2751. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148591 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 11:09 am

I am arguing against your idea that you can prove any hypothesis by increasing sample size.

You cannot "prove" any hypothesis, and I never said you can. But you can show any effect to be significant since that is only a p-value that you are after, I think you are misrepresenting my point here.

You are wrong about the radioactivity example. You can get quite small counts, and in some cases you can be dealing with pretty small numbers of atoms, and the decay can fall to undetectable in finite time. Infinity is not involved.

Well then state your hypothesis and tell me what the power is, You are doing the experiment, not I.

I am sorry it is really quite absurd to argue that sample size has nothing to do with power.,

(Now I was talking about parametric hypothesis testing, specifically the kind of the form H0: effect = 0, now if you are trying to do other things it may be different, so what is your hypothesis?)

You have one group of, say, 100 people who attempt to match a card (chosen by computer) that someone looks at, by ESP.

I was thinking about a single psychic who claims to have ESP.


'

2752. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148584 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 10:50 am

You are wrong. Look over my radioactivity example

I have explained why that is a different class of problem, because your formula for power doesn't depend on n, you use an asymptotic formula where n--> infinity.

But that has nothing to do with the kind of human scale research we are talking about here, where n cannot be treated as infinity and taken out of the consideration. In these cases, larger n corresponds to higher power. I don't even know what you are trying to argue against, this is first year statistics and it should be obvious for you since you claim to have done graduate level work in statistics,

2753. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148582 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 10:44 am

No. That is not a valid statistical approach. Please read what I have written in the last few posts. You need controls.

No one say it is. All I am saying is if statistical significance is all you are after then this would do. My whole point is there is more to sound statistics than just a p-value!

2754. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148577 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 10:34 am

It seemed to me that you were originally saying that a particular hypothesis could be shown to be significant with a large enough sample. What you seem to be saying now is that if you keep sampling for long enough, you can find an arbitrary hypothesis which would seem to be significant. That isn't the same thing.

I was and am saying that you can show a particular hypothesis to be significant if you have a large enough sample.

But if each run is considered an independent trial, then the two are the same (if you want to be pedantic you can invoke some versions of ergodic theorem but it is hardly necessary for the kind of stuffs in social and life science).But you don't have independent trials in the kind of Markov chain modeling you said you are doing, so in that case they are not the same.

As for ESP, it depends on what you determine to be the criterion for acceptance. If all you require is that the subject should guess more than 50% of the time correct with whatever significance level, that can be done with a large enough, pre decided number of runs, But if you insist the subject has to guess x number of times correctly in a row, then it wouldn't work by increasing the number of runs. There is probability 1 (certain event) for any number of consecutive runs to be successful eventually("the infinite monkey theorem") but the waiting time can be the age of the universe depending on how many consecutive runs you stipulate.

2755. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148572 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 10:12 am

No, this isn't the way statistics is used. You don't say "search for any difference, no matter how small, and keep going until you find it".

I never say that is what you should do, all I am saying is thatif all you care about is statistical significance you can produce significance if you do it

Since you may be doing this inadvertently if you run a bunch of data through SAS or something you should look at other things than just significance even if the test result turns out to be significant, that was all my original point,

If you do it deliberately to mislead people, then at least someone should be able to take you to task, being statistical significant alone doesn't say a lot, all it says is there is a good chance some effect is not zero, but it could be so tiny that it is well within the margin of error of measurements, which can be quite big for the social and life science.

2756. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148565 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 10:01 am

Dr.Benway

A dishonest scientist gathers a mass of info, runs the ANOVAs, and reports on those measures that come up significant without mentioning all the things that weren't significant.

Yeah, but first of all, you don't run Anova's separately because that will magnify the chance of type I error, you instead do some kind of general linear models where all the factors are considered together, in that case all the p-values would be reported on the same report

Secondly, withholding data is actually cheating, and probably illegal. That is not what I am talking about.

2757. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148561 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 9:52 am

Dr.Benway,

here are many ways to lie with statistics. Increasing sample size isn't one of them.

Practically, no, in most circumstances anyway because it is a very expensive way to lie, given the fact that it costs a lot to produce samples in the social sciences, But I was making a point about principle, which is not controversial at all.

