What I was doing is called satire. WN was actually presenting well-reasoned arguments. Religious folk are apparently incapable of such.

The idea that a religious cardiac surgeon would offer substandard care is not one backed by evidence. Atheists and agnostics reject beliefs that are not backed by evidence.

Ok, but it makes no sense to me. That's like a child agreeing that their parent has authority over them, true, but pointless because it doesn't in any way change anything. Certainly, the parent doesn't need the child's permission or validation. Perhaps then there's another reason and that's to reinforce that authority amongst believers here in the earthly realm. This doesn't prove that there are no gods either, it might serve their purposes too although I don't think that reflects well on them.


I don't think that this necessarily follows. Prayer is just one of many types of reinforcement, it's not a required technique nor would it ensure the survival of that belief system.

I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive, it could be a reinforcement technique and still accomplish something for the participants and that doesn't change even if they're aware of that. In fact, that simply makes it that much more effective.

This is something else that doesn't make sense to me. God is going to do what god is going to do, and it's not possible that he's simply not aware of anything and needs to be informed, he's omniscient, so to pray for his intervention is at best useless, at worst downright arrogant and egocentric to think that you could actually influence god.

Agreed, as I said above.

OK, what I've come to think is that prayer changes nothing, can't change anything in terms of what god is going to do, but can have an effect on the person praying and those around them AND serves the purpose of reinforcing belief. It's very clever but far from unique, this type of psychological practice is common, for example in 12 step type programmes where participants publicly declare their number of days sober and 'share'. They understand (I imagine) that this has a reinforcing purpose for their ongoing efforts at sobriety, but it also reinforces that effect on the other s members of the programme, makes everybody feel good, and generally promotes the idea of sobriety.

You must be forgetting the bit where you basically called me stupid and incapable of presenting a rational argument. Hurtful and completely unnecessary. Now I'm done wasting our time addressing this habit of yours of getting personal with me, you either stop doing it (preferable) or if it becomes the only way you ever speak to me you'll eventually become the 3rd person on my ignore list.

Never said it was backed by evidence. Said several times that I wasn't even sure it it could have a measurable effect and that it simply makes me uncomfortable.

It's not a case of 'looking down' on anyone, I don't consider myself any better or any worse than anyone else because of what I believe or don't believe, it's more about finding their judgment questionable.

If you took your car to a mechanic who assured you that they would do everything in their power and skill to fix your car, but then confessed that sometimes they suspect that there are gremlins at work, would you still trust their judgement?

Sure, but there's a difference between discussing the differences in those types of belief (which can be interesting), and categorizing people as the type who have those beliefs or who don't.

And I've explained that since my view is 'reasoned' it can't be prejudice, neither has it anything to do with being made 'uncomfortable' by contrary views. I believe that I have a perfectly rational reason for not fully trusting the judgement of people who believe in things invisible, unproven and supernatural. If you believe beyond doubt that there is a god and simply can't understand how I could fail to see something so obvious, then you'd be perfectly within your rights to find my judgement questionable. I expect that you actually do.

Why not?

You will note that I did stop. I also made a point that needed addressing. The claim that religious people don't make rational and well thought arguments is false.

The proper test for whether a person makes well thought out rational arguments is by looking at their arguments.

That is what prejudicial intolerance is.

Fwiw, if it has no measurable effect, then it has no effect given that it is an empirical question (whether your average religious cardiac surgeon is worse than your average nonreligious one). If I were to try to make a rational argument, I would say that I would rather have my cardiac surgeon have a strict moral code of duty to others, so religious cardiac surgeons should make me feel more at ease.

Right. But then you also hold this position:

This is a hypocritical stance, and further evidence of prejudice. But it is consistent with your other forms of argumentation, in which you argue that your views on religion don't need to be grounded in evidence about religions (because you believe religions are supposed to be practiced in a certain way and you admit that most people don't practice religion in that way).

