Georgia is having a drought. Things are bad. So what do people do when they feel helpless and cannot do anything?
They pray.
So the governor has organized a prayer service to pray for rain. I’m sure this will work. Oh wait: no it won’t.
I bet that a month from now they’ll get rain, and they’ll say, "See? We did it!"
So there ya go, Georgians, your tax dollars at work wasted.
Still, I cannot leave this without pointing out one part of the article:
[The governor’s spokeswoman Heather] Teilhet said the governor’s office has invited spiritual leaders from several faiths and dominations to participate in the service.
Emphasis mine, but c’mon, a little help from the leather community probably wouldn’t hurt either.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
As a resident of Georgia, and having voted against Governor Perdue in the last election, I can safely say that he’s a flippin’ joke of a leader. He doesn’t even bother to hide his utter disregard for separation of church and state, because he knows that all the Baptists in the state heartily approve of Sunday liquor bans and state-organized prayer services.
I could rant about Perdue for a while. Instead I’ll ask a different question: If Perdue and his staff gathered in a circle and started doing a stereotypical Indian rain dance, like the kind you see in a movie, nobody would expect it to actually work. What makes prayer different? (Hint: the answer is nothing.)
November 7th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
*bang his head on the wall repeatively* They are so…
May be we should all organized a worldwide prayer services to pray for stopping global warming. And see what will happen…
I shouldn’t read post like that while studying in science… It depress me…
November 7th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Domination, is actually a pretty apt title for what many religions do to their followers!
November 7th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Snoopy, praying for an end to global warming won’t help. It’s not real, remember? Just like the Moon landings, and all those astrology debunkings.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
I agree with you, but I have no problem with people appealing to a higher power in an area where we as of yet have no control. Face it, there’s not a dag-blame thing we can do about rain yet.
So should they pray? I don’t see why not. Will it work? Dunno. If it rains will they chalk it up to a higher power? Prolly. Is that good or bad? *shrug*
So long as they’re not telling me what or if to worship, I’m cool.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Well, at least it gives us something to laugh at…
November 7th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
As I have previously said I am religious. So I am all for prayer services. However I think it is extremely wrong for a governor to be organizing one especially ON state grounds. That is a blatant violation of the separation of church and state.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
@Kevin
“I agree with you, but I have no problem with people appealing to a higher power in an area where we as of yet have no control. Face it, there’s not a dag-blame thing we can do about rain yet.”
If some cloud pass over them, science can DO something about it :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
USA and Canada don’t seem to use this system, but China does use it alot and is having some trouble with it :
For example :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3893671.stm
I think even if we can do something about rain we shouldn’t unless for last resort.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Well, that time and effort spent praying could be used instead for dowsing…
November 7th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
@Snoopy: Woah. Maybe they have some troubles with it but that’s some darn good progress there. Could help some folks. But then again, you need the cloud first of.
As for the whole praying thing. Haven’t they learned yet that prayer is useless since God doesn’t CARE?
You need to pray for strength to exterminate some people, or to halt the planet’s spin so you can exterminate people, not to have some silly rain. I don’t think they ever managed to get some rain in the bible…
November 7th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
In Australia John Howard asked the country to pray for rain to break the country’s drought. The result was terrible storms resulting in deadly flash floods.
Apparently you really need to word your payers carefully, otherwise the malevolent genie in the sky makes them backfire.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Of course, if it’s God’s will that Georgia should be dry, who does the governor think he is to ask otherwise? You’d think it would take a mighty set of cojones to call upon the almighty and say “yeah, God… I know you’re all knowing and all powerful and stuff, but I think your plan for Georgia is wrong so could you throw us some rain?”
If I was God and was drying out some part of the earth because, well, because I could, and an arrogant little dust-bunny started second-guessing me, I’d send him rain all right… about 40 days worth right after some plagues of boils or frogs or locusts. It wouldn’t be a matter of loving my creation, it would be a matter of ensuring my creation knows its place.
The truth of the futility of prayer aside, what’s always bugged me about it is the sheer HUBRIS of intercessional prayer, and the hypocrisy of doing it. How can you believe in a divine plan and divine wisdom if you actually expect he’ll change his mind just because you ask? Sure, if you buy into the invisible superman stuff, prayers of supplication make sense. But asking your god to intercede is really saying you know better than god. From what I know of mythology, gods don’t take to that sort of thing very well.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Hey it’s true! God will be mighty pissed if they start saying that his drought is not good for them! How DARE they contradict Him?
Heehee… What I love of religions is that there are so many contradictions and things they overlook.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Its interesting how they’re asking for everyone to pray to any god they can muster. Jesus, what happened to the religious and their goddamn standards? They lack a little water for the golf courses and suddenly Ba’al doesn’t look too bad. Pathetic bunch of liars. Goes to show they know of at least one god that doesn’t work, namely their own. Perhaps they hold out hope that its indeed the other gods that actually exist.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I offer this, the best treatise on proper prayer that I have ever seen…
http://www.squidzone.ca/UT/prayer.pdf
November 7th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I like your astronomy, and mostly ignore your anti-religous rants.
But, occasionally you get to me, and you got me this time.
Sometimes you folks seem just as intolerant as you claim the religous zelots to be.
Prayer does work.
Oh, and …
“There are no atheists in foxholes”
November 7th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Barry - Just to clarify for the few non-Australians who read this blog… John Howard is Australia’s Prime Minister.
In fact, his exact quote was “…we should all, literally and without any irony, pray for rain over the next six to eight weeks”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/NATIONAL/Pray-for-rain-urges-Howard/2007/04/22/1177180463040.html
November 7th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Russel: Intercessory prayer does NOT work. It has been tested repeatedly, and it does not work. It’s really that simple.
Also, about atheists and foxholes: can you prove that? I can disprove it, certainly.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
So why doesn’t the Gov’ also ask for prayer on behalf of all the Mexicans who’ve been flooded out of their homes as of recently? The pious are among the most selfish of people.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Hey Russel,
Please name one clearly documented occurrence in recent history (last 5 or 10 years) where prayer was shown to actually work over all other possibilities. Preferably an actual scientific study, but some other example would do.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
> “There are no atheists in foxholesâ€
Because, being more educated, they got assigned to technical positions far behind the front lines.
Ha ha ha!
Holy cow! Even *I* think that was mean!
Still went there, though.
I need to be spanked.
Preferably by Jennifer Connely.
No man-crushes here.
I tease.
As for weather control, the military expects to have that by 2025.
https://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/2025/volume3/chap15/v3c15-1.htm
Pie in the sky, but I have to sort of admire the chutzpah of the authors. It’s a good read. Stuff like creating ionospheric mirrors to enhance radio communication over the horizon.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I like your astronomy, and mostly ignore your anti-religous rants.
But, occasionally you get to me, and you got me this time.
Sometimes you folks seem just as intolerant as you claim the religous zelots to be.
it’s not reasonable to tolerate dangerous irrationality. Just like nobody should tolerate drunk driving, or waving a gun around in public, neither should people tolerate dangerous magical thinking.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Every single religious person I’ve talked so have had to back up what they say with buzz words and catch phrases rather than trying to make any sense, or use reason.
