[quote="Interbane"]If the jury were made up of mathematicians, I think you'd find their judgement surprising. Insanely rare coincidences are inevitable.

The larger problem is that if you did have a jury of people, they would need evidence to corroborate the story. Other witnesses who are impartial, writings, recordings. Single anecdotes do very little in a courtroom. Establishing that Hudson's story is truthful would be a difficult thing. What convinces you personally, when explored in detail, may break down under scrutiny. end quote.

Hi Interbane, I think the point about mathematicians is interesting.
Anyone who reads Hudson Taylor's account would see that there are many incidents,situations and examples that he gives of praying and receiving what he believes to be answers to his prayers from God.He doesn't give all instances as careful reading shows.

I suppose someone could do a statistical analysis of numbers of prayer requests, factoring in things like the time of answer,(usually late but just in time) and other aspects like when he has to discard his only clothes and a forgotten trunk of clothes arrives just at that time.I'm not sure how you would define these sorts of incidents but there's a striking, mirror like quality about them.
I'm not a mathematician, but I suspect if you were to do this kind of analysis asking the question; Just how probable is it?I would think extremely improbable. I imagine there is combinatorial inflation involved in the various elements.
As far as historicity and biography goes, broadly speaking that could be found on wikipedia and elsewhere.

I think in life, we judge people in various ways and when we've been around for a while we become quite good at it.Looking at what can be known of his life he seems like a man of integrity, unlike the televangelist types.
I'm simply saying as a matter of experience, that God does hear and answer prayers.That's the testimony of innumerable Christians.I could be lying when I speak personally about this,but I know I'm not.
There is a difference between what is random and what is specifically targeted, and when examples are multiplied that difference is vast.
I'm sure you can pick this all apart in your usual way to show, as you believe, that I haven't provided evidence that God hears and answers prayers.I do think though, that if his account is true which I believe it is,to suggest it can be adequately explained by the math is extremely unreasonable.

I'm simply saying as a matter of experience, that God does hear and answer prayers.

I understand. I can tell you that there is likely no god, and like many biases we possess, we see agency where there is none. Is your experience tempered Flann? Have you run it through a process to screen for truthful beliefs, before believing them? What process did you use? Your own intuition? We humans are terrible at forming truthful beliefs, and our experience often leads us astray. The only way to justify knowledge is through tried and tested processes. Put through that gauntlet, the idea of gods and prayers is easily seen as fantasy.

There is a difference between what is random and what is specifically targeted, and when examples are multiplied that difference is vast.

This is a crucial difference. If your life depended on it, how would you differentiate the two? How would you know for sure if a prayer was specifically targeted, or was unfulfilled coincidence? I asked this question many posts ago, multiple times, because it is the key to understanding why belief in prayer is unjustified. Consider a mother praying for her son's miraculous recovery, only to have the son miraculously recover. How could you show that this was more than coincidence? How could you show supernatural causation between prayer and recovery? What is the difference between this, and members of competing sports teams each praying for a win, and the winner declaring that his prayers were answered? Or if morality and deep emotion must be involved, between to competing armies whose soldiers each pray for their own victory, and the winning side declaring that god answered their prayers?

So again, how would you show that a prayer is more than a coincidence? At least give the exercise an attempt. Formulate some way to make the distinction.

I'm not a mathematician, but I suspect if you were to do this kind of analysis asking the question; Just how probable is it?I would think extremely improbable.

Yes, extremely insanely improbable.

I see I've failed to convince you that insanely improbable coincidences are mathematically certain. In a naturalistic universe where everything fits within a causal web, such unbelievably rare coincidences are guaranteed to happen. This is not only a byproduct of the complexity of our universe, but also the associative complex of our minds.

In mathematician John Allen Paulos' words:
"In reality, the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences."

Read these two articles if you have time. Perhaps they express the concept better than I've been able to.

http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=91
http://www.whydomath.org/Reading_Room_M ... dence.html