In any case, Andrea, if is very logically fallacious to make a post-hoc analysis of a person’s group membership based on whether they eventually conform to the expected outcome criteria. If you try doing that in any practical science class and you will not only fail, but will probably also be used as a cautionary tale to teach other students what not to do. It is the equivalent of arguing that someone who is pregnant could not have been following a birth control plan as prescribed. (A notorious research study into the efficacy of Catholic birth control methods actually did this. Any one who got pregnant was simply dropped from the study on the grounds that they weren’t really following the method or they would not have got pregnant. As you might be able to see in this particular instance, this is completely circular logic. This allowed the study to conclude (falsely) that the Catholic method being studies was nearly 100 percent effective compared with the less effective (97 percent) artificial birth control method, which did not remove people if they got pregnant.

Your reasoning falls into a similar logical trap. Your sample is actually 100 percent effective because you throw out everybody who follows the method but does not turn out the way the theory says they should. This is bad, bad, bad, bad reasoning. Instead, be honest and admit that there is quite a large percentage of people who were once “saved” who no longer believe any of it was real. Look around you. About 10 percent, or more, of the people who you now think are excellent examples of the “saved” Christian will become “unsaved” over the next 25 years. Can you tell, ahead of time, which ones they will be? Since I have studied the phenomena I might be able to come up with a pretty reasonable guess, if I knew a few details about their personality, intellect and probably future place of residence, but I doubt that you could. Of course, one of them might turn out to be you. Think about that.

P.S. There is a lot of invalid evidence for the existence of gods, including yours.

Unlike the systems of other several other developed countries, the U.S. secondary educational system contains no nationally compulsory lessons in the rudiments of critical thinking, the skills of logical reasoning, the identification of fallacious reasoning, the art of baloney detection and the recognition of insidious scams and marketing ploys.

Without mastery of these skills the bulk of the American public will continue to be more than usually fooled by people, like Creationists (almost entirely a U.S. phenomena) and mega evangelists (also a U.S. invention) who deliberately attempt to dupe and exploit the gullible believer in order to obtain money, power and ego trips. They will also be at the mercy of well-meaning people who are unaware that they lack knowledge and experience in relevant areas and are therefore mistaken and misinformed and easily misled by charismatic con artists who manage to persuade them that they are not.

The younger and less educated the person, and the less skeptical they are of things they are told by those in positions of real or apparent authority, the more susceptible they are to being duped.

I would strongly recommend that you seek to remedy these deficits in what ever way you can.

Since there is no valid evidence for the existence of a god, even yours, there is no valid reason why anyone should believe that one exists, even yours.

Ok, brandon, I’ll bite. If God is gravity, what test is analgous to your jumping off a building?