You seem to be doing a lot of pretending. Mr. Trancecoach....>> ^Trancecoach:

I'm going to pretend that made sense to me.
>> ^westy:
>> ^Trancecoach:
Placebo effect on mice, Westy?
You must be joking!
Lolololol
>> ^westy:
>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

I call bullshit
as sumone said the only time praying helps is when u tell sumone that people are giving a shit about them and u end up with posative phycalogical effects , and placebo effect.
the same thing would happen if u told an ill person that people were thinking about them and wanted them to get better.

as for this video WTF BBQ lol


I stoped talking about mice and the study after i typed "I call Bull shit"
you took what i said out of context , i was restating the realty of things on humans and just highlighting what sumone else had alredy said , the fact that you were talking about mice is not evan relivent.
Fact is there have been so manny studies and its allso the sort of thing that if it worked you would have plenty of evidence evan before you did a study.

I'm going to pretend that made sense to me.

>> ^westy:

>> ^Trancecoach:
Placebo effect on mice, Westy?
You must be joking!
Lolololol
>> ^westy:
>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

I call bullshit
as sumone said the only time praying helps is when u tell sumone that people are giving a shit about them and u end up with posative phycalogical effects , and placebo effect.
the same thing would happen if u told an ill person that people were thinking about them and wanted them to get better.

as for this video WTF BBQ lol


I stoped talking about mice and the study after i typed "I call Bull shit"
you took what i said out of context , i was restating the realty of things on humans and just highlighting what sumone else had alredy said , the fact that you were talking about mice is not evan relivent.
Fact is there have been so manny studies and its allso the sort of thing that if it worked you would have plenty of evidence evan before you did a study.

>> ^Trancecoach:

Placebo effect on mice, Westy?
You must be joking!
Lolololol
>> ^westy:
>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

I call bullshit
as sumone said the only time praying helps is when u tell sumone that people are giving a shit about them and u end up with posative phycalogical effects , and placebo effect.
the same thing would happen if u told an ill person that people were thinking about them and wanted them to get better.

as for this video WTF BBQ lol



I stoped talking about mice and the study after i typed "I call Bull shit"

you took what i said out of context , i was restating the realty of things on humans and just highlighting what sumone else had alredy said , the fact that you were talking about mice is not evan relivent.

Fact is there have been so manny studies and its allso the sort of thing that if it worked you would have plenty of evidence evan before you did a study.

Yeah, if the mice believe that "medicine" is going to help them, then it will work.....

What I want to know is how they convinced the mice they were sick to begin with in order for the placebo affect to work.

>> ^Trancecoach:

Placebo effect on mice, Westy?
You must be joking!
Lolololol
>> ^westy:
>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

I call bullshit
as sumone said the only time praying helps is when u tell sumone that people are giving a shit about them and u end up with posative phycalogical effects , and placebo effect.
the same thing would happen if u told an ill person that people were thinking about them and wanted them to get better.

as for this video WTF BBQ lol

Grad, Bernard. "Paranormal Healing and Life Energy." American Society for Psychical Research Newsletter 7 (1981).

——. "Some Biological Effects of the 'Laying on of Hands': A Review of Experiments with Animals and Plants." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 59 (1965).

——. "A Telekinetic Effect on Plant Growth." International Journal of Parapsychology 3 (1961); 5 (1963).

Grad, Bernard, Remi J. Cadoret, and G. I. Paul. "The Influence of an Unorthodox Method of Treatment on Wound Healing in Mice." International Journal of Parapsychology 3, no. 2 (1961).


>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

Link to study, please?

Agreed. Link please.>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

Link to study, please?

Placebo effect on mice, Westy?
You must be joking!
Lolololol

>> ^westy:

>> ^Trancecoach:
So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

I call bullshit
as sumone said the only time praying helps is when u tell sumone that people are giving a shit about them and u end up with posative phycalogical effects , and placebo effect.
the same thing would happen if u told an ill person that people were thinking about them and wanted them to get better.

as for this video WTF BBQ lol

>> ^Trancecoach:

So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).


Link to study, please?

>> ^Trancecoach:

So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).
Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.
That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).


I call bullshit

as sumone said the only time praying helps is when u tell sumone that people are giving a shit about them and u end up with posative phycalogical effects , and placebo effect.

the same thing would happen if u told an ill person that people were thinking about them and wanted them to get better.


as for this video WTF BBQ lol

So there's actually been some hard data collected on the effects of prayer on healing. The effects are extremely modest (albeit statistically significant).

