It is clear that uncritical faith, or blind belief in anything without question is dangerous to society. It is and has been the source of violence and death ranging from the Holocaust to the Crusades.
But these beliefs are almost always about what happens to you after death. It would seem that there is no greater fear than simply ceasing to exist once you die. I admit, the idea is frightening to me. It is also not comforting at all to think that a loved one is not going somewhere special to spend eternity.
This is part of the reason why religious faith is so popular I believe. It is soothing and peaceful to think of these souls ascending to a paradise. On the flip side, some people take solace in believing that those who have wronged them will have their souls eternally tortured.
In response to my post, the benefits of atheism, Paul wrote:
I watched my mom die last February. She was basically unresponsive for a day or so. When I called our pastor he came over and talked and prayed with my mom. She perked up. After that she returned to the dying process Tell me in that incident there is no God.
You talked about no evidence or existence of God or the power of Jesus. Strange you would mention those terms. Talk to people who have experienced the power of Jesus or felt the existence of God. I believe they would speak differently.
Prayer has no measurable effect. My sister had a liver transplant a number of years ago. Many people prayed for that surgery. She’s still here.
You enjoy science. But have you ever stopped to really, really think about science. How did science happen? Who created science? How about God?
A very unfortunate comment. I of course have great sympathy for Paul and his loss, as I would anybody who has to suffer the pain of losing someone they love. But his conclusions are so flawed that I almost feel too guilty to point it out.
But this is when it counts. This is where the split between religion and modern reality originates.
Paul says that he has witnessed two instanced in which prayer had a beneficial effect. This, to an uncritical religious individual such as Paul, is absolute proof of prayer’s beneficial and divine effects. And that is precisely why religious faith is so dangerous. It takes almost NOTHING of any merit to convince these people that something is true. No questioning, no critical thinking, no nothing, just straight up blind belief. Extremely unfortunate.
Paul must be made aware of, one way or another, that there is in fact no truth to his claim.
The first known experiment was conducted by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. In England, every Sunday, Galton knew that enormous hordes of people were in churches praying for the health of the royal family, therefor, there should be some measurable effect on their health on Sundays. He found no such correlation.
In 2006, a much more scientific and reliable study was supported by Rusell Stannard, one of three religious scientists in Britain. He was funded by the Templeton foundation to find out if praying for sick patients improved their health.
The patients were randomly divided into two groups, the control group and the test group. The control group received no prayers and the test group did. To have any test be conclusive or scientific, it needs to be double blind, so neither the patients, the caregivers, or the doctors knew who was being prayed for and who wasn’t. People who were doing the praying were given the first name and the last initial of the people they were supposed to pray for. Dr. Herbert Benson was leading the group, spending $2.4 million and was quoted in a press release, “believing that evidence for the efficacy of intercessory prayer in medicinal settings is mounting”. Nice unbiased researcher!
The team monitored 1802 patients at six hospitals who were receiving identical coronary bypass surgery. The patients were then divided into three groups, group 1 received prayers and didn’t know it, group 2 received no prayers, and group 3 received prayers and were aware of it. Obviously, group 3 tests for psychosomatics, or, the power of the placebo effect.
Three churches were charged with the act of praying. One in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts, and one in Missouri. Every one praying was told to pray “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications”.
And the results? Published in the American Heart Journal in April of 2006, the study concluded that there were no differenced between groups 1 and 2. Of course, there was a difference between group 3 and the other two groups, but it isn’t what you think. People who knew they were being prayed for suffered more complications than those who did not. The experimenters suggested that this was due to ‘performance anxiety’ of those who knew they were being prayed for.
As you can see, Paul continues to argue as someone blind and immune to logic and reality, as most religiously devout people do. There seems to be nothing that can penetrate their schizophrenia because the belief grows to be too strong. If you are used to convincing yourself or being convinced that something is true with no evidence, than it becomes very easy to ignore truths with evidence. These people are lost in their magical worlds where humans can walk on water, omnipotent beings interfere with the lives of some and not others for mysterious reasons, and man was invented by an intelligence less than 10,000 years ago.
Enjoy.