Any common bonehead knows there are atheists in foxholes. The most famous one being the now deceased Pat Tillman. What this proves, I dont know since this nation has more or less disavowed its Atheists. As for the atheists in foxholes I personally know, they are driven by a strong desire to protect our constitution. It is that constitution which provides for our freedom from tyrants and tyrannical religions when its meanings not slandered by illiterate religious goons.
Furthermore, its been shown in careful studies, both double blind and open, which show prayer has no effect whatsoever. None, nadda, zip. In fact, one of the studies showed that those who were aware of being prayed for actually had a slight INCREASE in complications.
heres the link
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/188/story_18848_1.html
and the actual paper
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=16569567
So what makes you think your god will do things only when specifically asked for them? It is presumably completely aware of circumstances without any need of information from you.
The religious get off on NOT thinking things through and really feel a sense of accomplishment if things go well without having to make any sense whatsoever.
If the religious had any concept of the minuteness of our world, and the utter mind melting vastness of just observable space, the puny nature of their little god would surely make them blush.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
> “Please name one clearly documented occurrence in recent history”
I’m not sure prayer is testable. You can probably always find some other explanation for the result even if it did work.
There’s also a basic fundamental problem with testing for… divine intervention, for lack of a better term.
How do you even do a *blind* experiment when the hypothetical subject of the experiment is, in theory, some sort of higher intelligence?
That’s the point where I usually give up and go turn on my XBox360.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Of course it will work. They will pray, and it will rain.
How could it not work?
November 7th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
> “It is presumably completely aware of circumstances without any need of information from you.”
Cite?
November 7th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I think the better way to handle this is to pass a law allowing gay marriage. Tolerance of the gay lifestyle brought rain to England. Some say it was too much, but once the floods have washed away then they can cancel their tolerance of the gay lifestyle.
http://www.entangledstates.org/2007/07/british-bishops.html
I think the problem with intercessory prayer is that God gets tired of requests (haven’t you ever seen Bruce Almighty?) Sometimes you just need to use reverse psychology.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Or try this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=prayer+works+proof&btnG=Google+Search
Google is your friend, folks. Have you not learned that yet?
Chinese dissidents excepted, of course.
Disclaimer: I vouch for ***NONE*** of the returned links!!!!!
November 7th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
> “I think the problem with intercessory prayer is that God gets tired of requests… Sometimes you just need to use reverse psychology.”
So God grants us all the things we *don’t* want.
I think you just discovered the underlying reason why the world sucks.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
QD, it seems to me (a non-scientist) that a double-blind study on prayer would be one where the people doing the praying don’t know who they’re praying for. The people being prayed from don’t know that they’re being prayed for. And the people observing the results don’t know who’s being prayed for and who’s not. Would that be a triple-blind study?
November 7th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Of course, they will pray, praying takes time. As they pray, they effectively integrate the probability of rain over time until it actually does rain. They chalk it up to god, and make a few people even “dumber”. Perhaps god, has an extra chromosome (in a diploid genome, presumably), and really does need to have large regional problems pointed out. This would certainly explain the various bizarre responses such a “Downs syndrome” deity has to prayed-for crises.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Intercessory prayer has been tested using solid statistical methods, and has been shown to be indistinguishable from chance. I’ve linked to this before, and it was all over the web earlier this year.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Considering Christianity is basically the slavish worship of an admitted global genocidal sky-maniac, I wonder what beef they have with Stalin and Hitler, who pale in comparison?
Must be they didn’t tithe properly, after the fact. The tzar’s got away with it for centuries. The rest of the European royalty murdered and starved millions over the centuries without much of a squabble from the church. But then they were paying the blood money for official approval.
In light of this, how could anything be any worse than a religious morality?
November 7th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
@Quiet Desperation:
Prayer is absolutely testable, and it has been tested, and it has been shown to not work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html
What you’re referring to about finding other explanations is simply making excuses. We’re not testing god, we’re testing the quantifiable effects of prayer, all things being constant.
Prayer does not work. Q.E.D.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
“There are no atheists in foxholesâ€
Not only Pat Tillman, but does anyone here
know if Audie Murphy from WWII was an
atheist; or does anyone besides me old enough to remember WWII??
November 7th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
You guys just don’t get it. The prayer to end the drought isn’t an attempt to change God’s will. Georgia’s drought is God’s way of calling attention to some stubborn sinful attitude or action on the part of the population of Georgia. Once they have repented of that, God will restore his blessings and the windows of Heaven will open.
Not that I believe any of that, but it’s a condensed version of what I grew up hearing from the pulpit…
November 7th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
So they believe god is illiterate. Thats a heck of a game of charades.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Just so it don’t look like I took a shot and ran…
Wait… I’m still pulling out the quills and dousing the flames, but that was to be expected.
Here are a few responses…
Evloving Squid:
(”dangerous irrationality” … I like that)
Drunk driving is really dangerous.
Ideas, religious or not, are not dangerous.
The way some people act on them are very dangerous.
We should pray about it.
Bad Astronomer:
No evidence of “no athiests in foxholes”, just a tag line.
In fact, the almighty wikipedia has evidence to the contrary.
I’d bet there are fewer that are undecided either way though.
Quiet Desperation:
Um, yeah, about that education thing.
Many educated people pray.
Okay, I was laughing too, but still.
The Stone:
I don’t think that God only does stuff when we ask.
Maybe prayer just gets us online with God’s plan.
Skepterist:
Can I give an example of prayer working?
I could find many testimonies, and I can give my own.
All,however, can be attributed to time, chance, and/or attitude.
You know, such so-and-so getting well, or getting a job, or maybe even to stop the flooding we had this summer.
I know some people who have sufferd tremendous heartbreak, when there prayers went seemingly unanswered.
Even unanswered prayer can offer hope, and hope is a good thing.
Not that one should sit on a train track and pray to not be hit by a train.
If you look around and find yourself on a train track, you should at least be moving off the track while you are praying.
Believe in the Bible, God, the Lord Jesus, or not…
Prayer, meditation, or just pulling together as a group, can have a tremendous effect towards solving problems.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:05 am
> “Prayer does not work. Q.E.D.”
I didn’t say it did. I do not think prayer works. I am not religious. You’re talking to the uberskeptic here. I’m skeptical of other skeptics.
I was just speculating on the full parameters of such a test.
>”What you’re referring to about finding other explanations is simply making excuses.”
Huh? Excuses for what? I’m saying the there’s always another explanation other than prayer should there be a positive result. Some tests do show a positive, but there’s always another, more rational explanation. See the 1995 test involving AIDS patients.
> “We’re not testing god, we’re testing the quantifiable effects of prayer, all things being constant.”
But it’s some hypothetical God that answers the prayers, yes? I don’t see how you can remove that from the equation. Or, not being religious, am I uninformed about what prayer is supposed to be doing?
IOW, is it supposed to be client/server ot peer to peer?
November 8th, 2007 at 12:13 am
It’s funny how the “no atheists in foxholes” crowd seem to forget that America isn’t the only country on this planet with armed forces. While the US may still be overwhelmingly Christian (but increasingly less so) there are countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, Vietnam, Russia, Denmark, etc. etc. where nonbelievers are already in the majority.
Do all the non-religious troops from those countries suddenly not count for some reason?