Dr. Bernard Grad worked with a self-proclaimed healer, Oskar Estabany, and observed that Estebany could "psychically" (i.e., prayer-at-a-distance) inhibit the damage caused by saline to red blood cells, thereby decreasing the healing time of wounds in mice, as compared to a control group of mice for whose healing was not prayed.

That said, I think this family needs to get the hint... unless of course the man's right, and the woman's foot IS all she has (and judging by her family, he might be right).

Okay ladies, the cleric said "Many women who do not dress modestly, lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes."

He clearly means it's sex with chaste young men that causes the earthquakes.

When you organize a day of that, I suspect even Christian "clerics" will start a fuss about it.

Chaste young men will praise God if you do it, though.

>> ^CreamKreatorAlong with handicapped, mentally ill, anybody really who can't be a good capitalist and take care of them selves without any help from anybody.

First of all, it is the noobiest of noob mistakes to say that capitalists can't be charitable. Charity can ONLY occur from capitalist money because it is a voluntary relinquishment by definition. Second, the only systems in which people become that destitute on average are socialist systems where production is punished and idleness is rewarded until there is very little productivity to actually be divided. Even I might feign illness and take from the pot you're so eager to fill for me. What are you going to do to stop people from doing that? Who is this grand assessor of value of which you speak?

I know, let's copy Finland, people who live much more modestly, spend 1% what we do on national defense, and don't have reserve currency priveleges, a truly insane example of socialism that could "work for us".

Where does that lead us? Education is the next victim. No more decent public schools, everything is privatized, that's capitalism!

Good, the whole problem with public schools is that it is a complex service financed on forcible appropriations. Normal businesses fear losing customers. These people don't. I've read articles of California superintendents embezzling thousands and then keep their pensions when they get out of prison. That's just the worst of the worst. The union collusion and retained voting rights has made it almost impossible to get teachers to eliminate themselves or take pay cuts. People are forced to pay their salaries and moving away from a good job is an uncertain substitute for true choice. Vouchers would be a huge step forward because it puts the spending power with the consumer instead of the provider. Teachers and those who hire them would suddenly fear losing business to other schools and would no longer be able to suck with impunity.

Capitalism doesn't work. Communism didn't work. Even pure socialism won't work. Any political ideology won't work by itself. They need to be mixed up, democratic capitalist socialism would be somewhere closer to perfect society.


Capitalism isn't a system of government, it's simply a term referring to the percentage of earnings controlled by earners. Socialism is the percentage of earnings controlled by non-earners. Nobody who advocates capitalism truly believes in taxless anarchy without courts or national defense. What we don't want is the government being used as a conduit to incentivize one legal behavior over another or benefit one business at the expense of another. You and everyone on this forum continue to vote for obvious corporatists, not me.

Then you throw around the term "democracy," big red flag for anyone who truly understands government. Democracy is mob rule. Clearly, some things should not be decided on a majority vote. That's why we are a REPUBLIC with a paper dictator called a constitution. The more we keep disobeying it, the more miserable we're going to become.

Or you can take the one thing out of that equation that causes pain and suffering more than any idea in the history of man: Money.



That's nonsense. Money is a commonly accepted medium of exchange to defeat the inefficiency of barter. It is, in essence, a product that is a placeholder for other products. That was truer when we were on gold than now, but still... Are you saying you don't want people to make stuff and trade with each other? Stop watching TV and read "Economics in One Lesson." It's only $10 on amazon.

All you people do is post videos of pissed off protesters who take positions without understanding them. Weaksauce.

I hate to say this, but apparently somebody has to.

When it comes to cunts and pricks, dicks and assholes, flesh eating wounds...

When it comes to boobs and breasts and Borneo tribesmen with their balls in wheelbarrows...

When it comes to that certain smell that you know ain't right but you do it anyway....

Alas, let's not forget the simple fact that you were so desperate for love that you fucked somebody ugly.

I personally consider it an honor, if not a duty, that my good friend...Bea...take the bull by its horn.

And show them all....

And if I may digress....

You fuckwad "Modest Mouse" quoters want to know what the fuck is going on?

Bukowski took something that was ugly and painful...and made it something beautiful.

Just like Bea.