I see where steve is coming from, In his line of work he deals with samples which are 1) huge, of the order of 10^23, say and 2) easily controlled and reproducible in the lab. These are not the environment of applied statistics in most human scale research.

In Steve's kind of scenario the formulae are somewhat different as well, For example it wouldn't make sense to compute power in terms of sample size because theoretically, he handles his sample size as "infinite" and use asymptotic formulae where n does not appear.

But in social and medical research n is important, A sample size of 200 and 2000 have very different power.

It is really not so difficult to understand. Bigger sample size increases the power, higher power means more sensitive to small differences between the null and the "actual" distributions, Since the null can almost never capture the true distribution because, among other things, we don't formulate our null hypotheses down to 5 or 6 decimal places in typical social science and life science studies, this small discrepancy can be detected, in principle with an increase in sample size. For cheap experiments where cost is not an issue, like making people read cards 1000 times, it has been used to show things like ESP are statistically significant.

P.S. Your point about rounding up and down being equally likely concerns numerical computations where one has to do a lot of roundings, it is not what I am talking about here.

2758. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148538 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 9:14 am

OK, I also have M.Sc level stats

But let's do it. What is the hypothesis of your example and the power of your test?

EDIT

Just thought of this, in physics you may use an asymptotic formula for power because of the large sample size, so n may not be a meaningful parameter in determining the power in that setting. But in social research, which is what we are talking about here, The sample size would be a couple of hundreds to may be a few thousands at most. You wouldn't find a sample size of 10^23 so most of the asymptotic formulae you use in statistical mechanics type of modeling would not apply.

2759. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148532 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 9:07 am

You can't simply come up with an arbitrary hypothesis and prove it with enough samples. The whole point of statistics is to look for data trends that are actually there.

Well just look it up.

How do you determine what is actually there and what is noise? The hypothesis testing itself doesn't tell you, you have to use other knowledge and heuristics (often knowledge of the specific disciplines) to decide that.

There is no hypothesis testing that can tell you you are over fitting, thus modeling a lot of noise, for example, you may get a huge R^2 with 100 parameters in a regression model and think that you did a good job.

2760. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148525 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 8:54 am

No, it doesn't work like that. You can only detect significant differences if they are really there

No, look up the formula for computing power. I am very sure I am right on this one. You can "prove" ESP to be significant using this trick and I think somebody has actually done it.

Indeed this is standard material in any good first year statistics course. You can find that in text books.

EDIT In statistics text books this is usually under the heading :statistical significance and practical importance.

2761. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148520 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 8:46 am

Steve,

The idea is actually very simple. A statistical hypothesis test is like a microscope which would resolve two overlapping probability distributions, the null and the alternative (let's just stick with a single alternative distribution)

The power of the test is like the resolution power of the microscope. If the power is low, it is difficult to tell the two distributions apart, so you may fail to reject the null even when you should, resulting in type II error. When the power of the test is high, it is sensitive enough to resolve small differences between the null and the alternative hypothesis even when they are very closely overlap.

The power increases as the sample size grows. With a sufficiently large sample size you can detect very minor difference between the null and alternative distribution, leading to the rejection of the null.

Now the null distribution is almost always "wrong" because of truncation errors in representing real numbers. For example, in your null the mean is 7.5, while in fact it is 7.5111. With a powerful enough test you can resolve the difference and get a significant result.

2762. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148513 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 8:32 am

How does altruism in kin groups translate to non kin groups? Members of kin groups have common genes but not in larger groups. Dawkins says it is a "mis-fire". It may turn out to be the only explanation, but it is not the kind of explanation which is so compelling that it would close off other alternative approaches once and for all.

2763. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148510 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 8:25 am

I think it is clearly wrong to say that behaviour that promotes the group over the individual is the opposite of Darwinism as conventionally understood

It may not be opposite, but I find convetional Darwinism has nothing to offer at this level other than providing ad hoc stories of plausibility, evolutionary psychology is like making up stories as one gets along. Sloan Wilson might very well be wrong, but I don't think anyone gets it right either, and certainly not Dawkins and his mematics.

