Nuns Donate Their Brains to Alzheimer's Research

Many Catholic religious orders are participating in a long range Alzheimer's disease study. Rush University's Religious Orders Study began in 1993 and tracks the participants' mental abilities through yearly memory testing. In addition to the annual tests, the study subjects agree to donate their brains. From the article: "The researchers sought members of religious orders, hoping they would be willing to donate and would not have children or spouses interfering with that arrangement at the last minute. More than 1,100 nuns, priests and brothers across the country representing a wide range of ethnic groups are taking part."

Comments

Mental Capabilities?

[morari]

Are these really the brains we want as our basis for research?

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

They will be much more useful than yours, obviously.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

why not? might give insight into why people are drawn to specific topics... it also will be fairly good baseline since those in these orders will have documented and controlled diets, so will form a good base for comparing against each other at least.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[elmick]

Are these really the brains we want as our basis for research?

You think yours would be better somehow?

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Empiric]

The data's already been copied and reconstructed. The physical substrate is useless.

If we want to understand better why the substrate degrades, then, well, yeah.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[spun]

Why not? Like it or not, it is fairly normal to believe in religion.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[drsmack1]

How about we let them use yours instead? Get a donor card - Monty Python style.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Itninja]

How knows? Maybe a lot can be learned from women who choose a celibate, isolated, and cloistered lifestyle. And their penchant for ridiculous clothing (for most)? That's got to be worth something.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[MBGMorden]

Maybe a lot can be learned from women who choose a celibate, isolated, and cloistered lifestyle

And remain there. An older coworker of mine "stole" his wife from a convent. He actually managed to de-nunnify a nun and marry her :). Despite being one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, we always joke that he's going to Hell for that one regardless :).

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[flaming error]

Why your question? Perhaps you are not a fan of religion in general, or catholicism in particular? Like the rest of us, they probably believe every religion they don't belong to is misguided.

Unlike the rest of us, they have made the extraordinary decision to dedicate their lives completely to the service of others. If somehow a bias for altruism sneaks into some neurologic baseline, perhaps DSM-V will someday list greed as a psychosis. No other problems seem obvious to me.

I doubt monastic brains are hardwired for superstition any more than those of the general population. Of those slashdotters who believe that we are visited by extra-terrestrials, how many came to that conclusion based on the forensic evidence and proven physics?

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Aeros]

I wonder if god will be up there waiting for him with brass-knuckles on to knock him on back down to hell! :) I agree with some of the others that a person who can constrain themselves like that would be interesting to study. I wonder what the comparison between a person like that and a prisoner's brain would look like.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Again]

Why not? Like it or not, it is fairly normal to believe in religion.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. I remember reading elsewhere that nuns are ideal test subjects for longitudinal studies because the affect of a lot of independent variables can be eliminated or reduced when compared to people who have a more normal lifestyle.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[RobotRunAmok]

Fuck you.

No, seriously: Fuck You.

Just one of these women does more real, genuine capital 'G' Good in a week than a land-fill of snarky Internet tough guys like you will do in your entire life.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[yyxx]

Just one of these women does more real, genuine capital 'G' Good in a week than a land-fill of snarky Internet tough guys like you will do in your entire life.

These women would do Good even if they weren't part of an ancient, evil, lying, murderous cult; more, actually, because they wouldn't be recruiting into that cult.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[yyxx]

Like the rest of us, they probably believe every religion they don't belong to is misguided.

Speak for yourself. Intolerance of other religions and an assumption of absolute truth are largely errors of the Abrahamic religions.

I doubt monastic brains are hardwired for superstition any more than those of the general population.

I'm sure they are, actually, but it doesn't matter that they are not representative of the general population.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[PopeRatzo]

I remember reading elsewhere that nuns are ideal test subjects for longitudinal studies because the affect of a lot of independent variables can be eliminated or reduced when compared to people who have a more normal lifestyle.

I can think of other parts of nuns that might be useful for research, since they've hardly been used.

Old Catholic school joke: Q:What kind of sex do priests have? A: Nun.

Boy we were really naive back in those days.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, that's why he's already donated his.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[c6gunner]

Amen

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

And where does your intolerance and assumption of truth come from?

Hopefully you're not representative of the general population either.

After all it sure seems that a world full of people like you would be worse than a world full of people as altruistic as these nuns.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[vadim_t]

Just one of these women does more real, genuine capital 'G' Good in a week than a land-fill of snarky Internet tough guys like you will do in your entire life.

Such as?

Honest question, no intention of trolling. It's my understanding that nuns largely remove themselves from normal society, and as such don't really do much good in the way I understand it.

Note that as an atheist my definition of "good", especially with a "capital G" doesn't include religious functions that don't benefit the society outside their environment, such as praying, singing and baking cookies to sustain themselves.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[RobotRunAmok]

I suppose there may still be a few of those medieval-style cloisters around, but most orders of nuns today are engaged dawn to dusk in charitable works involving AIDS hospices, orphanages, care for the elderly, education, disaster relief, etc. Think less Hildegard von Bingen and more Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Bing Tsher E]

an ancient, evil, lying, murderous cult;

Let that hatred drain out of you. It's probably good therapy.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[vadim_t]

That I would consider a good thing indeed, so long that they don't follow Mother Theresa's footsteps.

All I've read about her makes her considerably more evil than good in my view. She expressed a very bizarre love for poverty. Not for poor people and their problems, but poverty. As in she seems to have believed that being in a seriously screwed up situation of abject poverty is a good and virtuous thing, and that her task is to sort of bask in that atmosphere without trying to fix it.

A quote of hers that expresses this view is: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

From what I've read, her care consisted mostly of prayer, offered no real help, medicine, painkillers, and involved reuse of syringes, when she was getting tons of donations that would have allowed her to do much better. People who were curable were just let to lie in a bed without painkiller or any real assistance. That's not good, that's greatly harmful. And combined with the amount of donations she failed to use use for helping people, and that seem to have ended up in a bank account at the Vatican, makes her greatly evil in my view.

Then there's the whole railing against birth control thing, but even where she could have helped in a way that wouldn't have conflicted with her religion, she still did a really horrible job.

