And I'm telling you you're stupid if you're only going to believe things that can be proven Empirically

There was an extensive study done on prayer.... something like they got 5000 people to pray for something and noted the results... let me try to find that....

Edit: Simple google search brings up lots of result

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/healt ... QlRo9Q0sRw

In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding.

In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance.

At least one earlier study found lower complication rates in patients who received intercessory prayers; others found no difference. A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

But yeah, I'd tend to side with you on prayer as far as real-world application goes, but personally, for myself, I feel it's more than that.

this is the typical answer that most religious debates end with. I can't follow you if you're going to go beyond "real-world application" which basically gives you a licence to make anything up you want because no one can trace your argument to any real source. It's the "I just know it in my heart" defense.

And what's wrong with that defense? That is what religion is based on. Belief. You dont need cold hard data to believe in something, if you do that speaks poorly of your ability to be human. We are not machines, we dont need factual evidence for every little thing, sometimes you just have to accept that there may or may not be any proof for what you seek. That is what religion is.

Last year (2005) the Kansas State Board of Education decided that in addition to the scientific explanations of where the universe and people came from, that public school children should also be introduced to the possibility that the universe did not come about over billions of years but was made in only a few days by a god who spoke it into existence and that the first man did not evolve over millions of years from primitive ape-like ancestors but instead was made in only seconds from potting soil.

In protest to this decision, a computer scientist named Bobby Henderson professed his belief in a supernatural being called the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” and called for the teaching of “Pastafarianism” in public school science classrooms which seems equally reasonable.

For example: in Pastafarianism when asked why the earth appears in tests to be billions of years old, the reply is that the invisible Spaghetti Monster is there changing the “true” results with his “noodly appendages” to fool the highly trained scientists.

Pastafarianism also suggests that Global Warming is coming about because of a dwindling number of Pirates. It points to the fact that the number of Pirates has been going down since the 1800s while the average temperature of the earth has been increasing.

Also instead of commandments, the Pastafarians follow eight “I’d rather you didn’ts” that were given to a Pirate named “Mosely” by the Spaghetti Monster himself. It was originally 10 IRYDs but 2 were accidentally dropped on the way down the mountain which explains the exceptionally poor moral standards of Pastafarians.

Here is the official website of this exciting new religion:
http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

BTW, Pastafarians end all their prayers with the word: “Ramen.”

Didn't someone post that a long time ago on these forums? I swear I have seen that before either here or somewhere else. Still pretty funny though.