Oh man, talk about tone deaf to the criticisms of religion!

I suspect that quote is going to be spliced into many, many anti-religion videos.

ooooooh, the irony. @_@

where's alanis when you need her?

My imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend. Now lets fight over it.

This...this is some precious stuff right here. Straight to the quote mining folder you go, Father Morris!

That lady actually hit it on the head. "You need an outlet...".

I guess if you cut up any Fox report to small enough sound bites you can find some truth.

*cough* Hypocrite *cough*

I want to know if there was a group in this study that talked to a person instead of someone imaginary. Did that group also show improvements?

Also, did praying actually stop the abusive relationships or did it just make the victims feel better about being punched?

Those studies are not gonna show feedback from god? or divine intervention? Really father??? Oh my!
no study EVER is going to show any such thing, because it is not fucking real except in your head!

Article about the study on LiveScience. (@Fusionaut: The article partially answers your question.) Definitely worth a read as it tends to present a balanced view. I would be interested in reading the original paper to see the methodology used in more detail.

oooo! Thank you!>> ^SDGundamX:

Article about the study on LiveScience. (@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://fusionaut.videosift.com" title="member since September 9th, 2008" class="profilelink"><strong style="color:#00ffbf">Fusionaut: The article partially answers your question.) Definitely worth a read as it tends to present a balanced view. I would be interested in reading the original paper to see the methodology used in more detail.

I like how religious people can never decide if God intervenes or not.

>> ^RedSky:

I like how religious people can never decide if God intervenes or not.


Well, we all know he doesn't! That would negate free will!

You just need to read the Great Bible he gave us to make our decisions. I'm going to go take my lithium and read "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Toodaloo!

/Yes, it's actually "tout a l'heure", us silly Americans.

YOU DONT KNOW WHAT MY JESUS TASTES LIKE !

"There's going to be divine assistance"

People who think magically scare the shit out of me.

This vid didn't get a lot of votes, but it completely connects the Religious/FOX News/Corporate complex together in a pretty intuitive way:
http://videosift.com/video/RSA-Animate-Smile-or-Die-the-hazards-of-positive-thinking

I remember my mother told me this once. Some people just need to pray and to believe in something. The whole "easing of the mind" diatribe because they feel powerless and need to feel in control by letting some outward being comfort them. But, it's in my opinion that these people just haven't accepted reality - of what consciousness is, who they are, the modern world, government, war, space, science. If they could just accept reality for what it really is then maybe they wouldn't need a God, christ or religion. They'd have to find beauty in the chaos and accept it or at least ponder it.

I feel like these types are the ones most afraid of psychedelics. Like they think they will see demons and become possessed - they believe in this shit; and maybe they will because of the amount of guilt their religions place upon them or maybe as a strange self-fulfilling prophecy.

I pray maybe twice a year - and it's called either mushrooms or LSD and though those experiences aren't always about feeling "easiness" they do help me accept reality for what it is. And it's always mostly an amazing time ; at least only the good times stick with me. I think American culture needs to embrace moderate use of psychedelics - it'd probably help out the fucked up ways people think in this country.

So... the benefit is either self derived - placebo effect. Or delivered by god.
Hypothesis: If delivered by god, then, praying to an imaginary friend is 'silly'.

If you're going to use research to back up your religion. Lets test it further.

Four groups with an illness receive no treatment aside from ardent daily prayer.
- one group prays to God
- one group prays to Buddha (to prove if it's any god or just your god)
- one group prays to Chuck Norris (to prove if it's placebo or God)
- one group does not pray at all.

If all four groups are the same then the research is bull shit.
If there is no significant deviation between the 3 groups praying, then you can run tell that!

Is there really no one willing to fund a post graduate student to do a study to put this shit to bed once and for all?

Research Limitation: up front you agree not to say "God is Mysterious" if you don't like the results.

@mgittle
@shagen454
@raverman

I think prayer may have more benefits than you guys admit. And I do think prayers can affect reality, just not in the way you guys are describing.

Richard Wiseman did a 10-year study of luck that found that lucky people did indeed have better things happen to them. From the article:

Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prohesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I'm not aware of any studies that have investigated prayer in a similar manner, but probably people who believe prayer works benefit from almost the same exact effects. Also, if such a study were conducted and such evidence were found, it wouldn't necessarily disprove the tangible effects of prayer as a supernatural phenomenon but it would strongly suggest there are alternative explanations.

Also, @raverman, I don't think your study would be very convincing to most people because no religions I know of describe prayer as a "wish machine." Most religious people would say that just because someone prays for something doesn't mean it will automatically or always be answered. Some would go so far as to say if the prayer isn't answered then clearly the answer is "no." This makes scientific investigation in the form your describing nigh impossible. At science's core is the idea that there are rules to how the phenomenom being studied work and that through observation we can observe these rules. While the effects of arbitrary decisions (i.e. someone who got prayed for gets better) can be observed, it is probably impossible to figure out how those decisions were made through observation only and without asking the decider directly.

our concept of god is really just a projection of the self. prayer is merely a self-wish to a projection of the self.

>> ^raverman:

So... the benefit is either self derived - placebo effect. Or delivered by god.
Hypothesis: If delivered by god, then, praying to an imaginary friend is 'silly'.
If you're going to use research to back up your religion. Lets test it further.
Four groups with an illness receive no treatment aside from ardent daily prayer.
- one group prays to God
- one group prays to Buddha (to prove if it's any god or just your god)
- one group prays to Chuck Norris (to prove if it's placebo or God)
- one group does not pray at all.
If all four groups are the same then the research is bull shit.
If there is no significant deviation between the 3 groups praying, then you can run tell that!
Is there really no one willing to fund a post graduate student to do a study to put this shit to bed once and for all?
Research Limitation: up front you agree not to say "God is Mysterious" if you don't like the results.