I hope that if there are any nuns trying to help that they do what she should have actually been doing, helping people, instead of what she did.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[tisepti]

Such as participating in a long term Alzheimer's research project.

That may not be a massive amount of 'Good' by whatever metric you want to use. Its still more good that I know the nuns in question have done then say ... you.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[tnk1]

Speak for yourself. Intolerance of other religions and an assumption of absolute truth are largely errors of the Abrahamic religions.

>

Clearly there are some religions that are more tolerant of people who believe other things, but for the most part, religions are mutually exclusive. You can be a nice Buddhist or something and maybe tolerate everyone, but that doesn't mean that if Buddhism's ultimate world view is right that somehow the other religions can be right. Nirvana isn't heaven. And there is either one, none, or many gods, but you can't have all of them at the same time.

If there was a religion that had at its central tenet that all religions are somehow right, it still would be either right or wrong. There is nothing inherently strange or about pointing out that one choice in a mutually exclusive situation is either True or False, that's just logic. Certain adherents to certain religions might be nicer about it in mixed company, but unless they are insincere, their very adherence to their doctrine is an assertion of their belief in one or more absolute truths.

And of course, you know as well as I do that religious intolerance is definitely not confined to the Semitic religions, they just happen to be the world's largest and most influential ones, so they tend to blot out everyone else.

It doesn't really matter anyway. Tolerance is not inherently right or wrong, its just a lot more comfortable if you happen to be in the minority. It has a value based only on the facts of the reality that we live in and our personal goals in relation to those facts.

(And yes, I prefer tolerance. In fact, many of the Semitic religions have that as a core value, but that doesn't mean I am right or that the religions are followed.)

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[JRR006]

I do a lot of work with my local parish's rectory and convent (not a believer myself, but a 20-something "computer person" willing to lend a hand), and the nuns' daily activities involve organizing soup kitchens, visiting nursing homes, arranging excursions for people who live in group homes for the mentally disabled (taking them bowling, out for ice cream, whatever), tutoring, all in secular settings. I suppose they project the image of Catholicism (they wear a 'modernized' habit and veil), but the institutions for which they volunteer are not, by and large, part of any religious organization. There are cloistered orders, but those are rare. When I was a wee lass, the nuns could sing along to the Backstreet Boys. No one is safe from the reaches of pop culture, apparently. ;)

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[vadim_t]

That may not be a massive amount of 'Good' by whatever metric you want to use. Its still more good that I know the nuns in question have done then say ... you.

How are you so sure of that? Did you hack into Santa's computer and get to see my good and bad lists?

Also, RobotRunAmok's post implied that they do good deeds on a regular basis. Considering my understanding of that they live in isolation and as such whatever they do doesn't really affect society, it seems to be perfectly fair to me to ask what kind of social good they do. Note that I don't think there's anything really wrong with separating yourself from society and quietly living out the rest of your days. I just don't think there's anything very commendable in it either. It's neutral, neither it does any harm nor it contributes anything.

Also nowhere did I imply that I think I'm a bigger contributor to society, sheesh. I'm asking a question, not doing a comparison of who earned how many points.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[vadim_t]

Well, then perhaps you clarify things for me then. Before making my first post, I checked wikipedia just in case, and got this:

To be a Catholic nun, one must live in a convent, cloister, or monastery; belong to an order in which the members eventually take the solemn vows; and recite the Liturgy of the Hours or other prayers together with her community.

Nuns are restricted from leaving the cloister, though some may engage in teaching or other vocational work depending on the strictness of enforcement, which is up to the monastery itself. Visitors are not allowed into the monastery to freely associate with nuns. In essence, the work of a nun is within the confines of her monastery, while the work of a sister is in the greater world. Both sisters and nuns are addressed as "Sister".

Many Sisters are no longer teachers and nurses. More Sisters continue to choose vocations in Law, publishing,AIDS ministry, and many other things in mainstream society.

To me this implies that a nun's access to the real world may not exist at all, and if it does may be quite limited. Their primary duty would be to a monastery, and if they get to work in a soup kitchen it's because the monastery itself allows it, and that sisters and not nuns are the ones that undertake large amounts of social work.

So, given your experience, is the explanation on Wikipedia accurate?

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I remember the days when boys wanted to enter the Priesthood.
Rather than the other way round." - Private Eye

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[The Archon V2.0]

Are these really the brains we want as our basis for research?

You think yours would be better somehow?

Mine would be since I never use it, having found something else to think with.

Speaking of which I'm very disappointed this headline wasn't code for sexy women in nun outfits giving head to old guys. I've got a fetish, you see.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, I can tell you my firsthand experience of working with Mother Theresa and her religious order of Nuns in Calcutta and Haiti. They do actually use medicine and do everything possible to help the people they care for. Many of whom would just slowly die on the street. They do run hospices as well, which are basically the same as our hospices in the USA. They are a place where the terminally ill can die with dignity and minimal pain and suffering. I don't know why you are lashing out against this wonderful amazing person and those that have continued her work. You seem to be very angry towards Catholicism in your reply, heaven knows you may have your reason. Very good people can do very bad things. And very bad people can do very good things. So with many more people in an organization, how much more good can evil organizations do and more evil good organizations can do. It would be a very simplistic and altogether immature world view to believe a single person, much less a whole organization was 100% either good or evil. Learn to call the bad parts of a thing bad, and the good parts of it good. The world will be much better off for it.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[JRR006]

Apologies for the delay in replying. It's a matter of misapplied terminology, of which I was ignorant until I went and looked it up. So, thank you. :) I can tell you that the sisters in my parish belong to the Franciscan Sisters of Saint Joseph, so they are technically "sisters" adhering to that order's charter (which stresses social service), not "nuns". Reading the article, it seems like there is a similar confusion of the terms. The article mentions a participant from the Congregation of St. Joseph, and from the CSJ's website it doesn't seem like they're a cloistered order, either, so the article and headline calling them "nuns" is similarly incorrect. Some of the participants may very well be nuns, but clearly not all of them. You are right: *nuns* would have very little access to the outside world. The study participants/donors aren't (all) nuns.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[TapeCutter]

"They do run hospices as well, which are basically the same as our hospices in the USA They are a place where the terminally ill can die with dignity and minimal pain and suffering.

