That's great that you found a medication that works. Really, I mean that. I'm a big fan of "whatever works" when it comes to mental health -- although there are some extremely unethical goings on with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA, readily spelled out in this brief piece. I especially like that the FDA man has a fundamental misunderstanding of basic statistics -- and then said it was basic statistics. Facepalm!

Data are data, and anecdotes are anecdotes. And with anecdotes, there is a distinct lack of control over extraneous variables.

Also, at the end of the report, and in the companion piece, they state explicitly that you should not stop taking your anti-depressants.

I encourage you to look further into this story and the science behind it, rather than dismissing it simply because it doesn't match your experience.

>> ^DuoJet:

This is total, f cking, bullsh t. I tried a number of different medications before I found the right one for me. Some of the medications I tried did nothing, some caused unwanted side effects, only one got me where I wanted to be.
For me the difference has not been modest, but life-changing.
Friends have described the similar experiences.
Do not stop taking your anti-depressants based on this report.

i agree with everything you just said, but i think you might be over estimating how much of it is science.
it's a great deal business. at least in the US. where medicine is mostly for profit. for huge huge profits.
medical RESEARCH is in fact, science. and i have faith in it. the dispensing of medicine is however, a business.

i'm saying this as someone who has degrees in health science fields. spent 8 years as a health care professional. spent 1/3 of that time doing administrative work. and now owns a business as a CAM practitioner.... which btw, is also a good bit business.

i'd also like to stick up for alternative medicine here.
a good deal of it is bullshit. any results are simply the placebo effect. but i don't think we should discount the placebo effect. it's an amazing mechanism. if you feel less depressed because someone hit you with a tuning fork and you didn't have to take any pills or go to a counselor, then okay. that's awesome. i still think you probably need counseling, but whatever. i also think you should take a good hard look at your diet and how much exercise you're doing. but how much does it cost in the US to go to a counselor, go to a doctor, get your anti-depressants and have a nutritionist and a phsyical trainer help you learn how to excercise and eat right? it's probably cheaper to pay someone $80 to hit you with that tuning fork and convince yourself it's going to work.

I make a decent living practicing complementary health care. but i don't tell anyone they need to be hit with a tuning fork or have someone throw energy beams out of their hands at them. i tell people they need to stretch, and i teach them how. i tell people they need to sleep properly, and i help them do it. i tell people they need to find an effective way to deal with stress, and i give them that. i tell people they need to find a form of exercise that's right for their bodies and lifestyles, and i help them find it. a lot of people just need someone to trust and someone to talk to. and that's why they call me a "therapist". i never tell people to go against their doctor's orders. i never tell anyone to stop taking their medicine or not to be vaccinated. and that's why what i do is COMPLEMENTARY.

we're too quick to dismiss a different approach when it comes to health care.
the same people are also very quick to be able to recognize the problems with our for profit health care systems when it comes to political discussions. the profit motive hasn't just tainted medicine in terms of disparity. it's tainted it in terms of effectiveness. this is where a holistic approach is good. it's not effect to only treat the symptom. if someone is overweight, has high blood pressure, their stress is out of control and they have diabetes. prescribing them pills, while necessary in the short term, is not at all where the "care" should end. i know doctors will also tell their patients to eat right and exercise but they do not teach them how to do it. because for profit health care doesn't think that is profitable. a for profit system does not want you healthy.

soooo... the market has opened up. if the way we practice medicine and viewed health in this country was working, people wouldn't pay to get hit with tuning forks. oh and half of this is a problem with our education system.
>> ^dag:

^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).
Bill Maher is not a kook.

No true Scotsman.

It really shouldn't matter. Iowa is a placebo, a self fulfilling prophecy. Only Ron Paul is too large a pill to swallow. If people don't believe its significant it won't be.

@SDGundamX

On the So-Called Benifits of Religious Belief

First, I'm going to assume that you simply googled "religion+health+studies" or stg like that, and did not read before posting; frankly, I don't blame you. I can only hope you are not as intellectually (and downright) dishonest as the second link you posted: the very first study cited is completely misinterpreted; basically, since kissing multiple partners can increase probability of meningococcal disease, and strict religious tradition would prevent that, religion prevents meningococcal disease. Yeah, really strong science in favour of faith right there. Some of the studies cited actually prove the opposite of what the site is peddling, but they excuse this by accusing the meddling of "Jews and Buddhists" in the prayer groups. I'm actually surprised at some of the studies the website cites, one of which concludes that "Certain forms of religiousness may increase the risk of death." Some of the studies make no mention of religion whatsoever. I could go on, but the point is made.

As for the studies - and they exist - that show positive correlation between health and religion, they concern only the social benefits of religion as community*. The so-called "New Atheists" are the first to point out this positive role, although the uniting and socially reinforcing factor of religion is the same force that fosters and reinforces hate, prejudice and discrimination against the self (guilt) and the "Other" (non-members of the ingroup, "heathens", gays, blacks, "Westerners", you name it). When people use the socially unifying and reinforcing benefits of religious organisations to defend religious beliefs, a certain comparison quickly comes to mind, which Godwin's law prohibits me from making...

