Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[mikkel_the_dane]

The word 'BEFORE' is also a time word. So it also only makes sense within the universe (or multiverse, if you go that far).

Again as a limit for knowledge.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I looked up several sites that discuss it. But what does it mean to 'freely choose'? What does it mean to be 'independent'? What does it mean to 'make decisions autonomously'?

Clearly, we are *not* fully autonomous. If I am falling from a cliff, I cannot 'choose' to not fall. I am subject to the law of gravity. Similarly, if a car runs into me, I cannot 'choose' to be unhurt.

So I am NOT autonomous in all cases.

That means the question is whether I am *ever* fully autonomous and, in other cases, the degree to which I am autonomous.

In any case, no I do not believe in 'libertarian free will'. I find it clearly wrong and rather a silly concept.

Nothing. Can you show where something I said was contradicted by what I just said?



Causation only makes sense when there are natural laws acting. That is because causation is the action of those laws.

In particular, it makes no sense to talk about the cause of natural laws.

Similarly, causation only makes sense when there is time. And since time is part of the universe, that means that causation only makes sense within the universe.

And that means that it makes no sense to talk about the cause of the universe.

Finally, not everything *in* the universe is caused. Most quantum level events are uncaused. So it is also false that the universe only works by 'blind causation' (what the adjective 'blind' adds to the description is beyond me).

So we apparently have laws that just happened because we'll, you have no clue why, and yet you want to say that it's not blind even though you can't tell us what caused anything that exists to exist.
Yeah that was super enlightening, thanks,!

 

[Wildswanderer]

At one point, 90% of the world thought the Earth to be flat. The numbers don't prove their ideas are right.

And, again, I do not dispute that they had certain experiences. What I dispute is their interpretation of those experiences.

Someone having hallucinations has the experience of seeing things that are not there. The experience exists, but their interpretation is wrong: the visions are all in their head. What they see is not real.

The vast majority of people are not taught to use logic or to be skeptical. So they believe and experience things that do not correspond to reality much more frequently than those who have been so taught.

Yep 96 percent of people suffer from hallucinations.. sounds perfectly reasonable, you convinced me!
Why people give you guys any credit for logic is beyond me.

 

[Wildswanderer]

And that is why I don't follow truth. I find it to be fantasy and rather boring just as all versions of true religions.

So you choose not to seek the truth?
Nice!

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So you choose not to seek the truth?
Nice!

Well, I am a skeptic. False is more important to me. Truth can deceive you.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Not needed. My conscience is used for that. In fact, what does it mean that you wouldn't do that anyway without the belief that a deity exists that expects it of you?

it could be the God DNA working in you conscience

You had said, "Your faith is to be used in helping feed and clothe." I said faith wasn't needed. Now you've moved the goalpost to something unrelated. Perhaps you can just agree that faith is not needed to be good or do good. Was it this thread in which theists were arguing about faith versus works when a skeptic pointed out that the Bible gives contradictory answers to that question? Attempting to reconcile the contradiction, some believer was saying that good works is proof of faith. It's not.

You are free to live with prayer. I choose reason. I choose action.

Prayer can also demand action

Prayer can't demand anything. It's a request. And even if one demands action, that is not the same as acting. I still prefer action to prayer, even prayers demanding action.

Does every theist have trouble with the concept that atheists don't believe in gods or God? Atheists don't blame gods any more than they blame vampires and leprechauns.

Is there any relevance to this post on "atheism"? I don't think that has anything to do with what we are talking about.

You had written, "Don't blame God for the responsibility that He gave us" to an atheist. I am always amazed when theists seem to forget this fact. I doubt that any unbeliever writing to you forgets that you DO believe in God, or writes in a way that assumes you don't, but theists do this constantly, as when they quote scripture to an unbeliever as if that were meaningful to him like it is for the believer.

You have no answers, just faith-based guesses.

Answers to what?

You had written, "Which proves the reality that you really aren't seeking answers."

Not really. Doing something is better that doing nothing whether you also pray or not. The STEP study showed us that. I realize that you have problems with the study design, but the scientific community vets the study design prior to funding it and then again in peer review once the paper is published. The church is not a peer. Lay opinions in conflict with the experts have no standing with the scientific community or the community of critical thinkers. The creationists need to be reminded of this frequently when they claim that the theory of evolution doesn't meet their standards and is disputed. Uninformed opinions aren't being debated except by the uniformed.

I disagree. If the "scientific community" doesn't consult with where the information comes from, they are already messing up.

So you think the scientific community needs to consult with members outside of itself to design a valid study? They don't. The information comes from examining the patients before and after intercessory prayer. And there are no rules to how a believer is to pray. If you have some, they're your rules. From Philippians: "The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I spent a fair amount of time reading the stories of antivaxxers, many of whom died, on either of two / websites just to get a better sense of their thinking and their experience - was there regret or did the antivaxxer or his/her significant other double down as he was dying? Did they thank or blame the doctors and hospital? Did they try to manage the case by insisting on quack remedies? How many children did they leave behind? Was there a GoFundMe established to help with expenses? It was quite an education.

