I’m as much a physicalist as they come, but placebos and even meditation seems perfectly plausible to me. The brain is connected to the body, so you don’t have to buy into woo to admit that fooling the brain can improve your health. There was also a study showing that the same drug or placebo works better if the person taking it thinks it is expensive.
And of course all these effects are measurable - no faith required at all.
That’s a psychological effect, not a physical one. The pills don’t physically do anything, and they also don’t heal anything. They can temporarily use suggestion to alleviate pain or discomfort, but they don’t actually change or heal the physical causes. It’s not even the pills per se which cause the placebo effect. It’s the suggestion from the pill giver.
I guess this would be analogous to religious faith in that it can lead to a false beliefthat a problem has been solved when it hasn’t been (actually faith healing uses exactly the same psychological phenomenon).
Nailed in the first post. Faith without action is perfectly okay with me.
Well, it’s measurable, it’s empirically tested, so it’s physical enough for me. But yeah, you couldn’t see from a blood sample if anyone was taking placebos. I just wanted to contrast that the placebo effect is well understood and very much part of the physical world - there’s no need for faith in it.
To take a flippant stance and borrowing a tactic of some of the more annoying (though sometimes sincere) believers; because with faith in an Abrahamic god, anything goes. This kind of god is the negation of any kind of moral standard. Kill, rape, maim, torture, whatever. It’s all fine and even encouraged if your god happens to wake up in a bad mood that day. Even if your god disapproved, never mind, just ask for his forgiveness and you’re fine and dandy. But if you don’t ask him to treat you like a lowly worm, no matter what else you did or didn’t do, when you’re done and dead, god himself will make all of that look like a pleasant evening in the pub. It’s bloody disgusting. Fine if you want to believe it, but don’t tell me you’re doing anything praise worthy.
What is physically measurable about it? The placebo effect does not cause physiological changes or healing. It’s just superficially analgesic. It causes the brain to release natural endorphins which temporarily relive pain. It can also make people “feel better” in a more subjective sense in that it can make them think their condition is improving (when it isn’t), so it makes them more optimistic and makes their mood better, but placebos can’t actually kill cancer cells or physically heal anything. The suggestion can just change the way they feel emotionally about it and cause the brain to bomb them with it’s own natural painkillers.
I’ll assume by “faith” you mean “believing something without evidence”.
Generally this is a Bad Thing. If you don’t base your beliefs about the world on empirical observation, then they’re much less likely to be correct. This will often lead you to do things that are either useless or destructive. For example, in a dangerous situation you might waste time praying instead of trying to figure out how to save yourself or others.
Really? Atheists can’t get dementia or Alzheimers and fall prey to manipulation? Neat. Now there’s a reason I can get behind.
Well, it makes me happy. It helps me calm myself when facing a crisis. I’ve had jobs where I had to make quick decisions with others life on the line. The exact beliefs that gave me the calm never came up when I was making these decisions but the calmness to not crumble under the crisis sure was. More specifically, it fought the natural fear of holding such responsibility. That’s one good that came to mind.
I was just reading the Wikipedia article about placebos looking for numbers and/or quotes, and it turns out that you are right - the measurable impact on sicknesses with “binary” results is insignificant. I had the impression that placebos can help here too, for a tiny fraction. Interesting.
Still, even the “feeling better” - effect is physical - higher endorphin levels do show up in a blood test. It’s not a miracle healing, of course not, but that was never open to debate. All I mentioned was a physical impact on the patient.
martu did not say all danger.
Yet again I ask you to define “faith” for the purposes of this thread.
Sorry, saw this earlier and ran out of time.
Honestly, I’m not the person to ask about the real definition of faith as I’m not sure I even have whatever that is.
Either kind of faith works for what I’m asking though since I’m only asking what would make someone aggressively dismissive of someone holding a faith. Now, blind faith in something harmful is another thing. I’m pretty much talking self affecting faith because again, I see no problem fighting harmful faith when it comes up.
