What do Theologians and Pokeologists have in common?

Response to: http://www.truefreethinker.com/articles/fundamentalist-theologian-asks-%E2%80%9Cwhy-won%E2%80%99t-god-heal-amputees%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cwhy-does-god-hate-amputee

In this article, Mr. "FreeThinker" declares the author of Why Won't God Heal Amputees a theologian. It always amuses me when religious people use terms like "Religion", "Faith", or "Theologian" in a derogatory sense. I recommend a diet higher in irony.

First, a theologian is merely one who is trained in theology.

Just as someone studying Pokemon cannot study actual Pokemon (because they don't exist), the theologian studies written stories about God, the history of such pursuits, and philosophies (written or oral) about the presumed nature of God (all things which DO exist). As far as I am aware nobody has actually studied God directly. Many theologians, as a result of this study, find that the claims are simply too weak to support a belief in said 'god'. So being a theologian, in no way, implies belief in the claims - any more than studying Pokemon would imply a belief in actual Pokemon.

Another look at Bias and Prayer

I ran across this story today which I hadn't heard about before so I did some investigation and thought I would share my findings because it shows how Confirmation Bias leads to false conclusions.

Back in November 2007 Georgia (the whole southeast) had been experiencing a severe drought for some 18 months. So Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue announced he would hold a public prayer to ask god for relief from the drought because, as we all know, "The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power," said Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley.

So the first question here (which apparently didn't occur to many in the media), is how many people, how many farmers prayed during that year for rain already over that year?  Keep in mind that those thousands upon thousands of prayers went unanswered.

Now read the very last line of this report about the upcoming event:

Now in Georgia, there is a little rain predicted, but not enough to end a drought.

"There is a little rain predicted," well now, isn't that convenient. Let's schedule a public prayer right around the time SCIENCE is already predicting precipitation. And if it so much as sprinkles on that day? Thank GOD we prayed.  I'm disgusted by this kind of duplicity honestly.  They wait 18 months to make a big deal out of a prayer meeting when meteorologists just happen to be predicting precipitation.  I'm also a little ashamed that people fall prey to such simplistic manipulation.

And then people (see this YouTube video) take ONE instance out of what could be tens of thousands and count that as a rousing success DESPITE the fact that the drought continued to worsen and lingered on through 2008, it got much WORSE in many locations after Nov 2007 and it was relieved only in late 2008 and 2009 for some regions.  This is a perfect example of Confirmation Bias

http://web.me.com/atlwx/wxhistory/files/20070501-drought.html

Drought conditions persisted and actually continued to worsen during December. This was especially true during the first half of the month when unseasonably warm, dry weather prevailed across the region

Lake Lanier in northeast Georgia and the main water supply for the Atlanta metropolitan area, dropped to its lowest level in history on December 28, 2007

Tell ya what, next time there is a drought, wait 6 years before praying and see if it corrects itself without the prayer and only then pray when meteorologists are predicting the weather to be the absolute worst, not when they are finally predicting some rain.

A detailed analysis of the 2006-2008 Drought: http://www.gawrc.org/2011paper_pdfs/7.3.4Kim.pdf

See also: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/

Time for prayer again

“@time: Science acknowledges the medicinal power of prayer | http://su.pr/1shWfH (via @TIMEHealthland)”

There are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start.

For starters the study and the title Time gave this article have almost nothing in common. It was a sociology study of 62 women victims of domestic violence. And it has to do with the emotional aspects of abuse, not medicinal power. That is a dishonesty level I find unacceptable.

And it suggests:

"prayer can be…a way for victimized women to learn to forgive their abusers,"

Why must an abused person forgive their abuser? That is a disgustingly immoral suggestion to me. Yes I will heal, and be happy, but how dare they suggest that I have to forgive them. If you feel it helps you to forgive, that is up to you of course. But don't assume this is necessarily a good thing. In fact, it continues:

"he finds that it can also keep some women from getting out of violent situations."

Exactly. And does the study say that prayer is even the best way for women to get out of abusive relationships? Nope, it sure doesn't.

What the study essentially says is that prayer can be used as a coping method (like children often use an imaginary friend).

Real scientific studies into prayer show no medical effect as my blog post on prayer discusses.

Intercessory Prayer

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer: If you know you're being prayed for you sometimes do worse.

The studies on Intercessory prayer (the type of prayer where you asking for your 'higher power' to intercede with human affairs on your behalf) have been fairly inconclusive in the past but as better testing methodology is brought to bear on the question the studies tend to actually show negative effects when the person is aware that others are praying for them. The hypothesis is that their failure to get better causes some depression and possibly a weakening of the natural immune system.

This is a surprising result which pretty strongly shows that, not only is intercessory prayer ineffective, but that the wrong kinds of wishful thinking are actually harmful as well.

I think that understanding this aspect of the failure of prayer is an important step in coming to grips with reality and rejecting millennia old superstitions.

The second stage of understanding comes when you can stop seeing every good thing that happens as a result of God's actions while ignoring every bad thing that happens. The Chilean miners are a perfect result of this blindness in action. Yes, it is wonderful that the Chilean miners were able to be pulled out, but what about the dozens of other people in the mining profession that died in the line of duty during that same process? And why trap them in the first place?

If you look more closely you can see that in every single one of these cases there is always a natural explanation (and in future articles I will discuss why natural explanations do not give credit to a theistic, personal God -- as we already see is the case of intercessory prayer).