The Lancet and The British medical Journal both disagree with your anecdotal assesment of the quality of care offered by the missionaries of charity. Like many fanatical Catholics Mother Theresa was a strong adherent to the masochistic belief that the path to enlightenment is through poverty and suffering.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[vadim_t]

Pretty much everything she says goes against what you say here. I'm quite sure that she has helped some people, but according to herself, the way she does it is very twisted. Some choice quotes from her address at the National Prayer Breakfast:

One day I met a lady who was dying of cancer in a most terrible condition. And I told her, I say, "You know, this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus--a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you." And she joined her hands together and said, "Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me."

Here you can see somebody who is obviously not on painkillers, and won't be, because the pain is the "kiss of Jesus" and evidently a good thing. I'm sure she'll provide a bed, and water and maybe some food, while leaving this person to die in pain while speaking about how beautiful all that is. Obviously there can't be any talk of euthanasia either. This lady would have been much better off with a normal social worker.

I had the most extraordinary experience of love of neighbor with a Hindu family. A gentleman came to our house and said: "Mother Teresa, there is a family who have not eaten for so long. Do something." So I took some rice and went there immediately. And I saw the children - their eyes shining with hunger. I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And the mother of the family took the rice I gave her and went out. When she came back, I asked her: "Where did you go? What did you do?" And she gave me a very simple answer: "They are hungry also." What struck me was that she knew - and who are they? A Muslim family - and she knew. I didn't bring any more rice that evening because I wanted them, Hindus and Muslims, to enjoy the joy of sharing.

Note the latest part. She's intentionally withholding food, not because she doesn't have more, or can't afford it, or anything like that. No, it's because apparently for her the image of hungry people sharing some food is beautiful. She seems to be more interested in marvelling at that "beauty" and making a point about sharing than in really helping people.

We are not social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of some people, but we must be contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we must bring that presence of God into your family, for the family that prays together, stays together.

Outright admission that the religion is the priority.

Her own writings show that what she seeks is not to really help people. It's to sort of immerse herself in their misery.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[lxs]

Sure we do. They are in excellent condition. Stored indoors most of the time. Only one owner. A sweet old lady who only used them on Sunday for going to church.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[JosKarith]

Since nuns are Brides of Christ, that makes God the ex Father in law. Ow.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[eugene ts wong]

How did he "steal" her away? I assume that you're being figurative. Was he passionate and persistent? Was he more than she ever expected from a guy?

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Again you are making the mistake of conflating your opinions on her spiritual beliefs with the good that her charity provides. You disagree with her thoughts on God, leading you to believe those thoughts are causing her to intentionally inflict suffering on people already suffering. Do they have enough doctors? No, they don't. Do they have enough medicine? No, they don't. OD they have any of the advanced diagnostic equipment that modern western medicine has? Again No. They do their best with what they have. They would do better if they had more.

If they had a reputation for mistreating or inflicting further pain on the patients, they wouldn't come any more. Parents wouldn't be lined up outside at 5 am to seek help for their sick children.

You just can't seem to accept that someone with beliefs you strongly disagree with could be doing any good. That's not a very mature worldview

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[yyxx]

Clearly there are some religions that are more tolerant of people who believe other things, but for the most part, religions are mutually exclusive. You can be a nice Buddhist or something and maybe tolerate everyone, but that doesn't mean that if Buddhism's ultimate world view is right that somehow the other religions can be right.

Oh, there are many more possibilities. Some religions believe that all religions (including their own) are incomplete and flawed because human understanding is limited. To such religions, Christianity is just one more flawed religion among many; practice it and maybe it helps you fulfill your purpose in life. The Abrahamic religions, however, claim absolute truth and require worship of a specific God and in specific ways. They postulate that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed were unique, and that their religious texts were handed down by God. Other religions believe that while Christianity may or may not be true as far as it goes, it is irrelevant because there is a greater truth.

Thinking that "religions are mutually exclusive" is itself a fundamental error of the Abrahamic religions. The Abrahamic religions are exclusive of all others because they claim complete and ultimate truth and authority. But there is nothing "mutual" about it.

It doesn't really matter anyway. Tolerance is not inherently right or wrong, [...] (And yes, I prefer tolerance. In fact, many of the Semitic religions have that as a core value, but that doesn't mean I am right or that the religions are followed.)

It "doesn't really matter", but it's a "core value"? See, you put your finger on it: while the Abrahamic religions claim to be tolerant, they are inherently intolerant.

Re:Mental Capabilities?

[yyxx]

Let that hatred drain out of you. It's probably good therapy.

Good advice; you should give it to the Pope and his cardinals and bishops, who call anybody who disagrees with their theology "evil", "immoral", "not fully human", and "disordered".

What's the name on the brain?

[DevConcepts]

Abby.
Abby what?
Abby Normal.

Re:What's the name on the brain?

[rodney dill]

What kind of brains do you have?

Re:What's the name on the brain?

[DevConcepts]

What kind of brains do you have?

The grey kind.... Both of them...

Re:What's the name on the brain?

[rodney dill]

I though you had nun

Re:What's the name on the brain?

[DevConcepts]

It was a hard habit to break.

An Elaborate Scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice trie, zombie scum! Your little charade won't fool me, you want this grey matter you've got to work for it. NO FREEBIES!

Re:An Elaborate Scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't remember donating my brain to anything!!!!

Nun brains always determine the same cure

[GodfatherofSoul]

Rap his knuckles with a heavy wooden ruler. Don't think that's doing to do much for research.

Re:Nun brains always determine the same cure

[BrokenHalo]

Heh. Penguin rules, I guess. :-|

My immediate reaction to the title of the submission: "Nuns Donate Their Brains to Alzheimer's Research" was to say "they might as well. Their brains aren't useful for anything else".

They heard

[MrTripps]

The nuns heard that helping science was a good habit to get into.

Re:They heard

[athe!st]

Nun puns?

Re:They heard

[Xacid]

For those curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_habit

Ummm Yes

[DevConcepts]

Given that the environmental structure is common to all persons at the location, it should remove some of the variables that exist and allow researchers to focus on the changes over time with regards to the disease itself rather than the differences that would be experienced with a geographical larger study.

