Do I sense some personal pride there ?
You do not. I am happy to debate people, and it's not uncommon for debates to get heated. But what you said sounded pretty close to an insult, followed up by something very far from an assurance that it wasn't. And if that turns out to be the case, I shall simply add you to my Ignore list, and continue the conversation with politer people.
See it as a challenge to motivate you to dig up the facts as I requested and present them clearly and without bias . Don't teachers motivate their students? If you don't get round to doing it - I would make the assumption that you are not really "interested" at all.
I'm not particularly interested in accepting challenges, thank you. If I think something you say is worth responding to, or if I feel it would be polite to, then I'll respond to it. Also, I note the implication that I might be unclear or dishonest in presenting evidence. I'm still willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're simply being careless with your language, rather than being deliberately insulting. Do be more careful in future.
if you are interested in Stats then dig out the Crime Survey Stats - my hunch is the Athiests are over represented in British Prisons
Unlike your theoretical concept - This can actually be measured. We have the Census Data and the Prison Data. Go back 10 - 15 years with the Stats before Mr Blair allowed immigration and a massive change in British culture to get some reliable data. Enjoy the revelation.
First of all, while it may not be particularly easy to do, in theory it's perfectly possible to get an overview of statistics with regards to miracles, general good luck and other forms of "prayers being answered". I suspect that if this were in Christians' favour, if the evidence did show that Christians had all the remarkable good luck, not to mention bona fide documented miracles, we would hear a lot more about it.
Of course, we don't. Luck affects everyone, "miracles" aren't actually miraculous, and I'm asking, in this thread, what difference it would make if God
stopped answering prayers, because I suspect that there would be absolutely no difference at all.
Now, you propose that atheists are over-represented in British jails? Well, let's check that.
This site seem to have some good data. According to it, the percentage of atheists in jail has been holding steady from 1997 to 2015 at around 30%. In very rough figures, this would seem to be about typical of the country as a whole. As this article puts it:
The number of Britons who say they have no religion has hit a record high, new data has revealed.
More than half of the British public (53 per cent) say they are not at all religious – a figure that has increased by five percentage points since 2015 and by 19 percentage points since 1983, when just three in 10 people deemed themselves non-religious.
Information about US prisons is also interesting.
This article probably presents the most accurate figures; and while it quite rightly cautions that there may be many factors and explanations at play, it's quite evident that the percentage of atheists in prisons is much, much lower than the percentage of atheists in the US population.
So, when you say you expect atheists to be over-represented in prisons, I have to point out, you're quite wrong; in fact, it's the other way round. And that's interesting, isn't it?
If prayer does mean anything, we should expect to see trends. Of course, we can't tell anything from any particular item of data; but overall, isn't it strange that higher proportions of Christians go to jail, and lower proportions of atheists? With all those prayers being said to God, you'd think it would have
some positive effect? Prison populations are a strong piece of evidence. Not conclusive, of course, but a good start. I wonder what other kinds of data we could examine?
Note the OP is far from humble - he is quite arrogant and he wonders why God never answered his prayer. The people of Israel worshipped God - made request in prayer to God but their hearts were far from him. They didn't live according to what God asked them to do . Yes - some were religious but they didn't change their behaviour.
Arrogant? I wonder if you're reading your own ideas into this. I haven't seen cvanwey's posts as arrogant at all. He said that he prayed, sincerely, and with an honest desire to know God's will, for many years. Does that sound arrogant to you? And how can you know what cvanwey's behaviour was? He said that he was a good Christian. Presumably he loved God and Jesus as much as you did. Who are you to judge him?