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Prayer Does Not Help Heart Patients
mu22le writes "A recent study conducted by the Duke University Medical Center on 700 patients, found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf.
This result seems to contradict a previous study by the same authors that reported "cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer in addition to coronary stenting appeared to have better clinical outcomes than those treated with standard stenting therapy alone"."
And yet ... Weekly religious attendance nearly as effective as statins and exercise in extending life, according to a story today at Science Blog.
To debunk a popularly quoted study which found that prayer does help hospital patients.
Actually it's a really lousy illustration. Most creationists believe in "microevolution" - that diseases will change over time to become immune to drugs.
However, they do not believe that evolution is sufficient to create multi-cellular organisms or other specifies - in other words, they don't accept that evolution can actually have evolved humans.
So a creationist is quite likely to accept that TB has evolved to become immune to old drugs. That's (unfortunately) not enough to "prove" that humans evolved.
Funny strip, but don't confuse humor and science/logic. No self respecting creationist denies that species adapt to different environmental conditions, such as new drugs. That's microevolution, changes within a species, genus, or some upper limitation of the extent those changes can go. It's been proven, and it's easily observed. Macroevolution, which is essentially the progression from paramecia to humans, isn't nearly as clean cut or easily proven, and that's where the point of contention is. Even still, a lot of creationists do believe in macroevolution, or at least some form of it.
About the OT, there's obviously a lot more research to be done. Thus far, there have been two studies on this topic, and the results contradicted each other, so unless you're just an antagonist who exists solely to rant against religion every time you get the chance, you'll suspend judgement for now. That's just the obvious conclusion of anyone with a good, scientific mindset.
As to what Creationists accept, that has changed over time. Ten years ago there were plenty of Creationists who went around saying "adaption only within kinds". When sufficient numbers of examples of speciation were thrown in their face, they suddenly started doing odd things like redefining "kinds" and producing their own private definitions of what micro- and macro-evolution are. In fact, some are now quite happy to accept any form of evolution providing it does not have humans in the tree.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Walking on fire has nothing to do with the power of the mind. I'm assuming you're talking about the old walking on coals trick. The secret is that coals aren't a very good conducter, and as such don't pass their heat onto the walkers feat very well in the brief time that they're in contact. If you were to place a metal sheet on top of the coals and have someone walk across that, well, you'd be in for a very different show.
The terms macroevolution and microevolution were first coined in 1927 by the Russian entomologist Iurii Filipchenko (or Philipchenko, depending on the transliteration), in his German-language work Variabilität und Variation, which was the first attempt to reconcile Mendelian genetics and evolution. Filipchenko was an evolutionist, but as he wrote during the period when Mendelism seemed to have made Darwinism redundant, the so-called "eclipse of Darwinism" (Bowler 1983), he was not a Darwinian, but an orthogeneticist.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This is half ture really. The first study monitored the effects of prayer when the person knew about it, as well as when they were unaware. Since the initial result was that unknowing prayer did not show signs of progress, they expanded this aspect of the study further. So basically, they further showed that if the person knew they were being prayed for, it helped, and if they didn't, it had no positive net result. The slashdot posting this time seems to leave that out.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
has anyone ever found a single fossil record of any precursor?
I typed "platypus fossil record" into Google, and the first hit discusses the fossil record of the platypuses. Dude, have you even tried to answer your own questions? Or is is easier to conclude that because you don't know, therefore we don't know?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
hinduism is explicitly interested in karma/reincarnation in search of nirvana, and islam in heaven (thus the whole "72 virgins" controversy with islamist sects); i know less about buddhism, but believe it has its own vested interest in acheiving tranquility and oneness. Judaism has varied in emphasis over the millenia, and is currently in one of its more worldly incarnations; historical Judaism, has, however, been every bit as apocalyptic and heaven-focused as modern American fundamentalism. but i think we're now firmly off topic. :-)
The world can be wrong today for once.
1 - You can be devoutly religious and also logical/rational/scientific.
No, you cant. Religion is the belief in in the supernatural.
Science only only concerns itself with demonstratable conjecture to describe a natural phenomenon.
Most people who construct the "Choose religion or science" frame do so (as I do) because I believe that once someone accepts that a supernatural world exists, they abandon their ability to pursue science. If your willing to accept the supernatural -- what purpose does reason and logic have in the pursuit of science (that which is natural)?
2 - Some "scientific" and anti-religious people are just as bigotted, and illogical as the religious nuts.
This is essentially the "science is a religion" argument, and I will have nothing to add beyond Richard Dawkins excellent article you can read here.
As for the anti-religious being 'bigotted', yes, I can assume some are. I will admit to it myself. I will not apologize that I agree with Denis Diderot when he said "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Destroying religion as necessary to civilization as plumbing and not cohabitating with one's livestock.
Religion is (to put it mildly) a bother and a bore, and Im tired of a world populated by masses who believe their supernatural deity is The Most Great. Religion keeps us from taking ownership of Humanity's OUR OWN PROBLEMS. Keeps us from realizing that WE ALONE are responsible for the state of our community. Religion is a manner of absolving oneself of responsiblity ("I give myself to you oh lord").
This life is all we have. There is no second chance to get things right "next time", or reward in an afterlife. Please consign these fantasies to ancient history where they belong.