Re:Ummm Yes

[PyroMosh]

WNYC's Radiolab did a very similar story involved nuns donating their brains to Alzheimer's research. It was the University of Minnesota though, so it may also have been a different group of nuns.:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127211884

Basicly, you are right. They Nuns were a good choice because (as they put it):

Snowdon wanted to look at aging over time, and decided to focus on sisters because they all had fairly similar histories and backgrounds. Most of them joined the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation when they were 18, and all had abstained from smoking or drinking. So Snowdon signed up 678 sisters, all over the age of 75, from the order. All of the sisters agreed to donate a small part of their brains to the study after they died.

The study looked at writing as an indicator of Alzheimer's risk. And they chanced upon a jackpot - all the sisters in the study had essays that they had written at 18 or 19, roughly 70 years earlier.

Do yourself a favor and listen to that episode, or at least read the transcript.

Re:Ummm Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup - and notice how long ago THAT was. Now we have this study that began in 1993.

NEWS for nerds. Delivered 17 years later.

Nuts

[clemdoc]

Am I the only one who read 'Nuts' instead of 'Nuns'?

Re:Nuts

[2names]

Nope. I read it that way too. And depending upon one's beliefs, our way of reading it is true as well.

What if they discover ...

[cpscotti]

..Alzheimer is consequence of too much religious brain-wash?
As far as my grandmas go, going to the church too much does fry your neurons!

Re:What if they discover ...

[Mashiki]

Yep. Lot of caring people in this thread, who bash other peoples beliefs, while I'm sure they tout that they're very tolerant.

Let me know if your brainwave applies to MS as well. Two monasteries around here have members who donate.

Re:What if they discover ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they discover the other way around?

Plus with this data set you would not be able to tell, simply by the definition of the dataset. I swear what do they teach at the jr/sr high level these days... Oh and I learned scientific rigor AT a christian school. Want an F in science? Dont follow the scientific method. You would have got an F on that paper. As your whole assumption can not be proven with that data set. You are trying to apply science to something that can not be proven. There is such a thing as an intractable problem. Such as 'this statement is false'. Unprovable.

Re:What if they discover ...

[aristotle-dude]

..Alzheimer is consequence of too much religious brain-wash?

As far as my grandmas go, going to the church too much does fry your neurons!

No, it is a consequence of too much internet brainwashing. You anti-religious trolls all sound the same. Do you go through a training course somewhere?

Re:What if they discover ...

[jschmitz]

Yes its called COLLEGE

Re:What if they discover ...

[Anonymous Coward]

so this then?

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154822

Re:What if they discover ...

[Strange Ranger]

You know, it is possible to scorn religion without scorning the religious.

Let's step away from religion for a moment. I can't STAND strong accents that to me sound like they're spoken by illiterates. "Ebonics" (Let me axs ya a kestun), Boston folks who can't pronounce Rs, southern drawls. Makes me wonder if these people never had a TV to teach them how to talk.
But I know we're all a product of our environment and also more than than sum of our parts. I may think you talk like a goofball. But I'm judging the way you sound. Not YOU personally.

Same for religion. You can bash irrational beliefs in magic sky dictators, while still loving and befriending the people who suffer under such beliefs. That's why they call it "tolerance" and not "blind acceptance".

In summary, it's rational to bash a belief, while not bashing the believer.

Re:What if they discover ...

[Bing Tsher E]

Many people graduate and LEAVE college. The learning process has just begun when you get that degree, you know.

Re:What if they discover ...

[Mashiki]

You know, it is possible to scorn religion without scorning the religious. ... Same for religion. You can bash irrational beliefs in magic sky dictators, while still loving and befriending the people who suffer under such beliefs. That's why they call it "tolerance" and not "blind acceptance".

Odd. You've just successfully argued against yourself, by bashing what a person believes in but saying it's all okay, here have hugs and cookies, and saying by the way, your beliefs suck. Tolerance is about not stepping on someones toes, or disagreeing with what they believe in while not stating that they 'suffer' from something.

Re:What if they discover ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's about the same way the religious are 'tolerant' of atheists ("Oh you poor misguided soul. Well you're going to hell unless you convert but you're a good person"), gays ("hate the sin not the sinner" [except half the time that one ends with "murder the 'sinner', claim he was coming on to me, watch me get a slap on the wrist from a jury full of rednecks"]) and anyone else they disagree with, and while I don't think we should stoop to their level if they can't take a little sassy talk in their direction they shouldn't be part of the archaic, hate-mongering, little-boy-diddling, woman stoning, suicide bombing, abortion doctor killing, regressive, pointless thought cancer that's eating our society and enabling assholes to run-amok (not that they wouldn't anyway, but they hardly need the help) the world over.

Religion is the bane of rational thought and one of the biggest barriers to continued progress we face today. The sooner we give up superstitions created to give comfort as we cowered, ignorant in the desert, scared of the thunder and baffled by the rain the sooner we can reach for the stars as a united people. So while I don't hate (most) religious people I do hate religion and I do feel sorry for those trapped in that mental box

Re:What if they discover ...

[Mashiki]

Funny. Very tolerant view, religion is the bane of rational thought, yet I'll bet that you'll find that many members of the scientific community are religious in some way. Or you can look at heavily religious countries(heya Israel) who have more phd's and published papers per-capita than anywhere else in the world.

Religion isn't the problem. The problem is religion which has never had reformations, or branches which actively encourage people into things which aren't the norm of society. For the sake of argument, the majority in the US are Christian or some flavor of it. And those that aren't are religious(or spiritual) in some way. From what I've read you're just as backwards, regressive and probably bigoted as the people you complain about.

Re:What if they discover ...

[TapeCutter]

"the majority in the US are Christian or some flavor of it. And those that aren't are religious(or spiritual) in some way"

Except for the 10% who identify themselves as atheists.

"Or you can look at heavily religious countries(heya Israel) "

What do you call a jew that does not belive in god? - Answer - A jew. Israel is much closer to a typical European state than the US when it comes to religious belief, about one third of Israeli's label themselves as either atheist or agnostic.

Re:What if they discover ...

