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Freud theorized that one's view of God springs from the view of one's father. When a man comes of age and is thrust into the cruel, cold world, he desires nothing less than a haven of security and protection from it. He can no longer look to his parents for this protection - after all, he is an adult and must learn to care for himself - but he desires above all a "Someone" to do this job for him. Freud theorized that the man's need to overcome his helplessness leads him to the idea of a Higher Power, which he calls God: "When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child for ever, that he can never do without protection against strange superior powers, he lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father" (Freud 30). God acts as an idealized father figure for humans, providing an adversary to harsh Nature and an ally in the midst of life's troubles. Indeed, God becomes made in man's own image, the "ultimate wish-fulfillment" of man's desire for a loving father (Freud 21).

Perhaps if one's father was hateful, angry, and aggressive their view of God would be more punishing. Perhaps this person would be more concerned about evil demons that always try to sabotage versus a loving God that aims to protect. The bible has its fair share of comments about such a God, especially in the old testament.

Sure, if you want to meet 'em in hell .

"That last little bit is the best response yet. I really hope that you do think about that, because there is a real problem amongst Christians where they decide to pick and choose what parts of the Bible they agree with and which they dont."

My NAZI comment was directed at your slippery slope argument. There have been unethical experiements in the past, but they hardly bring us to being NAZIs. Milgram's Obedience was specifically designed to model NAZI behavior, but it did not take us down a slippery slope. There is a reason that Godwin's Law exists, after all.

What alternative do you propose? If you read the data, 11 patients of what will ultimately become the 600 patient study group have already refused to be a part of the study in the hospital. When they are able, patients are explained everything and given a choice. People who want to be excluded can pick up free bracelets. Thousands of these bracelets have been distributed.

You fail to realize that this is a clinical trial both in the hospital and in the field. It is a randomized sample between different treatments. The FDA has not yet officially approved the drug for use in more than a few hundred patients. They have not yet officially said that it works better than than saline, either. This is a test to see if all of the data gathered over the past years that says PolyHeme works for trauma patients is true in the field. Thus far it has been. When field trials start accumulating bad results they are quickly cancelled.

Considering the fact that they have already tested this on healthy adults and consenting hospital patients during the first two phases of clinical trials, what do you propose they do in order to determine efficacy in the hospital setting? Shock needs to be treated in the Golden Hour and that is when Polyheme works the best. Stopping Polyheme treatment until the patient is alert and oriented (assuming he doesn't die anyway even with "real" blood or end up in a coma) or waiting for next of kin to show up will prevent data gathering during this golden hour. What has been done in the past is approving a substance at this point and using it in the field without real life scenarios. The three possibilities are FDA rejection, FDA approval without these trials, or waiting to see the outcome of the trials then deciding on approval.

Imagine hospitals never running out of blood. That would be truly amazing. When it passes its trials this product will revolutionize emergency medicine. Every one of these news items shows why we need this in our hospitals now. Currently 20% of trauma patients die from their injuries. By carrying this on Advanced Life Support units they can reduce that horrible mortality.

On an aside, I am surprised that politicians are not speaking out in favor of Polyheme. It could help lower the murder rate. Maybe it's just because I'm in the Philly area and it has a horrible murder rate, but improved EMS keeps more people alive and makes the statistics look better.

I agree, but I think it would happen with adults too, depending on how they did the study. People follow authority figures all the time, assuming they know what's best.

So if the experimenters just told people to "do these steps" the people would most likely assume that each step had some point to the research, even if they can't understand it. After all, it's a scientist telling you to do these things. I'm not a psychologist, so I wouldn't know why they wanted all those steps to be completed. I'd assume there was a reason, though, and do them anyway.

If it wasn't made clear that the goal was to do whatever the goal was and not to do the process suggested, I'd bet most people would follow the steps given, assuming that the useless steps had some use to the researchers.

The Milgram experiment (or here, if you don't trust the Wikipedia) proved that people are very willing to do what an authority tells them to do, even if it's against their better judgement.

Hell, yeah. Anybody remember this study?