But really, “no atheists in foxholes” is an insult to the tens of thousands of American *and* allied troops who are fighting not for some misbegotten religious crusade (not that all religious troops think they are), but because they are doing what they believe is right — fighting for their country and their way of life. It’s sad that they are currently having to do it in an Iraqi war that should never have happened, but the troops are not to blame for that.
I have been fortunate enough to have never been in a foxhole, though I did think I was going to die once, and I’m not ashamed to say that I was a gibbering wreck for a while. It was only later, when I was looking back at the way I had felt and reacted that I noticed I had never once appealed to a higher power for help. I sought help from where I knew I could get it — the professionals, my friends and my family, and that got me through.
That’s the thing about being an atheist. I know many Christians don’t really understand how it is (or, perhaps, don’t want to understand) but when you are an atheist, prayer simply isn’t an option worth considering. You don’t reject God, hate God, or push God away, (not even “deep down in your soul” as have been suggested to me many times), you just don’t believe there is a God at all. It would be like asking a Christian to offer up a prayer to Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Why would you even bother trying? Christians don’t believe for one second that Thor exists. That is how atheists think about the Christian God, so why would an atheist in a foxhole bother wasting his or her time offering prayers to what they are certain is a non-existent entity, a figment?
So next time any of you Christians try to understand something from an atheist’s point of view, instead of worshiping the God of the Bible, imagine that you are being asked to place all your faith in Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, and that you are being told that deep down, you know that Thor is the one true God who will save you. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
(Yeah, I know Thor is only one of many Norse Gods, but that’s not the point of this exercise
)
November 8th, 2007 at 12:14 am
> “Um, yeah, about that education thing.”
That’s what I call public schools. Those education things.
Or as I call them when my totally misanthropic personality comes out to play: indoctrohives.
> “Many educated people pray.”
Not educated enough, then.
Probably went to one of those indoctrohives.
> “Okay, I was laughing too, but still.”
Good. Laughter is a far better medicine than prayer.
I’m really not a very serious guy. I figured most people would figure that out by the time they reached the spanking comment.
Still, though… Jennifer Ficken’ Connelly, eh? Although Famke Janssen would do if she wears her X_Men outfit.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Excellent point Tacitus
November 8th, 2007 at 12:19 am
> “Not that one should sit on a train track and pray to not be hit by a train.”
Especially if God is a Darwinist.
(rimshot)
Thank you!
November 8th, 2007 at 12:32 am
[…] to the Bad Astronomer atheism prayers for rain religionPopularity: unranked [?] Share and Enjoy: These icons link to […]
November 8th, 2007 at 12:40 am
>”there are countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, Vietnam, Russia, Denmark, etc. etc. where nonbelievers are already in the majority.”
Agree with everything else, but not sure about this factoid. Majorities still believe in, at least, some sort of spirit or life force. Does that count as secular? I dunno.
Denmark still has an official state religion for some reason. A bureaucratic oversight perhaps.
In a place like Vietnam, the base tenets of Buddhism and Confucianism are so ingrained into the culture they’re inextractable.
And a recent polls show a full 97% of the populations of Norway, Sweden and Finland are hard core Norse paganists. They do it all, up to and including human sacrifices during the Yule. And they *still* use the Julian calendar.
No, I made that last one up. Sorry.
Don’t forget, though- a lot of those places you mentioned are going to be *totally* taken over by Islam by 2020 or 2030.
November 8th, 2007 at 12:47 am
>”you know that Thor is the one true God who will save you. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
I know you ain’t disssin’ Thor, punk!
http://captain-america.us/articles/images/ultimates/ultimate-thor.jpg
November 8th, 2007 at 1:00 am
> “So they believe god is illiterate.”
Well, He does predate language.
And maybe He’s resistant to learning new things.
After all, you can’t teach an old god new tricks.
(rimshot)
Oh! Oh! You gotta like that one!
(crickets)
Argh!
November 8th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Not to pile on, but the “no atheists in foxholes” line really gets my (non-sacrificial) goat. What if one were to assert that there are no Jews in foxholes? It seems the same to me to tell me that I will suddenly find some particular god, as it is to say that I will find some unidentified god. I’m serious here, how do people feel about me saying “there’s no Presbyterians in foxholes”, since I think they will suddenly convert when faced with the prospect of their mortality (even if only corporeal mortality)? I’d be mightily cheesed-off if I were a Presbyterian.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Sigh. This site is up for best science blog? What science? I know this is your blog, and I’m just a guest. I just wish there was more science and less politics, religion, etc. If I wanted that garbage, I would go to blogs that write about that.
I am not religious in any way, so don’t bother to flame me about that. I’m just here for the astronomy. Is there a way that I can filter RSS to only show me the science blogs and not the fanatical target of the day?
November 8th, 2007 at 2:17 am
@Quiet Desperation
I think my tone was off, so my response came off wrong I think
Anyway, my posting was just to demonstrate that we can test the affects of prayer without testing the existence of god. It’s been done time and again with the same findings: it doesn’t work. Why some people still argue that prayer works is beyond me. Wishful thinking may benefit some people to some degree, but it has no effects on the real world. Much like the placebo effect I would argue; you may feel better, but you’re not better.
Now the making apologies part simply meant making excuses. If the results show prayer doesn’t work, and people still try to argue for the benefits of prayer, they’re simply making excuses for the lack of proof. I didn’t mean YOU were making excuses, I was being specific to those who defend prayer in spite of evidence to the contrary. That definitely came off wrong on my part.
Now, we do NOT have to even discuss god to talk about affects of prayer. God is an assumption in that respect; if we were to find that prayer works, it will still not be evidence for god, it would only be evidence for the affects of prayer. Likewise, finding prayer doesn’t work is not evidence against the existence of god. In other words, from a scientific perspective, god is removed from the equation. We are simply asking if prayer works, not HOW it works. There is a huge difference there. But, since we have found that prayer doesn’t work, there isn’t any need to ask the “how” question. If we did find that prayer worked, we could assume that it meant god existed, but again, without testing the “how” part, god is only an assumption. But again, we don’t get that far as every test to date has shown prayer doesn’t work.
Hope that clears up some of my point
Richard
November 8th, 2007 at 2:47 am
I have heard that: God listens to all prayers, but not all prayers are answered.
that being true; how could prayer be tested?
it’s not as if you are dealing with a security light that goes off if something is detected by the sensor.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Yep, makes sense to me. I think praying can help, not for the rain of course, that’s just goofy. But since the Gov of backasswards Georgia was elected by the majority of the STUPID you might as well get them all together for a prayer & a BBQ. States paying.
Oh, I forgot, a group prayer for rain would just make them all Hypocrites, according to Matthew 6:5,6., right?
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you”.
November 8th, 2007 at 3:41 am
Perhaps they should try sacrificing some virgins to the sky gods?
Maybe if they tossed a priest, a minister, and rabbi into a volcano?
