Xtians: Reasons For Belief?

[Vigile]

 

Just fill in the blank so I know where everyone stands so we can quit arguing. Man up and vote.

 

Is a study of prayer efficacy science?

 

MM

BAA

Roz

Orbit

Directionless

Prof

 

Is a study of sin science?

 

MM

BAA

Roz

Orbit

Directionless

Prof

 

Not going to hurt my feelings.

 

VOTE, it's the American thing to do....

Is a study on prayer science?

 

Yes, if it is done using the scientific method.

 

Is a study on sin science?

 

Yes, if there is a coherent working definition of sin and some proposed effect is supposed to have, and the scientific method is used. Same qualifications apply to prayer or anything else and it's proposed effects one wishes to evaluate.

 

 

Sin is a religious term and completely meaningless outside of religion.  I'm sure you can find plenty of studies on drug abuse, spousal abuse, cheating, et al.  Good luck on finding studies about using the 'lord's' name in vain or rejection of the gospel. 

 

Your prayer studies haven't been very friendly to the xians.  Some have shown to reduce stress, but in no way have any studies shown that prayer heals disease or helps people get jobs or pass tests. 

[bornagainathiest]

 

 

No, Ravenstar.  No. 

 

 

"One of the main reasons I believe in the God revealed in the scriptures

is the art, literature and music created by believers through the centuries."

 

 

What was my unfounded claim? I was answering a question and expressing my opinion.

 

Do you not think that Christians have contributed to art, literature and music?

 

 

No, Ravenstar.  No. 

 

 

Ironhorse will always put faith before facts.

Faith over facts.  Faith instead of facts.  Faith always trumps the facts.

 

You are wasting your time trying to acquaint him with the facts of the history of art.

I've been wasting my time trying to acquaint him with the facts of the history of science.

Others have been wasting their time trying to acquaint him with the facts of the history of Christianity.

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/62720-no-shit-sherlock/page-27#.VAltqvldUuk

 

Please read the last three pages of this thread, Ravenstar.

That's what'll happen here, if tackle him about Christianity and art.  You'll just end up with his stonewall refusal to answer and you'll get nowhere.  He's a denialist.  A faith-motivated denier of facts.

.

.

.

If you want to give up now, I won't blame you.  But there is something useful that can come out this impasse.  

 

You'll note that I haven't given up asking Ironhorse and holding him to his promise to answer the questions?  

Well, I have no real expectation that he'll ever answer.  But that doesn't really matter.   Since educating him and opening his mind to the facts is impossible - we can hold his behavior under the spotlight for everyone to see.  

 

This let's the lurkers, the undecided and the newly deconverted see Christianity at it's very worst. 

We know that they can see his denial for what it is because it's already had a excellent result with LongWayRound.

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/64182-thank-you-ironhorse/#.VAlwgPldUuk

 

Anyway Ravenstar, it's your call.

If you don't want to persist as I'm persisting, that's fine by me.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[♦ ficino ♦]

 

Who was it on here who was promoting Mel Gibson's Passion movie as a reason, or at least, inspiration for faith?  Then he was banned but came back under another name and gave himself away by promoting that same movie again.  

 

I have to admit that Faure's Requiem made me more disposed to become a Catholic.  It never provided a ground for belief, though!

 

 

It will be difficult for future film directors to create a piece of art like Gibson did in The Passion of the Christ.

 

I'm not a theorist of art's relation to myth, but it seems one of the most powerful channels by which myths take form and sweep us up into the world of the fiction, shall we say.  There is a lot of art that has this effect.  I was already an ex-Catholic when I stood under Piazzetta's sweeping ceiling painting in San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, in which St. Dominic is taken to heaven.  From the floor it looks as though the heavens have opened, and one nun is leaning over the edge of heaven, looking down at the viewer and beckoning, as it to say, "Come up here."  I prayed perhaps the last prayer I ever prayed, but out of respect for the moment rather than because I believed there was some deity that was listening.  What's real is that the artist effected me, and the structure of the myth shaped that effect.

