According to proponents of this form of prayer, how much additional specificity and detail can be added beyond what Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald Tacelli have presented?
No additional specificity is needed, although more can be given. No additional specificity is reliably given in scientific proofs in general. For example, a little over a hundred years ago some thought that human flight was possible. Many did not. (This is a broad hypothesis but it has been succinctly stated.) Prevailing scientific consensus was that it was impossible. In general no proof that I am aware of purports even to be able to falsify it. It did not need to be falsifiable in order to be demonstrable.
For the Skeptic's Prayer to be effective, are there unstated implicit conditions beyond those mentioned by Peter and Ronald?
Only those established by God. They are published, including specific conditions and specific outcomes:
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
(James 1:5-6)
Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
(Moroni 10:3-5)
There is not a single documented instance of either of these promises being unfulfilled when the prerequisites were met, despite millions of trials and corresponding data points.
To be clear, the requirement of faith doesn't mean the skeptic already needs to be convinced there is a God, since that would be circular. Rather, faith is confidence and trust. If the skeptic has only a little, he still gets to choose where to invest it. The act of asking God a question exhibits some faith. Further actions and activities in this vein will allow that faith to grow. Faith is not sterile. It is fertile. Tiny seeds can grow into great trees if they are nourished.
Are there thresholds to the level of skepticism a person must have before attempting the prayer? Can one be "too skeptical" for the prayer's effectiveness, and if so, are there strategies to overcome this limitation?
Perhaps this is like asking if it is possible to fail adequately to disinfect a surface by the application of too little sodium hypochlorite. Yes, it is possible to underdo it or fail to satisfy the conditions of a proof and miss out on the consequents through lack of diligence or inattentiveness. The same is true of any bona fide experiment.
The asker should not assume that diligence is not required. If he is only willing to invest a soap opera's equivalent of effort to the question of whether there is a God, he should not expect his life to change dramatically. If on the other hand, he is willing to invest an accumulated lifetime of effort to pursuing knowledge of and faithfulness to God, he can expect miracles. Willingness is a choice, not some predestined or predetermined thing.
Is the skeptic supposed to undertake additional practices during the Skeptic's Prayer "experiment," like attending specific church services, fasting, reading the Bible, studying natural theology, or anything else? Or is merely praying for a few minutes sufficient, with no specified changes to one's daily life? While Peter and Ronald overlook this aspect, I presume it holds significant importance.
There is no procedural outline anywhere on Earth that is exhaustive. Many unstated environmental conditions are assumed to be within reasonable bounds (for example, atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, literacy, etc.). Yes, it is always possible to leave out important elements that should have been obvious, and yet that we too often learn we must not take for granted because of the propensity of experimenters to leave out important conditions. It frustrates lab students to learn they needed to leave the fume hood open or needed to wash their apparatus using distilled water before performing a titration. Perhaps this is one reason why Scripture consists of more than single page or a one-liner. The procedure requires thorough understanding in order to be fool-proofed. It is generally understood that this is the responsibility of the experimenter.
Is a single invocation sufficient, or does it require daily repetition over a few days, multiple times a day for an extended period, or even years or decades? The clarification on this aspect is not provided by Peter and Ronald. At a minimum, it seems they endorse trying the prayer at least once. However, they provide no guidance on frequency, intensity, or similar factors.
So it was with flight and every other discovery and even oft-repeated process that has considerable scientific rigor built into it. "We get there when we get there". Repeated applications may be necessary. This is true of trying to land rockets, parallel park cars, grow peas and removing plantar warts; no matter how scientific or well-practiced the subject matter is, there is room for failed trials as well as failure to continue to try. Without patience we can do nothing.
How explicit can expectations be in the Skeptic's Prayer "experiment"? What should the seeker anticipate? Is an event expected, and if so, will it be clear and unmistakable? Can specific examples of this event be given to enhance the expectation's specificity, clarity, and detail? Peter and Ronald caution against expecting miracles, but what reasonable outcome can the seeker envision in their mind as something to anticipate with hopeful expectation?
Knowing that God is real is clear and unmistakable, just as knowing that gravity is real is clear and unmistakable. The basic promise is that the person will be given witnesses and knowledge of the existence of God. The exact same specificity of expectations applies to any other endeavor promising knowledge, whether it be telling students they can know that gravity is real or that DNA is helical. There is special pleading applied by unbelievers to this category of knowledge. If the receipt of knowledge is deemed to be an "inadequately specific" condition, then science itself would be unscientific, because knowledge is the basic promise of science.
All sincere, truthful and honest expectations are allowable. Importantly this does require us not setting terms for God.
As has been demonstrated, vagueness is not the heart of the problem. Unwillingness to accept that we can know the truth of this matter for certain is.
As an illustration, consider a teacher who is trying to teach a student that 2+2=4.
The teacher can use examples and allegories like putting two apples on a table, then putting two more, and asking the student to count. The student's ability to grok addition and generalize it successfully is not something the teacher can inherently or forcefully supply, no matter how many allegories, explanations or practice problems are given. It is left to the realm of the student's cognition and understanding of the examples given. This requires him to apply himself to what might appear to be a dark, foreboding and grueling endeavor, without a specific promise of a timeline as to when the knowledge will dawn on him. Much of that will depend on his own sincere efforts and experiences.
A student disputing that 2+2=4 because he insists he does not know it or that it has not yet been "proven" to his satisfaction is ultimately epistemologically indistinguishable from his refusal to accept that there is a God, in terms of his ability to know it.
Even machine learning "agents" when fully trained, do not actually "know". The nature of addition was either given as an axiom or algorithm, or else it really is just using a function approximator with inbuilt libraries to produce a result when it is queried.
The same model applies to any truth claim that can be learned by experience.
There are millions of true claims that billions of people do not know or think they know are true only because they have not applied themselves to learn and know for themselves. But this is the general sincere promise of science: That you too can know if you apply yourself to know (not if you just go along with groupthink because of peer pressure, funding or other inadequate reasons).
There is nothing inadequately concrete about a promise that you will know something, or can know it if you will apply yourself to learn it in the proper way. The absence of infallible deadlines and the need to sort through our own misunderstandings, misperception and ambiguity are simply facts of life and of science, and in no way are unique to the task of learning and recognizing that we know there is a God.