This is yet another example of why I question your intellectual honesty. It seems that you are steeped in all sorts of assumptions (from religious parenting to the quality of religious doctors who have been board certified). This is ultimately proving to go down the path of the dreaded B-word (bigotry).

...

You believe all sorts of things. You believe that all religious texts are supposed to be taken literallly:

So the fact that you believe something, even in the fact of evidence to the contrary (and you even *admit* that the evidence works against you -- since only "some" people follow religions literally, though that claim is probably questionable as none actually take their religion completely literally), yet you continue to maintain that belief is a direct challenge to the intellectual honesty of your position.

People can find your judgment questionable in the absence of "belief beyond doubt that there is a God." This would be a very non-sequitur analysis of why virtually everyone in this forum disagrees with you.

Tautology aside, you keep saying this, but you haven't explained how you came to this conclusion. You're essentially saying that free-will is inconsequential.

I would like to hear you elaborate on this conclusion, as I think you're mistaken no matter how you look at it, biblically or otherwise.

Just because I don't know if it has a measurable effect doesn't make it prejudice and the argument you make here is simply a reversal of my reasoning. You don't know that theist surgeons actually adhere to a strict moral code nor that it would have a measurable effect, when compared to atheist surgeons, if they did. If I'm being prejudiced then so are you, but I don't actually believe either position is prejudiced.

I certainly wouldn't want to be treated by someone who spent time praying for me, I'd rather they used that time more productively racking their brains for a solution.

prejudice seems related to pre judging which seems consistent with judging in advance of evidence.

As an aside a nurse is unlikely to be wracking their brains for a solution at those times when they may offer a prayer for a patient, this isn't how it works.

Nobody chooses to die of an illness, so I don't believe that Free will is relevant to this discussion. Once someone contracts a fatal illness (or life threatening injury), then presumably god has allowed this to happen and is aware of it happening. He also presumably knows how it's going to turn out. What does it acheive for the patient, to pray to god then? You can't change the outcome. All you can do with prayer, it seems, is have an effect on yourself and those around you, and that doesn't seem like a good reason at all.

Funnily enough, we had some JW's yesterday and in their literature is a section on prayer. It offers instruction on how to pray and mentions that 'no matter what we ask according to his will, he hears us' (John 5:14) and then interprets that as being 'types of request that are likely to harmonise with god's will'. 'Harmonise', not 'change'. So, my question to you, again, would be 'what are you actually achieving by praying other then making yourself, and possibly those around you, feel better in some way?

I don't think anyone is claiming hospital staff should there and then take time to consider the effects of offering magic to patients, but when they do it is reasonable to expect them to have thought it through.

I was responding to this, which I think a bit silly.

If a nurse offers a prayer for a patient and the patient would be comforted by this what is the issue exactly, if they aren't comforted by this where is the harm in offering.

Unless of course the patient is MB and it undermines his confidence in medical practice and training as a result

The definition of prejudice that I'm using - "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience."

I don't have experience, but I have a reason and that's that they have the ability to believe in a god, something that no one would disagree is 'supernatural'. So I'm not in doubt about them because they're theists, as if theist were just a label, in fact it's not, it says something about how they think.

Notwithstanding an article I read recently that postulated that Chimps can 'imagine' food even when it's not present, we seem to be alone in the animal kingdom in our ability to imagine and it may be one of the reasons that we've been 'successful' as a species, but that doesn't mean that long term it's a successful survival strategy.

A prejudice can be based on improper reasoning as well, it's why evidence is a good check to see whether our assumptions are actually correct.

As has been pointed out a racist can provide reasons, they can reason about their prejudice it doesn't protect them when their reasoning is shown to be incorrect. It's why evidence matters, it's why when a question is open to empirical scrutiny it should be considered as such rather than relying on that which is less likely to be correct.

Like you understand cognitive biases you understand how our reasoning can be flawed and this is why if we are supposing someone is worse than someone else we should expect to be able to measure it

I don't think it is up to you, the nurse or me to judge what is the harm is in offering. Obviously some people are going to take offense to being offered magical rituals by health professionals. This isn't just isolated to "reactionary atheistards" (which seems to be the vibe from this thread).

