Well, does anyone here still believe that knowledge can only be gained by the scientific method?
If so, can you tell me how you obtained this knowledge? What scientific methodology did you use to divine this marvelous insight?
Perhaps, but must all knowledge be objective in order to be fundamentally reliable? How do you know this, and what objective means did you use to rigorously determine this fact?
But is that really a valid outlook? If we are allowed to explain away every instance of failed prayer as the person not praying “correctly” or not being “sincere”, yet allow ourselves to count every time that prayer “works”, how is that different than merely projecting one’s own bias onto the observation of randomly occuring events? Such an experiment could easily be done with sincere people who believe in the power of prayer. What reason would they have to lie? If the power of prayer is a REAL phenomenon, then it should be measurable. If there is no objective way to distinguish between the power of prayer and the effect of chance, then for all practical purposes, there is no difference.
But these kinds of questions are dealt with by researchers all the time. Do we invalidate every drug trial because “maybe the subjects spit out the pills when nobody was looking”? It’s a difficulty, yes - but not a reason to proclaim that prayer is immune from scientific observation.
First of all, I just came up with that methodology off the top of my head. My point was to explain the difference between the concepts of controls and of reproducability. To that end, I tailored my “experiment” to be analogous to Soup_du_jour’s “experiment”. If I were a researcher, and I were actually going to do the experiment, I think I would leave out the table part and just go with a “prayer” group and a “no prayer” group.
Second, even if the experiment were done as I originally said, the results, if anything, would be biased TOWARD showing that prayer to God works. But equivalency of God and table is not really the issue - that was obviously just a bit of facetiousness on the OPs part.
Unfortunately, the OP will not grace us with his/her presence, so we are forced to guess at what he/she meant.
Blasted!
I would point out that looking under a rock can be an experiment, even if the rock is lightyears away and looking under it is accomplished with a radio telescope.
We can’t reproduce the Big Bang in a lab, yet. On the other hand, simply locating and observing a series of astronomical events undergoing a specific phenononom, and one similar to the others not undergoing the phenononom, could be a reasonable experiment.
That’s not an experiment. It’s an example of direct observation, which is entirely different – unless, of course, we choose to adopt an exceedingly loose definition of “experiment.”
Looking at something with a telescope is a great way to gather data, from which inferences can be drawn, but it is not experimentation.
And even if it were, that still wouldn’t support the claim that scientific experimentation is the only way to attain valid knowledge. If it were, then what scientific experiment would you use to determine the validity of a given experiment? For that matter, what experiment would you conduct to determine that that scientific experimentation is the only way to valid knowledge?
—But is that really a valid outlook?—
Uh, it’s a valid criticism of any such study. It’s a problem that no one has thought of a good way to overcome. I’m not pro-proving prayer or anti-proving it: I am trying to be realistic as to how convincing any such study could possibly be.
—If we are allowed to explain away every instance of failed prayer as the person not praying “correctly” or not being “sincere”, yet allow ourselves to count every time that prayer “works”, how is that different than merely projecting one’s own bias onto the observation of randomly occuring events?—
I am not defending or attacking any result: I am pointing out that this sort of study, even in the best circumstances, is extremely vulnerable to attacks upon it’s internal validity, no matter WHAT it concludes. The point is to create an experiment which can defend itself against criticism of its findings. And just because you think the critics are a bunch of whiners doesn’t change the inherent problem: the experiments results are just not ultimately very convincing: the statistics do not represent what they claim to.
—Such an experiment could easily be done with sincere people who believe in the power of prayer. What reason would they have to lie?—
How can you tell? Do we have a sincere-o-meter to make sure that people have the same level of sincerity, or a mind reading device to make sure they are praying to exactly the right god (maybe some people lack “true” faith by some criteria that we have no knowledge of)? How can we prove the control group isn’t sincere about prayer? And after all this mangling and selecting to correct for all these problems, how can the study then claim to have any external validity?
