Stephen: Greetings. You said in your opening statement that "Now, this will work best if some of the persons participating in the discussion and the experiments have some faith to begin with. We would also need some real skeptics. Who knows, perhaps God will bend over backwards to show a skeptic a thing or two." This reminded me of the following scriptures:Matt 16:2-4
He replied, "When evening comes, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' 3 and in the morning, 'Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. 4 A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah." Jesus then left them and went away.
Notice how Jesus says that a generation that seeks a sign is a wicked one. Is He implying that any skeptic is wicked? No because a skeptic is not a believer. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days. Jesus was dead for three days before He rose. Perhaps in Christian terminology, prayer is not prayer without a belief in a source to pray to. For the skeptics, how can they pray if they already doubt the source? Or are you suggesting that they pray like this:
God, I doubt that You are a reality, and I have yet to see You manifest in any way that I can see. I am gonna give this experiment a fair shake, however, so If You are real, move the table one inch.
Amen. Heck, if You are real, prove it to me! I dare ya!
™ Version 4.2