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// she created an experiment on the efficacy of prayer by dividing her exams in two groups, praying for success only on one, the other one being a control group

// she created an experiment on the efficacy of prayer by dividing her exams in two groups, praying for success only on one, the other one being a control group. She achieved the higher marks in the latter group In at least Judaism - and I would expect in other religions, prayer is necessarily partnered with intention[1] - ie what is in your heart matters, not just the words you're repeating. Presumably someone creating such an experiment does not engage in the prayer with sincere faith and thus can conclude nothing from the outcome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavanah

burkaman 3y ago
> Presumably someone creating such an experiment does not engage in the prayer with sincere faith and thus can conclude nothing from the outcome. Why do you say that?
- xyzelement 3y ago
  On the simplest level, because the very idea of faith requires going beyond the point where you are able to operate on pure reason. For topics that can be understood using experimentation, faith is not required. "I believe in prayer" and "I am going to determine my religiosity based on the outcome of this experiment" are incompatible beliefs. Since we know the later is true, we can assume the former isn't.
  - angoragoats 3y ago
    > For topics that can be understood using experimentation, faith is not required. To put this another way, faith is the excuse people give to rationalize believing in things for which they have no verifiable evidence.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      Faith is the (a) recognition that we're limited beings whose perception and thinking are ultimately inadequate to understand objective reality and (b) a set of beliefs you take on for dealing with that unknowable space. (a) is obviously true even if you're a complete atheist. EG, there's no reason to assume that evolution endowed us with ability to understand the objective reality anymore than it has endowed some deaf and blind deepwater creature that ability. Since we all engage in life despite the limitations of (a), we are all making assumptions about the nature of reality whether we call it faith or not. EG, in the absence of us being able to know for certain why/how/by whom the universe was created, religious people make one assumption (purposeful creation and the meaning of life that it implies) while atheists make another one (random accident and the meaninglessness it implies.) You can't "see" that accident anymore than you can "see" G-d, so the amount of faith required to believe one or the other (or any other variation) is the same. So yes, there's room for faith and we all operate on it. Back to the topic at hand, prayer is in the domain of religious faith, so it's meaningless for a non-religious person to test it out.
      - angoragoats 3y ago
        I absolutely do not agree that (a) is obviously true, for several reasons, so you are going to need to clarify and then provide some evidence to back that claim. 1) What does "understand objective reality" mean, specifically? 2) Please provide evidence that we currently do not "understand objective reality." 3) Please provide evidence that we do not possess the ability to _ever_ "understand objective reality." > we all operate on it [citation needed] > prayer is in the domain of religious faith, so it's meaningless for a non-religious person to test it out This is extremely presumptuous. What is your rationale that Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was "non-religious" at the time she conducted the experiment? (Hint: you'll need to show that she had a complete lack of religious belief, not only a lack of belief in the religion(s) you're familiar with.) EDIT: there's also a whole load of other fallacious crap in your comment that I haven't even addressed. We cannot assume the universe was created at all for any purpose; atheism has nothing to do with "random accidents" or any supposed meaning attached to them; having no reason to assume something does not imply its negation, etc etc.
        xyzelement 3y ago
        // 2) Please provide evidence that we currently do not "understand objective reality." Would you trust yourself, or any other human, or humanity, to answer the question "describe the true process of the universe's creation?"
        sorokod 3y ago
        Curious about the word 'true' there, are you asking about the Planck Epoch of the big bang?
        angoragoats 3y ago
        Sorry, did you mean to quote something different in my post? Questions are not evidence. It’d be extremely helpful if you gave a specific definition of “understand objective reality” as I asked in #1 before moving on to 2 and 3. If you’re saying that “understand objective reality” means “knowing the true process of the universe’s creation” I’d counter that baked into that is the assumption that the universe was created, which is not necessarily the case, so you’d additionally need to provide evidence for that.
    - Dove 3y ago