2764. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148508 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 8:20 am

The only section which seems to mention "post humans" is this:

And the title of the piece.

2765. The science of religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread

Comment #148501 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 8:11 am

Oh dear. Another attempt to sneak group selection in. Someone needs to re-read The Extended Phenotype.

I don't think he was trying to sneak in anything, he was quite upfront that group selection was not mainstream. However, I find that very dogmatic to think the Dawkins had spoken the last word on the topic and dismiss the whole idea that way.

In science there shouldn't be any taboo, especially in an area such as the evolutionary role of religion, which standard evolutionary theory does not apply directly. Anything that invoke evolution at the social level necessarily would involve a lot of extrapolations

The idea that there is group selection at the social level is not any more crackpotish than Dawkins' idea of memes, which is taken as gospel truth by many here,

2766. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148491 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 7:53 am

Koreman

It seems the author is not talking about atheism but about 'post humans'. People who believe they are going to be godlike in the next four decades with highly advanced technology, augmented intelligence, implants, uploaded brains, eternal life and so on. Amongst those people there are a few who match the description.

Exactly my though.

2767. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148487 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 7:41 am

Steve,

If you really want to show an effect, you should provide results that are likely to have happened by chance alone less than 1 in 1000 times (p <= 0.001)..

I should also add that even if the study were statistically significant, one has to look at other things such as strength of association and sample size etc in order to conclude that there is a real effect,--though in disciplines like social work they probably wouldn't bother.

It is the nature of hypothesis testing that you can find any effect to be statistically significant with a large enough sample size. For example, you can show that ESP is statistically significant that way.

2768. Fleabytes

Comment #148407 by Bonzai on March 23, 2008 at 12:40 am

Thank you Alan F for the excellent post.

However, I do take issue with one point. You said that Einstein denied being an atheist because of political expediency in deference to the prevailing theistic prejudice of the time. You suggested that he might be a bit like U.S. politicians who conceal their atheism while paying lip service to God in order to get elected.

There is a chance that you could be right, though it would be very out of character for Einstein, who always saw himself as an iconoclast. Moreover, having had openly called the belief in a personal God, including the Judeo Christian God, "infantile" and "childish" I don't think he could have gotten much worse in the eyes of the pious majority by saying he was an atheist, if it was just about renouncing all gods.

From reading Einstein's polemics against "atheism", it is clear that his definition of "atheism" was somewhat different from conventional usage today. It appeared that he used the world "atheism" to mean not simply an absence of theistic belief, but a rigid ideology which saw the universe as just "matter in motion" devoid of mystery and beauty, everything was laid bare by ruthless logic. This kind of "atheism" didn't even have room for "Spinoza's God".

An "atheist", therefore to Einstein was not a just a non believer, but a positive Philistine, a vulgar materialist who was tone deaf to "the music of the spheres".(my paraphrase of E's own words to that effect)

Based on this definition it is easy to understand why Einstein wouldn't want to have anything to do with "atheism".

P.S.In early 20th century Europe, "Atheism" was a political banner often associated with various radical movements, He might be thinking of say, the Marxist-Leninists or the nihilists when he used the label "atheists"

2769. Fleabytes

Comment #148318 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 4:06 pm

Dr. Benway,

.Murky believers are less of a problem than fundamentalists because they simply don't believe much of what their religion teaches. That's not a strong argument in favor of belief, I'm afraid.

I never argue in favour of beliefs, To say something is harmless is not the same as recommending it, I would recommend it only to fundies.

2770. Fleabytes

Comment #148316 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 4:01 pm

All I am arguing is that that Churches have influence.

Well then I don't know what you are arguing against. Certainly I wouldn't disagree with that, it is a truism.

2771. Fleabytes

Comment #148312 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 3:56 pm

religion helps.

So can other things. Pseudoscience, for one.

2772. Fleabytes

Comment #148311 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 3:54 pm

It does have specific content. It has the content put into it by those in the religious organisation you joint

That depends on how seriously you are a joinder. If you are right,--you are making categorical statement here, not I,--why is it that most Catholics in the U.K and the developed countries in general do practice birth control? This is a main doctrine of the Catholic church, not a minor issue.