[TapeCutter]

"No, it is a consequence of too much internet brainwashing.You anti-religious trolls all sound the same. Do you go through a training course somewhere?"

You mean like this one? - No, thankfully we don't.

Re:What if they discover ...

[Strange Ranger]

You're arguing semantics. If I can think someone suffers from prostate cancer and not be prejudiced against them, then I can also think they suffer from religion and be tolerant and accepting of them. I'm talking about the thing, not the person.

Re:What if they discover ...

[c6gunner]

Well if it comes down to one of the two, you're better off going with the internet. What you think of as religion is 2,000 year old bullshit that some iron-age twits made up to explain the world around them. The internet is, likewise, full of bullshit, but at least it's made up by modern era people who have the benefit of a couple thousand years of scientific discovery.

ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Brains were analyzed but no sign of intelligence was found.

Re:ROFL

[JockTroll]

Says the fecalmasturbatory kid.

Re:ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

You wear your name well, young Mac user.

Brains...

[amentajo]

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:Brains...

[amentajo]

When parts of your body are potentially valuable to society, they're lost unless you donate them, which is what this story is about.

So, in this case, nothing of value was lost.

What's "Troll" about that?

Or out of

[Anonymous Coward]

Blind Man!

Oh come on people, stop bashing the old biddies.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is their decision to stay in a religiously themed communal housing structure any different (from the standpoint of the cultural norm) from your decision to avoid sunlight and social interactions, and to live in your mother's basement collecting manga, video game paraphernalia, and a super huge collection of raunchy porn locked away on an encrypted filesystem?

These people are motivated by their religious precepts to help other people, and believe in a spiritual afterlife. As such, they are less concerned about what happens to their bodies after they die than some other people, and more concerned about how they can continue helping people after they are gone (at least the ones that aren't pedophile priests anyway). Their brains get Alzheimers just like everyone elses, and such a huge turnout (over 1000 individuals in the study, for something that requires you to donate your brain, is a pretty huge turnout) means that there is a considerable chance that significant findings could be obtained through the study. That kind of thing alone merits some form of hat tipping.

Why is everybody poking fun that they are all celibate, instead of praising them for their altruism in this respect? I mean, it's not like the average slashdot reader gets busy every friday night in his mother's basement you know. (no, Palmula Handerson and a bottle of Jergins doesn't count.)

A good use

[mmaniaci]

Hey, finally those religious types are putting their minds to good use.

Hold off on the troll mod, I couldn't help myself :).

Fuck you all

[elewton]

Granted, I didn't RTFA, but these people are giving massively.

The whole process is annoying and gross and their doing it to help people. I'm no fan of Catholicism or the Abrahamic God, but they're doing good.

Re:Fuck you all

[elewton]

their doing it to

Ah, fuck...

Oh well,,,

[Locke2005]

they weren't using them anyway. Oh wait... are they going to wait until they are dead first?

They're not the only nuns

[Anonymous Coward]

U of Minn. researchers are doing the same (sort of) thing... here's a whole radio show about it!

http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2010/05/05/vanishing-words/

Apparently loss of vocabulary and sentence complexity (i.e. number of ideas communicated per sentence) are early warning signs for alzheimers. Agatha Christie's later works show signs that her capacity was dropping, too.

Results will be useless

[GungaDan]

because of their sample selection. If religiosity is hard-wired in the brain http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/ then these researchers have selected a sample that will make their results applicable to... nuns and other religiodelusionals.

Re:Results will be useless

[gstoddart]

because of their sample selection. If religiosity is hard-wired in the brain http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/ [cnn.com] then these researchers have selected a sample that will make their results applicable to... nuns and other religiodelusionals.

Well, unless there is some atypical distribution between alzheimers in religious an non-religious brains, I seriously doubt that what you suggest will actually affect what they're studying.

They have access to 850+ brains of aging people, all of which will go through annual testing to check for degradation in skills and the like, and be able to compare that to long-term medical histories. Getting that big of a sample of anybody is a huge big deal -- the fact that some of these people have been in this survey since the early 90's gives them a truckload of data, and speaks volumes about how helpful and committed they've been.

I'm the first to disagree with mindless adherence to religion, but these ladies are willingly participating in science, so we're not talking drooling zealots who think the Earth is 6000 years old. Hell, one of the smartest (and nicest) people I ever met was an old Jesuit Priest who was a university lecturer in physics and astronomy at the university I went to. He was nice enough to let me access his UNIX machine since the CS department didn't have one and I wanted to learn it.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater -- the religious people who can accept the science can be pretty nice people, and they're generally not talking about things that science can intelligently speak to (or even want to). They're certainly not all groping the choice boys or smacking people with rulers. Like with the rest of society, that's a small subset of the overall population.

You're still breathing, so it's not too late to open your mind. :-P

Re:Results will be useless

[gstoddart]

They're certainly not all groping the choice boys or smacking people with rulers

Doh. That, of course, should be "choir boys". :-P

Re:Results will be useless

[aristotle-dude]

So what you are saying is that people like you hate religion so much because of brain damage you suffered at some point?

Re:Results will be useless

[Dunbal]

Well, unless there is some atypical distribution between alzheimers in religious an non-religious brains,

This is exactly what must be determined first. If you're just taking names at random from the general population you're allowed to say you have a representative sample. If you start picking and choosing, you have to prove that your sample matches the general population FIRST. It's like surveying people about how they like the public school system at the golf pro shop or the tennis club.

Re:Results will be useless

[yyxx]

If you start picking and choosing, you have to prove that your sample matches the general population FIRST.

Nonsense. They study Alzheimers in nuns, period. If they find something that's interesting regardless of whether it is specific to nuns or not. If they come up with a treatment in nuns, they can then apply it to the general population and see whether it works. They don't need to show that anything matches the general population "FIRST". Heck, we do tons of medical research in mice, and they certainly don't match the general population.

Re:Results will be useless

[Anne Thwacks]

mice, and they certainly don't match the general population.

You must be new here

Re:Results will be useless

[TapeCutter]

You should have left out the last sentence. New drugs do not go directly from mice to the general population.

Re:Results will be useless

[yyxx]

You should have left out the last sentence. New drugs do not go directly from mice to the general population.

I didn't say they did. You should have used your brain.