November 8th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Can’t get this song out of my head:
By Sting
Turned on the weather man just after the news
I needed sweet rain to wash away my blues
He looked at the chart but he look in vain
Heavy cloud but no rain
Back in time with Louis XVI
At the court of the people he was number one
He’d be the bluest blood they’d ever seen
When the king said hi to the guillotine
The royal astrologer was run out of breath
He thought that maybe the rain would postpone his death
He look in sky but he look in vain
Heavy cloud but no rain
Well the land was cracking and the river was dry
All the crops were dying when they ought to be high
So to save his farm from the banker’s draft
The farmer took out a book on some old witchcraft
He made a spell and a potion on a midsummer’s night
He killed a brindled calf in the pale moonlight
He prayed to the sky but he prayed in vain
Heavy cloud but no rain
Heavy cloud but no rain
The sun won’t shine till the clouds are gone
The clouds won’t go till their work is done
And every morning you’ll hear me pray
If only it would rain today
I asked my baby if there’d be some way
She said she’d save her love for a rainy day
I look in the sky but I look in vain
Heavy cloud but no rain
November 8th, 2007 at 4:29 am
True, prayer won’t hurt the persons praying - but it certainly won’t help them in the sense that the laws of nature simply look away for a few hours. For the myriad of testimonials and stories about prayer helping in stopping floods, in surviving a disease: it seems like people simply want to see a reason for these things to happen. They don’t (really) know the mechanisms involved (meteorological, biological, statistical(!)), and turn to a simple explanation…
The (disputed) behavior experiments by Skinner with his “superstitious pigeon” show something similar. If you throw give a hungry pigeon pieces of food at random times, they might associate their previous behavior with the inexplainable appearance of food and start doing it all times. So if the pigeon had done the pigeon-equivalent of praying before - voila, prayers works, since the food did appear eventually!
Even if these experiments are not proven a 100%, the logic behind it is easy. If you do something incessantly, chances are it will sometimes precede something beneficial for you (like rain).
Anybody can believe that prayer helps (won’t hurt anyone when done in private and not instead of necessary action), but nobody can claim it “really” works due to anecdotal reports when all sound science says it doesn’t. It’s just prayer plus the (few) times something good happens to us by chance!
November 8th, 2007 at 6:13 am
For a truly elegant summary of the efficacy of prayer, see http://russellsteapot.com/comics/2007/omni-impotence.html.
http://russellsteapot.com/comics/2007/Mastering-Your-Operational-Excellence.html is pretty good, too.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:30 am
Quiet Desperation said: “I need to be spanked.
Preferably by Jennifer Connely.”
Where does the line form?
November 8th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Ideas, religious or not, are not dangerous.
The way some people act on them are very dangerous.
We should pray about it.
You’re right. Ideas are not dangerous, although ideas certainly have a dimension of quality from terrible to awesome. Ideas that deny reason fall toward the terrible end of that spectrum.
How people act on ideas is where the danger is. Religious ideas, when acted upon, have demonstrated for not just days, months or years but literally for MILENNIA that they are harmful, backward, and dangerous much more than they are anything else.
Consequently, they should not be tolerated in civilized places.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Okay….. here are a few reasons not to be an atheist. I am working on all of the difficult questions and probably will not finish until the day I die:
Science has eliminated God:
It is well known that the scientific method is incapable of adjudicating the God-hypothesis, either positively or negatively. Those who believe that it proves or disproves the existence of God press that method beyond its legitimate limits, and run the risk of abusing or discrediting it.
Faith avoids dealing with evidence:
Faith is not blind trust in the absence of evidence. A good Christian definition of faith:
[Faith] affects the whole of man’s nature. It Commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence, it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and its is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.
Faith in God is like believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy:
This is a schoolboy argument. There is no serious empirical evidence that people regard God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as being in the same category. I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was about five years old (I caught my Dad eating Santys mince pies and distinctly remember trying to ‘chin him’ I have been a skeptic ever since). I did spend some time as an Atheist and discovered God later in life and It does seem that a large number of people come to believe in God later in life, anyway I have yet to meet anyone who came to believe in Santa Claus late in Life. If this argument has any plausibility, it requires a real analogy between God and Santa Claus to exist - which it clearly does not.
Music:
A Scientific account of Music would be unsatisfactory to me and would probably go something like neural response to the impact of airwaves on the eardrum. The deep mystery of music - how a temporal sequence of sounds can speak of an eternal realm of beauty - total eludes its grasp, in the same way that the Big Bang is unsatisfactory, of course I believe this theory but there must be much more.
Age of the Earth:
It is anachronistic to press scientific meaning on to Genesis, as the first scientific journals did not appear until the seventeenth century.
Creationism happens when you try to interpret Genesis without Theology.
Dark Materials - Philip Pullman:
It has been said that Pullman is anti-religious, but I just do not agree with that, after all his books are set in an alternate universe.
Pullman is an Atheist but it seems to me his major problems are with any form of organized oppression be it religious hierarchy or Soviet Rule. I really respect this balanced view because what Yeltsin and Stalin did is a fact of history too.
I find his books spiritual and like to read them for their Philosophical content.
Anthropic Principle:
The math’s on this one goes waaaay over my head, but I have managed to understand that when the Big Bang happened the required elements (and amounts of them) for life would not necessarily happen. In fact it seems our universe is extremely ’special’ and an enormous amount of fine tuning would seem to be the answer or there were previously a trillion big bangs and it just so happens that we reside in this one?!
To believe that this is just some happy accident is too much in the realm of the fairy’s even for me.
Can you not see, it is ridiculous NOT to pray.
Oh yeh even in America 42% of Scientists believe in God.
November 8th, 2007 at 7:03 am
True, prayer won’t hurt the persons praying
I disagree.
Prayer hurts the person praying as much as doing any pointless activity hurts the person doing it. At that level, it’s as harmful as watching Knight Rider reruns.
Intercessory prayer hurts the person praying because a true believer is actually using prayer to abrogate personal action. People pray for strength, pray for God’s help, whatever… they pray for things to be handed to them on a divine platter, instead of using the time constructively to achieve whatever end they want God to grant. That means they’re actually impeding their own progress or whatever end their after.
Worse, if you believe that God will intercede on your behalf, it pretty much removes the responsibility for success and failure from your shoulders. That harms the person praying too - without the burden of responsibility, it’s far too easy to dismiss the negative.
In its most extreme form, intercessory prayer can physically hurt people by causing them to forego treatments and methods known to work in favour of waiting for divine grace. When that happens, they truly lose and people can (and have) died.
November 8th, 2007 at 7:04 am
OT, but GO VOTE! CA got ~1000 votes overnight, yeah.
http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog-1.php
November 8th, 2007 at 7:05 am
OT, but GO VOTE! CA got ~1000 votes overnight, yeah, riiight.
http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog-1.php
November 8th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Anthropic Principle:
The math’s on this one goes waaaay over my head, but I have managed to understand that when the Big Bang happened the required elements (and amounts of them) for life would not necessarily happen. In fact it seems our universe is extremely ’special’ and an enormous amount of fine tuning would seem to be the answer or there were previously a trillion big bangs and it just so happens that we reside in this one?!
I think the real problem is assigning such a high level of “speciality” to life. Why is life so special? Why does it make more sense to presume that some divine creature made everything just for you than it does to conjecture that maybe you just popped out by accident?
