Coincidental Favourable Results

In response to Rachel - full post found here

I think it is important to remember that the mere result of an event that happened to be positive does not necessarily equate to a reason to believe that god exists. Similarly, bad results of an event is not necessarily a reason to believe that god does not exist. This is basically tautological but I'll say it anyway; things either will happen or they will not happen.

The universe is so largely complex that any event is far beyond the reach of a single cause. There is certainly no way of knowing that the event occurring in someone's favor or against their favor could have been caused by a single thing. Say I prayed to a transcendent milk that it rain on Tuesay. Whether it does, and I am made happy, or it doesn't, and I am made sad, has no clear correlation with an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. If it does rain, there is no way of knowing if I could have received the same result had I prayed to a transcendent tea kettle. Similarly with negative results, had it not rained, there is no way of knowing that praying to something else could have made a difference. In these sort of situations, who you pray to seems almost coincidentally related to the result; though maybe there is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being beyond our understanding. I do not know.