Proposed Experiment to Prove God's Existence

[Steveseo]

Hi,

I am an atheist and (early career) scientist. This has probably been done before, but out of curiousity, I'm trying to come-up with a scientific experiment that should prove that there is a God, if indeed there is a God.

I came up with a simple experiment, that anyone can do, that doesn't require any expensive equipment, and doesn't require much scientific knowledge at all.

Christians often talk about the power of prayer. As I understand, They believe that certain positive events in their lives were the work of God, and mainly because they prayed to God, often persistently, in order to ask him to make that positive event occur. Of course, this only works if the prayer was unselfish, and the desired event was also unselfish, and for the common good?

My simple experiment focuses on prayer and whether it does produce any differences at all with respect to not praying.

Rain is generally a good thing (apart from floods). Rain fills dams, helps farmers grow their crops, makes grass greener, etc. I live in dry Australia, and rain is very desirable in most parts of the country. Desiring rain, is a very unselfish desire, because it is for the common good. Rain is also something that we as humans have very little control over, so that rules out the possibility of human interference.

The simple experiment I propose is this:

Get about 10 people who live in various parts of the world to each do the following simultaneously:

If the year is odd (e.g. 2005):
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December

If the year is even (e.g. 2006), do the opposite:
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November

While doing this, record the actual cumulative rainfall during all of these months, for each month. Keep this up for an even number of years.

At the end of a these years (say 2 or 4) (when you decide to end the experiment), get all your cumulative rainfall for each month data together.
Add up all of the rainfall levels for all of the months in which you prayed. Also, add up all of the rainfall levels for all of the months in which you didn't pray.

Is there a significant difference between these totals? What about the other 9 guys? What's their difference like?

If there is a significant difference in the two totals, for the vast majority of the 10 people who simultaneously performed this experiment in different parts of the world, all showing overwhelmingly that the months of praying for rain had significantly higher rainfalls than the months of not praying, then you have basically scientifically proven that praying for rain increases rainfalls, which should pave the way for proving that God exists.

Why is this scientific proof?
* Because it is an observable phenomenon.
* The experiment is able to be repeated and results verified independently.
* The experiment is controlled (e.g. all possible interferences have been ruled-out, such as seasonal variations, and human influence).

I'm interested to hear comments from atheists and theists about this.

 

[lucaspa]

Christians often talk about the power of prayer. As I understand, They believe that certain positive events in their lives were the work of God, and mainly because they prayed to God, often persistently, in order to ask him to make that positive event occur. Of course, this only works if the prayer was unselfish, and the desired event was also unselfish, and for the common good?

My simple experiment focuses on prayer and whether it does produce any differences at all with respect to not praying.

Rain is generally a good thing (apart from floods). Rain fills dams, helps farmers grow their crops, makes grass greener, etc. I live in dry Australia, and rain is very desirable in most parts of the country. Desiring rain, is a very unselfish desire, because it is for the common good. Rain is also something that we as humans have very little control over, so that rules out the possibility of human interference.

The simple experiment I propose is this:

Get about 10 people who live in various parts of the world to each do the following simultaneously:

If the year is odd (e.g. 2005):
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December

If the year is even (e.g. 2006), do the opposite:
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November

While doing this, record the actual cumulative rainfall during all of these months, for each month. Keep this up for an even number of years.

There are two flaws with you study.

1. The most serious is that you are testing prayer, not God. Your underlying hypothesis -- "They believe that certain positive events in their lives were the work of God, and mainly because they prayed to God" -- is not being tested. IOW, you aren't testing whether God is causing the result to the prayer.

2. Now, you realize that you have not controlled for prayer for or against rain by other people not in the study. So any negative result is worthless. It simply means the 10 intercessors were not enough to counter the vast number of people praying in the opposite way.

I suggest you learn a lot more about the fundamentals of hypothesis testing and experimental design before you waste more time pursuing a scientific career.

For one thing, you should have done a literature search on intercessory prayer. If you had done that, you would have found that IP has already been shown to have a positive effect, albeit in settings different from this one:

14. Byrd, RC, Positive theraputic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population. Southern Med Jour 1988 81(7):826-29. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj1.html
15. WS Harris, M Gowda, JW Kolb, CP Strychacz, JL Vacek, PG Jones, A Forker, JH O'Keefe, BD McCallister, A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278 http://archinte.ama-assn.org/issues/v159n19/rfull/ioi90043.html
15. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1627000/1627662.stm A study at North Carolina
17. http://health.medscape.com/viewarticle/405270 IP for infertile women
18: Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Friedman R, Myers P, Bethea CF, Levitsky S, Hill PC,Jain MK, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Lam P, Benson H, Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): study designand research methods.Am Heart J. 2002 Apr;143(4):577-84.
19: Leibovici L. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients withbloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.