I didn't say joining the Church would have no effect on anyone, but it is you who argue
categorically that it would have a strong enough effect even on very loose believers, I think your case in not tenable.

Your example of trade union is a good one. I have to join a union and pay union dues for most jobs that I had. But I can't really say what their views are on a lot of issues.

2773. Fleabytes

Comment #148306 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 3:45 pm

We get "evidence" from our dealings and conversations with other people. This evidence can include views that coloured people are inferior (or "not our kind of people"), or that God tells us that what gay people do in bed is naughty.

You don't need religion for that.

2774. Fleabytes

Comment #148303 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 3:40 pm

Whenever anyone offers up a rational about how belief in God influences people and therefore affects their decisions you just ignore the point and say, well people who don't believe in God have the same fallibility too, or that belief in God is not the only motivation for that particular act. Who is arguing that?

No, I am saying a "murky" belief in God in itself doesn't have any specific content,--it depends on what you put in it,-- it doesn't tell you to do good or bad. In a way it is a screen, a vehicle, so it is barking up the wrong tree to say believing in God would make you do a, b and c, it doesn't follow. It also doesn't follow that if you have this one "irrational" belief, you must be irrational consistently, most of us have irrational "beliefs", if not religion then it would be something else.

2775. Fleabytes

Comment #148301 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 3:33 pm

"heavily influenced by a belief in God and what people select from institutions that support that belief in God"

So then it is not just what the book says and the dogmas, but the people actually are active agents in making their own beliefs.

You have a priori belief, you seek some kind of validation by picking and choosing whatever God and religious institutions that conform to your aprori belief,--even I wouldn't put it so strongly,--so really, the God-belief is just a vehicle without wheel and you are your own master,

In the same way, if I am biased against homosexuals I may cite pseudo science in support of my claim that say, homosexuality is a disease. Indeed that was Hitler's excuse to exterminate gays (and Jews too), he used pseudoscience to rationalize his murderous project rather than religion,

I think you are speaking about a general tendency of humans to see what they want to see rather than religion in particular. In theory, Dr.Benway would be correct that evidence based thinking would keep us from falling into this trap, but in reality it happens more subtly, it is often not possible or not feasible to collect all the data and the data themselves may admit different interpretations. I would say that is probably the norm rather than the exception.

2776. Fleabytes

Comment #148292 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 3:15 pm

You can be a chemist and be a murk. A biologist and a murk, but the kind of decisions most people make are directly related to human affairs, and that relates to an understanding of human nature. The bulk of decision making that normal people make is directly influenced by peoples conception of human nature, and that is heavily influence by a belief in God

I disagree. I think your decisions regarding human affairs are by and large influenced by your prior experience with people and practical considerations rather than some abstract theory of human nature. These are mostly evidence based thinking and most of us do that almost instinctively,--of course that is not to say we can't misunderstand or miscalculate.

2777. Fleabytes

Comment #148284 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Dr. Benway,

The invasion of Iraq is just one example of how powerful people who aren't thinking clearly can use fear and God-talk to persuade others to hasty action. We have to break the spell that goes: "He believes in God, so I can trust him."

I am not so sure how much did God talk figure into support of the Iraq war. From what I gathered it was about WMD, "stopping Hitler" and a bit of 9/11 inuendos.

You are right that when communities got freak out they would act in hysteria, but 1) nationalism is more potent than religion in these instances 2) I am not sure about your thesis that a by and large reasonable person who just believes in a God in some ambiguous and general way would become a fanatic because he has a prior, wishy washy belief.

You said in your previous post that the murky believers project themselves into their belief systems, which I think make sense. But if that is the case the religion is just a passive vehicle, if the person becomes a crazy ethnic cleanser, it wouldn't be because of the screen. Something else has to change the movie that was being projected on it.

Finally, I don't think having a belief in God means you are categorically incapable of carrying out evidence based thinking. Indeed most "murky religious people" are rational on most decisions where such thinking is required.

2778. Fleabytes

Comment #148280 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 2:26 pm

This is REAL. This is one of the reasons I think even moderate religion can be a problem. It provides cover for this kind of Murk.

As I explained she was wrong. There had to be a lot of middle of the road Christians supporting same sex right up here based on the polls, otherwise the numbers don't add up.