 

IH, had you stood in front of the great statue of Zeus at Olympia and gazed at the god's reflection in the reflecting pool in front of it, I think you would have sensed the awe that it and its myth project.  Surely you won't say that they are grounds for belief in the ancient Greek gods.

[Orbit]

IH does being moved by atheist art make you an atheist?

[Vigile]

Ih was moved by that horror flick? Tells me he's mental.

[Thackerie]

 

Who was it on here who was promoting Mel Gibson's Passion movie as a reason, or at least, inspiration for faith?  Then he was banned but came back under another name and gave himself away by promoting that same movie again.  

 

I have to admit that Faure's Requiem made me more disposed to become a Catholic.  It never provided a ground for belief, though!

 

 

It will be difficult for future film directors to create a piece of art like Gibson did in The Passion of the Christ.

 

 

Torture porn like that piece of crap by Mel Gibson is apparently easy to create; there's so much of it.

[directionless]

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Just one of several articles about this latest study. Apparently there are challenges.

Apparently the people praying knew nothing about the patient other than a name, and the words of the prayer were even partially scripted. I know that this type of prayer is sometimes practiced in monasteries, but it isn't normal prayer that most Christians would consider valuable. Also one critic mentioned that the study had no way of controlling for the prayer efforts of loved ones. Maybe the poorer performance of those who were prayed for through the experiment resulted from the loved ones slacking-off in their personal prayer efforts on the assumption that their loved one was already getting enough prayers as part of the experiment.

 

If I was designing a prayer experiment, I would first study anecdotal evidence of answered prayers and try to duplicate those conditions as closely as possible. The conditions of this investigation seemed to have been designed primarily for simplicity of data collection or something IMO.

 

Also from a Christian perspective God needs to grant the prayer request. God must be willing for the scientific study to show evidence for the efficacy of prayer. God might not want to perform like a trained poodle for the scientists.

 

Horseshit.

 

You can't Biblically exclude it O...

 

Right End3. That's the very thing that makes the

claim "god answers prayer" not scientific. That claim is non-falsifiable, because Christians assert that any outcome is an answer to prayer, in some way or another. This covers all possible outcomes! You could do nothing (not pray) and still get an outcome. Some outcome will occur Independant of prayer. Since this covers all possible outcomes, the proposed mechanism for the outcome (prayer) can never be causally linked to any outcome. That's the consequence of non-falsifiability, it makes any results uninterpretable and meaningless.

 

Note: The prayer study was studying the question of whether or not prayer had any positive health effects on patient outcomes. This is falsifiable (because it does not predict ALL outcomes as a result. It predicts one type of outcome that can be distinguished from other possible outcomes), and it's completely independent of asking whether or not "god answers prayer."

 

My understanding is that statistics models sources of error as random variables. The will of God in a prayer study is not necessarily a random variable IMO. If God doesn't want to cooperate then it would be like testing a medication when all you have is placebo.

 

Furthermore, praying for the name of a total stranger using a partially scripted prayer is really stretching the definition of prayer. It's like my example of studying aerodynamic lift by throwing bricks.

 

Call me cynical, but I think the people who designed this prayer study were not at all interested in studying prayer; they wanted some publicity and some money to replace some worn-out office furniture or something.

[Neverlandrut]

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Just one of several articles about this latest study. Apparently there are challenges.

Apparently the people praying knew nothing about the patient other than a name, and the words of the prayer were even partially scripted. I know that this type of prayer is sometimes practiced in monasteries, but it isn't normal prayer that most Christians would consider valuable. Also one critic mentioned that the study had no way of controlling for the prayer efforts of loved ones. Maybe the poorer performance of those who were prayed for through the experiment resulted from the loved ones slacking-off in their personal prayer efforts on the assumption that their loved one was already getting enough prayers as part of the experiment.

 

If I was designing a prayer experiment, I would first study anecdotal evidence of answered prayers and try to duplicate those conditions as closely as possible. The conditions of this investigation seemed to have been designed primarily for simplicity of data collection or something IMO.