So, by your criteria, God has already been "proved". Are you about to give up your atheism?

 

[USincognito]

This thread is more appropriate for General Apologetics. Please ask that a mod move it. This forum is full of theists and atheists here to defend evolution and these sort of posts only serve to divide us.

 

[JohnR7]

My simple experiment focuses on prayer and whether it does produce any differences at all with respect to not praying. Rain is generally a good thing

This has already been done.

James 5:17-18
Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. [18] And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

What is your next request?

 

[Q-La]

...
Why is this scientific proof?
* Because it is an observable phenomenon.
* The experiment is able to be repeated and results verified independently.
* The experiment is controlled (e.g. all possible interferences have been ruled-out, such as seasonal variations, and human influence).

I'm interested to hear comments from atheists and theists about this.

Hi Steveseon,

If a prayer-rain relationship is established, it may point to reasons like will power or other mental-natural phenomenon, it really depends a lot of the faith already inside you(God or no-God). It just seems like that faith in God is a gift and His existence is not possible to either prove or disprove. Also the proposed experiment is prescribing the nature of God - that He must react to all prayers disregarding the reasons and conditions behind. If you call me by phone and I do not answer does it disprove my existence? If God creates the world with scientific methods and phenomenon as tools (physics, molecularbiology, chaos theories...) will He bind His hands with them so that He become part of the system without free will? You must thus understand the nature of the God you are trying to find / prove before applying the method of inquiry.

 

[lucaspa]

This has already been done.

James 5:17-18
Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. [18] And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

John, is this what you consider "proof"? How do we know this actually happened? Where is the confirmation of multiple observers? It's not even mentioned in any other book in scripture, is it? Much less any other records of the time. And a drought that lasted 3 years and 6 months would surely have been noted, because it would have brought widespread famine to the Roman Empire of the time.

That's the problem with using scripture as "evidence" of the physical universe. The evidence is not intersubjective.

 

[lucaspa]

I think we keep it here, because it involves experimental design. Apologetics won't be able to properly evaluate the scientific merit of the proposed experiment.

 

[Mistermystery]

Hi,

I am an atheist and (early career) scientist.

Atheism does not equal.....


Wait...

 

[lucaspa]

Atheism does not equal.....


Wait...

Keep going. Atheism does not equal science nor being an atheist equal being a good scientist.

 

[Data]

If the year is odd (e.g. 2005):
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December

If the year is even (e.g. 2006), do the opposite:
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November

This would produce a false positive result if there was a monthly cyclical variation in rainfall. Bad experiment.

 

[JohnR7]

John, is this what you consider "proof"? How do we know this actually happened? Where is the confirmation of multiple observers?

I know that it happened because I read about it in my Bible. We accept that by faith. Those who do not have the faith to accept it will get a chance to see and experance this "proof" during the tribulation period.

Rev. 11:6
These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire.

Are there any christians here who can tell us who these two witnesses are that we read about in Rev. Ch 11?

 

[Steveseo]

There are two flaws with you study.

1. The most serious is that you are testing prayer, not God. Your underlying hypothesis -- "They believe that certain positive events in their lives were the work of God, and mainly because they prayed to God" -- is not being tested. IOW, you aren't testing whether God is causing the result to the prayer.

True, I'm not directly testing the existence of God in this experiment, I am testing the power of prayer. However, I decided it would be good to take things one small step at a time - wouldn't proving the power of prayer be a good starting point for proving the existence of God? I thought that proving the power of prayer would make it necesary and worthwhile to go on to bigger experiments to prove the existence of God.

2. Now, you realize that you have not controlled for prayer for or against rain by other people not in the study. So any negative result is worthless. It simply means the 10 intercessors were not enough to counter the vast number of people praying in the opposite way.

I forgot to mention that each experimenter should pray for rain in their local area, not for the world as a whole. The experimenter should perhaps even record the rainfall levels themselves, using their own equipment. Because it is now confined to a local area, this reduces the interference from people praying without knowledge of the experiment.

Also, the statistical average of people praying for or against rain, without nowledge of the study, should be fairly constant throughout the study. At the very least, it shouldn't vary in the same pattern as alternate months, swapped around every alternate year. Therefore, the affect of other people's prayers, whom are not aware of the study, has in fact been controlled-out of the experiment.

I suggest you learn a lot more about the fundamentals of hypothesis testing and experimental design before you waste more time pursuing a scientific career.

