street.

Of course, this ignores every other conceivable prayer that doesn't involve the expense of someone else. But of course, Marshall Brain doesn't seem to think that way. He only looks at the negative and concludes that God doesn't exist, without even thinking about both sides. The irony here is amusing.

So let's once again reiterate our position here:

1. Marshall Brain's view of prayer is a poor caricature of what the Bible actually says. The Bible makes no promises as Brain seems to think, and rescue from such things as he mentions above are not guaranteed. J.P. Holding adds:
1. "The fact is that nothing in the Bible or its context promises any such thing of prayer, as we have seen. This is not to say that it was not within God's power to do answer such a prayer positively; nor that there might be some reason why God might spare one particular person or duck or house from some tragedy. But it is really no better than claiming that your car keys were stolen by Satan unless you have far better objective evidence that there was a divine answer."
2. It is certainly possible that God answered the prayer of the one hundred soldiers, or Steve Homel, or anyone else. He could have selected them out of the others because had further plans for him: he hadn't accomplished all he wanted to do with those men. We all know that God isn't about treating everyone equally, so this is perfectly within his bounds to do. However:
   
3. It's more likely in such a situation that God had nothing to do with any of this at all. That doesn't mean God doesn't exist. That means God is sovereign.

© P-Dunn's Apologetics 2008. All rights reserved.