The Atheist Prayer Argument Is A Dull Generalisation Predicated On INEXPERIENCE

You think we just have miracles documented, verified, and sitting around in a cedar chest awaiting your inspection?Mike is actually making somewhat of a decent argument, but a lot depends on whether our token atheist even wants to believe. Churches themselves are at least half full of skeptics and non believers.
If I were to ask this atheist if he wanted to believe, he may say "yes of course I do! I would accept the evidence in a minute!"Other atheists would have a different reply.. Some responses I have heard from various people (who may not have self identified as atheists but were either skeptics or agnostics.) are as follows:Token Atheist #1: " There is no God, just as there is (are) no Leprechauns." I call this the no God default position. Critical Thinking and its accepted attempts to falsify data are partly to explain why so few educated minds even get to the point of a giant leap of faith.Token Atheist #2: "Show me the evidence or retract your claim!" I call this the stay in your lane, leave me alone, and crawl back under your rock position. Atheist #2 was likely never a believer and has had his position reinforced by seeing American Christianity as a conservative delusion which justifies the "Christian" U.S. Empire which can be proven to have slaughtered millions of people in the name of Jesus Free Market Capitalism!. Though I have no proof, I would guess that a major percentage of professing atheists are liberals (and/or critical thinkers).Token Atheist#3: I call these ones the "Problem Of Evil" atheists.Rejecting the Bible as in any way authoritative makes it harder to believe in anything.Conversely, using the Bibles own words to trash belief and attempt to falsify the apologetic narrative seemingly has no real social value...unless one actually wanted more atheists! Of course, playing devils advocate (hopefully not literally) a skeptic may ask what the advantages are to being a Christian believer.

Oh right! Of course! Without evidence, these types of atheist simply close their hearts and attempt to disprove prayer (or God or Jesus) rather than speculate.What these type of atheists *do* see is the fact that many Biblical Christians who argue against evolution are also conservatives. This fact also supports my guess that a majority of atheists are (if not) liberals at least solid critical thinkers.If a critical thinker had any sort of unexplained positive experience, they would attempt to falsify the feeling rather than accept it. Such types rarely "get saved".In their defense, I may add that they would ask me how I knew it was God. They also would continually bring up my horrible behavior and conclude that if this was what a professing Christian behaves like, it simply proves their point! Also, I have been asked more than once why I dont give everything away and why I worry about money. To be fair, it is a valid question but why do they conclude that Jesus expects that (literally) of all of us?

You only accept evidence. We accept eyewitness information from ourselves and others. Of course believers don't accept every purported incident even if we witness it ourselves, but it helps to have other witnesses. Again, a critical thinker at a church event in which unexplained things happen is more likely to attempt to falsify their experience.Let me ask you this: In your early days of bells and smells, did you feel safe with the people you were around? I would argue that your rational evidence based club makes your mental sanity more comfortable. During the few times when I and others purportedly witnessed a supernatural unexplained event, we were dumbstruck. Critics could argue that we were fooled by conmen who at best were magicians trained in illusion, but the main difference between myself and a critical thinker is that they(you) will attempt to falsify your perceptions whereas I faced the magic to see if it was in any way real. While I would cautiously agree that I could be wrong, you would never admit that you could be wrong.You may never get the evidence that you require.

So the next time that someone swears on their Bible that God healed them or God told them something that was unexplainable to them, you quite correctly label it as an article of faith and not science, correct? For sure. I understand the definition of terms quite well. In fact, the whole reason that I never ascribed to what is loosely known as Biblical Creationism was not so much that it was a quiet article of faith by some. What turned me off was all of these people insisting that it could be scientific.
Ask me how old the earth is. I would say that I don't know and I dont care. If a staunch Biblical Literalist insists that it is a young earth (under 10,000 years) I would chalk his/her reply up to faith...not science.
Ask me if I believe that Jesus once existed and I would say with conviction that I believe that He was, is, and always will be. I would argue that there is no "once" about it. ​I can and will argue to defend my faith, but I try not to conflate it with science by definition.One other thing that I DO believe in is that there are many who, under the name of science, evidence, and critical thinking have an agenda to discredit the Bible in the way that Christians throughout History have believed it to be.You say that replication is a key part of science. This may be so, but IF God exists, He likely won't replicate anything just because a team of scientists require it in order to complete their experiment. Hypothetically thinking, your question could be "Why Not"?