I don't understand the logic behind this statement. Wouldn't I LEARN more about the fundamentals of hypothesis testing and experimental design THROUGH PURSUING a scientific career? I think I would.

For one thing, you should have done a literature search on intercessory prayer. If you had done that, you would have found that IP has already been shown to have a positive effect, albeit in settings different from this one:

14. Byrd, RC, Positive theraputic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population. Southern Med Jour 1988 81(7):826-29. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj1.html

On about line 3 or 4 of that document is says:

"Over ten months, 393 patients admitted to the CCU were randomized, after signing informed consent, to an intercessory prayer group (192 patients) or to a control group (201 patients)."

Now this statement is not specifically clear as to whether the patients knew which group they were assigned to or not. If the patients knew which group they were assigned to, this opens the door for interference in the experiment, through emotional and mental influences, in bettering their conditions. Therefore the experiment would not be controlled. I have no doubt at all that knowing that you're being prayed-for, can affect your health. However, this doesn't conclude that there is a God involved at all. If this experiment was properly controlled (and maybe it was, maybe they just didn't say it specifically enough that the patients had no idea which group they were in), the patients should have no knowledge whatsoever whether they were being prayed-for or not. If fact, even-better controls would have been the patients not knowing that the experiment was even happening.

15. WS Harris, M Gowda, JW Kolb, CP Strychacz, JL Vacek, PG Jones, A Forker, JH O'Keefe, BD McCallister, A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278 http://archinte.ama-assn.org/issues/v159n19/rfull/ioi90043.html
15. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1627000/1627662.stm A study at North Carolina

Now this last one looks better. It does specifically say that the patients had no idea who was being prayed-for and who wasn't. It also says the researchers had no idea either.

This is an interesting one. I'd like to see more experiments like this, or maybe even carry out one like this myself some time. As the Dr Harold Koenig says, "The results tend to lean toward prayer helping people but more study is needed."

17. url]http://health.medscape.com/viewarticle/405270[/url] IP for infertile women
18: Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Friedman R, Myers P, Bethea CF, Levitsky S, Hill PC,Jain MK, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Lam P, Benson H, Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): study designand research methods.Am Heart J. 2002 Apr;143(4):577-84.
19: Leibovici L. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients withbloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.

So, by your criteria, God has already been "proved". Are you about to give up your atheism?

All the other links you gave were broken.

No, by my criteria, God has not already been proved. Such an important and controversial topic is not proven by just one case of one experiment. Proof may perhaps be through many consistently successful repetitions of one experiment. If you have any more links, like the ones you gave, I'd be interested in reading them.

 

[Steveseo]

This thread is more appropriate for General Apologetics. Please ask that a mod move it. This forum is full of theists and atheists here to defend evolution and these sort of posts only serve to divide us.

I don't know any mods. Can you please ask one to move it? Thanks heaps.

 

[Steveseo]

This has already been done.

James 5:17-18
Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. [18] And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.

What is your next request?

What you speak of is not science. For a start, you are quoting a book that:
1. Has been shown to contain hundreds of self-contradictions.
2. Has been shown to contain hundreds of absurdities.
3. Has been shown to contain hundreds of contradictions to historical and scientific fact.
4. Has been shown to contain hundreds of false prophecies.

If you want to see all of these, you can go to www.skepticsannotatedbible.com, where you can even check your own bible to verify all of these.

How can you rely solely upon information in this book, without it being also proven in other ways?

Your argument is hardly scientific - it's the opposite of scientific.

 

[Steveseo]

This would produce a false positive result if there was a monthly cyclical variation in rainfall.

That's why I was particularly careful in saying that the prayer and non-prayer months be reversed every year, and that the experiment continue for an even-number of years. This should cancel-out any monthly cyclical variation in rainfall.

Bad experiment.

So quick to jump to conclusions?

 

[ReUsAbLePhEoNiX]

Hi,

I am an atheist and (early career) scientist. This has probably been done before, but out of curiousity, I'm trying to come-up with a scientific experiment that should prove that there is a God, if indeed there is a God.

I came up with a simple experiment, that anyone can do, that doesn't require any expensive equipment, and doesn't require much scientific knowledge at all.

Christians often talk about the power of prayer. As I understand, They believe that certain positive events in their lives were the work of God, and mainly because they prayed to God, often persistently, in order to ask him to make that positive event occur. Of course, this only works if the prayer was unselfish, and the desired event was also unselfish, and for the common good?

My simple experiment focuses on prayer and whether it does produce any differences at all with respect to not praying.