Re:Results will be useless

[SleazyRidr]

You should have read the third sentence and applied it to the context.

As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[jellomizer]

As someone with religious tolerance and have actually have worked with catholic Priests, Nuns, Monks, Bishops, etc... A lot of these people are Smart and have PHD and MDs in many areas of science and often with other areas of study as well. Don't let the traditional dress fool you, these people are actually well educated with sharp minds.

Just because you don't agree with their religion or religion in general, don't let yourself think for a second that these people are any less then you.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just because you don't agree with their religion or religion in general, don't let yourself think for a second that these people are any less then you."

Thank you jellomizer for saying this. It is astonishing to me that such an obvious statement even needs saying, but, apparently it does. Actually I can't imagine why traditional dress should "fool" anyone into assuming the wearer is uneducated or unintelligent. Perhaps I give people too much credit.

Pam
http://www.talksocialnews.com

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[c6gunner]

Your appeal to authority fallacy notwithstanding, it's worth pointing out that many people who believe in UFO's, bigfoot, and the JFK and 9/11 conspiracy theories also have PHD's etc. Having a piece of paper from a fancy school doesn't mean you're not an idiot, it just means you can focus on a task and have a higher IQ than a chimp.

On the other hand, success in the scientific fields can be directly correlated with religiosity - those who do the best work and contribute the most to our understanding of the universe are FAR less likely to be religious than their more mediocre counterparts.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[Bing Tsher E]

On the other hand, success in the scientific fields can be directly correlated with religiosity - those who do the best work and contribute the most to our understanding of the universe are FAR less likely to be religious than their more mediocre counterparts.

That's a rather ignorant assertion. The Scientific Method has nothing to do with a person's religious faith. But since you want to dabble in stereotypes, there may indeed be a coorelation between 'lost soul' spiritually hollow types who never make it off campus and adopt a permanent long-term career in 'science.'

Nobody's saying they're the best scientists, however. Many of them are placeholders.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[jellomizer]

Religion and Science are not really in conflict, just the ignorant people think that is such. Now parts of the religion can be put in question about their truthfulness. However most non-radicalized religions accept the idea that there is a literary truth and a physical truth. They can Accecpt that Jesus turned Water into Wine, and at the same time that there is no possible way to do this, without stripping the water atoms fusing together hydrogen atoms to make the carbon and other atoms and form molecules, and also they are willing to accept if they went back in time they wouldn't have seen this from happening. However the story is more on teaching a higher truth that is far more important then the actual event.
Now say that something didn't happen you will need to disprove the it did happen. But for most things in a religious context there isn't proof or disproof thus it puts it outside of science.
Religion isn't Science

I can disprove that 2+2=5
as 2 can be represented in (1+1) so (1+1)+(1+1) = 1+1+1+1 = 4

Also you can state that an even number + an even number is always an even number (there is a more formal proof that I dont care to write on) and because 5 is odd thus it disproves 2+2=5

Now you can argue religion when you have the more radical religions fighting science saying because it is in the book then your science is wrong, because you can backup your science. However being religious isn't a judgment on your intelligence. Your inability to understand a scientific argument and refute it is a basis on your intelligence.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[jellomizer]

Actually a lot of those people are often stereotyped as atheists who are wondering trying to find some greater force in the world.

The fact that many people in the science field are openly hostile towards religious people couldn't be a factor that Religious people contribute less to some areas of study.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[sjames]

I'm going to have to call 'citation needed' on you there. Einstein was quite clearly a believer in God. Many others have some sort of spiritual belief outside the realm of science. It's not uncommon for a physicist to accept on faith that there is some great intelligence out there and that through physics they may better understand it. I've heard that from mathematicians as well.

They may simply be far less likely to talk about it openly to avoid a bias against anyone in the academic world that professes a religious belief.

Naturally they're not going to bring up religion or faith where it doesn't belong, such as in a scientific paper.

There's a nice list of Nobel Laureates and other influential scientists who are known to have been religious. I'm sure you'll recognize a few.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[Gaffod]

A lot of these people are Smart and have PHD

Can you give some examples please? I find the idea a bit incredible.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Just because you don't agree with their religion or religion in general, don't let yourself think for a second that these people are any less then you.

They are key members of a worldwide organization that harbors a large number of repeat child molesters. The Catholic Church knowingly puts vulnerable children in close proximity with molesters, fails to warn parents about priests who have a history "problems," and it doesn't cooperate with law enforcement investigation. The Church does everything possible to cover up it's dirty little secret with no regard to the life destroying damage it causes in the process.

It doesn't take much to be better than that.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone with religious tolerance and have actually have worked with catholic Priests, Nuns, Monks, Bishops, etc... A lot of these people are Smart and have PHD and MDs in many areas of science and often with other areas of study as well. Don't let the traditional dress fool you, these people are actually well educated with sharp minds.

Just because you don't agree with their religion or religion in general, don't let yourself think for a second that these people are any less then you.

I wholeheartedly agree with jellomizer. The biggest difference between the ladies back at the Mother House and the general population, in my experience, is they not only dedicated themselves to a higher cause but are also quite a bit more intelligent than the general population.

I was taught by Nuns, I've worked with Nuns for many years, my wife has 2 Aunts who are Nuns and I've never met a Nun yet that starts a discussion on any topic (and they will discuss any topic with you) with slanted or derogatory statements about others beliefs. Please walk up the stairs and ask your Mom to take you out and meet some of these people before they are all gone (they are not being replaced as fast as they are dying off). Spend time with them and you will learn more in a day about human nature than you have learned about anything in your lifetime.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[commodore64_love]

The fact your well-reasoned, well-written, and logical post was marked "trolll" is proof positive that the Slashdot mods are asses (and the system is broke).

The anti-religious bigotry in this thread is disgusting. Are you members of a KKK splinter group that desires to castrate and lynch nuns, imams, and other religious persons? As was done to blacks? Fucking intolerant bigots.

I would mod your post +1 insightful if I had the ability. I don't agree with all the points of your post but enjoyed it nonetheless.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[vadim_t]

I'm going to have to call 'citation needed' on you there. Einstein was quite clearly a believer in God.

Definitely not in the traditional way, no

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.