      That is the definition of faith used by the irreligious -- as hostile a definition as if you asked one political party to explain the beliefs of the other! An insider, and particularly a Christian, would never define faith that way. Speaking as a Christian myself, I would say faith is belief in motion. And I would say that faith doesn't oppose rationality and evidence, but is rather sort of orthogonal to it. Let us suppose you believe there is a horrible and dangerous pandemic going on outside your house. You rationally are afraid to go outside. And then as days pass, you gather evidence that the pandemic has subsided and things are safe now. At first you don't trust it. And then you think it might be true. And then probably true. And then virtually certain. That process of gathering evidence and becoming more certain is rationality. Faith... is when you go outside. Belief in motion. Now, that step out the door can happen at any point. It can happen when you first hear a hint that things are better, and in a reckless rush of hope, you run outside. It can happen long after you are certain certain certain and fear keeps you inside too long. These are both examples of bad faith, unhealthy faith, faith misused. A Christian speaking of faith really means healthy faith - you go out when you should. Sound faith doesn't imply a lack of evidence, or complete evidence either. It's about deciding the evidence is sufficient and moving forward from there. And it's not only that - it's faith in something. If you step outside because a certain analyst convinced you it was safe, and you later take that same analyst's advice on diet, and on this, and on that, and it keeps working out - you are growing in faith in that analyst. Eventually, you may trust them quite a lot. This is what I would say faith is: belief in motion, working towards building trust.
      - angoragoats 3y ago
        I simply rephrased the parent post’s definition of faith, nothing more. There is a lot of nonsense, bad analogies, and fallacious reasoning here that I don’t care to respond to individually, so I’ll just ask a question that should be easy for you to answer given your explanation, and will also let you pick up a Nobel Prize or similar award if you answer successfully: What is your evidence for god existing? In other words, framed in terms of your (bad) pandemic analogy, what is your equivalent to the verifiable evidence gathered showing that the pandemic is subsiding?
        3y ago
  - burkaman 3y ago
    I understand what you mean but I don't think I agree. Scientists are human and frequently experiment on things that they have strong beliefs or faith in. Francis Collins is famously a devout Christian, but still conducted experiments on the origins of human life. Personally, I have faith in gravity (an absolute belief that it will work despite never having studied it myself), but I would still be very interested in doing an experiment to test it, probably partly because like everyone else I enjoy confirming my own beliefs. On the other hand, I have no faith in prayer and have never considered running an experiment, and would not really be interested in doing so. We can't know for sure, but my own intuition tells me that someone who conceived of and carried out that prayer experiment probably believed it was going to work.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      I think you're calling out a subtle difference between "faith" and perhaps "belief" or "knowledge." Gravity is something you believe deeply because of the science and experience you have with it. Faith would be something like "gravity and other laws of physics exist because the universe is inherently meaningful" while another faith would be "... they exist despite the universe being being random and inherently meaningless" The inherent meaning of the universe is not something we can test out, but it's something we have a faith-like belief (one way or another.)
      - angoragoats 3y ago
        > The inherent meaning of the universe is not something we can test out, but it's something we have a faith-like belief (one way or another.) I do not hold any beliefs (faith-like, or otherwise) about the meaning of the universe. Ask me anything.
        fsflover 3y ago
        What is your meaning of life? Do you see any reason to be a good person instead of being an egoistic one, where the latter would benefit you?
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > "I believe in prayer" and "I am going to determine my religiosity based on the outcome of this experiment" are incompatible beliefs. Yet the Bible itself contains multiple examples of belief tested by experiment, both in the Old and the New Testaments. From memory: Doubting Thomas testing the wounds on the resurrected Jesus, making the water burn, etc.
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      I upvoted your response to me though I have no response on that particular topic as I don’t have depth on Christianity. I do think religion encourages engagement and wrestling with faith as a matter of process so I agree with you there. But I don’t think the story of Thomas is taken to mean you don’t have faith in anything besides tangible proof.
      - cyberax 3y ago
        The notion that religion must be taken on faith only, and that testing is antithetical to "the true belief" is fairly new. It was likely a reaction to rapidly shrinking gaps in our knowledge of the world, that mostly pushed religion out of the "material" world.
        jll29 3y ago