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm/

Remember for each person getting shot in an on-line game, there is someone willingly doing the shooting. One additional purpose of this could be to desensitize the players to inflicting harm on others, or finding people who never minded much in the first place. For those that do especially well, there is always prison guard duty...

i don't know why you feel you have to clarify time and again that you do not condone or approve or whatever... the nazis were a product of a situation and an era... the "final solution" if such a thing existed was a result of the age of reason that saw such a course of action as rational... the catholic church and pope weren't even vocal enough about it... now some people continue to deny much of the atrocities and say they were grossly exagerated... i don't know about that, maybe, maybe not... but i know one thing... losers tend to be vilified and winners write history books...

Just consider for example the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments; google for it... For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 illiterate black men who were lied to and a disease such as syphilis was deliberately allowed to take its awful course on them without treatment. here

While you're at it you might wanna also google for the CIA mind control experiments during the cold war... they experimented on soldiers and mental patients, gave them high doses of drugs, hundreds of electric shock treatments per individual within a few days... and stuff like that...

most importantly, had you or the person you responded to been living in nazi germany, you would've probably done the same. Just see the Milgram experiments ... google for them if you don't trust the source

don't exonerate yourself; given the situation, we're all guilty

You are correct - I misunderstood the 60% figure, and upon second inspection it does apply to the maximum setting, not the pain-threshold setting (on some sites I read 65%, I dont know which is the correct figure) - the only figure I could find regarding anything close to the "threshold of pain" was the statement that "no subject stopped before reaching 300 volts" on this site. If I recall correctly, the threshold of pain in the experiment was about 120/150 volts, and at 300 the actor playing the student would pound on the wall and scream. So a) you're right, and b) I guess the only thing I can console myself with is the fact that at least not everybody killed the guy (same link as before, reference that a german experiment showed that only 15% of volunteers refused to administer a lethal shock)

I don't believe this is true at this moment. When I was taking my Psych 2 class, we had a few discussions on ethics in clinical trials. Aparently, it was unethical to hide the purpose of a study, in light of more famous programs like the Milgram Experiment, where the subjects may not desire to know how they would behave under certian circumstances. So (if I understand correctly) unless there is a pressing reason in the field of psychology, otherwise cleared with some sort of ethics board, researchers cannot use subterfuge in the execution of any experiment.

Another interesting psychological phenomena that might apply to these UFO types was conducted by Solomon Asch. He brought together around a dozen people and gave each one a piece of paper with three different sized lines, then asked each person which line was longest. Out of the dozen people, though, there was only one experiment subject and all the rest were confederates, who would unanimously say a wrong answer. Then the experiment subject would usually repeat a wrong answer. If enough UFO types get together and repeat the same thing, the new guy starts to believe it and repeats the party line even if he isn't sure if it is right.

Hey, sounds like politics. Or slashdot. Or religion. If you have a basic knowledge of psychology, you probably post a large number of interesting comments relating psychological theories to behavior commonly derided on slashdot, like using Windows, etc.

Psychology 101 -- in the early 60's, Stanley Milgram wrote the book on how depraved people can be.

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm

What he was really studying was the varying levels of conformity (or conformability) in various cultures, and how willing people are to follow orders, even when those orders are morally wrong.

The statement doesn't make the assumption of you getting found out. It's supposed to be a test of personal morals. If the only thing keeping you from murder is the fear of being chastised by others then you would fall to the yes side of this test.

Similar but not entirely related was the Milgram Expriment. A volunteer was told to give increasing electric shocks to a "subject" in the next room when the subject in the next room answered a question incorrectly. Now the guy in the next room wasn't really getting shocked but he was yelling like he was. The researcher was collecting results on how these volunteers ability to morally detach themselves from the act by saying he was told to do it.

A classic (if now considered somewhat unethical) experiment in the 60s by Milgram shows the dangers with telling people to administer punishment to others... especially where they're told that they should do so (in short, when told to administer punishment to a level that could cause serious permanent physical damage to a stranger, two-thirds of people will tend to do so if sufficiently emotionally detached).

A lynch mob is never too far away, try Canetti's Crowds and Power too...

T