—If the power of prayer is a REAL phenomenon, then it should be measurable.—
For something to be measurable, we need to be able to measure BOTH the dependant AND the independant variables. At best, we’d want to get some sort of dose/response measure.
We all agree that we should be able to set up a situation in which the dependant variable is measurable. But the independant variable is always going to be a sticking point: it can always be called into question.
—But these kinds of questions are dealt with by researchers all the time.—
No. Whether patients spit out their pills or not is very different from whether or not some totally unobservable, even in theory, event happened or not. At the very least, the pills can be closely monitored. Or, you can have randomized groups, and argue that, since both were given pills (one just a placebo), we should expect both groups to have about the same number of pill spitters.
But you can’t do that with prayer, since the control and experimental groups, no matter what else you do, CANNOT be asked to do the same things, so cannot go through the same experiences.
And you aren’t giving subjects a pill. You are asking them to do something without any way to observe if they’ve actually done it, and done it right, or not. Same problem with the control group.
And the factors that would be relevant to getting an unbiased sample are almost totally hidden from you.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by JThunder *
Thus far, your style of debate seems to be to try to goad others into making some sort of blanket statement, then saying “prove it with rigorous methodology”.
The problem is, we can’t disprove EVERY alternative means of gaining knowledge, if those means have not been defined. I believe that science is the best thing we have going. Are there other ways to gain objective knowledge? Why don’t you suggest one of these ways, and then perhaps we can have a debate about it.
The only non-objective knowledge-gathering option presented thus far is the process of relying on personal “feelings” as evidence of the physical existence of God. (You may substitute another word for feelings if you find that offensive - the point is that it is evidence that is not in any way tied to empirical observation.)
Here is why I do not find such “knowledge” to be reliable:
Human beings are notorious for believing contradictory things. If Joe believes that Zeus is the ruler of a multitude of gods, and Sylvia believes that Allah is the one true god, and Jeremy belives that David Koresh is god - obviously someone is mistaken.
Medieval doctors believed that blood-letting was an effective cure for many illnesses. Modern doctors believe the practice to be ineffective and dangerous.
I recently read a disturbing article describing how some people believe that raping a virgin will cure them of AIDs. But most people believe that raping a virgin will have no effect on the virus.
Now, will you concede that mere belief is an unreliable method by which to obtain objective knowledge, or would you like another 10 thousand examples?
Ah, but there’s the rub. Many people believe in the so called “power of prayer” out of what they call objective observation. Skeptics call this a subjective “feeling.”
I would also add that absence of proof does not equate to proof of absence.
Sorry, but I don’t see any relevance at all in what you said. You have already conceded the fact that the “power of prayer” is not objectively observable, but now are attempting to argue that it IS. Debating you is becoming a lot like trying to nail down a cube of Jello.
Your point being…?
-Ah, but absence of any sort of evidence, no matter how circumstantial or fleeting, in any form whatsoever, is about as close as you can get to proof of nonexistence.
—Ah, but absence of any sort of evidence, no matter how circumstantial or fleeting, in any form whatsoever, is about as close as you can get to proof of nonexistence.—
It’s a real waste of time to run around looking for proof of non-existence. That sort of thing taints the whole enterprise of knowledge. It’s more than enough to simply say that abscence of evidence precludes proof of existence at this time. Why would anyone need to say more than that? Because it pisses off believers? I don’t get it: it’s both empirically overreaching AND pointless.
Perhaps you could tell us what you mean by the scientific method. What I know of cosmology, which involves modeling the conditions of the early universe, making hypotheses about what evidence of them we are likely to find, searching for this evidence, and modifying or strengthening our hypotheses based on this evidence is certainly an application of the scientific method. Penzias and Wilson got their Nobel Prizes by detecting the cbr that was predicted as leftover evidence of the Big Bang. BTW, the study I described on the efficacy of prayer on royalty also conforms to the scientific method, and it would even if it had found such evidence.
The problem here is that in your book the power of prayer is unfalsifiable, since you can always come up with some explanation such as “god doesn’t want to be measured” to explain away all negativer results.