        I'd say "complementary" rather than "antithetical". Questions of faith are "interoperable" (to use geek language) or consistent with reason (what you call the material world), meaning that if there is a seeming contradiction, you may have misunderstood one or the other. The world of knowledge is logical-axiomatical when deduction is applied and empirical-scientific when induction is applied. Importantly, neither of the two methods can answer fundamental questions like "Why are we here?", "What are we supposed to do?", "What can we expect?" etc. which fall in the realm of faith. There are "interface" situations between the realm of faith and the realm of science such as events seen as miracles, which scientifically are just low likelihood events and that is all that can be said about them regarding science, whereas a subject may not be content with such an non-explanation e.g. "Why did I alone survive the plane crash? Why me?" Or take the historical Jesus: it is evident that a person by that name existed, because the Romans reported so (considering him their enemy makes them reliable sources): the Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Jesus, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written c. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44. Now Tacitus did not confirm that Jesus was a "saviour", ascribing a religious role to a historic figure is an act of faith, perhaps based on his message of love of neighbor and forgiveness, which at the time was seen as contradicting Jewish commandments (and therefore, predictably, heresy, which calls for death) but was actually a clarification of these, spoken by someone who practiced what he preached.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    >For topics that can be understood using experimentation, faith is not required. Actually, you need faith in the laws of logic and anything else that is considered axiomatic as they, by definition, cannot be proved by reason.
- Dove 3y ago
  I think many of the paradoxes of prayer are most easily comprehended if we remember that God is called our Father, and we are called his children. How would the situation in question work out, between a father and a child? Suppose there are three brothers - Peter, James, and John. Suppose Peter is wondering if it ever matters whether he asks his dad for anything. Perhaps he thinks his dad is so powerful and so wise that he will always do the right thing and doesn't need Peter's advice. Or perhaps he thinks his father is so distant and uncaring that asking him for help is useless. So Peter decides, as an experiment, every day to ask his dad to do something nice for James, and never asks him to do anything for John. What will happen? It entirely depends on the relationship between Peter and his dad! But at a minimum, it seems likely that Peter's dad would resist his son's attempt to control him, and would take a dim view of Peter's insincere requests and desire to play with his brother's fates. Is there any point in children asking their parents for things? There is - if Peter is genuinely worried about a problem James is having and brings it to his father's attention, action is all but guaranteed - especially if they are close. There's a world of difference between requests based on the pre-existing relationship and the feeling behind the request. God is a person. He knows when you're running a study. He knows when you're genuinely concerned. He knows you far more thoroughly than you know yourself, and responds - not the way a force under your control would, but the way a person would. As a bonus thought, I have a young son who likes to take trips outside. It is his favorite thing. I know this. At any moment of the day, I know he would probably like me to take him outside just then. Sometimes I do, sometimes I am doing other things. I am infinitely wiser than my (in this case, two year old) son when it comes to prioritizing going outside vs. doing other things, and I really do try to get him as much outside time as I can, in general. And yet! In spite of all of that! It is perfectly true that he frequently causes me to take him outside by asking. Despite all logic to the contrary, prayer can work - the same way, for the same reason. There is something in the asking itself that changes the context and the priorities. Incredibly counterintuitive things can happen when people are involved.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Wonderful analogy, thank you.
  - burkaman 3y ago
cpill 3y ago
OR pray is BS and good is a fairy story. Also a valid conclusion from that experiment.
- Muromec 3y ago
  That's an easy and conclusion everybody arrived at before. It's probably the right one, the problem -- it's boring. It doesn't make a story, doesn't increase social cohesion and provided no value whatsoever. Unless you actively fight opressive religious authority (parents excluded), which some people do, but most are probably not writing on this forum, it's fine to search for something more amusing and with potential of story-telling.
rsynnott 3y ago
As Terry Pratchett pointed out, that’s the trouble with Pascal’s Wager. > “This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts...”
- jedberg 3y ago
  Also you do have something to lose -- the time you spend worshiping the god that may not exist.
NewEntryHN 3y ago
Doesn't matter. If God wants to hide he can spot you're measuring prayers and stay under the radar anyway.
- petesergeant 3y ago
  Exactly. Even as a committed atheist, you also have to accept that should you accept an axiom that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, all and any experimental results become null and void.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

