The Bottle of Milk Delusion - Why Prayers Always Work.

I don't claim original authorship of the argument here, but I think it's worth a little elaboration. I'm assuming, by the way, that an Islamic argument to prove Allah always answers prayer would be very similar if not identical. Indeed, there doesn't appear to be any other possibility for what could happen as a result of prayer.

No doubt some Christians will argue that there are more ways that their god answers prayers, such as the five here, where there are three yesses (somethining else happens; something happens and them something else happens; the thing happens) or the four here ("I can't hear you!" although how that differs from "No", and how the faithful tell the difference is beyond me). I wish they would make their mind up. Perhaps they are talking about different gods.

But in any case, all of these can be arbitrarily ascribed to a bottle of milk too, or any other object, animate or inanimate, animal vegetable or mineral or any combination of those for that matter.

Now, I daresay every Christian and Moslem will see the good sense of all this when ascribed to their particular god as its response to their particular prayers, so what's wrong with the logic when we ascribe it to a bottle of milk, when the outcome is identical and indistinguishable?

But more to the point, maybe, if theist can't point to a fault in the 'proof' of the effectiveness of prayer to a bottle of milk, how can we tell if their prayers to their particular god are effective and not the mere arbitrary, retrospective assignation of cause to effect?

In other words, why do prayers to an invisible god validate that god's power and existence when prayers to a bottle of milk don't validate the bottle of milk's powers? We know it exists, by the way, because we can take it out of the fridge and look at it, unlike gods.

What we're seeing of course is confirmation bias. Theists need to ascribe cause of random events and even non-random ones, to their god to 'confirm' to themselves that their sacred conclusion was correct all along. At the same time, many of them will decry material evidence as inferior to faith whilst desperately clinging to any material 'evidence' they can convince themselves supports them.

The delusional power of religion is such that religious people even pride themselves on their ability to fool themselves with this sort of 'proof' and gather together in self-referencing mutual support groups to keep reinforcing their prejudice and shutting out doubts.

I'll bet there will be very few Christians or Muslims who read this and who realise they can't tell the difference in outcome between praying to their god and praying to a bottle of milk, who will change their minds about the effectiveness of praying to their god and the uselessness of praying to a bottle of milk. It obviously takes more than stark-staringly obvious logic to shake the firm convictions of a willingly self-deluded theist.

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