Wow, I’m a little too slow for the board. Sorry again.
martu said the danger and as far as I know we were discussing one specific type of danger so I didn’t see the need to clarify he didn’t mean all danger but I will do that.
martu, can you tell me what specific danger you meant that ties into my statement of worrying about dementia instead of faith and would be solved by not having faith?
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How do you distinguish between the good kind of faith and the bad kind of faith? In advance, I mean … before someone does something obviously good or bad.
It’s your thread, for Rao’s sake! Open up a dictionary, pick a definition, and get back to us.
So you are telling me that a literal belief in the Flying Spaghetti monster does not reflect a lack of critical thinking, and/or ignorance? (that was the example I was working with in my post)
Secondly, to assume that your “feeling” can be so compartmentalized as to have no impact on the outside world is the height of arrogance, despite your clearly earnest desire to paint me in such a light. (BTW it is this basic logic is that you are sarcastically describing as “omniscient knowledge” on my part: belief in flying spaghetti monster => lack of critical thinking => indirect impact on decision making)
I think a big reason for the success of Christianism in America is the vast amount of positive feedback they get.
Everything re-enforces faith. If you are rich, you thank god for your success. If you are poor, you thank god for testing you. If you get sick, it is god’s will. If you get better, you thank god for healing you. No matter what happens, the whole community assures you that your faith is strong and everything is going the way god wants it to.
Ok, all faith is together as one thing and there is no difference from any faith to another? If I have faith that Johnny isn’t holding pocket kings I’m on the same road as a christian telling their kids their friends are going to Hell? I don’t even believe in Hell so yeah, if my holding my beliefs are making you think that I’m the kind of guy who will do this to my kids then yeah, that answers my question as to why you’d be hostile and aggressive whenever I state my beliefs but it doesn’t really strike me as logical or fact based at all. It sounds more like making assumptions due to how your mind works not how the human mind works in general.
I never said that. I never said that there weren’t specifically dangerous or bad faiths. Unlike you, I don’t hold every faith exactly equal though.
I’m saying that despite that, the vast majority of the humans in the world profess some faith and most of them, heck the vast majority of them function rationally enough for us to advance as a species so yeah, neither of us can prove a cite.
Among other beliefs certainly. I’m also talking about people who believe that the universe itself is a higher entity for example and we’re all part of that. In other words, those who do not believe in a personal god at all. I’m talking about faith in the unprovable. You are trying to again fit me into a religious box but that’s not me.
I dunno, what does the FSM stand for, I might get behind it if it is espousing what I believe in.
Wouldn’t matter as I’d be believing in the ideals, not the specific fiction but just like other forms of fiction having a FSM makes it easier for people with those beliefs to work with than trying to lay theory on them. That’s what makes fiction valuable. It gives you an outline of a thought you can work with.
I don’t see that though. I have no surviving close family. I am not part of any groups or affiliations. I don’t wear any beliefs on my shoulders nor is there any way that I can affect people on my job due to any beliefs. I haven’t even laid any of them out here in a discussion about beliefs. If you’re saying that I’m harming someone then it’s simply the fact that I exist that is doing it and I can’t help existing. Maybe the answer to the OP is because those with belief are viewed as abominations by the type of people who would aggressively scorn them?
We all agree it can hurt and we all agree it must be confronted when it does. Are you saying that this risk is so bad we need to proactively stamp out any belief lest it become that type of belief? Again, think bigfoot not flying planes into buildings.
Well, hmm, I don’t agree with the first sentence if you mean to the believer. Presumably their faith is in line with their beliefs and they would be able to sort out which is harmful and non harmful. I’ve never been someone to just randomly pick a faith and oh well, sucks if I disagreed with it personally, I’ll just have to change my own thoughts to match this new belief.
There could be people out there like that but I’d like to give people more credit than that and assume that it worked the other way around.