Typically, each biography, taken from Facebook posts, begin with the antivax memes about tyranny, false information about vaccines and the power of the unvaccinated immune system, etc.. Then comes the illness as it progresses from sick at home to the hospital to the ICU and vent. This is where we see the requests for prayer like these, with no instructions on how to do it. Why do you suppose these prayers didn't work (he eventually died of Covid? You might say that we should examine just how these prayers were offered before deciding if they were effective or not as you did with the STEP study (if these memes don't appear, try https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/pos...fan-forklift-driver-anti-vaxxer-dead-of-covid):

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Sorry you feel that way. Life has been good outside of religion.

It's boring in my experience.

Sorry to hear that. Then I guess you need religion.

You might have seen some of my comments on the difference between growing up outside of religion compared to within, about how the atheist learns to accept that there may be no afterlife and that his consciousness might be extinguished permanently with death, that there is nobody not on earth that loves you or hears your petitions or cares for you, and the like. And it appears to have stripped the meaning from life that you would have experienced had you developed like the atheists posting here, none of whom tells you that they find life boring

No, it doesn't, but outgrowing magical thinking is part of growing up.

Unless we actually live in a " magical" realm as much as a physical universe...

From Wiki: "In psychology, magical thinking is the belief that one's thoughts by themselves can bring about effects in the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it." This is a common state in children. They don't understand that they can't change reality just by thinking. Also characteristic of this level of intellectual development is not understanding object permanence, a form of magical thinking, such as that when something is out of view it magically ceases to exist. Atheists abandon this thinking. Theists realize that the magic doesn't include making spoons bend by willing them, or any of the things many insist are the case because they need it to exist to comport with their theology. Look at the difference between our two comments above. You need magic to exist because you have accepted that it does by faith, that prayers will affect external reality or that dead people can be revivified by an act of divine will. The empiricist has given up this kind of thinking, but the theist hasn't.

There is nothing difficult about believing by faith. Or virtuous. Faith, by definition, is unexamined belief.

No, it's evidence of things not seen. It's not blind.

So you think that using the word evidence makes faith not blind? For starters, that comment about faith being evidence of things not seen is incoherent. The sine qua non of evidence is that it be evident. It remains a thing not seen, belief in which is blind (lacking evidence, nothing visible or otherwise detectable). And this is what unexamined means in this context.

Is faith a virtue because it is a path to truth? How can faith be a path to truth when any wrong idea can be believed by faith? How can faith be a virtue when it requires suspension of critical thought, which actually is a virtue? Does faith imply contemplation and insight? No, it is simply the will to believe - the shallowest of intellectual experiences.

So you don't actually believe free will exists.

@Polymath257 asked you for a clear definition of what you mean by free will. I haven't seen your answer yet, but hopefully it will address the concept of the illusion of free will, which is different from free will. The latter is very difficult to define. Some have suggested that free will mean will not determined by deterministic processes such as neural circuits outside of consciousness, but even if will is the result of indeterministic quantum processes, it is not the decision of the self to choose what it will want, which is what free will implies. It is also something that the subject discovers about itself.

This comes up in discussions about people being able to choose their sexual preference. Nobody chooses to prefer men over women or vice versa. They discover that about themselves, and though they can make choices about behavior, they can't choose what to desire. That aspect of will is certainly not free. Nor is wanting a drink when one's hypothalamus tells him that his blood osmolality is high. He didn't choose to be thirsty. He can choose whether to satisfy the urge or not, at least for a while, but he can't make himself stop wanting a drink, because he didn't choose to want a drink. None of these is what I would call free will, although people will experience it as such - the meaning of the illusion of free will, or the sense that one is the author of one's desires rather than a passive, conscious observer discovering what it wants.

So which of these is the case - the self is the author of its will, or the self receives its will from processes occurring outside of consciousness? How could we decide? It's not enough to say that we could have chosen otherwise. That might be part of the illusion. You might have chosen otherwise at a different time or under different circumstances, but that also might have been a forced decision that felt free. It has been suggested that one would need to recreate the exact circumstances including visiting the same moment and circumstances and see whether a different choice could have been made, meaning going back in time. Of course, even that won't work. You wouldn't know that you had been there before, or what you had chosen. If you did, it wouldn't be the exact same mind in the exact same moment and circumstances. The question may be undecidable.