 

Also from a Christian perspective God needs to grant the prayer request. God must be willing for the scientific study to show evidence for the efficacy of prayer. God might not want to perform like a trained poodle for the scientists.

Horseshit.

You can't Biblically exclude it O...

Right End3. That's the very thing that makes the

claim "god answers prayer" not scientific. That claim is non-falsifiable, because Christians assert that any outcome is an answer to prayer, in some way or another. This covers all possible outcomes! You could do nothing (not pray) and still get an outcome. Some outcome will occur Independant of prayer. Since this covers all possible outcomes, the proposed mechanism for the outcome (prayer) can never be causally linked to any outcome. That's the consequence of non-falsifiability, it makes any results uninterpretable and meaningless.

 

Note: The prayer study was studying the question of whether or not prayer had any positive health effects on patient outcomes. This is falsifiable (because it does not predict ALL outcomes as a result. It predicts one type of outcome that can be distinguished from other possible outcomes), and it's completely independent of asking whether or not "god answers prayer."

My understanding is that statistics models sources of error as random variables. The will of God in a prayer study is not necessarily a random variable IMO. If God doesn't want to cooperate then it would be like testing a medication when all you have is placebo.

 

Furthermore, praying for the name of a total stranger using a partially scripted prayer is really stretching the definition of prayer. It's like my example of studying aerodynamic lift by throwing bricks.

 

Call me cynical, but I think the people who designed this prayer study were not at all interested in studying prayer; they wanted some publicity and some money to replace some worn-out office furniture or something.

Keep in mind "the will of god" was not a factor in this study. This study was not examining god's will or whether "god" answers prayer. It had nothing to do with god directly. Whether god exists or not, some people do pray. The study examined any possible effects of prayer (no assumption beyond that).

 

Good observation. The definition of prayer and it's parameters are something, scientifically, worth reevaluating and possibly retesting. I doubt the results would be different, but that is just my prediction.

[directionless]

Keep in mind "the will of god" was not a factor in this study. This study was not examining god's will or whether "god" answers prayer. It had nothing to do with god directly. Whether god exists or not, some people do pray. The study examined any possible effects of prayer (no assumption beyond that).

 

Good observation. The definition of prayer and it's parameters are something, scientifically, worth reevaluating and possibly retesting. I doubt the results would be different, but that is just my prediction.

One minor point on the will of God: IMO science normally assumes that God will keep his invisible fingers off the instruments during the experiments or that God will at least behave in a predictable way like a force of nature. How much sense does it make to implicitly assume these things about God while you are supposedly testing prayer which according to Christians requires God's willing participation? We might hope to discover ESP-powered healing powers in an experiment like this, but we should not expect to discover God-powered healing powers unless God behaved like a force of nature with no free will during the experiment (i.e. a trained poodle jumping through hoops for the scientists).

 

The experiment implicitly assumes that God's will is not a factor or that God's will is a random variable. Neither of those assumptions applies to Christian prayer IMO.

 

EDIT: Also assuming God exists and has chosen not to make his existence obvious (for whatever reason), why would God cooperate to make a study of prayer show positive results?

[Orbit]

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Just one of several articles about this latest study. Apparently there are challenges.

Apparently the people praying knew nothing about the patient other than a name, and the words of the prayer were even partially scripted. I know that this type of prayer is sometimes practiced in monasteries, but it isn't normal prayer that most Christians would consider valuable. Also one critic mentioned that the study had no way of controlling for the prayer efforts of loved ones. Maybe the poorer performance of those who were prayed for through the experiment resulted from the loved ones slacking-off in their personal prayer efforts on the assumption that their loved one was already getting enough prayers as part of the experiment.

 

If I was designing a prayer experiment, I would first study anecdotal evidence of answered prayers and try to duplicate those conditions as closely as possible. The conditions of this investigation seemed to have been designed primarily for simplicity of data collection or something IMO.