Once again, it is the arrogance of religion that illuminates the matter. Religion crumbles if one does not have faith that humans are the acme of all existence. That’s really where the “faith” is… the unfounded assertion that life, and humans in particular, are somehow more special than anything else. Because, let’s face it, if we are not the acme of all things, then maybe God wasn’t necessary to design us; the universe maybe isn’t so specially tuned in a way that only God could tune; etc.
I am not saying that because life may not be special in the cosmic scheme of things that we should devalue it and run around on a killing rampage - we’re alive, we prefer to stay that way, all is well. But to believe that we are special above everything else in the universe is the ultimate egoism - a dangerous hubris that threatens our very existence.
November 8th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Wait, make that 1300 votes overnight… no, wait, now make that 1400 votes for them, … w-wait, now 1500……..
November 8th, 2007 at 7:32 am
>>Evolving squid
That is certainly not how I interpreted the Anthropic Principle, I mean when you said that we are special above everything else. That truly is rubbish (and not something I said). In any case how would we know?
To me it means that from the begining the universe was ‘gifted with the ability to create carbon based life’ to me that means that the very same elements are everywhere in the universe.
It’s just the odds of this happening thats interesting to me.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:10 am
It seems to me that the issue here isn’t whether prayer works or not (I don’t believe this is testable - as any good psychologist will tell you, you can’t test for a response if your subject knows what you are up to, and if there is an omniscient god, then, by definition, they know what you are up to).
The issue is a blatant violation of the separation of church and state by the governor of Georgia. He should be impeached for this. Unfortunately, the way the constitutions tend to work you need to do something both illegal and unpopular to be impeached (actually, just unpopular would probably do - I don’t think the Founding Fathers [sounds like a Catholic order, doesn’t it?] really realized how bad our politicians would get two centuries down the line).
Now, religious or not, it should be possible to agree that the US has separation of church and state. The Supreme Court has upheld and strengthened this over the years and it’s really not open for debate.
Now we get to see where the ‘bad astronomy’ comes in here. This separation is what protects us from things like the mandated teaching of ‘creation science’ in schools. If it is constitutional for the governor to mandate state prayer services, then it is constitutional for him to mandate the teaching of creationism in the state schools. That goes against the evidence of astronomy for the Big Bang, etc. (not to mention Evolution, which is, of course, Biology and not Astronomy).
So, to sum up. This post has a good and valid place as a ‘bad astronomy’ article. Public prayer -> Creationism -> Bad Astronomy. An attack on the separation of church and state is (in the current climate in the US) an attack on one of the bulwarks against Bad Astronomy.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:10 am
I am at work right now, and I am pressed for time, so forgive me if someone else has already said this.
I am a non-theist, so I already presume that prayer does not work. Having said that, I want to add that you *cannot* scientifically test prayer. Here is why.
Belief in prayer assumes a conscious God with free will. And the Bible tells us in Matthew 4:7 that you should not put God to the test. So it’s entirely possible that God is up there, ticked off that he’s being tested, and withholding his healing powers as a way to punish those that would test him. If one entertains the idea that prayer might actually have an effect, then one has to consider this idea.
Unless you can blind God to the prayer test, the test will never be truly blind.
J. D.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Genius,
I was going to post that same comic! I love Russell’s Teapot.
Anyway, it always cracked me up that people think group prayer is more powerful than one person praying. I like to envision God having something like an “Applause-O-Meter” but only a “Prayer-O-Meter”.
There’s God, on his throne staring at his “Georgia Drought Prayer-O-Meter”. It’s only at the yellow stage now so it’s not a time for answering the prayer. Oh, here comes the governor with his big prayer group, and the prayers come rolling in!!! The arrow is moving to the right!! It’s in the red!! OH! THE ARROW IS SPINNING THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE PRAYING!!! IT’S TIME TO ANSWER THE PRAYER!! YAY GOD MADE IT RAIN!!
November 8th, 2007 at 8:28 am
What’s next–sacrifice a virgin?
November 8th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Martin Moranon,
The odds of it happening are the interesting part to me too. I still remember back in the late 1980’s when i was in grade school, seeing a TV documentary where a catholic priest and a scientist were debating just exactly that.
The main gist of the priests theory was that the chances of all the right chemicals ending up in just the right place to condence down into a planet of just the right size and pressure to eventually create life totally on accident was just so astronomically small that it couldn’t possibly happen more then once.
When it was the scientists turn he lined it all up mathmatically kind of like the drake equasion but extended out a little further. His basic premise was that if we took only the stars we had actually named and assumed that .1% of those stars had 1 planet and .1% of those planets had something else required to make life etc etc etc.. He worked it out to if 1 ten thousanth of 1% of the stars we had names for had intelligent life around them there would still be more then 180,000 planets with intelligent life. Yes its true that the chances are astronomically small, but the numbers we are dealing with are astronomically large numbers.
I would say that the chances that life could arise without the help of any god figure are actually pretty good.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Its a ridiculous cop out to assume a study of prayer is somehow nullified by the mere knowledge that prayer is being tested. I mean, using your logic, that would mean that whenever the Romans marched a band of Xians before a bunch of lions, testing their prayer efficacy in effect, they’re prayers went unacknowledged in anyways, even if there was good works to be done.
Assuming prayer cant be studied, is just another one of those smoke screen lies. God is invisible, god works in mysterious ways, and if you try to study the presence of any effectiveness of god he will just not show up.
As far as the anthropic principle, its a shoddy argument because it ignores the trillions of life forms which have come and gone across the eons. It would more be more accurately stated as “the biological principle”, since we have only been on this planet for around 100,000 years, and have been and still do cohabitate with the rest of life on this planet.
To the intellectually lazy religious, who love their fairytale explanation of reality here is a quote from the late Richard Feynman, who summed up the enhancement of awe science provides:
“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?”
–Richard Feynman
So science does for everyone brave enough to ask the tough questions, work hard, and stay up late to see the universe as it truly is.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:33 am
MArtin:
String theory has the “problem” that although it does a good job explaining the presence of the strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational forces, the balance between those forces seems to be random. What falls out of the calculations is that the particular balancing act required for stars to form and nuclear processes to last long enough for life to develop does NOT follow from unknown initial conditions. We end up with a potential mix of 10^500th power of potential universes that COULD form. Only SOME of those would allow life as we know it to grow.
,,,however, our kinda life isn’t the only way sentience could form,,,
Thus we end up with the Multi-verse, in which there are ga-zillions of local universes. We’re just in one that happens to be kind for US.
,,,and the anthropic principle is the result.
The only real question about god is this: could there BE a god? Is such a being possible?
Now, define it!
In infinity, all things that are possible, will be,,,if you just wait long enough.
GAry 7
November 8th, 2007 at 8:36 am
I’m a Georgia resident, for better or for worse. I wasn’t surprised that Sonny called for organized prayer, and if he used a bunch of taxpayer money and property to do it, that wouldn’t really surprise me either. We know him well enough to expect that kind of foolishness.
What bothered me about it was that the day after the call for prayer, WABE, the Atlanta NPR affiliate, ran a bit on the radio news about it. In the piece, WABE discussed the plans for prayer in the exact tone you might hear on a piece about a tainted food recall or plans to clean up a crime-ridden neighborhood by assigning more vice officers to it. It was very matter-of-fact; there was no hint that anyone might think that prayer didn’t work. There was no indication that prayer was anything but a perfectly logical solution to a pesky problem.