But as I've explained before, one privilege of developing outside of Christianity is the freedom to consider this issue dispassionately and open-mindedly. The theist who needs free will to exist according to his theology isn't free to do that. He assumes free will must exist, and probably never thinks any more about it than that. And because he has no experience thinking about the possibility that will is determined, he considers the idea ridiculous and waves it away with an ad lapidem fallacy: "Appeal to the stone, also known as argumentum ad lapidem, is a logical fallacy that dismisses an argument as untrue or absurd. The dismissal is made by stating or reiterating that the argument is absurd, without providing further argumentation."

I have been free to consider the possibility that we are all what the theist disparagingly calls a robot or meat bucket, and am at peace that this may be the case, that if it is it always has been the case, and if that whatever is happening was fine before, it still is now. Maybe everything you and I do is predetermined. OK. That's acceptable.

Here's where that magical thinking comes into play, when the theist simply insists that there must be free will because, paradoxically, he wills it to the case.

 

[metis]

Of course, it could be the God DNA working in you conscience...

I can certainly relate to that.

 

[Polymath257]

So we apparently have laws that just happened because we'll, you have no clue why, and yet you want to say that it's not blind even though you can't tell us what caused anything that exists to exist.
Yeah that was super enlightening, thanks,!

And how is that any different than what you offer?

You claim a God exists that created the universe, but say that the origin of God is a mystery. in other words, you have no clue as to why God exists.

What I point out is that there is ultimately *something* that exists with no reason. You say it is God. I say it is the universe with its laws.

The difference is that we know the universe and its laws actually exist, but we don't know the same about any deities.

 

[Polymath257]

Yep 96 percent of people suffer from hallucinations.. sounds perfectly reasonable, you convinced me!
Why people give you guys any credit for logic is beyond me.

No, but 96% of people are subject to superstition and delusions based on such.

Do you really dispute that?

 

[KWED]

Sure, but there wasn't a different set of texts.

Is that it?
"It could have been different, but it isn't, so it must be true"?
(There were other texts that were not included in the canon.)

 

[KWED]

This merits a response.
You have a clear difficulty in addressing reality and backing up your statements with facts.
Do you have a faith issue?

Still waiting for you to tell us what prayers you have had answered. You know, the ones more important than the ones to save children from an agonising death?

One might begin to suspect that either you are making it up, or you that your prayers are so trivial as to make good look like a callous sociopath, or perhaps you realise that your "answered prayers" look suspiciously like chance events.

 

[KWED]

True. But the bible says that if you REMAIN as a person of 'faith' with no experience then you don't have understand what
it is you claim to belong to. Faith in the Gospels is for those who enter the church, but it must grow beyond that.

Which verses please?

 

[KWED]

Then re-read it. Save it even. It's provocative.

I have, and it still looks like nonsense.
Maybe try presenting whatever point it is in a different way?

 

[KWED]

That's another thread.

You made a point on the issue in this thread.
Now your argument has been dismantled, you duck the issue.
Same old same old.

 

[KWED]

Maybe your problem is that you deny that the spiritual realm is just as real as the physical realm.

I don't "deny" it. My position is simply that as there is zero evidence to support the claim, and no rational argument that makes it seem in any way necessary or reasonable, there is no reason to accept it as a valid and reasonable possibility.

What even is "the spiritual realm"? How do you know it exists?

 

[KWED]

No, it's evidence of things not seen. It's not blind.

How can non-observation of the undetectable be "evidence"?

 

[KWED]

So you don't actually believe free will exists.

I don't think it matters.

 

[F1fan]

The bible warns about people like this Reverend Jerry (who is he?)

Take your pick of charlatan Christian preachers. Benny Hinn. Jimmy Swaggart. Jim Baker. Pat Robertson. Joel Olsteen. Ken Copeland.

And then there's those who seemed upright but were still bigots, like Jerry Falwell, James Hague, Franklin Graham's son, forgot his name.

So the Bible warns of these people yet Christians flock to them? Something is rotten about Christianity.

Using people who BREACH certain principles to DISCREDIT those same principles is not honest or logical.

Yet it is so pervasive through christianity and conservative politics.

In my experience in Christian church there was seldom any mention of ethics and doing the right thing. Much of the sermons were about compliance to authority and dogma. Many others were so abstract I had no idea what they guy was talking about. Christianity has followed the money, not the message. It is a business, not a mission. They should at least be taxed, and especially since many preachers violate laws and ethics and go on political rants.

 

[Polymath257]

No, it's evidence of things not seen. It's not blind.

Faith isn't evidence of anything other than the willingness to believe without evidence. So, yes, it is blind.

There is *plenty* of evidence of things not seen. For example, we don't see air, but we can measure it, liquefy it, determine its temperature, etc.

We can't see radio waves, but we can build radios and emitters that show that radio waves exist. We can then measure their properties and understand how to use them.

We can't see radioactivity, but we can measure its effects and learn how it works. We can then determine its properties and learn how to use it and how it connects to other things.

So, there is a great deal of evidence of 'things not seen' and NONE of those are based in any way on faith.