Or to put it more succinctly, a lot of patients are fucking hypochondriacs who are in desperate need of a kick in the seat of pants, and if it is delivered nicely through a CD, then so be it.
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But those who actually *believe* in hogwash like that aren't going to be convinced by a scientific study, are they? Cognitive dissonance and stupidity are a mixture that's very difficult to overcome.
The first thought that comes to mind on this is the Christian attempt to prove the world was indeed round
Most people try to spin this the other way around though.
In 1492, every educated man knew that the world was round. So did every ocean-going sailor. The "bigoted church leaders of Spain" did not oppose Columbus. Columbus had in fact been housed, supported, advised, and greatly aided by Spanish monks who encouraged him to present his proposal to the King and Queen. A Dominican priest, later Archbishop of Seville was one of his greatest supporters at the court. There was a University Commission which concluded that plans for his voyage were impractical. But the Commission agreed with Columbus that the world was round and gave no indication that they believed the Bible taught that the world was flat.
The "hogwash" most atheists use to describe religion these days is usually fact based on fiction such as Washington Irving's novel about Columbus that stated the Christians (not the scientists) were the ones saying the world was flat.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
Can you think of any Biblical story where critical thinking was rewarded?
Would you like them listed alphabetically or chronologically?
but we could definitely get religion back in to the home or churche where it belongs and out of public life
That would be unconstitutional. Sorry.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
The headline and article summmary are misleading.
While prayer did not help for primary clinical outcome, it did help for secondary clinical outcome. Secondary clinical outcome includes criteria such as:
"six-month death or re-hospitalization, as well as measures of emotional distress prior to a patient's procedure."
"The researchers found no significant differences among the treatment groups in the primary composite endpoint. However, six-month mortality was lower in patients assigned bedside MIT, with the lowest absolute death rates observed in patients treated with both prayer and bedside MIT."
MIT is thearapy consisting of bedside music, imagery and touch therapy (MIT), and is categorized as a "Noetic" interventions along with prayer.
"pray and MIT therapies are defined as "an intangible healing influence brought about without the use of a drug, device or surgical procedure," according to the researchers."
I'm an atheist, but such a misleading headline shows how slanted this site's postings can be. Please read the article before accepting such a misleading headline.
The King of the Potato People was an entity born of Arnold J. Rimmer's feverish delusions, in the episode 'Quarantine' from the fifth series of Red Dwarf. The rest of the crew are in quarantine enforced by Rimmer, ostensibly to avoid infecting the ship with a dangerous insanity virus, but really out of spite. Rimmer himself has managed to contract the virus anyway. The crew are trying to talk Rimmer into letting them out, and it becomes increasingly clear that he is insane, and so they attempt to humour him... leading to the immortal line:
"So let me get this straight. You have a magic carpet and you want to fly on it to see the King of the Potato People and plead with him for your freedom... and you're telling me you are completely sane?"
I went with the King of the Potato People because, since I was arguing that asking for favours from such entities is subject to a strange double standard, I thought the Red Dwarf association might work rather well, especially with a geek audience. The Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster have rather different symbolic meaning.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
For now let me just point out that judging by this: Calling atheists fanatical dogmatists is not as good an argument as you think. you either have not read or have not understood what I've written.
You haven't called them that specifically, and I know that you are trying to argue for balance and rationality, but what you did say was that
Prayer, like most spiritual things, is difficult to quantify or directly observe and so the proper scientific default position on prayer should be utter neutrality: neither for nor against.
In fact, the onus of proof would be on those who claim prayer works, particularly because it appears to be based on non-empirical claims, and so the proper default scientific position on prayer should be negative until proven. The reason it tends to be a strong negative is that so many religious claims have fallen through that the entire domain has a very poor reputation. Religious proofs predate modern science itself, and go all the way back to the early church. Their poor reputation is not a recent acquisition.
What you are doing with this argument is sneaking the line of reasonableness closer to the religious side, to give the religious argument the edge and make the counter-argument look less reasonable. I know because I used to do it; I used to think that atheism was itself a positive assertion. If the correct scientific position really were neutral, then a assuming a position of skepticism before proof would be dogmatic. But that's not how it works.
So you didn't say that atheists were fanatical dogmatists, but that is where your argument leads, though you may not intends this (there are people on the extreme who are using this same argument for that specific purpose--a variation on it is a mainstay of the ID agenda.) And I'm really not trying to convert you here--the more rationalists we have amongst religious believers, the better, because a lot just won't listen to anyone but a fellow believer any more. But I am trying to show you where the tone of anger comes from in a lot of these posts.
Everyone with a modicum of secular education (monks included) knew that the world was round by 1492. The impracticality stemmed from their belief that the world was too big. Which it was. Those who were encouraging Columbus were basing that encouragement on a misguided belief that the world was about 10,000 fewer miles around than it actually was.
But the popular conception at the time, the one held by the uneducated--in 1492, pretty much everyone--was that the Bible taught that the world was flat, and therefore the world was flat. Had Columbus been requesting aid from a democracy, the public outcry probably would have scuttled the mission.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
An excerpt:
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
ALL polymers are long chain.
p.s. if you're trying to reference Gibson he said long-chain monomers.