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

[Faraday321@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/31/2007 3:15:45 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
hhaskell@mindspring.com writes:

At  10:06  -0600 3/31/07, Brian Whatcott wrote:
> 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.

That certainly is a  natural tendency, but I wouldn't say that it 
always happens. If it did,  how would anything new ever get accepted?

However, it is certainly true  that the religious ones were quick to 
attempt to rationalize these  results, just a quick as they are to 
trumpet results which purport to show  the efficacy of prayer.

> 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?

It  does seem to me to be pretty hard to demonstrate something like 
the  efficacy of prayer by any sort of double-blind research 
technique, since  isolating the subject of the experiment will be 
nearly impossible, if not  completely impossible. If God listens to 
all prayers, then that must  include even those submitted outside of 
the study, and presumably, God  would know which of those prayers were 
truly devoted to the desired  outcome and which were pro-forma parts 
of the study and take appropriate  action. So I would have to agree 
that seeking effects that are dependent  on human or other natural 
causes are much more likely to be  verifiable.

> 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.

I guess I would be But in  any case, I doubt that there is much 
correlation between the core beliefs  of people and the presence of 
kind, loving or more generous actions. Many  atheists are kind and 
loving, and there are many who profess high  religious calling who are 
quite mean-spirited. One fact is well-known: our  prisons are 
populated by atheists in a much lower proportion than their  presence 
in the general population would imply. One can make of that what  one 
will.

> 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.

I'm not sure what this has  to do with faith. It does seem to be true 
that people raised in a kind and  loving environment are more likely 
to be kind and loving adults, but it is  much less clear that 
religious faith has any bearing on this  fact.

> 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...)
I would certainly like to see the evidence for these  statistics. 
Intervention vs. non-intervention might well have such effects  if 
they are well designed, but I would question that such huge  
differences would appear between faith-based and non-faith-based  
interventions.

Hugh
-- 




))))))))))))))
 
Maybe god is just a big prick. He is so hidden you know. I share with  Vic 
Stenger the notion that the god hypothesis is amendable to scientific study. 
 
 
Bob Zannelli 
 
 
)))))))))))))))
 
_http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/supernatural_science30010
6.htm_ 
(http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/supernatural_science300106.htm) 
 
 
))))))))))))))
 
My university of Hawaii colleague at the time, the eminent  philosopher Larry 
Laudan, had been one of the strong voices disputing Popperian  falsifiability 
as a workable demarcation criterion for science. When the  Arkansas decision 
was announced, Laudan objected strenuously. He pointed out  that creation 
science is in fact testable, tentative, and falsifiable. For  example, it predicts 
a young Earth and other geological facts that have, in  fact, been falsified. 
Falsified science can still be science, just wrong  science. Laudan warned 
that the Arkansas decision would come back to haunt  science by "perpetuating 
and canonizing a false stereotype on what science is  and how it works." 
Coming up-to-date, we  similarly find that ID is testable, tentative, and 
falsifiable. For example,  William Dembski asserts a “law of conservation of 
information” which implies  that information cannot be generated by natural 
processes. This is provably  wrong. Information is negative entropy and the second 
law of thermodynamics  allows for the entropy of systems interacting with their 
environments to  decrease and thus information to increase naturally. Michael 
Behe's examples of  "irreducible complexity" have similarly been refuted.
     
 



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