Casting a wider net on faith and blessings

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JohnW
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Re: Casting a wider net on faith and blessings

Post by JohnW »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:38 am
JohnW wrote:
Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:26 am
To be completely honest with you, this is the sort of thing that scares me a little. I am a scientist, so yes, that is how I would set up such a test. As a religious person, I would be afraid to look at the results of that study. I certainly believe in the power of prayer. I put people's names on temple prayer roles, and I regularly attend the temple and pray over those folks. I would be uncomfortable with such a study for various reasons.
Doesn't that tell you all you need to know about how much you really believe (or don't believe) in the efficacy of people's names being on temple prayer rolls?
Yes, I sometimes wonder if I would have enough faith or belief to survive a jolt such as described above. I think this is normal. I don't think it is overly concerning to me, because I think my second paragraph (reposted below) is probably what describes my aversion better. I don't think we as humans like scientific scrutiny on things that are intimately important to us, especially when the topic isn't all that scientific.
JohnW wrote:I guess it is a little like if someone offered to do an exhaustive and invasive study on whether my mother loves me or not. I don't really want anyone to do such a study because I'm pretty sure I already know the answer. At the same time I'm a little afraid of what such a study might uncover.
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Physics Guy
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Re: Casting a wider net on faith and blessings

Post by Physics Guy »

John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman was a real guy. He was kind of strange: his business of raising apple saplings was quite profitable but he lived as a barefoot hobo wearing a pot on his head and preaching Swedenborg. His apple trees were probably used for hard cider. That would make even a boring guy popular.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
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malkie
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Re: Casting a wider net on faith and blessings

Post by malkie »

JohnW wrote:
Tue Mar 28, 2023 12:40 am
malkie wrote:
Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:48 am
Any number of successes does not prove the promise to be true. Agreed?

But how many failures would you say it takes to prove it false?
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I think the above is the crux of the issue. I would argue that any number of failures could occur and still not prove anything. As you state in your explanation, numbers 3 (lack of faith) and 5 (will of God) tend to be the most likely candidates for why a blessing might not turn out the way the receiver hopes. I think it is a complex enough system that we probably can't say what caused the outcome.

I was going to go into an elaborate comparison with some other complex phenomenon like the weather, but that is probably belaboring the point. There are various complex systems that just cannot be predicted neatly. There is some squishiness to them. Failures in our scientific predictions don't prove anything in those complex cases. I think that is what Physics Guy was trying to get at when he mentioned if God is running the system as a big optimization problem. There is much less room for fulfilling favors than we might initially think.
I can see an argument for complexity, but only to a degree. But let's look a bit further at (3) and (5).

I suppose that one of my underlying issues is that the scriptures that talk about god's promises seem to greatly oversell. If they were true, even allowing for any lack of faith, surely the news would be overwhelmed with stories of miracles.

What if I promised my kids a reward if they were nice to me, but almost every time they claimed the reward I said that they hadn't been nice enough, and only I can make that determination. In addition, I don't give them any way of knowing ahead of time if they are being nice enough, but always wait till they want me to make good on my promise, and then say no.

And if the problem is "god's will" - well, he should not go around making a bunch of promises when he knows that he is going to just say "Nope - I don't want to do that" in the vast majority of cases in which the people he made promises to try to take him at his word.

Since god must know that humans will almost never hit the acceptable level of faith, and even when they do he reserves the right to say "no", and leave them to puzzle over their failure, I think that we humans might have a case for godly malpractice, because we have been led to believe that miracles are within our reach, and he apparently keeps dangling them in front of us without intending to let them within our grasp.

Perhaps the scriptures and the religious leaders need to be clear about expectations, however painful it might be.

Missionary: "Using the Priesthood of God, not only apostles but ordinary folks like us can perform miracles, just like those in the Bible!"
'Gator: "Wow, that's incredible! Where can I find out about it - why aren't the newspapers & media full of the accounts of miracles?"
Missionary: "Although god has made these promises to us, miracles actually happen at a rate no better than chance. It's because we are not faithful enough, or god decides that, for his own good reasons, he doesn't want to perform as promised. But the promise is right there in the scriptures - here, read it for yourself."
'Gator: "Yep - that's good enough for me - please, take my money!"

If "god's promises" were a business, I can just imagine what it's reviews would look like. Its salespeople would have been fired, and regulatory bodies would have shut it down a long time ago. But because it's religious it gets away with abusing its customers.

And they keep coming back for more!
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