 

Also from a Christian perspective God needs to grant the prayer request. God must be willing for the scientific study to show evidence for the efficacy of prayer. God might not want to perform like a trained poodle for the scientists.

 

Horseshit.

 

You can't Biblically exclude it O...

 

Right End3. That's the very thing that makes the

claim "god answers prayer" not scientific. That claim is non-falsifiable, because Christians assert that any outcome is an answer to prayer, in some way or another. This covers all possible outcomes! You could do nothing (not pray) and still get an outcome. Some outcome will occur Independant of prayer. Since this covers all possible outcomes, the proposed mechanism for the outcome (prayer) can never be causally linked to any outcome. That's the consequence of non-falsifiability, it makes any results uninterpretable and meaningless.

 

Note: The prayer study was studying the question of whether or not prayer had any positive health effects on patient outcomes. This is falsifiable (because it does not predict ALL outcomes as a result. It predicts one type of outcome that can be distinguished from other possible outcomes), and it's completely independent of asking whether or not "god answers prayer."

 

My understanding is that statistics models sources of error as random variables. The will of God in a prayer study is not necessarily a random variable IMO. If God doesn't want to cooperate then it would be like testing a medication when all you have is placebo.

 

Furthermore, praying for the name of a total stranger using a partially scripted prayer is really stretching the definition of prayer. It's like my example of studying aerodynamic lift by throwing bricks.

 

Call me cynical, but I think the people who designed this prayer study were not at all interested in studying prayer; they wanted some publicity and some money to replace some worn-out office furniture or something.

 

You can't scientifically measure anything having to do with god. The entire enterprise is doomed. It's not statistically possible, and it's not scientifically possible. Assigning a probability to god's existence or actions is nothing more than assigning probabilities to your own assumptions and imagination.

[Neverlandrut]

 

Keep in mind "the will of god" was not a factor in this study. This study was not examining god's will or whether "god" answers prayer. It had nothing to do with god directly. Whether god exists or not, some people do pray. The study examined any possible effects of prayer (no assumption beyond that).

 

Good observation. The definition of prayer and it's parameters are something, scientifically, worth reevaluating and possibly retesting. I doubt the results would be different, but that is just my prediction.

One minor point on the will of God: IMO science normally assumes that God will keep his invisible fingers off the instruments during the experiments or that God will at least behave in a predictable way like a force of nature. How much sense does it make to implicitly assume these things about God while you are supposedly testing prayer which according to Christians requires God's willing participation? We might hope to discover ESP-powered healing powers in an experiment like this, but we should not expect to discover God-powered healing powers unless God behaved like a force of nature with no free will during the experiment (i.e. a trained poodle jumping through hoops for the scientists).

 

The experiment implicitly assumes that God's will is not a factor or that God's will is a random variable. Neither of those assumptions applies to Christian prayer IMO.

I agree that those assumptions don't apply to the full Chrstian notion of prayer. My only point is that, from a purely scientific stand point, this study makes NO assumption whatsoever about god or the will of god. Your point is how Christians will dismiss the results, and perhaps rightfully so. We can always allow Christians to set the definition and parameters of what they think is effective prayer, then test for any correlation between that and positive outcomes. The question of the effectiveness of prayer and the question of god's will in regard to prayer and how those questions may effect outcomes are one in the same in a religious sense, but not in a scientific sense. Science cannot assume the involvement of the will of being that has no evidence of existence. That's a separate issue. If we attempt to account for the "will of god" in a scientific study, without having knowledge of exactly what god's will is for the patient's ahead of time, then we have introduced a factor that is unpredictable, cannot be measured and observed. We cannot include "the will of god" scientifically and be able to make any scientific sense of the results. It is a non-falsifiable proposition. Without definiting god's will ahead of time, Christians will always interpret "the will of god" after the fact to be whatever the outcome was. This prevents us from making any definitive connection between "god's will in prayer" and outcomes. Attempting to account for god's will would be unscientific.