I get what you're saying, but I still think what he's proposing necessarily forces people to make value judgments that are beyond science. While science can find evidence of empathy in the brain it can't tell us whether such empathy is necessarily good or bad. Say there is a society that is more "empathetic" than another society and that first society is more materially well off. You can't jump to the conclusion that empathy is good for survival, because there are hundreds of variables that affect the wealth of a nation and furthermore correlation does not necessarily mean causation. It could very well be the case that being materially well off creates a more empathetic society (or creates the conditions that allow such a society to arise). Or it could just be a total fluke.

That's what I found unclear in his speech--how exactly is science making value judgments? Science is providing facts about the world, but it still requires human consciousness to interpret those facts in a meaningful way. And people will interpret the facts differently and this will lead to conflict (global warming, the various string theories, etc.). How that conflict is resolved (whether with words or guns, for instance) will depend on a lot of things--including the values of those participating in the conflict. So it seems like a Catch-22 to me. You're using science to try to come up with value judgments about things, but in order to do that you have to make value judgments about the data you've collected. You're right back where you started.

Changing topics a bit here, I find his argument about the Muslim dress code frivolous. He is specifically cherry-picking by using Taliban-style extremely fundamentalist Islam as representative of all Islamic beliefs. It is true that certain Islamic governments have created laws to enforce a power divide between men and women but it is equally true that not all Muslims share this view and that Islamic countries vary widely in what is considered appropriate dress. The Koran itself admonishes both men and women to be modest in their dress and actions. Obviously certain Islamic scholars have ignored the "men" part and focused on the women in order to pursue their own agendas and strengthen their own power. Sam Harris blames religion for this but I blame human nature. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about religion, a political ideology, law, or any other organized system--there will be humans in the world who will attempt to twist and exploit it to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of those they don't care about. The crusade against religion that people like Dawkins and Harris are waging is, in my opinion, a waste of time. If you really want to change the world, find a way to change fundamental human nature.

Ironically, I believe this is the true purpose of religion--to encourage us to change our base desires or harness them for use towards a greater good. For me, whether a God or gods actually exist is irrelevant. If religion can help people to overcome their own innate self-destructive or selfish tendencies and work together for the good of humankind, then it is a useful tool. But all tools can equally be used as weapons. That doesn't mean you get rid of the tool, though. The problems of religion that both Harris and Dawkins talk about aren't problems with religion per se but with how certain people have interpreted religion in ways that are self-serving. I don't think religion needs to be destroyed. But I do agree with Sam Harris that we need to be vigilant against those who would use religion--or any other organized system for that matter--in order to pursue their own ends, and we need to be willing to call a spade a spade and not keep silent for fear of being considered ethnocentric. That's why I have no problem criticizing the Taliban's interpretation of the Koran and Islamic law. It seems to me to be a thinly veiled grab for power and dominance that uses religion as its cover. I could say the same thing about the drive to ban gay marriages in the U.S. or a host of other issues. My point is that these things are not representative of religions as a whole but instead are examples of discrete individuals (mis-)using religions to further their own agendas.

Sorry for writing so much. Took me a while to sort out all my thoughts on the matter. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

>> ^mgittle:


I don't think it's about majority vs. minority happiness the way you make it sound. It's not 51% vs. 49%. If you accept his argument at the end regarding the father killing his gay child out of "love", then you must accept that there exists a type of love/empathy that is healthy for a vast majority of a population.
For example, in Turkish, there are two words for love. One is the type of love one feels for their parents, siblings, close friends/community. The other is more like passion/infatuation and would never be used for family/friends. We lack this basic word-based distinction in English, so the idea of love often gets strangely twisted between the multiple types and sometimes requires convoluted explanations of one's feelings. This distinction is important because I believe the former type requires empathy to feel, and the latter type is more instinctual and does not require empathy.
Therefore, if you can argue that empathy is a good survival trait because it creates a stronger nation/culture/etc, then there must be scientific evidence for empathy in the brain and evidence that certain individuals lack empathetic brains for whatever reason.
I don't think he's arguing that "good for the majority = good for everyone" is something that works 100% of the time. Clearly, personal freedom is important, but when personal freedom/morality encroaches on the freedoms of others (such as his argument that culture forces "voluntary" body covering, or the aforementioned father-killing-gay-son argument) it is no longer a good thing for anyone involved.

http://videosift.com/video/Bukowski-Modest-Mouse-Music-Video