That means she cannot generalize, It is something peculiar to the U.S., or some parts of U.S., not murky believers in general.

2779. Fleabytes

Comment #148276 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 2:16 pm

I am not talking about phelps, and I am not talking about Canada. In the UK we have Bishops directly trying to influence politicians and the government. They are working to hold back rights in all kinds of ways,

As I explained it didn't work at all and it actually backfired on them pretty badly.

People pick from religious institutions what they feel comfortable with. Of course, on birth control, the Church can't be right. But because they feel gay people are a bit odd, then the Church is clearly right.

I just don't find it convincing. Suppose you are a punk who wants to beat up on some gays I don't think the thought of whether you will get absolved at confession on Sunday would even enter into your calculation.

2780. Fleabytes

Comment #148272 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 2:05 pm

Individual views can be dealt with better if they don't have institutionalised support.

But now you are talking about religious institutions rather than individual believers. It would be like trying to make the point that Catholics all have 10 kids because the Church bans birth control. Then you look around and see your Catholic neighbour has only one child. The error in this reasoning is that most Catholics (in the developed world anyway) don't give a shit to what the Pope says about condoms and pills.

(BTW If faith is truly private there shouldn't be organized churches at all.)

With some exceptions, Churches are against homosexuality in some ways. But I think it is pushing it to say they "cover for" gay bashers except for the likes of Phelps. Moreover, when the bashers themselves are not even religious I don't see how you can pin the blame on Christianity. Machismo cultural norms may have a lot more to do with it,

Religion simply doesn't play that big a role in everyday life in Canada like some of you think, I suspect it is the same way in most of U.K and Europe as well. The U.S. is just a very peculiar outlier for the developed countries and I don't think it should be used as a model.

2781. Fleabytes

Comment #148262 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 1:39 pm

Dr.Benway,

But middle-brow murkies "just know" God doesn't like butt sex. They'll vote for anti-gay policies. But to your face they'll say, "Oh how nice that you and your partner got married!"

I can only speak to my country. Before the same sex marriage vote was passed in parliament the polling result of the public indicated a roughly 50-50 split over for and against. Out of those against more than half said that they actually had no problem with civil unions for gays, they were just hung up on the word "marriage".(Since the bill was passed the support had gone up quite a bit)

On the other hand, if you poll Canadians on their religion I think something like 70% or more(?) say they are Christians. So there must be a lot of "murky Christians" going along with same sex marriage. The Anglican Church of Canada also supports it.

So, I don't think you can generalize.

One should also ask how many non religious people may have a problem with same sex marriage and gays in general. I read of incidents of gay bashing in my city where some yahoos went on a Saturday night with base ball bats to beat up on gays. To my best knowledge none of these people were religiously motivated.

2782. Fleabytes

Comment #148257 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 1:28 pm

TCT

Bunting is talking about something else than the kind of third person reality that can be investigated by science. Her religious belief is a bit like Shakespeare, as Dr. Benway puts it. Hence it is about first person experience and is subjective, not reducible to science any more than you can apply the scientific method to literary criticism.

Hearing Bunting I have the feeling that the supernatural aspects of the religion is not the main part of her belief. It sounds like an add on or something that just comes with the package.

I heard her debate with Dawkins, it was actually quite frustrating because they were talking about different things. Dawkis was trying get her to admit believing in the virgin birth but clearly that kind of objective truth is peripheral in her belief system, When she said "subjective truth", it means something like what you get from literature rather than science.

2783. Fleabytes

Comment #148252 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Murkiness will not disappear until the scientific method, critical thinking and human fallibility are foundational to education.

I don't think so. Science doesn't speak to subjective experience in a first person way. There is nothing "postmodernist" in saying that subjective experience is subjective,

EDIT
If anything the murky believer,--unless he is also a Post Modernist,-- does agree that there should be a common ground of rational discourse regardless of one's belief, which is unlike the fundamentalist who insists that Biblical authority,--based on his interpretations,--should trump everything else. Accepting the universal is exactly opposite to POMO

2784. Fleabytes

Comment #148250 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Dr. Benway,

I disagree. God = final authority. Nothing says STFU in an argument better than, "I just feel God really wants..."

