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Topic: virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer (Read 1205 times) |
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Kharin
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Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #1 on: 2003-10-24 06:01:54 » |
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Quote:"The world's largest study into the effects of prayer on patients
undergoing heart surgery has found it appears to make no difference." |
Interesting that even placebo effect possibilities are limited. That said, more pertinent is the possibility of adverse health implications from such activities as meditation. Here's one piece of reseach I found on the subject:
http://www.trancenet.org/research/toc.shtml
Quote:"It is not the task of this chapter to refer once again to the individual results tabulated in previous chapters. The summaries at the end of those chapters suffice in this regard. We rather wish to identify and interpret some basic structures of T.M.
The initiation into the practice of T.M. is geared towards increasing the emotional openness of the meditator. On the basis of this increased opening up, an unreserved acceptance of the teachings as spread by Maharishi follows.
The acceptance of these teachings causes a loss in the sense of reality, altered social attitudes, which themselves lead to a breaking off of or reduction in contacts to the world of non-meditators.
The 'one-to-one' type of relationship is replaced by a narcissistic ego-centric "me" type of relationship.
Negative experiences with the meditation are seen as "unstressing" and are blamed on earlier development (pre- T.M.) or on the negative karma of the meditator's surroundings.
The overcoming of these 'knots of stress" leads to more intensive meditation and increased isolation. " |
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David Lucifer
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Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #2 on: 2003-10-24 14:24:36 » |
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[Jonathan Davis] The world's largest study into the effects of prayer on patients
undergoing heart surgery has found it appears to make no difference.
[Lucifer] What kind of implications does this study have? I'm inclined to take this as evidence against the existence of certain classes of gods through the use of modus tollens (mentioned on another thread recently).
Something along the lines of:
1. If God exists, then God answers prayers.
2. If God answers prayers, then prayers make a difference.
3. Prayers don't make a difference. (results of the study)
4. Therefore God does not exist.
Of course a theist could dispute any of the premises, maybe God doesn't answer prayers. Maybe prayers aren't supposed to make a difference. Maybe the study is flawed. If the study is flawed, it should be possible to point out exactly why. If the theist is forced to retreat on either of the first two premises, that would be interesting too as it clarifies what they believe and what kind of claims they can make.
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rhinoceros
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Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #3 on: 2003-10-24 20:45:38 » |
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[Lucifer]
What kind of implications does this study have? I'm inclined to take this as evidence against the existence of certain classes of gods through the use of modus tollens (mentioned on another thread recently).
Something along the lines of:
1. If God exists, then God answers prayers.
2. If God answers prayers, then prayers make a difference.
3. Prayers don't make a difference. (results of the study)
4. Therefore God does not exist.
Of course a theist could dispute any of the premises, maybe God doesn't answer prayers. Maybe prayers aren't supposed to make a difference. Maybe the study is flawed. If the study is flawed, it should be possible to point out exactly why. If the theist is forced to retreat on either of the first two premises, that would be interesting too as it clarifies what they believe and what kind of claims they can make.
[rhinoceros]
Heh... I'll try to play this game.
What do we have to assume for this syllogism to be valid? I think that most religions have thought of this and covered their bases.
(1) "If God exists, then God answers prayers."
This one would realy leave a god open to many tests if advocated by a religion, especially if it demands a *consistent* behavior from God. The religions I know about usually leave an escape hatch, such as "God doesn't intervene" or "God has its own plans and is not inclined to doing personal favors, except when he thinks a miracle is in order".
(2) "If God answers prayers, then prayers make a difference."
I think this can be assumed for all gods who do answer prayers (if not omnipotence, they should at least have some lesser potency). However, some would object to what exactly that difference would be. They would say "You don't always get what you want". So, their bases are covered here.
(3) "Prayers don't make a difference. (results of the study)"
Even if this study is invalid, we can always find other cases where prayers have not been answered, either in a personal level or statistically. However, if we want a true statement of fact, statement (3) should be:
(3.a) "At least sometimes, prayers don't make a difference"
Because of this, the previous statements should be universally true for the syllogism to be valid.