Fantastic - why don’t you provide some, which is the topic of this thread, after all. Prayer doesn’t do it, “scientific” facts in the Bible don’t do it, and I trust you won’t pull the “god exists because a sunrise is beautiful” stuff on us. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did not have to guess about God’s existence - how come we have to now?
One example of knowledge gained without using the scientific method is mathematical knowledge. Another is observational facts. However, for explaining things, I’ll take the scientific method any day.
I agree that such studies are fraught with problems, but not necessarily the problems that you have outlined. The main problem is that nobody is likely to change their opinion on the subject, so why do the study in the first place?
The most common methodology for these types of studies that I have seen is to have “prayer groups” pray for a person to recover from illness, without that person’s knowledge. There is one subject group that is prayed for, and a control group that is not prayed for. I assume the researchers who do these types of experiments trust that the prayer groups they use are sincere in their desire to speed the healing of the person they are praying for. What are you suggesting, that the prayer groups are infiltrated by lying atheists who actually don’t pray, just so they can skew the results?
I believe they overcome this difficulty by using multiple prayer groups from different religions. But you’re right in that any critic could use the “no true Scotsman” argument to justify his rejection of the results. Really, the bigger issue is that no believer is going to change their mind, anyway, no matter how many studies are done.
Not sure what you mean. If you are saying that it would be necessary to quantify the effect, I disagree. A given event can be observed to be either affected or unaffected, without need for a sliding scale of prayer dosage.
—But these kinds of questions are dealt with by researchers all the time.—
And you can’t observe people praying? The suggestion that people would deliberately lie to the researcher, and pretend to pray when they are actually not praying is no more absurd than suggesting that subjects could hide a pill under their tongue for an hour until the nurse leaves the room.
But you wouldn’t NEED to. The control group is the group of patients who are not prayed for. Since neither patient group knows if they are being prayed for, the study would be contolled for bias. The reason you need a placebo group in a drug trial is because the patient KNOWS he is taking a pill. If there is no way for the patient to know he is being prayed for, the placebo group is unnecessary.
—I assume the researchers who do these types of experiments trust that the prayer groups they use are sincere in their desire to speed the healing of the person they are praying for.—
This is ridiculous methodology that would never pass muster in any program evaluation. Simply trusting that the experimental group actually did what they are told to do?
Worse, any attempt to specially select a “sincere” group of prayers ruins the randomization of the study. For all you know, the effects you are proving simply demonstrate that more sincere people can better exercise magical psychic willpowers than others.
Again: the problem is not controlling WHAT they are praying for, but rather the totally unobservable process of prayer itself.
—But you’re right in that any critic could use the “no true Scotsman” argument to justify his rejection of the results. Really, the bigger issue is that no believer is going to change their mind, anyway, no matter how many studies are done.—
But it isn’t a fallacy in this case. No definitional backsliding is being done. You can’t take out on believers what is an inherent flaw in even the THEORY of this sort of endeavor.
—A given event can be observed to be either affected or unaffected, without need for a sliding scale of prayer dosage.—
Yes, I was just saying that a dose/response measure would be the BEST outcome.
—The suggestion that people would deliberately lie to the researcher, and pretend to pray when they are actually not praying is no more absurd than suggesting that subjects could hide a pill under their tongue for an hour until the nurse leaves the room.—
The problem is not about lying. It’s about things like sincerity and the unobservable differences between one mind and another. We don’t understand these effects or differences, and we can’t control them.
Further, it’s much LESS absurd than the pill scenario. With prayer, there is litterally NO WAY the experimenter could check up on the subject to find if they’ve done the prayer right or enough or whatever. With the pill scenario, there are a ton of tricks by which we can actually study the way pills are taken, how they affect the body when properly taken, etc.
—The control group is the group of patients who are not prayed for.—
Uh, says who? How can you establish that they are not being prayed for? Or perhaps covered in general prayers for the sick to get well (which, perhaps, a member of the experimental group might ALSO pray for).