Unfortunately, one of these studies will not occur in the modern world. You see, us scientists(read: doctors) have these rules called "ethics" which do not allow us to withhold an effective treatment in the name of a research study.

>> ^SDGundamX:
I don't think your study would be very convincing to most people because no religions I know of describe prayer as a "wish machine." Most religious people would say that just because someone prays for something doesn't mean it will automatically or always be answered. Some would go so far as to say if the prayer isn't answered then clearly the answer is "no." This makes scientific investigation in the form your describing nigh impossible. At science's core is the idea that there are rules to how the phenomenom being studied work and that through observation we can observe these rules. While the effects of arbitrary decisions (i.e. someone who got prayed for gets better) can be observed, it is probably impossible to figure out how those decisions were made through observation only and without asking the decider directly.


Then why does he suggest that "if God DOES exist the benefits of prayer would be even greater?" It sounds to me like they have a fairly specific hypothesis about what the existence of God would imply about the physical world. Besides, I think Raverman's little caveat at the end was hinting that he was expecting this sort of response. The frustration is that somehow they get to use science to support their views, but never can it undermine them.

"this is useful information & reaffirms things I believe-BUT ONLY TALK TO GOD OR YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!"

Anyone notice the wild assortment of stories that they plug at the end?
I thought for a second it was going to go into Monty Python territory,...

"... also coming up, a dog who married a beaver; we have the exclusive wedding pictures. And also coming up in a moment, can bonzai trees help us communicate with the dead?... Professor John Buttersworth of Jarvis Christian College will help us look at the facts."

Since when did FOX start keeping partisan news clerics on staff? His mouth is moving, but no one is home. Here is another unintentionally self defeating argument from this moron's wiki page.

"Belief only makes sense if it is based on truth." -Father Morris, Fox News Head Cleric

Really? Faith requires evidence now? I could not have asked for a better Saturnelia gift. Thanks Father M!

>> ^BoneRemake:

NEITHER HAVE YOU TASTED MY JESUS !

Actually GundamX, there was a study that produced evidence that PRAYING for hospital patients can make illnesses worse and lead to significant post-operative complications. Here's a news story on it:

http://news.scotsman.com/health/Health-warning-Praying-for-the.2764265.jp

@bmacs27 That's his interpretation, but one that is difficult to prove wrong. The only way to empirically test it would be to go back in time and try both ways (praying and not praying) and recording the results. If we could do that the case would be settled, I suppose.

@criticalthud That's actually many sects of Buddhism's view.

@dystopianfuturetoday I've read the study. That article you cited is incredibly misleading. The researchers involved in the study say the result regarding complications is likely a chance finding due to the numbers (59% prayed for getting complications and 51% un-prayed for getting complications) being so close. In other words, in a repeated study with a larger sample size they expected it to be even. See the NY Times article as a reference.

One possibility the researchers cited is that people who've been told strangers are praying for them think maybe their condition might be worse than the doctors are telling them (thus leading them to freak out a bit and impede their own recovery). That wouldn't be evidence of prayer causing damage, though (a conclusion which by the way actually implicitly suggests prayer works--just not in the manner people think), and the researchers specifically stated (see the NY Times article) that you can't use the results to draw any conclusions about people who ask to be prayed for or prayer offered among family members and friends since the study was only concerned with praying for strangers.

And finally, that study treats prayer as if it is a "wish machine" (see my comments to raverman). It starts with the assumption that everyone who gets prayed for has their prayer answered in the affirmative and in exactly the way they phrase it--which isn't how any of the major religions defines prayer, as far as I know.

It would be really interesting to search through the results of that study and look at the outliers, in my opinion. Were there differences in the number of people who made unexpected recoveries in the groups? How about the opposite--unexpected deaths? I don't know if they kept such information. But even if they did I don't see how they could link these things to supernatural effects one way or the other. The way the study is designed, there doesn't seem to be a way to separate supernatural effects from chance natural effects.

Just to make it clear, I'm not a theist in any way, shape, or form. I'm just pointing out the difficulties in studying supposedly supernatural events "scientifically." I personally don't think either side can prove their case using science although that certainly hasn't stopped people from trying. My view on prayer is that it could help (people feel better knowing someone is praying for them), it could do nothing, or it could be harmful (parents decide not to take their child to the doctor and leave it in "God's hands")... it really depends on the circumstances. However, I think that most of the time for the overwhelming majority of people in the world, prayer is beneficial, for probably the same reasons that Wiseman (see previous comment) found for people who feel they are lucky. That doesn't mean prayer has a supernatural basis. But it also does suggest that prayer is neither pointless nor meaningless.

@dystopianfuture ie: god as the projection of the self
krishnamurti as well - it just makes sense. indeed, our "version" of jesus is blond/blue eyed Caucasian. Most of the bible is about tribal norms and law. A simple question to any bible thumper is: which is more likely - god created us in HIS image, or we created him in OURS? I think, given the laws of probability, proportionality of the universe, and simple inductive reasoning, the answer is pretty clear.
We create a god, endow him with our "virtues", proclaim our godliness and our wisdom, and then pretextually justify just about any powerhungry, disgusting action we commit.

@SDGGundam
indeed, it is certainly hard to quantify that which remains un-quantifiable. "energy" in so many respects is something we really are just beginning to understand.

after the new year, i'm becoming a full member of this site. principally because some of the best, most thoughtful discussion on the net seems to take place here. I appreciate all of you. happy holidaze.