That may be in theory, but unless you are a fundamentalist you may not be so sure that you do know what that final authority's opinions are.

I am afraid you are making religious beliefs to be more coherent and consistent than they actually are for many "murky" believers.

2785. Fleabytes

Comment #148248 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 1:05 pm

TCT

This is the product of a post-modern education

Well I don't know if I understand your point correctly. But I will try to address it,

To my understanding "post modernism" means the doctrine that there is no objective truth, that everything is subjective, just points of view.

Now since we don't believe God exists, there is no objective truth about religion in the first place. I don't see how it is "post modernism" to say that religion should be confined to the private realm as relevant to the believer's private experience, whether he calls it revelation or whatever.Experience is subjective.

From the theists' point of view, the idea that revelation is private is as old as Christianity itself and there is nothing "post modern" about it. Within the theistic framework that just means God speaks to you in a way that addresses your particular situation. There is no requirement to reject objectivity wholesale.

2786. Fleabytes

Comment #148242 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 12:42 pm

Dr.Benway,

As usual your points are logical and concise, But then to what degree can you impose a "logical" and linear structure on something which is in some fundamental sense illogical and convoluted? I find your view a bit too black and white,

When I say faith should be private I mean exactly that. When it translates to actions, those actions have to be justified on rational ground other than just "God told me to", I don't think I am yielding too much to the believers.

1. Confidence. It's not ok to assume that one's uncorroborated personal revelation from God is actually and undoubtedly from God. The brain plays a few tricks on all of us.

It is not different from people having too much confidence in their judgments in general You can be over confident for all sorts of reasons other than religion.

On the other hand, if you talk to the "murky" believers they would actually tell you that they are not always so confident about their faiths. They experience doubts, uncertainties and they are often not sure what they should make of a situation. Is this really a message from God? Is he silent?. In their language, faith is a struggle and a journey, It is not just having infinite confidence, quite far from it.

I think you are unfairly imposing the fundamentalist model on all religious people. That strikes me as simplistic, If these people are so confident they would have been fundamentalists in the first place,

2.Egocentrism. Just because it seems self-evident to you that ham is forbidden by God desn't mean everyone has the same "inner knowing" or intuition.

Again, religion is not the only source of egotism and religious people have no monopoly on being judgmental and unforgiving, Indeed I find many "rationalists" here quite judgmental and egotistic in their own ways.

Sock puppetry: your God, like your appendix, your farts, or your dreams at night, is actually a part of yourself. Saying "I humbly submit to the Lord" is like saying, "I humbly submit to a part of myself," which, frankly, is the opposite of humility.

I have no general disagreement there, except that you seem to think religious believers only get their ideas through scriptures and introspection, I think this is a caricature, Unless they live in isolation they do have a shared experience with humanity. Religion in the "murky" form is often just a visualization aid and a short hand for experience and feelings that cannot be clearly articulated, but it is not to say that these feelings are completely alien to non believers.

Blank checks: the ineffable unknowable has to stay that way. No fair getting specific or concrete about the mind of God at a later date.

This is a replay of 1. See the response above.

2787. Fleabytes

Comment #148220 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 11:19 am

Dr. Benway,

Not in talking snakes of course. But in what? Belief in what?

Whatever "God" represents for them. Whatever personal revelation they receive,

2788. Fleabytes

Comment #148216 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 11:03 am

SWRB

That's not entirely true - faith is seen by many in Canada as the Achilles heel of the Federal Conservatives and is often seen as the reason (the "hidden agenda") they might not achieve a majority in any future election - but many will vote for them exactly that reason

Since Harper took over he put a gag order on the religious right and the social conservatives in general and talked mostly only about economics and scandals and he got in, The Alliance and Reform before that were lingering in opposition for decades. I think that actually proves my point, Very much unlike the U.S. overt religious piety doesn't pay in Canadian politics,--except for Alberta, as noted.

EDIT

Stockwell Day became a national laughing stock for believing in creationism and he was slaughtered in the election. That alone tells us we are different from the U.S. Now he does get a cabinet post under Harper but you can be sure you won't hear any bible thumping from him in the near future,

2789. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148210 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 10:37 am

In this case the guy is an associate professor of social work and the paper was published in a social work journal so I am not too surprised.