burkaman 3y ago

> Presumably someone creating such an experiment does not engage in the prayer with sincere faith and thus can conclude nothing from the outcome. Why do you say that?

xyzelement 3y ago
On the simplest level, because the very idea of faith requires going beyond the point where you are able to operate on pure reason. For topics that can be understood using experimentation, faith is not required. "I believe in prayer" and "I am going to determine my religiosity based on the outcome of this experiment" are incompatible beliefs. Since we know the later is true, we can assume the former isn't.
- angoragoats 3y ago
  > For topics that can be understood using experimentation, faith is not required. To put this another way, faith is the excuse people give to rationalize believing in things for which they have no verifiable evidence.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    Faith is the (a) recognition that we're limited beings whose perception and thinking are ultimately inadequate to understand objective reality and (b) a set of beliefs you take on for dealing with that unknowable space. (a) is obviously true even if you're a complete atheist. EG, there's no reason to assume that evolution endowed us with ability to understand the objective reality anymore than it has endowed some deaf and blind deepwater creature that ability. Since we all engage in life despite the limitations of (a), we are all making assumptions about the nature of reality whether we call it faith or not. EG, in the absence of us being able to know for certain why/how/by whom the universe was created, religious people make one assumption (purposeful creation and the meaning of life that it implies) while atheists make another one (random accident and the meaninglessness it implies.) You can't "see" that accident anymore than you can "see" G-d, so the amount of faith required to believe one or the other (or any other variation) is the same. So yes, there's room for faith and we all operate on it. Back to the topic at hand, prayer is in the domain of religious faith, so it's meaningless for a non-religious person to test it out.
    - angoragoats 3y ago
      I absolutely do not agree that (a) is obviously true, for several reasons, so you are going to need to clarify and then provide some evidence to back that claim. 1) What does "understand objective reality" mean, specifically? 2) Please provide evidence that we currently do not "understand objective reality." 3) Please provide evidence that we do not possess the ability to _ever_ "understand objective reality." > we all operate on it [citation needed] > prayer is in the domain of religious faith, so it's meaningless for a non-religious person to test it out This is extremely presumptuous. What is your rationale that Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was "non-religious" at the time she conducted the experiment? (Hint: you'll need to show that she had a complete lack of religious belief, not only a lack of belief in the religion(s) you're familiar with.) EDIT: there's also a whole load of other fallacious crap in your comment that I haven't even addressed. We cannot assume the universe was created at all for any purpose; atheism has nothing to do with "random accidents" or any supposed meaning attached to them; having no reason to assume something does not imply its negation, etc etc.
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        // 2) Please provide evidence that we currently do not "understand objective reality." Would you trust yourself, or any other human, or humanity, to answer the question "describe the true process of the universe's creation?"
        sorokod 3y ago
        Curious about the word 'true' there, are you asking about the Planck Epoch of the big bang?
        angoragoats 3y ago
        Sorry, did you mean to quote something different in my post? Questions are not evidence. It’d be extremely helpful if you gave a specific definition of “understand objective reality” as I asked in #1 before moving on to 2 and 3. If you’re saying that “understand objective reality” means “knowing the true process of the universe’s creation” I’d counter that baked into that is the assumption that the universe was created, which is not necessarily the case, so you’d additionally need to provide evidence for that.
  - Dove 3y ago
    That is the definition of faith used by the irreligious -- as hostile a definition as if you asked one political party to explain the beliefs of the other! An insider, and particularly a Christian, would never define faith that way. Speaking as a Christian myself, I would say faith is belief in motion. And I would say that faith doesn't oppose rationality and evidence, but is rather sort of orthogonal to it. Let us suppose you believe there is a horrible and dangerous pandemic going on outside your house. You rationally are afraid to go outside. And then as days pass, you gather evidence that the pandemic has subsided and things are safe now. At first you don't trust it. And then you think it might be true. And then probably true. And then virtually certain. That process of gathering evidence and becoming more certain is