Do you really think you've studied this issue more than Buddhist monks or the Hasidic Jews, both of which have arrived at a completely different conclusion? How about those that have completed a comparative religion doctoral program...and still arrive at a different conclusion than you?

It's about time you get your head around the idea that people smarter than you have spent their entire lives comparing religions and there's still no consensus, and it's about time you realize why this is.

No I'm not bothered at all. Some other guy started the whole "so tell me more about these 1-outers" since lilprog kept casually throwing the term out and it interested me. I wanted to help apply a little more pressure to learn how someone like him thinks. I wanted to know if he was using the term more or less as a figure of speech, like him saying "every day I witness God's work", or if he meant it literally.

Ahh but that's the problem, you can't understand how someone like me thinks when you think in your frame work. Everything I`ve seen or experienced has been chance, coincidence, or variance. Whether what I saw was 100-1 odds or 10000000-1 odds the universe is big enough that SOMEBODY out there had to hit that chance, and therefore everything has no meaning or purpose, its all random jargon.

You can`t even begin to get into my head unless your willing to open up to the possibility that there is something more to life than vast randomness...

Well I think someone asked once before what it would take to convince an atheist there was a god. For instance, what if the sky literally opened up, the clouds parted, the sky turned green, and an enormous clearly recognizable face emerged and began to speak to us, telling us he is God and so on and so forth. Something well beyond any natural phenomena. The response given was that it would be even MORE likely that it was some hoax, either manmade or alien, trying to convince us that it was God. Afterall, why wouldnt you consider something at least slightly more possible than the supernatural when given the option?

Even if you were to shoot yourself in the head and find yourself in what you imagined would be the afterlife, and then suddenly returned to earth as if nothing had happened, with full recollection of your event, you could surmise that maybe you instead had some sort of schizophrenic episode and none of aforementioned events ever took place, since things like this HAVE happened. Although I suppose the introduction of witnesses could change things considerably.

Basically I just wanted to hear your take on it. I mean, if your story is that you went to buy a soda from the vending machine but didnt have any change in your pocket, hit the button anyway and a coke popped out, then yes I'm going to chastise you for abusing the definition of God's work. Hopefully your 1-outers arent as trivial as this. Regardless, I was just curious what they are. It would be interesting if they were really hard if not impossible to explain.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever thought critically about the events in your life you attribute to god? You said yourself that we could probably discredit them for a variety of reasons, but have YOU ever tried to discredit them yourself?

Ok that is a fair enough response / request, so I will share one of my many stories with you. Again I can`t do anything but give my word that I am not embellishing any of this. Give or take 8 years ago I was in my second year of being a youth pastor at a church here in town. Our Youth group was running probably 30-40 at the time and we had a summer retreat at a local campground. About 20 of our kids came to this 3 day retreat, and the whole focus for the weekend was prayer. On the last day I did a message about praying for others and talked specifically about how God listens and answers prayers, and that God calls on us to pray for things regularly. At the end we discussed the weekend and all the topics and several of the kids raised their hands and talked about how they want to believe in prayer,and try it, but they had never experienced prayer working, wasn`t sure how to pray, etc...

So I talked for a bit about how anything in the bible if you are unsure about it, test it. Do it for a month, see if it makes a difference. You have to try things to see if htey work, the best way to know if prayer works is to well pray. Right after that the phone rang... I didn`t recognize the number and normally I don`t answer when I don`t recognize a number, but because there were kids there and it could be a parent I picked up. On the other end was a county sheriff. He introduced himself to me and explained that one of my kids at the retreat's best friend had written a suicide note, and was missing. This kid had been battling depression for a while, and the cop sounded fairly confident that they were looking for a body, and wanted to talk to this kid to see if they could get any information.

The kid talked to the cop for a few minutes then got off the phone and immediately told the youth group what had happened. The kids immediately said, hey this is it! Now we have a chance to see if God answers prayer. Lets all pray they find the kid.

I`ll be dead honest with you I panicked. Seriously. What happens if they pray for this kid and they find the kid dead, these kids are going to be devastated. The kids immediately with no coaching fell to their knees and started praying aloud with passion and drive for this kid. Me and our leaders followed suit and were praying out of desperation, God PLEASE PLEASE ONE TIME!

About 5 minutes into this the kids all of the sudden stopped praying and started headed out to door for lunch. I was like WTH! WE cant just leave and go to lunch? We have to keep praying. Then one of the kids said, we asked God, he has it under control it's all good, and they walked out the door. I starred at my leaders in disbelief, and was half way out the door to chase the kids back in when my phone rang. It was the officer again. The kid had JUST showed up at the house unharmed.

Our kids went into a frenzy. I talk to some of them almost 9 years later and they still have never forgotten that day. It was a life changing experience for me as I clearly did not have the faith that God would do this at the time in that I was scared about the consequences if they didnt. Our kids had a child like faith, prayed in faith, and got their answer to prayer.

I can`t prove that it`s not a coincidence to anyone. But it definitely was a 1 outer, and it definitely is not my only story. I know lots of people wonder why some prayers are answered and some arent, why there is evil and poverty in the world. Why bad things happen to good people. We could spend years discussing them....

That being said you experience enough of these situations in your life, and you start to see that this world is not pure chance, there is SOME semblence of order.

I'm not at all comfortable with your use of "what it would take to convince an atheist" in this paragraph. I think god is provable and has failed to be proved c/f Victor Stenger. Present good evidence like convincing repeated double-blind demonstration of intercessory prayer and I will change my mind on the god stuff.

I don't like derailing the thread as I didn't have any problem with your OP. But seeing as we've kinda moved on from that re the story above, why would god answer that prayer and not the thousands of others for children that go missing etc all the time?

Judging from the timing of the events, it seems likely the missing kid had already decided to show back up before you started praying (unless he was somehow already really close to the house and the police/family didn't noticed him).

Best of luck to you sir.....

You're a poker player, so assign a probability to the child having already departing before your group started praying compared to the probability that not only did intercessory prayer change his mind, but that he also happened to be close enough to change direction and get home within the quoted 5-7 minutes.

What probabilities would you assign? How did you determine whatever values you chose?

I am mainly referring to the probability that the child would missing in such a way such that the police are looking for a body and still be in the prerequisite 5-7 minute walking range. To determine such a probability I would have to look at runaway's distribution with respect to their home and where they typically 'hideout'. I would also have to know how extensive of a search the police committed to.

And so you would assign what values?

My point here is that you've asked OP for something that I think is an unreasonable request. Either the numbers are going to completely made up (I think there's only a 5% chance that...) or you're asking for information that's not readily available. This makes your counter-position fundamentally unfair. (It's not even clear that if you had the data above that it would serve as an adequate model.)

I don't know. This is a thought experiment, not a math problem. I'm certain almost anyone would agree that it's more likely that at any one time a runaway's location is more likely to be outside of the prerequisite 1/2 mile radius, than in it (specifically when the police are already searching for a body).

See above.

FWIW the kid lived on the edge of town near cornfields on one side, and a park with rivers and ponds and forest on the other.

But all your doing is proving my point. Anyone can come in can call anything chance, and play the devils advocate. Which is just a running in circles that is a waste of time...