Well in medicine that is a bit strange, I must say.

2790. Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'

Comment #148207 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 10:31 am

I believe it got published.

I heard in the social sciences you can get paper published with very small sample size such as, gasp, 15 if you have something interesting to say, what qualifies as "interesting" probably depends on intellectual fashion,

Now another thing about the social sciences is they often do statistical analysis on data that don't generalize beyond the sample, So the whole discussion of statistical significance is really moot. You can only talk about statistical significance if you conceptually embed your sample in some kind of ensemble (population) and seek to answer "how typical are these findings in the population?" But the question would be pointless if the sample is all that there is and there is no conceptual ensemble to embed it into,

EDIT I was told by people in the know that to some extent this is a number game, Government agencies now want "evidence based" research to allocate fundings, so if you write a qualitative paper about say, the mental health of seniors in old folks homes to argue for better fundings in these facilities, you will be ignored. But if you pile them high with numbers, nevermind the numbers are just telling the same stories and the report is probably not really sound statistically, they would open up the purse string.

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Comment #148200 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 10:21 am

SRWB

Admittedly, this is my read of attitudes and letters in the local papers, etc. NOT scientific by any stretch. But one can sense a hardening of support against that great Canadian love of multiculturalism

Actually prayers in the legislation is largely a symbolic issue, I don't think most Canadians are too worked up one way or the other.

This is how we are. We pay lip service to religion in some formal occasions just like we pay lip service to the Queen, but religious piety, as well as the Monarchy,are tightly confined to a very narrow ceremonial role which they cannot overstep.

Politicians who openly profess faith would be viewed with suspicion and would disqualify themselves from national politics. The only exception to this rule is Alberta, aka Texas of the North and some rural ridings that only produce back benchers.

As for "multiculturalism", that is a vague word with different meanings to different people. In Canada it is largely successful and it is not like what is carried out in the same name in the U.K and Europe, Ethnic identity is not binding here, one can slip in and out of multiple identities,

The recent debate on "reasonable accommodation" is not about multi-culturalism perse, but about to what degree institutions should cater for religion. There is no question that it started because many are fed up with special demands from Muslims, but the discussion is framed in such a way that it applies to all religions and ethnicity and immigration are not mentioned, I think this is again a very sensible Canadian approach, When proposal for Sharia was shot down in Ontario, all religious tribunals were simultaneously stripped of their legal status.

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Comment #148182 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 9:01 am

SRWB,

Big kerfuffle recently about whether catholic politicians should receive communion if they support, or vote for, issues which violate RC teachings/beliefs

As a Canadian I want to clarify. Yes, some Catholic Bishops did make the threat, specifically over same sex marriage, but it didn't go down well with the public and the media, they soon had eggs all over their faces and we heard nothing more from them. Catholic politicians such as Paul Martin, Jean Chretein (both former Prime Ministers) were on the record supporting ssm. Martin even made it a big election issue.

Just because the Bishops tried to influence politics it didn't mean that they stood any chance of succeeding. They can always attempt.

In the recent Ontario provincial election, the Conservative party suffered a humiliating defeat and its leader couldn't even keep his own parliament seat, This was all because they promised to fund faith schools.

I think we need to be vigilant against the mixing of religion and politics. But let's not exaggerate either. In terms of the influence of religion the U.S.is unique and we are not anywhere like it.

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Comment #148178 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 8:48 am

Steve,

Do you know how much their theology really affected their interactions with people?

That depends. For counselors and therapists I think they wouldn't initiate a discussion on religion because they deal with people of all faiths and no faith,

But if you do want to talk about religion they would give their opinions.

I was having some problems adjusting to being alone and away from home in my first year and I got mixed up briefly with a bunch of fundamentalists. At the same time I was seeing the Catholic nun counselor for other things. I told her about the fundamentalists I was hanging out with and their views on the bible and God etc, that got her started. She basically told me that these people were very ignorant and she gave me books on Biblical scholarship to read. The prison Chaplin also told me that he would try to set the fundamentalists straight in his work if the issue comes up.