Evidently, when he speaks of "god" he sort of means "the universe", and not any biblical character.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[sjames]

Certainly he wasn't a believer in a personal god but that's not the same as being an Atheist or un-religious.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[vadim_t]

Er, the KKK was a group composed of Protestants. Since they all were religious I'd be very surprised if it could spliter that way.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[vadim_t]

Well, I'd hardly call him religious. I think he comes closest to agnostic.

His god doesn't define morality, care about people, or affect the world. It works with rigid rules that are never deviated from, and due to this can be scientifically tested. He has nobody to pray to, no heaven and hell, no religious source of morality, and no dogma.

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

I cannot then believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the powers of interfering with these natural laws. As I said before, the most beautiful and most profound religious emotion that we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. And this mysticality is the power of all true science.

I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others.

IMO, with an opinion like even if he refers to something he calls "God", he pushed it out from every corner deities normally occupy, and turned it into something that doesn't affect, prescribe, do, or care about anything. I don't think he can be really described as "religious" as that doesn't have anything in common with any mainstream religion. It's not even a "great intelligence" as you say, since he describes it as entirely automatic.

He can't be called an atheist, but I think that calling him religious would be highly misleading, as what he says has nothing to do with what 99.9% people on this planet have in mind when you say that.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[sjames]

Buddhism is generally described as a religion.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[vadim_t]

But it has rules and a prescribed morality (the five precepts), an afterlife (nirvana), a hell (naraka), a prophet (buddha), divine beings (asuras and devas) and religious texts (vinaya and sutras)

Einstein's stated beliefs include none of those.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.

So no heaven, hell, nirvana or anything of the sort. Also no prescribed morality.

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.

So there is no divine force in this world, or outside it. That would seem to exclude any divine beings to me as well.

If there's no heaven, hell, a god that cares about or affects anything, there can't be a prophet either. There's nothing to make prophecies about, and the god if any isn't going to put any in the prophet's head. Without that, there's no religious text either.

Again, Einstein's belief is so thin that there's nothing to do about it. You can't go much further than compile a list of his quotes because no rules, morals or anything of the sort can be derived from that. Einsten's version of "god" as far as I can gather consists solely of a blind, automatic force that just does what it does in the same way as water flows downhill. It just seems to be another name for "the universe".

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact your well-reasoned, well-written, and logical post was marked "trolll" is proof positive that the Slashdot mods are asses (and the system is broke).

No it isn't. Grandparent post was not a troll by any means, but the occasional bad mod does not validate your persecution complex.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[yyxx]

The Scientific Method has nothing to do with a person's religious faith

No, that is an ignorant assertion. Historically, religion has been on a constant retreat, as the scientific method has proved one dogma after another untenable.

(Religions like Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity are now trying to cling to authority with pseudo-science like "natural law" and "creation science", but such ideas don't hold up to scientific scrutiny.)

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[c6gunner]

Any comment which includes the phrase "Einstein was quite clearly a believer in God" is clearly a troll.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[c6gunner]

Actually a lot of those people are often stereotyped as atheists who are wondering trying to find some greater force in the world.

And rightly so.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to call 'citation needed' on you there.

Since you're familiar with the "citation needed" meme, I would assume you know how to look on wikipedia.

Einstein was quite clearly a believer in God.

lol

Many others have some sort of spiritual belief outside the realm of science.

If you define "many" as "a small percentage", then sure. Either way, it's completely irrelevant, since the word "spiritual" is essentially meaningless, and doesn't imply beliefs in gods, religions, or any supernatural effects.

It's not uncommon for a physicist to accept on faith that there is some great intelligence out there and that through physics they may better understand it.

lol

They may simply be far less likely to talk about it openly to avoid a bias against anyone in the academic world that professes a religious belief.

OMG, CONSPIRAZII!!!!11!1!ELEVEN!!

Even if I were paranoid enough to believe such utter crap (or desperate enough in my attempt to defend religiosity) I'd still have to reject it in light of the fact that the statistics are based on anonymous surveys.

There's a nice list [adherents.com] of Nobel Laureates and other influential scientists who are known to have been religious. I'm sure you'll recognize a few.

Well since they were nice enough to put Einstein at the top of the list, I didn't have to bother reading any further. Try a more credible / accurate source next time.

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[hawkfish]

On the other hand, success in the scientific fields can be directly correlated with religiosity - those who do the best work and contribute the most to our understanding of the universe are FAR less likely to be religious than their more mediocre counterparts.

Citation, please?

And for a nice example of an anti-religious bigot leading a nasty crusade to discredit a theory that was later vindicated, please see Jesuit physicist George LeMaitre's "primordial atom theory" which is known to this day by Fred Hoyle's derisive epithet, "the big bang theory".

Re:As someone who has worked with Religious Folk.

[c6gunner]

Citation, please?

One example:

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

And for a nice example of an anti-religious bigot leading a nasty crusade to discredit a theory that was later vindicated, please see Jesuit physicist George LeMaitre's "primordial atom theory" which is known to this day by Fred Hoyle's derisive epithet, "the big bang theory".

You should provide more detail if you expect me to see anything. Otherwise you may as well write "as an example of quantum mechanics, see rocks".

These nuns provide an important service to AD res

[WillAffleckUW]

The reality is that nuns are a very good group of subjects, since they not only donate their brains after death - which is essential in determining AD status, but we have full medical histories on them for many decades.

None of our current studies focus on religion. The major risk factors are genetic and linked to diet and lifestyle.

Thanks for helping, sisters!

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't using them anyway.

Maybe that means they're in more pristine condition.

We're donating my grandma's brain

[socz]

In an effort to help "find a cure" we're doing the same. But it means a little more to us than most because apparently, we have a family history of this illness. My great grandfather was said to have been "crazy." The reason is because he ended up living at the uni where he was teaching, he wouldn't go home anymore (in the 1800s). So everyone just left him alone and as he got older and more "crazy" he got worse. Eventually he did die (leaving a LOT of written works behind because that was his obsession (writing poetry and about historical figures) - probably due to Alzheimer's). So in the late 90's my grandma started to get squirrely too. Its pretty amazing that in about 3 years time someone can totally change. So now in her ~ mid 90s, she's nothing more than a 5 year old girl who you can't reason with, you can't control (she is too strong), doesn't feel pain (when she is hurt she doesn't complain), medicine doesn't take its full effect (our family is very 'resistant' to drugs and liqueur) and worst of all, doesn't sleep at night.