As for faith itself, a recent study suggests that it can actually have negative effects on health, because of the stress and guilt believers put upon themselves when prayed for (link). Regardless, even if a positive placebo effect could/can be attributed to faith/rel. belief, it does not make it any less idiotic or objectionable than the belief in homeopathy or vaudou.
_{(if interested in what I think of the "faith is comforting" argument, pm me, I'm filling this thread enough as is)}

Your "two-sides of same coin" analogy fails entirely: telling a believer they're delusional is not denying their perception of their own happiness. A child happy at the prospect of Santa delivering presents is delusional, but truly happy. The idea that there is the same amount of evidence against and for religious belief is pure ludicrous. The Abrahamic God (let's not bring in the thousand and one others for now) has been logically disproven, even before el Jeebs showed up with his promise of hellfire. There is also substantial evidence that he is man-made, as are the book(s) describing him, which are full of inconsistencies (and outright fallacies) themselves.

Your comment about John Smith suggests that the only evidence that could convict a fraudster is confession; good thing you aren't a judge! Seriously though, your doubt probably stems from your lack of acquaintance with the evidence. You can start by reading his brief biography on Wikipedia; his con trick of "glass-seeing" (looking at shiny stones in a hat and pretending to see the location of treasure), for which he was arrested several times, is eerily familiar to the birth of the Book of Mormon (looking into a hat and "transcribing" gold plates that probably did not exist). He even had to change a passage after losing some pages of the transcript He received a divine revelation that the exact pages of the transcript that he lost needed to be changed, and that God had foreseen the loss of those papers (link).

The further one goes back in history, the harder it is to get historical evidence against religious beliefs, but there are always logical arguments that count as evidence as well (in arguing the idiocy of certain beliefs). Since my Santa analogy above seems not to have appealed to you, here's a different one. Imagine Kate were to have said "I do not believe in witchcraft/vampires because I'm not an idiot." Audience response? "Duh!" or stg similar. And yet there is the same amount of evidence for witches and vampires as there is for deities and afterlife**. The only difference between these three once highly common delusions is that one of them persists, even demanding respect, when it deserves at best critical scrutiny, at worst nothing but scorn.


<sub>*(and sometimes those benefits stemming from certain rules, like no alcohol/extra-marital sex etc... still nothing to do with belief.)

**Actually, there is relatively more evidence in favour of vampirism than of deities and afterlife</sub>


tl;dr: faith/rel. belief has no health benefits (check sources b4 posting); argument of religion's social role is double-edged; delusions are still delusions if they make you happy (try drugs); Joseph Smith Jr was a (convicted) fraud; idiotic beliefs are still idiotic when shared by the majority, just more socially unacceptable to mock.

>> ^SDGundamX:


See my answer to @BicycleRepairMan--what people accept as evidence in this matter and how much evidence is required for people to believe (or not believe) in a religion varies from person to person. Further complicating matters is that belief is not binary--it's a very wide continuum that includes people who aren't sure but practice the religion anyway.
My point about the New Atheists is that they feel the evidence against religion is sufficient. They are entitled to that opinion--but at the end of the day it is only an opinion. They should be free to express that opinion and tell people their reasons why they came to that conclusion. But they shouldn't pretend that their opinion is "fact" or belittle those who haven't come to the same conclusion.
About the "faith improving lives" bit--there is a fair bit of empirical evidence for the benefits of religious faith (in terms of both physical and psychological health: see here and here for more info) so I can't see how you can argue it is "delusional." Unless you meant that religion isn't the only way to obtain the same benefits, in which case I absolutely agree. But I find an interesting parallel in your thinking the New Atheists can tell a religious person that he/she is delusional if that religious person believes religion has a positive effect on their life with Christians who claim that atheists think they are happy but in reality suffering because they aren't one with Christ. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me.
I'm glad I amused you with my reference to Scientology. But this is a very rare case where we have a "smoking gun" so to speak. While I agree with you that there is a some suspicious stuff going on with Mormonism (how some passages in the Book of Mormon are very similar to other books available at the time John Smith lived), I'm unaware of any hard evidence that John Smith actually admitted to making it all up. Again with Mormonism, we're back to people having to personally decide for themselves what to believe (and all the issues that entails). [...]

What Netrunner said. Watching this video was frustrating because I was waiting for her to call him out on that bullshit. He may as well have admitted that religion is the utlimate placebo, an imaginary pacifier for our terrified little ape brains. What a moron.

Don't stop believing in fairies or they cease to exist.

>> ^direpickle:

>> ^Stormsinger:
I like Placebo, but somebody needs to let them know there -are- instruments other than guitars.

Like... those guitars that are, like, double guitars?


Oh yeah, then they could have EIGHT playing at once! LOL

>> ^Stormsinger:

I like Placebo, but somebody needs to let them know there -are- instruments other than guitars.


Like... those guitars that are, like, double guitars?

I like Placebo, but somebody needs to let them know there -are- instruments other than guitars.

Actually you can in large groups. A statistically significant difference in outcomes between a spiritual group and a non-spiritual group would infer that spiritual influences were affecting the issue in question.>> ^shinyblurry:

You can't test for spiritual influences.
>> ^lampishthing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
Sigh...>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".

>> ^shinyblurry:

You can't test for spiritual influences.
>> ^lampishthing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
Sigh...>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".




That's right. Because they don't exist! Isn't that interesting.

You can't test for spiritual influences.

>> ^lampishthing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
Sigh...>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

Sigh...>> ^shinyblurry:

This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".

4 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by Deano.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Pixies-and-Placebo-Where-Is-My-Mind-Live