The weak link is only statement (1), but I think religions have been careful to avoid putting themselves in a corner.
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simul
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Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #4 on: 2003-10-24 22:50:42 » |
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It was a flawed study. Ask any spiritual teacher, psychiatrist, or memetic engineer (same thing AFAIC).
Prayers don't help the people that are prayed for. Prayers help those who are doing the praying, if at all. And possibly any indirection therof. Prayers asking God to do things don't work. Wheras those asking God to give them strength to do things, often find it.
Likewise COV helps its members, throug interaction, philisophical inquiry amd community. And the world that we declare, throug our vision and consensus, will be created out of our commitment to COV.
The purpose of my proposed survey was to measure commitment, inspire commitment. We can create a new religion, as inspiration, through COV.
And my hypothesis is that the impact of COV, and the fulfillment of its vision, will be proportional to the commitment percentages of its members.
I'm thinking that will be something like the sum of some function of the commitment percentages of each member squared.
Distributed networks tend to have squared impact effects.
One impact measure would be the number of members of COV. Another would be the average commitment levels, as declared by each member.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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David Lucifer
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Re: Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #5 on: 2003-10-25 03:38:29 » |
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> One impact measure would be the number of members of COV. Another would be the average commitment levels, as declared by each
member.
We have the means of measuring this if you would like to pursue it.
How would you characterize the possible commitment levels (number and description)?
David
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simul
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Re: Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #6 on: 2003-10-25 06:09:19 » |
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We can use subjective levels:
Not committed
Just hanging out
Think it's a good idea
Committed to success
Very committed to COV's success
We can correlate each of the answers with behaviors.
Also, we may want to have a referral system, where we can estimate who was brought in by an article someone wrote. IE: if while reading an article, the chose to sign up...etc. Also directr referrals (who referred you) can be tracked.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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rhinoceros
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Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #7 on: 2003-10-25 07:21:24 » |
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[simul]
It was a flawed study. Ask any spiritual teacher, psychiatrist, or memetic engineer (same thing AFAIC).
Prayers don't help the people that are prayed for. Prayers help those who are doing the praying, if at all. And possibly any indirection therof. Prayers asking God to do things don't work. Wheras those asking God to give them strength to do things, often find it.
[rhinoceros]
A flawed study? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3193902.stm) But what it says is that prayers by others didn't help. Did you mean that it tested the wrong question? Well, it may have something to say to people who put their hopes in prayers. These people exist, don't they?
Those theologians, at least, sounded alarmed and ran to cover their bases. Notice their phrasing. They didn't admit that prayers don't work (that would be bad for their business). They only said that testing God does not work.
Also, an empirical study subject to peer review is just that. It has its own place for estalishing facts, no matter what the opinions of spiritual teachers, psychiatrists, and memetic engineers.
[simul]
We can use subjective levels:
Not committed
Just hanging out
Think it's a good idea
Committed to success
Very committed to COV's success
We can correlate each of the answers with behaviors.
[rhinoceros]
Commitment... One problem is that words are cheap. Even cheaper than subjective beliefs. Can you picture a zealot who is carrying nothing more than a flag with the word "commitment" painted on it?
Correlating commitment with actual behaviors could be interesting, but it could lead to something not so exciting, such as a daily routine of pointing fingers at cases of hypocricy...
I would stick with rating people for bringing in actual value and actual drive. People come and go, focus and value stay for a bit longer.
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simul
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Re:virus: 'No health benefit' from prayer
« Reply #8 on: 2003-10-25 07:56:59 » |
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1. Yes, I agree, it tested the wrong question. Had it measured the impact on the pray'ers instead of the pray'ees it may have prodices positive results. The two studies, side-by-side, could then prove useful to devlopers of religions, such as ourselves.
2. I agree that these subjective levels are only a curiosity without the correlative study. My theory is that, the existence of a poll would inspire actual commitment, although this may be difficult to measure.
However, the third proposal - to measure referrals - I think that this is essential to the success of COV.
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First, read Bruce Sterling's "Distraction", and then read http://electionmethods.org.
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