to think it is rude to persistently refer to God/Allah/etc. as an "imaginary friend"

[AtheneNoctua]

even after asked not to by several posters who have stated they found it offensive.

i must say not keen on the footsteps quote if only because i've seen it on lurid sunset posters in chuches.

My dad [vicar]gave my [athiest] dh a t shirt for Christmas once, it said 'Jesus Loves You' in big letters, then is smaller ones underneath 'But I'm His Favourite.'

I didn't. Improves it vastly. LOL.
[will try to remember to CAT you. Can you CAT me?]

emailed you

PMSL at the 'hopped' story. Any more like that?

Alas, no, sgb. That one was shared with me by a Christian friend, as it goes. Apparently her vicar started a sermon with it (and then went on to talk about 'god liking a laugh' or something. But my chum only actually remembers the bathos...)

So why if God is able to save lives at a whim, even breaking the laws of nature and altering destiny to do so, why did he allow little children to be butchered without anaesthetic by Dr Mengele? Is it because they were Jewish, so nobody said the right sort of prayers? Does God only do nice things if the right people pray in the right way? If prayers aren't answered, is it because you didn't pray hard enough, or because God just didn't feel like saving anyone that day, or because he doesn't like you?

Okay, but without an answer to those crucial questions we might conclude that some people get better randomly. It only really means anything if you can say that those who prayed got better or those who deserved to did.

All you have is:

Some people get better and some of them were prayed for and some not.

There is no pattern to point to and the only time anyone tried to show a pattern deliberately by arranging prayers for specific people they found none.

Sorry but we only have your word for this story, which didn;t happen to you anyway. Anecdotes are not evidence. There are lots of explanations far more plausible than supernatural involvement: a mistake on the man's medical records for one thing. Also, the variations in health, human biochemistry etc, mean that it's not entirely unheard of for someone to recover from a stroke or a brain haemorrhage quickly. As to the wife waking in the night wanting to pray, well it's hardly surprising that someone whose partner is ill may feel the need of comfort from her imaginary friend. But lots of people pray for miracles which don't happen and conveniently forget that.

You're perfectly entitled to come to that conclusion, but I have to wonder how people do that - how it actually works.

I could throw a dice repeatedly. Every time a six came up I could announce that god did that and each time a five I could say that was Allah.

I would have no reason to say that. It would be pure invention. Not a lack of really good evidence, but a lack of any at all.

I have things I should be doing too so I must go after this post. I start off multi-tasking then get sucked in

I don't know of any evidence for isolated miracles. It would be big news if there were. There are stories aplenty.

There was a thread on here once that you might like to consider. Something like "Why does god never heal amputees".

People with illnesses that don't show supposedly get healed all the time, but never anything that you could tell by looking.

Does god dislike amputees?

SO how do you account for proper large scale trials that showed that people who were prayed for actually did worse? There is zero evidence that prayer works, and if was a Christian I'd be glad, because prayer is a terrible idea - that if you have enough influential friends you can persuade God to be nice to you, but the friendless or those who can't pray can just sink because he won't care? So the baby who is prayed for can live, while the baby who isn't will die? Horrible.
And as someone said, if God wanted to convince anyone, he'd make limbs regrow! People do get better all the time from all sorts of illnesses.

Don't you think it is rather more likely that your mum's shingles just went into natural remission (as it does) than God 'cured' your mum while letting your friend die? What honestly makes more sense?

Natural remission or a mistake in diagnosis are far more likely than supernatural involvement. Those happen a lot. And I never accept unsupported anecdotes from random numptys on the internet as evidence of anything - I am not saying that you are making it all up, just that I have no proof that you are not. While it is perfectly plausible that your friend-of-a-friend was sick and then got better a lot quickly, the bit about doctors foaming at the mouth in shock and going It's a Miracle sounds like your vicar pal exaggerating because of his own vested interests.

As others have said, all this 'faith' healling generally seems to 'work' on conditions that will either get better sooner or later anyway, or conditions which involve a large psychological component. As to the 'miracles' which occur at those great demented festivals of superstition, there's an even easier explanation of the lame-who-walk at those. They are actors.

power of suggestion/placebo effect/psychomatic response - infinitely more plausible than big wizard in the sky who hurls random bolts of supernatural healing at random individuals in front of an audience (but happily ignores millions of starving/butchered/destitute innocents the world over on a day to day basis )