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Comment #148171 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 8:32 am

Steve,

The Murky "Pure" Theologists will claim that they are just academics, and doing good work increasing "understanding". I don't think they have much responsibility because few understand what they do

You are probably right in general, but there are exceptions,

The theologian I mentioned was a prison chaplain. There are also sophisticated theologians in jobs such as counseling, social work and so on, One of the most liberal theologians I encountered was a Catholic nun who was a student counselor in my college when I was an undergrad.

There are ways for them to influence people other than through the pulpit, Unlike the run of the mill preacher, these people often have professional degrees besides their theological credentials so you probably don't find them making a living giving sermons in churches.

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Comment #148164 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 8:23 am

Yeah, and my friends say being gay is the least of my problems..

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Comment #148157 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 7:58 am

Dr.Benway

However, in a friendship with such a believer, when the mood felt right, I'd gently try to raise his consciousness about the problem of narcissism.

I understand what you mean. But since I am pretty nacissistic in other ways I am not in the position to call others out on that. :-)

Steve

That is interesting, but surely illustrates how detached theologians can be from ordinary believers. This is surely far too sophisticated an approach - would a typical believer accept or understand this?

Actually Ronald DeSousa did bring that up during the debate, seeing that the theologian was an overall sensible chap and there was nothing he could get him on.

The reply was that it took time for a more enlightened version of faith to filter down to the pulpit, and this process have been going on throughout history.

My own view is that, while it is probably frustrating to see the slow process at work and there are set backs from time to time like some local Anglican Churches breaking away from the mother Church over same sex marriage, but this process has to be allowed to continue.In many instances it is probably more effective than the shock treatment that atheists sometimes prescribe (But then I am in Canada, which is overall very secular anyway, here we actually have Catholic politicians campaigning on same sex marriage, on the yes side.)

At least we shouldn't view "moderates" such as this theologian as the enemy and "fundamentalism enablers", we can be allies on many issues that actually matters.

EDIT Just cleaned up some typos. Dank, what happened to the preview feature??

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Comment #148153 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 7:44 am

Adam, apparently just means "man" in Hebrew.

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Comment #148146 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 7:28 am

Dr. Benway,

Strategically, the murky position is likely a necessary transition between belief and non-belief.

Actually, I think there are many who do settle comfortably in this position.

I am not sure if it will lead to non-belief. In fact it may strengthen belief in my estimations. I think by avoiding the clash with reality that fundamentalism necessarily engenders, the "murky", post modern position makes believers feel more comfortable about their faith and they don't have to withstand as much cognitive dissonance.

But it's a deception and we shouldn't kid ourselves about that. It only pretends to give authority to scripture. It doesn't acutally give any more authority to scripture than to Shakespeare.

Ah, but a price for adopting this position consistently is that faith has to become entirely private, the scriptures would indeed have no more authority than Shakespeare except to the believer.

I was attending a debate between an atheist (Ronald DeSousa, if you know who he is, he was on this year's beyond belief conference) and a Christian theologian.

It turned out that it wasn't much of a debate because the theologian took a position similar to what I wrote above while the atheist speaker's ammo were specialized to deal with fundies. The theologian was very slippery to pin down (unlike Jesus, bad pun)

Afterwards I had a little conversation with the theologian. He said something that I think made a lot of sense and I can certainly live with. He said if Christians wanted to bring their values to public policy debates such as abortion, same sex marriage and stem cell research, they would have to be able to frame their positions in secular terms and argue on those grounds alone, otherwise they should be ignored and written off as yahoos.

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Comment #148138 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 7:09 am

Steve,

. Does it sound like an actual voice, or the feeling that you might have heard a voice, or what?

I don't know. Don't forget that I am just another heathen. :-) Maybe you want to try some magic mushroom to simulate it. :-)

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Comment #148134 by Bonzai on March 22, 2008 at 7:00 am

Steve,

What I am after is how the individual guidance by God is given. What it feels like.

It is a qualia, not describable, you have to experience it yourself. So are you ready to take that leap of faith? Have you ever bungie jumped? Don't worry, relax, God will be there to catch you.

How persuasive do you think I am?