rationality. Faith... is when you go outside. Belief in motion. Now, that step out the door can happen at any point. It can happen when you first hear a hint that things are better, and in a reckless rush of hope, you run outside. It can happen long after you are certain certain certain and fear keeps you inside too long. These are both examples of bad faith, unhealthy faith, faith misused. A Christian speaking of faith really means healthy faith - you go out when you should. Sound faith doesn't imply a lack of evidence, or complete evidence either. It's about deciding the evidence is sufficient and moving forward from there. And it's not only that - it's faith in something. If you step outside because a certain analyst convinced you it was safe, and you later take that same analyst's advice on diet, and on this, and on that, and it keeps working out - you are growing in faith in that analyst. Eventually, you may trust them quite a lot. This is what I would say faith is: belief in motion, working towards building trust.
    - angoragoats 3y ago
      I simply rephrased the parent post’s definition of faith, nothing more. There is a lot of nonsense, bad analogies, and fallacious reasoning here that I don’t care to respond to individually, so I’ll just ask a question that should be easy for you to answer given your explanation, and will also let you pick up a Nobel Prize or similar award if you answer successfully: What is your evidence for god existing? In other words, framed in terms of your (bad) pandemic analogy, what is your equivalent to the verifiable evidence gathered showing that the pandemic is subsiding?
      - 3y ago
- burkaman 3y ago
  I understand what you mean but I don't think I agree. Scientists are human and frequently experiment on things that they have strong beliefs or faith in. Francis Collins is famously a devout Christian, but still conducted experiments on the origins of human life. Personally, I have faith in gravity (an absolute belief that it will work despite never having studied it myself), but I would still be very interested in doing an experiment to test it, probably partly because like everyone else I enjoy confirming my own beliefs. On the other hand, I have no faith in prayer and have never considered running an experiment, and would not really be interested in doing so. We can't know for sure, but my own intuition tells me that someone who conceived of and carried out that prayer experiment probably believed it was going to work.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I think you're calling out a subtle difference between "faith" and perhaps "belief" or "knowledge." Gravity is something you believe deeply because of the science and experience you have with it. Faith would be something like "gravity and other laws of physics exist because the universe is inherently meaningful" while another faith would be "... they exist despite the universe being being random and inherently meaningless" The inherent meaning of the universe is not something we can test out, but it's something we have a faith-like belief (one way or another.)
    - angoragoats 3y ago
      > The inherent meaning of the universe is not something we can test out, but it's something we have a faith-like belief (one way or another.) I do not hold any beliefs (faith-like, or otherwise) about the meaning of the universe. Ask me anything.
      - fsflover 3y ago
        What is your meaning of life? Do you see any reason to be a good person instead of being an egoistic one, where the latter would benefit you?
- cyberax 3y ago
  > "I believe in prayer" and "I am going to determine my religiosity based on the outcome of this experiment" are incompatible beliefs. Yet the Bible itself contains multiple examples of belief tested by experiment, both in the Old and the New Testaments. From memory: Doubting Thomas testing the wounds on the resurrected Jesus, making the water burn, etc.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I upvoted your response to me though I have no response on that particular topic as I don’t have depth on Christianity. I do think religion encourages engagement and wrestling with faith as a matter of process so I agree with you there. But I don’t think the story of Thomas is taken to mean you don’t have faith in anything besides tangible proof.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      The notion that religion must be taken on faith only, and that testing is antithetical to "the true belief" is fairly new. It was likely a reaction to rapidly shrinking gaps in our knowledge of the world, that mostly pushed religion out of the "material" world.
      - jll29 3y ago