So for all those reasons and more, hopefully, she'll be 1% of what helps to "cure" the disease or help contain it.

They got the story wrong!

[erroneus]

The way I heard this story was that a group of researchers were seeking brains for the study of Alzheimer's and they got NONE.

This just in: Alzheimers is given by God as punish

[melted]

This just in: according to the results of this research, Alzheimers is given by God as punishment for sins, such as molesting young boys, blowing millions (billions) of dollars on enormous houses of worship, and inciting hatred towards Muslims and sometimes even other Christian denominations.

Re:Oh come on people, stop bashing the old biddies

[BrokenHalo]

How is their decision to stay in a religiously themed communal housing structure any different (from the standpoint of the cultural norm) from your decision to avoid sunlight and social interactions, and to live in your mother's basement collecting manga, video game paraphernalia, and a super huge collection of raunchy porn locked away on an encrypted filesystem?

Maybe it's got something to do with a diet of anything other than Twinkies?

zombie

[Anonymous Coward]

if I were a zombie, I'd create a fake medical research facility and ask people do donate their brains.

I consider myself a radical athiest...

[Nadaka]

But seriously guys, you are going way, way out there in this nun hate.

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG!!!

What utter nunsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

If only they started making pornography and donating the proceeds, both biological and monetary, to stem cell research... mmmm, delicious nuns...

Re:What utter nunsense!

[neminem]

Obligatory Frontalot lyrics post:
lurking in #pass chans on the irc
got dcc'd unexpectedly
with an 80-minute XviD: Nuns In Heat
Part Three, Bad Habits. I'm so l337
that I had that one already
skipped to the part with the fishnet teddy
whipped it out, but to my chagrin
one toss from a win and the boss walked in
said "nuh-uh Front, that terminal ain't
for a latex crucifix spanking a taint
in big 32-bit color
while them rosary beads get yanked out the cruller"
I said "you can't fire me; I quit!"
opened up the case, yanked out the hard disk

Obama already did it

[whizbang77045]

Obama has already beat them to the punch. He's donated his brain to somebody, and he's still alive (I think)!

They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use them?

[spun]

I was responding to a post that questioned using nuns, assuming the poster was objecting to the 'abnormality' of religious belief.

You respond by saying, that's not it at all, nuns make better test subjects. But he wasn't implying they were better, he was implying they were worse. I assumed he was referring to nuns religious beliefs as the reason not to use them. I guess I just don't understand your reply. You do not address my question: why did the original poster claim nuns would make bad test subjects? Your answer explains why they are good test subjects.

Resurrection

[turgid]

How will they be resurrected for Judgement Day when their brains are missing?

Nuns help people?

[Anonymous Coward]

G.T.F. Outttahere

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

God

[PrimordialSoup]

they are taking part to prove God causes Alzheimers like all other nice things...

Wild nuns

[Anonymous Coward]

A cop pulls over a car load of nuns. The cop says, "Sister, this is a 55 MPH highway. Why are you going so slow?"
The Sister replies, "Sir, I saw a lot of signs that said 41, not 55."

The cop answers, "Oh, Sister, that's not the speed limit, that's the name of the highway you are on!"

The Sister says, "Oh! Silly me! Thanks for letting me know. I'll be more careful."

At this point, the cop looks in the backseat where the other nuns are shaking and trembling.

The cop asks, "Excuse me, Sister, what's wrong with your friends back there? They are shaking something terrible."

The Sister answers, "Oh, we just got off Highway 101."

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[Again]

I was responding to a post that questioned using nuns, assuming the poster was objecting to the 'abnormality' of religious belief.

You respond by saying, that's not it at all, nuns make better test subjects. But he wasn't implying they were better, he was implying they were worse. I assumed he was referring to nuns religious beliefs as the reason not to use them. I guess I just don't understand your reply. You do not address my question: why did the original poster claim nuns would make bad test subjects? Your answer explains why they are good test subjects.

Ummm, yes...

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[eugene ts wong]

He was probably just steering the discussion in the "correct" direction, as opposed to replying to your question.

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[spun]

Meh, I'm agnostic myself. Actually, I'm not really agnostic or even athiestic. What do you call it when you don't even think the answer to the question "does God exist?" could possibly be important? Believe if you like, or don't, it doesn't matter. I just don't like it when people are needlessly and illogically antagonistic.

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[eugene ts wong]

What do you call it when you don't even think the answer to the question "does God exist?" could possibly be important? Believe if you like, or don't, it doesn't matter.

I'd call it apathetic, but apathy has negative connotations.

I just don't like it when people are needlessly and illogically antagonistic.

Exactly. Me too.

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[spun]

That's it! I'm a militant apathetist. My motto shall be "Even God doesn't care if he exists or not."

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[eugene ts wong]

:^D Seriously?? You like the label?

It is interesting that you're taking on a new label, assuming that you're relatively serious. I'm also looking for a new label, but it's hard to come up with something reasonable.

No Pants [was:They are good subjects...]

[eugene ts wong]

I see that you mentioned pants a couple of times in the blog entry about obligations. I take it that you like to wear alternative clothing. Am I right?

Re:No Pants [was:They are good subjects...]

[spun]

Well, I prefer to wear no clothing but society has these odd rules about that. And, to be fair, sometimes it gets cold and pants are nice.

Re:No Pants [was:They are good subjects...]

[eugene ts wong]

I usually wear hosiery and shorts, which tends to feel tidier and freer than pants. Have you ever tried that?

Re:No Pants [was:They are good subjects...]

[spun]

Well, ah, you know, the missus and I agreed not to talk about that in public...

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[spun]

I just think the idea of being militantly apathetic is funny.

Re:They are good subjects, so we shouldn't use the

[eugene ts wong]

:^D I never thought of it in terms of "militanty".

What you say reminds me of that Futurama episode, where they encounter Neutrals. I still remember, "Beige alert! Beige alert!".