It’s silly to pray for some unlikely-but-by-no-means-impossible event (say, with a probability of 1%) to occur, and then declare\u00a0that your prayer must have been answered if the event does, in fact, occur.<\/p>\n
I was quite surprised at one of the reactions to this post: \u00a0quite a few\u00a0Christians told me that Christians just don’t do that. \u00a0Well, this is simply\u00a0not true, and\u00a0we were provided with\u00a0an example of a Christian doing precisely this just\u00a0the other day, when ebola survivor Kent Brantly credited God for his recovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the article just linked to, someone with ebola has a 10% chance of survival. \u00a0Actually, this is just the figure for the most deadly outbreak ever<\/a> – more accurate sources report a figure of around 36% survival for the current outbreak (see the wiki entry on the 2014 West Africa ebola outbreak<\/a>), but let’s stick to the 10% figure, for argument’s sake. \u00a0This means that\u00a0out of 1000 people who contract ebola, 100 would survive – and this includes people with no medical intervention. \u00a0As it happens, Brantly was the recipient of\u00a0a blood transfusion from a 14-year-old African Ebola survivor; he was also treated with an experimental drug. \u00a0As far as medical professionals can tell, the blood transfusion greatly\u00a0increases your chances of survival. \u00a0We don’t yet know if the experimental drug is effective (it’s still experimental, after all, and the creators of the drug fully acknowledge this – there hasn’t been an opportunity for a proper study yet). \u00a0But even if we stick to the blanket 10% figure, it’s just like this:<\/p>\n You roll a ten\u00a0sided dice and pray to God that you roll a 10. \u00a0Sure enough, a 10 comes up. \u00a0You deduce that God must have made the 10 come up.<\/p>\n I don’t think I really need to explain how silly that is, but… \u00a0In order to make that deduction, you need to know not only that the 10 came up, but also that the 10\u00a0wouldn’t have<\/em> come up if you hadn’t prayed, and if God hadn’t decided to grant your wish. \u00a0How could you possibly know that? \u00a0And in any case, how do you think God might have acted?\u00a0 Did God bend the laws of physics so the dice rolled in some strange, unnatural way? \u00a0Besides all that, if 1000 people performed the same experiment, you’d expect<\/em> to get about 100 people rolling a 10 – should they all deduce that God made it happen? \u00a0Would nobody get a 10 unless God specifically made it happen? \u00a01000 rolls and no 10’s happens with about a<\/p>\n 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%<\/p>\n chance. \u00a0Why would it be any different if the outcome “rolling a 10” is replaced with “surviving ebola”?<\/p>\n But anyway, the whole Brantly event got me thinking about prayer again. \u00a0What does it mean to say that God answered Brantly’s prayer? \u00a0I’ve answered this question in more detail elsewhere<\/a>, but: \u00a0it means that God listened to Brantly’s prayer, as well as the prayers of all the other ebola sufferers;<\/em>\u00a0chose to let almost all\u00a0of the\u00a0people die (a horrible, painful death); and chose\u00a0some\u00a0select few people to be spared (in this case, a guy who had all the medical help he could get). \u00a0All while there is a reasonable chance they would have survived without any intervention at all. \u00a0(If a Christian wishes to argue that any survival is due to an act of God in the first place, then I suppose they are accepting that it might have had\u00a0nothing to do with prayer, after all.)<\/p>\n But\u00a0even if we grant all these claims\u00a0<\/em>– that is, that God really did heal this guy, whether as a direct result of prayer or because he was going to heal him anyway, and regardless of the chances of surviving without any divine intervention – what business does Brantly have to go gloating about it? \u00a0“Gloating” is probably the wrong word, as I don’t suspect for a second that Brantly had any malice in making his statements (and I understand that he was in Africa working as a medical volunteer, even if his ultimate goal was to spread his religion), but he was certainly making a big public point about the “fact” that God had spared him. \u00a0Let me use an analogy to explain the problem I have with this:<\/p>\n Imagine your daughter is diagnosed with cancer. \u00a0She’s admitted to a hospital, where she shares a\u00a0room with another girl of the same age with the same kind of cancer. \u00a0You’re visiting your daughter one day, and you see that the other girl has recently died; her parents are there, mourning the loss. \u00a0Just\u00a0then, a doctor comes in and tells you that your daughter’s cancer has gone away – she (and you) can now live a normal life. \u00a0Would you start jumping up and down, screaming “Yes! Woohoo!”<\/em>? \u00a0I sure hope not! \u00a0But even worse would be to say, within earshot of the other parents, that God healed your daughter<\/i>. \u00a0To say so would be\u00a0to say that God looked at both girls, both of whom he\u00a0(supposedly) could have healed if he wanted, and decided to heal your\u00a0girl but\u00a0not the other. \u00a0Even if it is actually the case that God did this<\/em>, it is an awful thing to do to say it to the other parents. \u00a0But far worse if it is not the case (or if you just don’t know if it is the case or not).<\/p>\n But it all got me thinking about another aspect of it all. \u00a0We often see someone,\u00a0after<\/em> they survive some illness, declaring that they were healed by God – and, further, declaring that we can know God exists and that he acts in the world because of their survival. \u00a0But much rarer is the person who makes such a declaration\u00a0before\u00a0<\/em>the event. \u00a0Why didn’t Brantly say “Hey everyone, I’ve got ebola, but I’m going to make a testable prediction – if God is real, he will heal\u00a0me”<\/em>? \u00a0To do so is to put everything on the line – it’s gutsy (Pastor Mark Driscoll<\/a> would probably approve). \u00a0I’m not saying that Branson’s survival after such a prediction ought to make us all believe in God – don’t forget there’s a 10% chance that he would have survived anyway, even if God doesn’t exist or simply decides not to specifically intervene. \u00a0But imagine if every<\/em> Christian ebola sufferer made the same prediction, and they all survived. \u00a0If 100 Christians made such a prediction and then all survived, there’d be a<\/p>\n 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%<\/span><\/p>\n
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