“Looky there, Ole Sonny done took keer a’that problim! I’m shore glad he’s the Gubner!”
Not one word was uttered that might cast doubt on the efficacy of his plan.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Ideally, journalists ought to present the news without bias. Bias is what Fox does, and what its watchers enjoy. They love having that constant feedback from like-thinkers without the need to reassess any situation for themselves.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Addendum:
I personally like Joan Osborns song about god:
” Maybe God is just a slob like us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to find His way,back home,,,”
Or, as the Dead might phrase it,” It’s a long. strange trip and we have only each other for company,,,”
GAry 7
November 8th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Strictly speaking, the hypothesis under test is that prayer has an effect distinguishable from random chance. Any kind of prayer which is indistinguishable from random chance is, indeed, untestable…
November 8th, 2007 at 9:05 am
If it’s true that prayers are all heard but not all are answered then prayer is like a gamble then.
You’re playing a lottery with taxpayers’s money. Is that any better?
Also…
“Believe in the Bible, God, the Lord Jesus, or not…
Prayer, meditation, or just pulling together as a group, can have a tremendous effect towards solving problems.”
It’s a RAIN problem. Get over it, you can’t control weather with getting together with people and having a mental “oooouh I feel we’re doing SOMETHING!” party.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Martin Moran,
The odds of something happening are basically meaningless unless you assign some sort of preferred or “special” property to a particular outcome. The odds of getting any random hand in poker are all exactly the same. That means that your chances of getting an ace of diamonds, king of diamonds, queen of diamonds, jack of diamonds, and 10 of diamonds is exactly the same as your getting a three of hearts, ten of spades, five of clubs, ace of clubs and jack of hearts. Exactly the same odds for both hands, but which one wins?
Are you playing five-card stud or lowball? If you change your concept of what makes a special outcome then you will interpret it differently.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am
>> HvP
Sorry I am not sure if I should keep going with this, but have you noticed how many times a Royal Flush would appear, and you are only talking about 52 cards?
November 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am
BA: A few months ago I stopped visiting your site because of its degeneration from a serious discussion of things astronomical into a mindless blog of fools. I returned today to give a second look (scientific method perhaps). Alas, I see things are only worse. See ya.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am
At best, faith is sufficient enough to provide an vaguely warm and fuzzy feeling for some people, but it’s nothing so profound that it can’t be found elsewhere. At its worst, faith is what makes people crazy enough to fly airplanes into buildings because they think it will make their imaginary friend happy.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Maybe God wants Georgia or the entire south-east US to become a desert, who are we to try to change a Supreme Being’s mind with our prayer. We, in the flock, just don’t see the big picture.
If prayer works, then maybe there is a Counter-Prayer Group (CPG) somewhere in the deserts of Iraq or Afghanistan, who are (and have been) praying for no rain, so that we American infidels can feel what it means to live in a dry land!?! So would that mean that their prayers are stronger than ours? Is it prayer-time depended. We need more funding to aggressively research what it take to lobby God (through prayer) and get our version (or that of our government) of what we want the world to look like.
When Gov. Sonny Perdue invited multi denomination to his prayer meeting, I wonder if he included Muslims, Jews, or even Scientologists.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:07 am
“there are no atheists in foxholes.”
As an atheist who has been, in a situation where the end was nigh (albeit not a foxhole) I can assure you the last thing going through my mind was whether some made up silliness could save me or the people around me. What we did need was to take control of the situation for ourselves because in that moment we were, as we all are, utterly alone.
Keep your beliefs to yourself and let the rest of us get on with it.
Oh, and the idea of a prayer session to end a drought is stupidity in the extreme.
No, I’m not intolerant. Yes, you are stupid for thinking prayer is going to help.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Several of you are referencing the “no athesists in a foxhole” line, but you’re not interpreting it correctly. It doesn’t mean that there are no athesists in the military, or even on the front lines.
What it implies is that faced with imminent death, all people turn to a higher power and “pray” to be protected or saved or watched over. The athesist ceases to be an athesist for a moment, as he charges out of his foxhole into almost certain death, hoping/praying someone is watching over him.
These people identify as athesists before facing death, and usually again after they survive. But people who spout the “no athesists in a foxhole” line believe that all humans, in their heart, turn to a higher power when they are in mortal danger, even if they claim not to believe. The idea being that in our heart of hearts, we all believe in, or at least hope for the existance of, a power who is watching over us.
I personally don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what people who use that line believe. They’re not claiming that there are no athesists in the military or that people only go into the military to fight for religious reasons.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Martin:
As you say, to claim this is to go beyond the bounds of the scientific method. Few real atheists (real = having a physical existence, as opposed to those that only exist in theist imaginings) claim this. However, Bertrand Russell’s celestial teapot, or Carl Sagan’s invisible, intangible dragon also cannot be disproven. This does not mean that it is therefore reasonable to assume that they actually do exist. It’s the same with God. Until evidence for God’s existence is shown, the scientific default positon is non-existence.
So, you’re saying that faith starts with the evidence, then goes way beyond. Isn’t that just what you were accusing atheists of?
Also, let’s see that initial evidence for God.
It’s exactly the same. You just have more invested in your God belief, so you cling to it harder.
Ah, yes. The “science unweaves the rainbow” argument. Many people find vast wonder and beauty in science.
Atheists aren’t the ones you need to tell about scientific meaning and Genesis. All the evidence points to 4.5 billion years as the age of the Earth. Your unsupported assertation about creationism contrtadicts your claim about faith and evidence.
He writes fantasy books to entertain children. He isn’t some High Priest of Atheism. Nor is anyone else.
You (and creationist in general) have it backwards. Life evolved to fit the universe. There’s no accident. If the universe was different, but still able to support some kind of life, then life would be different (probably not anything we could recognise as life)
No, I cannot see that. Creationist hyperbole isn’t going to convince me.
Meaning that 58% don’t. It’s called Freedom of Religion.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Stephanie:
Everyone who has commented on “no atheists in foxholes” understands that. They are pointing out that it’s not true.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Okay, I got up this morning and read through this stuff again.
First, I want to apologize for the “no athiests…” comment.
It was a cheap comment, that I should not have made.
I have complete respect for any one who would risk life for their country.
Second, not all of us that believe in prayer, believe it is enough just to pray.
We must actively be doing what it is we feel led God wants us to do.
Sometimes it is just to be quite and wait, but most times not.
Yes, I’ve heard of religions who would pray instead of seek medical treatment, but that is not me.
If I am sick, I figure God put the hosptal there, use it.
If he gave me a truck to drill water wells, then I better use them.
I feel people, even goverment officials, should have the right to pray, whatever their religion.
I do not know how to keep the “freedom of religion” groups and the “freedom from religion” groups happy, both have rights.
I guess both sides just need a little more tolerance and understanding.
I like this site, Phil is a smart guy, and so are you folks.
I enjoy your comments.
Have a great day, and see you around.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:49 am
When I was a boy I really wanted a new bike so I prayed and prayed that god might grant me one somehow.