        I'd say "complementary" rather than "antithetical". Questions of faith are "interoperable" (to use geek language) or consistent with reason (what you call the material world), meaning that if there is a seeming contradiction, you may have misunderstood one or the other. The world of knowledge is logical-axiomatical when deduction is applied and empirical-scientific when induction is applied. Importantly, neither of the two methods can answer fundamental questions like "Why are we here?", "What are we supposed to do?", "What can we expect?" etc. which fall in the realm of faith. There are "interface" situations between the realm of faith and the realm of science such as events seen as miracles, which scientifically are just low likelihood events and that is all that can be said about them regarding science, whereas a subject may not be content with such an non-explanation e.g. "Why did I alone survive the plane crash? Why me?" Or take the historical Jesus: it is evident that a person by that name existed, because the Romans reported so (considering him their enemy makes them reliable sources): the Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Jesus, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written c. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44. Now Tacitus did not confirm that Jesus was a "saviour", ascribing a religious role to a historic figure is an act of faith, perhaps based on his message of love of neighbor and forgiveness, which at the time was seen as contradicting Jewish commandments (and therefore, predictably, heresy, which calls for death) but was actually a clarification of these, spoken by someone who practiced what he preached.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  >For topics that can be understood using experimentation, faith is not required. Actually, you need faith in the laws of logic and anything else that is considered axiomatic as they, by definition, cannot be proved by reason.
Dove 3y ago
I think many of the paradoxes of prayer are most easily comprehended if we remember that God is called our Father, and we are called his children. How would the situation in question work out, between a father and a child? Suppose there are three brothers - Peter, James, and John. Suppose Peter is wondering if it ever matters whether he asks his dad for anything. Perhaps he thinks his dad is so powerful and so wise that he will always do the right thing and doesn't need Peter's advice. Or perhaps he thinks his father is so distant and uncaring that asking him for help is useless. So Peter decides, as an experiment, every day to ask his dad to do something nice for James, and never asks him to do anything for John. What will happen? It entirely depends on the relationship between Peter and his dad! But at a minimum, it seems likely that Peter's dad would resist his son's attempt to control him, and would take a dim view of Peter's insincere requests and desire to play with his brother's fates. Is there any point in children asking their parents for things? There is - if Peter is genuinely worried about a problem James is having and brings it to his father's attention, action is all but guaranteed - especially if they are close. There's a world of difference between requests based on the pre-existing relationship and the feeling behind the request. God is a person. He knows when you're running a study. He knows when you're genuinely concerned. He knows you far more thoroughly than you know yourself, and responds - not the way a force under your control would, but the way a person would. As a bonus thought, I have a young son who likes to take trips outside. It is his favorite thing. I know this. At any moment of the day, I know he would probably like me to take him outside just then. Sometimes I do, sometimes I am doing other things. I am infinitely wiser than my (in this case, two year old) son when it comes to prioritizing going outside vs. doing other things, and I really do try to get him as much outside time as I can, in general. And yet! In spite of all of that! It is perfectly true that he frequently causes me to take him outside by asking. Despite all logic to the contrary, prayer can work - the same way, for the same reason. There is something in the asking itself that changes the context and the priorities. Incredibly counterintuitive things can happen when people are involved.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Wonderful analogy, thank you.
- burkaman 3y ago

cpill 3y ago

OR pray is BS and good is a fairy story. Also a valid conclusion from that experiment.

Muromec 3y ago
That's an easy and conclusion everybody arrived at before. It's probably the right one, the problem -- it's boring. It doesn't make a story, doesn't increase social cohesion and provided no value whatsoever. Unless you actively fight opressive religious authority (parents excluded), which some people do, but most are probably not writing on this forum, it's fine to search for something more amusing and with potential of story-telling.

rsynnott 3y ago

As Terry Pratchett pointed out, that’s the trouble with Pascal’s Wager. > “This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts...”

jedberg 3y ago
Also you do have something to lose -- the time you spend worshiping the god that may not exist.

NewEntryHN 3y ago

Doesn't matter. If God wants to hide he can spot you're measuring prayers and stay under the radar anyway.

petesergeant 3y ago
Exactly. Even as a committed atheist, you also have to accept that should you accept an axiom that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, all and any experimental results become null and void.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]