The problem isn’t just the person prayed FOR, but also the people doing the praying. If you want the experiment to have anything at all to do with religion, and not just psychic powers of well-wishing, then you’re in a bind on this matter.
Heck, I have a hard enough time trying to prove that various quite observable programs/interventions have meaningful impacts.
Apos, I have a sincere-o-meter you can borrow sometime if you’d like. 
They are quite handy.
Aside from your blithe tone, isn’t that basically what prayer is? An exercise of magical psychic willpower? Assuming that such a study finds evidence of prayer’s effectiveness, AND is successfully repeated and shown to have good methodology, then I suppose there could be a debate over whether God or human psychic power caused the miracle. However, if this dubious scenario developed, it could be resolved by having one group pray to God, and one group send human psychic waves, or whatever.
You make the whole thing sound ridiculous, but the thing is, probably billions of people really believe in the power of prayer. If this is a real phenomenon, then why would there be no way to objectively test it? What you’re saying is, if we DID find evidence that prayer works, we would have no way to know if it were some OTHER kind of magic. Come on, give me a break.
The flaw is in the nebulous and completely inconsistent belief of how prayer works. If we take people who believe that their prayers will work, and test them objectively, I don’t see how they would have any excuse to redefine prayer after the fact. After all, it’s THEIR belief, and THEY are the ones who prayed. If you are worried about conflicting beliefs, then studies could be done for EACH religion.
But prayer is widely believed to work DESPITE differences in the individual. If it works in the real world, why would it not work in an experiment, simply because someone is watching?
Actually, that IS a good criticism, and one that has been brought up in regards to previous experiments. The point has been made that they were actually measuring the effects of SUPPLEMENTAL prayer, since the control group might have family and friends who pray for them. So I definitely agree with you on this point.
Again, I would argue that that’s pretty much what prayer is.
blowero, I think you are completely missing Apos’s point.
As you probably know, there are a couple of lines missing from what Jesus is said to have taught in Luke from the more familiar version recorded by Matthew, and one of them is: “May your will be done on earth as in heaven.”
There is a very strong tendency among believers and non-believers alike to regard prayer as a form of magick – use the magic formula, and good things will come your way.
Instead, it’s supposed to be a way of conforming your will to the divine Will, of desiring what He desires – recognizing that your own well-being and ultimate happiness is a part of what He desires, and being content to have Him shape the future that will lead you to that happiness.
It’s the difference between a mature philosophical optimism and a small child insisting, “But I want it now!”
Ergo, prayer could be completely effective and not demonstrable in any objective terms other than polling the pray-ers to decide if over the course of time they become happier.
Sorry to throw a monkey wrench into the works – but if you’re looking for a magickal formula to be scientifically demonstrable, all you’re going to find is The Hat’s Rabbit. (Nice name choice, THR – I couldn’t resist the opportunity to play off it in this thread; hope you don’t mind!)
I disagree. You probably haven’t read every post in this thread. This is what has transpired:
Soup_du_jour posted a list of his evidence that prayer is effective, and I pointed out that his list was entirely subjective.
Voyager said that “observations of something irreproducible certainly count as scientific.”
Soup_du_ jour said : “Well, then, Voyager. My “kitchen table” experiment and my “laundry list” could count as scientific? Tell that to blowero.”
I responded that the problem with Soup-du-jour’s “experiment” was NOT irreproducability, but lack of controls. To wit, I gave an example off the top of my head of how a study might be done with proper controls.
Apos proceeded to pick apart my example as if I were actually SUGGESTING that such an experiment should be done, rather than merely using it as a quick example, as was my intention.
I responded that (A) I didn’t intend it as a serious experiment to be done, and (B) besides that, I disagreed with Apos’ PARTICULAR criticisms. Apos and I both agree, however, that that not much is going to be accomplished by such studies. I fully understand his point, but was just debating him on the particulars, just for fun.
I admit the whole thing is pretty silly, but then again, so is the idea of debating religion altogether.