I quickly realised that god doesn’t work that way, so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness
November 8th, 2007 at 11:03 am
the worst part is that, according to Wikipedia, Sonny Perdue is a potential candidate for vice president for the GOP ticket.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:05 am
And they do - as private citizens. What they don’t have is the right to use their official position to support their religious position.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:31 am
>> When I was a boy I really wanted a new bike so I prayed and prayed that god might grant me one somehow.
>> I quickly realised that god doesn’t work that way, so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness
Magisteria of science and religion (religion and temporality?) in action.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:38 am
@ JD, you *cannot* scientifically test prayer.
Probably not, but then why have prayer, if there is no way to tell if your prayers were answered?
Or take the extreme case, has there *ever*, in all of recorded history, been a *confirmed* case of an amputee miraculously re-growing the severed limb(s)?
I’m certain that, of all the amputees there have been in histroy, there have been a large percentage who prayed to be made whole (even if only silently - it says right on the label, that God hears your silent prayers). I’m equally certain that there is some percentage of amputees whose faith was ‘as large as a mustard seed’ yet somehow their prayers went unanswered - even though the Apostles were told, ‘WHATEVER you ask in My name, it shall be given unto you’..
November 8th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Sorry I am not sure if I should keep going with this, but have you noticed how many times a Royal Flush would appear, and you are only talking about 52 cards?
I’ve asked about that at a few casinos in both Quebec and Las Vegas that offer Carribean Stud Poker. I have been told that they pay out the Royal Flush jackpot about once a month, and the straight flush jackpot about once a day… and these are small casinos.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
@Martin.
John already did an excellent job replying to your comments, but that has never stopped me from chiming in:
As John said, the vast majority of atheists who have put some thought into what they believe know that science cannot prove God does not exist. Even “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins agree with that. It’s when claims that this God is intimately involved with us on a personal basis, guiding everything we do and continually interfering in history — all without any evidence whatsoever — that we tend to reject the idea of a supernatural deity worthy of unconditional devotion.
It’s possible that the Face on Mars really is an alien artifact, and there is a multimillion dollar industry around it that relies on the fact that, although there is no evidence of alien involvement, we cannot be 100% sure there wasn’t. Does that mean we should take them seriously?
Agreed, faith and belief is an integral part of the way we humans operate. But it all depends on what you think of the evidence for a personal God. If a stranger comes up to me warning that if I don’t dedicate my life to Thor the Thunder God there will be consequences to pay, I would rightly be extremely skeptical. If, the very next day, I am in the middle of a thunderstorm and I am struck by lightning, I might be a little less certain of my skepticism! Was it a coincidence? Probably, but who knows for sure?
The problem is that people are very good at remembering only the things that they want to remember. People believe it’s spooky when, just after you thought of someone, the phone rings and it’s them, forgetting the dozens of times you thought about them and the phone does not ring. Belief in pray, i.e. evidence for supernatural intervention, works in just the same way. A dying person beats the 100-1 odds and lives. They were probably just lucky enough to be that 1 in 100, but history and science shows that it’s hard for people to accept it was merely chance. Now, if an amputee’s limbs grow back after a prayer session, then that is evidence worth taking seriously but, oddly enough, that never seems to happen.
Although the comparison is valid in that it attempts to illustrate to Christians how skeptical atheists really are about the existence of God, I understand you objection. That’s why I prefer to use a pagan god, like Thor or Zeus in my examples (i.e. gods believed in by millions for centuries — no passing fad). Or perhaps, Allah would be a good example and the billions who pray to him several times a day, though that tends to be muddied by some claiming that God and Allah are the same entity.
By the way, the number of non-believers converting to Christianity later in life is statistically insignificant. Long term Pew Research and Barna Group surveys show that once you have established your belief or non-belief system in early adulthood, you are very unlikely to change later in life. The numbers of non-believers in each generation, as measured over the last thirty years as they grew older, have hardly changed at all. Sure some do change sides — I didn’t become an atheist until my 30s — but they are the exception, not the rule.
That’s just saying that science will never figure out everything. I agree, but it’s a massive leap to say that because we can’t know everything, we should believe there is a supernatural creator controlling everything and watching over us. Perhaps appreciation of music is simply a fortunate side effect of the evolutionary development of our complex human brains. We don’t know for sure, but is it any less likely than music being the gifts of the gods?
As John says, you are preaching to the wrong audience here, and this is not evidence against atheism.
“His Dark Materials” is children’s fiction, not a treatise on atheism. He does use allegories to criticize certain aspects of religion–the Catholic Church is his biggest target–but it’s a stretch to think that the whole of Pullman’s philosophy regarding religion is somehow embedded in those books. In any case, I’m not at all sure why you think this is an argument for not being an athiest.
Since we don’t know the underlying nature of the Universe, we have no idea if our Universe’s existence is extremely unlikely or inevitable. Today, neither science not statistics can inform us on that conundrum, and they may never be able to.
But then, why would it be any more likely that there was an omniscience, omnipresent deity around to create our Universe? A being claimed to be *more* complex than the Universe he is supposed to have created? Why should God get a free pass about the likelihood of his existence?
Even if we accepted all of the evidence you cite, the best you have done is given evidence that maybe we should be “theists” or “deists”. There is nothing in your comments that tells us that the deity you argue for is the slightest bit interested in whether we pray to him/her/it or that he/she/it is listening to us.
And no doubt, well over 50% of Pakistani scientists believe in Allah? Your point?
November 8th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
J.D. says, “So it’s entirely possible that God is up there, ticked off that he’s being tested, and withholding his healing powers as a way to punish those that would test him. If one entertains the idea that prayer might actually have an effect, then one has to consider this idea.”
So let’s say that I set up a blind study to test the efficacy of prayer on a group of, say, children with cancer. My prayer group would pray for the kids in one hospital, but not those in another to determine if prayer changes the outcome of treatment. (This assumes that both hospitals produce statistically equal results before the study.)
Now, would God ignore those prayers to teach me a lesson? And exactly how does that teach me a lesson? And what of the kids who are being prayed for? Does God just ignore them? And why does he ignore the kids in the hospital not being prayed for?
November 8th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
>> Georgia is having a drought. Things are bad. So what do people do when they feel helpless and cannot do anything?
>> They pray.
I think the core words here are “helpless” and “cannot do anything.” I’m not certain about the efficacy of cloud seeding and therefore can’t comment on it from any sort of expert standpoint; were it that simple, though, California would be seeding clouds left and right because the skies over here in San Diego have been grey for the past few days and anyone with a television knows that we don’t exactly have what would be called an overabundance of free dihydrogen monoxide in the ol’ water table.
Yes, this is really stupid and I agree that it’s a violation of the separation of church and state for the governor to do this using his office and taxpayer money. Now, were he to approach it as a private citizen out of his own pocket, that’d be a different matter… but “From The Office of the Governor of Georgia” on the stationary makes this a violation of the establishment clause.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
> “It has been said that Pullman is anti-religious, but I just do not agree with that, after all his books are set in an alternate universe.”
Nnnnnnno. It posits a multiverse of which our world is a member. Will Parry and Mary Malone come from our version of Earth.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
B.A.
I’m as much of an atheist as you are, but you CAN’T test whether or not prayer works no matter how hard you try all studies into it are automatically invalid.
