Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] God's reaction to prayers simply can't be explored by scientific study.

I was surprised by the negative outcome for those knowing. It violates the second kind of truth.

The effectiveness of "religious based" interventions is almost a cliché.

bc, wonders if the knowing were "religious".

p.s. I googled second ... and didn't quickly find it. I had understood it to mean the result from believing it's true. e.g. voodoo death. In lit.: The Emperor Jones.

Brian Whatcott wrote:

At 09:25 PM 3/30/2007, BC, you wrote:



cut


I was interested to examine my reaction to this story. I noticed
that rationalizing the outcome was relatively fast for me.
And I laughed: people do indeed rationalize any result that gives
rise to conceptual conflict.

If anyone here is moved to explore or teach the possibility of
mounting such a research effort in future, may I suggest that the
crucial measure would better be an outcome that may be altered
by ordinary human activity rather than a result that calls for a
miracle?

A reminder: a virtue of people with spiritual extension is that
they are led to be more kind, more loving, more generous, more
forgiving of transgressors - such social positives that one would
rationally wish such elements of faith to be propagated even if
one could know quite surely there was no basis to the Divine
spirit to which they appeal.

If one accepts this construction of faith, it is not fanciful to
realize that people exposed to negative human relations may
easily be damaged, and that people in kinder relations can be
invigorated.

Here's a less than scientific example of faith-based intervention.
It is found that drug-offenders (and others) who are exposed to
local faith-based support groups (driving them to Narc-Anon
meetings,finding them small easements etc...) have a better
recidivism rate than prisoners not so supported.
(The recidivism rate can be truly ruinous,
to them and to the rest of us: 80% and higher; the supported
recidivism rate can be surprizingly better, 15% and lower...)


Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l