Rain is generally a good thing (apart from floods). Rain fills dams, helps farmers grow their crops, makes grass greener, etc. I live in dry Australia, and rain is very desirable in most parts of the country. Desiring rain, is a very unselfish desire, because it is for the common good. Rain is also something that we as humans have very little control over, so that rules out the possibility of human interference.

The simple experiment I propose is this:

Get about 10 people who live in various parts of the world to each do the following simultaneously:

If the year is odd (e.g. 2005):
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December

If the year is even (e.g. 2006), do the opposite:
Pray for rain every day, in the months:
February, April, June, August, October, December
Don't pray for rain at all, in the months:
January, March, May, July, September, November

While doing this, record the actual cumulative rainfall during all of these months, for each month. Keep this up for an even number of years.

At the end of a these years (say 2 or 4) (when you decide to end the experiment), get all your cumulative rainfall for each month data together.
Add up all of the rainfall levels for all of the months in which you prayed. Also, add up all of the rainfall levels for all of the months in which you didn't pray.

Is there a significant difference between these totals? What about the other 9 guys? What's their difference like?

If there is a significant difference in the two totals, for the vast majority of the 10 people who simultaneously performed this experiment in different parts of the world, all showing overwhelmingly that the months of praying for rain had significantly higher rainfalls than the months of not praying, then you have basically scientifically proven that praying for rain increases rainfalls, which should pave the way for proving that God exists.

Why is this scientific proof?
* Because it is an observable phenomenon.
* The experiment is able to be repeated and results verified independently.
* The experiment is controlled (e.g. all possible interferences have been ruled-out, such as seasonal variations, and human influence).

I'm interested to hear comments from atheists and theists about this.

I would dare to say your prayer experiement has already been tried for thousands of years, and has failed miserably as evidenced by %50 mortality rate for children and all the countless diseases and plauges thruout history......
that is until the medical science came along and answered the prayers

 

[Tomk80]

I forgot to mention that each experimenter should pray for rain in their local area, not for the world as a whole. The experimenter should perhaps even record the rainfall levels themselves, using their own equipment. Because it is now confined to a local area, this reduces the interference from people praying without knowledge of the experiment.

Also, the statistical average of people praying for or against rain, without nowledge of the study, should be fairly constant throughout the study. At the very least, it shouldn't vary in the same pattern as alternate months, swapped around every alternate year. Therefore, the affect of other people's prayers, whom are not aware of the study, has in fact been controlled-out of the experiment.

Still, Lucaspa's objection holds true here. It is fairly impossible to tell how many people pray besides the people in the experiment. This would drown out the contrast. A negative result could easily be explained by other people praying year 'round.

Say that you have an area of 10,000 people, and 100 people in that area pray for rain. You yourself have 10 study subjects. This makes the contrast between praying and not praying for the study subjects very small. It might be that praying helps, but that this is not noticed because the contrast in the independent variable between non-praying areas and praying areas is to small.

However, what should also be noted is that it does make a positive result stronger. If such a small contrast can produce a difference, this would be all the more persuasive.

A possible solution to this problem could be an area-wide survey where you map the amount of background prayer. This way you can correct for background prayer in the statistical analysis, and enhance the contrast. If this is to expensive, another option would be to control for religion in the area in your statistical analysis (for example percentage of the population which is atheist/theist).


As for Data's comments. I'd stratify the months in high/low rainfall and randomize these, I think you might be more succesfull in countering any possible regularity then. However, I would agree with you at this point that your devision in different months every year should also counter the problem.

In your statistical methods I'd also control for season, either by stratifying your analysis or by controlling for it in your models. Maybe you should also control for average rainfall year-round. Not sure, I'll try to think it through.

 

[platzapS]

Interesting idea, but what if God doesn't answer weather prayers? I pray often for people I love, but I find it kind of funny when people pray for good weather at their golf games. I really laughed at Pat Robertson's comment that God sent tornadoes to the Midwest USA when President Bush tried to negotiate with the "evil" Palestinians.

I would like to see if there is power (and how much) in prayer.

 

[platzapS]

I would dare to say your prayer experiement has already been tried for thousands of years, and has failed miserably as evidenced by %50 mortality rate for children and all the countless diseases and plauges thruout history......
that is until the medical science came along and answered the prayers

 

[Tomk80]

Interesting idea, but what if God doesn't answer weather prayers? I pray often for people I love, but I find it kind of funny when people pray for good weather at their golf games. I really laughed at Pat Robertson's comment that God sent tornadoes to the Midwest USA when President Bush tried to negotiate with the "evil" Palestinians.

I would like to see if there is power (and how much) in prayer.

Look at the experiments Lucaspa posted. Those investigate the use of intercessory prayer in medical situations. They give an idea of what has been done up to now.