If God exists then he’s a sentient self aware entity and all knowing to boot
It doesn’t matter what tricks you pull on the suckers sat in church mumbling away to keep them from knowing its a test.
God would know that you’re pulling the wool over the flocks eyes and could rig the test anyway he (or should that be He) chooses.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
As Bishop Usher once wrote, the earth is 6,000 (six thousand) years old and was created in approx. seven days. Since his belief is based on his extensive study of both the Bible and theological writings of others, how could he be wrong. After all, the Bible IS the True Word of God, and is, therefore, inerrent. Listen to George W. Bush and his friends such as Pat Robertson etc. They know!
November 8th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
But if god wanted you to believe in him, why would he choose to deliberately hide evidence when he can see that people are actively searching for it.
I guarantee that minutes after any god gives conclusive proof of its existence, millions of skeptics around the world will be putting on their “You go God!” shirts and heading to the appropriate church.
God has nothing to lose and everything to gain
November 8th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
And not to deviate from the subject at hand, keep up the excellent blog, Phil. I have referred so many people to “Bad Astronomy” and will continue to do so.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Aaaaargh! I tried to vote for Bad Astronomy Blog as the best, but was advised that voting ended on 11/8/07 @ 5:00pm and my attempt is of course, on 11/8/07, but, regretably, @ 7:27pm.
November 8th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
[…] and Phil Plaitt makes a funny at our […]
November 8th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
No atheists in foxholes? Again? Next thing you know we’ll be hearing how the earth revolves around the sun.
Why not try:
http://www.maaf.info/ or http://www.atheistfoxholes.org/welcome2.php. There’s more, despite the discrimination given to the atheists who serve this country (I’m leaving out the rest of the world here).
I’m surprised more theists don’t take offense at that suggestion that it is only through fear that people can “find god”. Is that why so many fundies like war - they think it will increase the number of believers?
Anyway, the real reason I wrote - with the leather groups involved, maybe they will be praying for “Golden Showers”?
November 8th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
>> But if god wanted you to believe in him, why would he choose to deliberately hide evidence when he can see that people are actively searching for it.
To play advocatus Diaboli (advocatus Dei?) the usual argument is that God wants humanity to choose to believe (and be saved) as a matter of free will. Should God prove Its existence, everyone but the mad would instantly believe and the issue of choice and the concept humans being the underlying arbiter of their own fate fails miserably. One could still choose to disbelieve, yes, but it would be as irrational as disbelieving in the sun or in the ground one walks on.
A better argument to make is why, if God wants people to believe in It, would God create evidence that would seem to contradict Its existence (in terms of fundamentalism and creationism)? If the fundamentalist creationists are right, why would God plant evidence that the universe is, what, thirteen billion years old? If the active theistic evolutionists are right, why would God plant obvious design flaws throughout all of guided creation (the human birth canal, for one)? If the inactive theistic evolutionists are right… well… that hardly classifies as theistic evolution because God plays no role in it and so it becomes equivalent to believing in invisible pink unicorns, a completely unscientific belief.
These questions naturally bring up the possible answers of no God (of course), trickster Gods, or perhaps even malevolent Gods.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Martin Moranon said,
“Sorry I am not sure if I should keep going with this, but have you noticed how many times a Royal Flush would appear, and you are only talking about 52 cards?”
This would assume that you agree that there are at least four different ways of getting a “best hand” - one royal flush for each suit. That would be akin to conceding that there could be more than one special arrangement in which human life could have been possible even if some of the variables were tweaked.
But that’s not event what I’m talking about. The “royal flush” is a preconceived notion that humans have invented and assigned a special value to. Mathematically, a hand made up of 10, J, Q, K, A and all hearts, is just as likely as any other assortment of five cards you can name. Also, any straight flush is just as likely as any royal flush because both are determined by the same rules (five cards in sequence of the same suit). Some hands are even less likely but aren’t considered very valuable. This hand (9 of clubs, 6 of diamonds, 2 of hearts, 4 of spades, 3 of clubs) is even LESS LIKELY than having a royal flush because there can only be one of the former but four of the latter. The only difference is that we don’t view that first hand as particularly special. In fact, it’s one of the worst hands you can get, but it’s extremely rare to get EXACTLY those specific cards in one hand.
In that sense, we are making the rules about what WE think is special. There are probably other combinations of physical laws that are equally or less likely than those we are familiar with. It just so happens that we believe that a universe capable of supporting us is special. Just like there are specific combinations of cards in a poker game that are equally or less likely than a royal flush that we wouldn’t care about, there are different arrangements of universal constants that we wouldn’t care about simply because we assign value to conditions that we are comfortable with.
November 9th, 2007 at 1:06 am
I know, I know, several others have answered, most adequately, but I can’t resist chiming in to dogpile on Martin Moran ;-). There is no maliciousness involved, though, simply a desire to offer a different perspective.
Science has eliminated God:
No, not at all, and anyone versed in scientific principle or even logic knows this to be false. What science has done, however, is find methods to explain many of the things we considered manifestations of a higher being, and show them to be under no apparent outside influence. And it has turned up an awful lot of evidence that virtually all scriptures considered “holy” got the beginning(s) wrong.
About the closest anyone has gotten to disproving god has been Carl Sagan (if I remember correctly) pointing out that the universe demonstrates exactly what we would expect from random, undirected development.
Faith is not blind trust in the absence of evidence. A good Christian definition of faith:
[Faith] affects the whole of man’s nature. It Commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence, it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and its is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.
Francis Collins, again, if I remember right. About the only key part in there is the inclusion of the word “adequate” before “evidence.” While this can be taken many ways, I have to feel that the modifier of “adequate” indicates that what may be considered evidence is up for grabs, and more of a personal decision. But that just opens the door for a presupposed outcome: if you want to find god, you will. Coming from a scientist, this is pretty lame. Science works from a standpoint that the evidence is convincing because it stands up to the tests, even before the skeptical. Arbitrarily picking a point to say, “That’s good enough” only means you already know the answer. Nothing deep there.
The rest of it is doubletalk. “Confidence based on conviction.” Well, duh. “Consent of the will.” Aren’t they one and the same?
The final bit is what becomes downright amusing: “…by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.” I would seriously like to see someone, anyone, who conducted themselves in total accordance with their religion, whatever it might be. I haven’t yet. Religion is more often used to dictate other people’s conduct than one’s own.
But overall, who cares? “Faith” isn’t particularly an issue to anyone, except to point out the rampant hypocrisy. If someone has a problem with religion, it isn’t with faith, it’s with the shamelessly antisocial behavior under the claim of divine guidance.
This is a schoolboy argument. There is no serious empirical evidence that people regard God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as being in the same category.
Well, yes and no. I agree with you to a point, in that the analogy differs on too broad a level to be useful.
But the comparison does bear some examination. Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy have specific behaviors or actions, and these are ones we see easily and can test. Funny how Santa brings cheap toys to the impoverished families, isn’t it? Even as a child, we notice these things. Supreme beings are a lot more vague. Most of their “actions” take place once someone is dead - no tests there. You get to know of their existence only if, as indicated in the “faith” bit above, you try not to pin down their existence. This is supposedly “free will” in that, should a god prove its existence, we’d be “forced” to believe. But basically, it’s an attempt to legitimatize wishful thinking