Here are a few things to consider:
1.) Elderly and/or sick people often fear death. Prayer and religion can be a discomfort to them.
2.) It could be people from different religious denominations and/or religions who take offense by the offered ritual.
3.) It could be people who attribute religion with something negative, such a as superstition or lack of reason.

Now, sure... we can go around and say "well, let them be offended! We shouldn't go around being offended all the time". But this is about sick people being treated by paid professionals, professionals who should know very well that if you make people feel uncomfortable they will often tend to refuse treatment and sometimes it can even be a negative medical factor in their recovery.

I'm also certain that we can find similar magical rituals to prayer (verbal component, no "scary" props) that can offend most people. So color me extremely unconvinced by the whole "well, people should not take offense so easily"-argument.

You can consider it differently.

1.) Elderly sick people often fear death. Prayer and religion can be a comfort to them.

So where do we draw the line or do we allow those involved in provisioning medical care use their judgement?

But yes there is a potential harm if the recipient of the offer takes offense but this has made the press because someone took offence and complained, given we know this offence is newsworthy can we infer from the lack of other articles that people just generally aren't offended by this.

Do you think I am presenting the argument "well, people should not take offense so easily", if so where and if not why would you raise it in a conversation with me.

The nurse isn't the one who is likely to be racking their brain for a solution to whatever your medical problem is. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the medical profession.

But it should be noted that, depending on the type of prayer (level of experience, depth, etc.), there may be benefits to having a doctor that prays.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...53811911007531

While the focus here is on "meditation" there are some forms of theistic prayer (and specifically, Christian prayer) that is a meditative form of prayer that is sufficiently similar to "meditation" as described in the article ("Meditation is a mental training of attention") that one would expect similar benefits.

Except that your perspective of theists is completely in line with fatalism brought about by non-theistic determinism, thus you're applying your logic in a manner that's not even-handed.

Black doctors. Incarceration. Reasons.

It says something about *how you perceive* they think. As a simple point of fact, people who are much better thinkers than you theists. Furthermore, non-theists who are much better thinkers than you think that theism isn't itself automatically an unreasonable conclusions. This calls your "reasoning" into question.

Oh boy! More one-off articles that only tangentially support your viewpoint how you describe it and probably doesn't actually support your case at all if we were to look at the details of the article.

Actually, I think it *IS* the nurse's job to judge whether there is harm in offering. That's part of the whole relational aspect of medical professionals. They make such judgments if they ever make small take, share a joke, an off-handed comment, or whatever it is that they say in order to build a meaningful trusting relationship between themselves and the patient.

Trying to overly mechanize the nurse's responsibility as simply one who gathers information and conveys information is an oversimplification (and over-restriction) of what their job includes.

I don't think anyone is saying that, unless I missed it.

If we are going to discuss the Christian God then I think you should allow for some assumptions for how his character is typically understood. I struggle with this concept on a personal level... "why pray because God does whatever he wants anyway..." .

However, I think the classical Christian view is that God will sometimes change his will based on the prayers of humans. The basis for this is that God is relational (while omniscient) and does change his mind at times.

If you care about what the Scriptures say, which most evangelicals do, there are many examples where this takes place.

Most Christians would agree God is omniscient.

In the context of Christianity I don't think this is the case. God set up the construct where we pray to him and sometimes he will do what we ask. For example it is written in Paul's letter to the Hebrew Church:

Hebrews 14:6

God explicitly instructs people to address Him with confidence with their needs. He doesn't tell us that we are arrogant for even asking and that we are egocentric. The underlying assumption about God's character is the he is relational and benevolent.

Depends why they believed in gremlins and what they thought gremlins did. I would need to actually find out what they believed and if they were justified in holding those beliefs.

Please clarify, I am not sure what you mean here. I don't think God is obvious; I think atheism is reasonable but incorrect.

You are speaking in absolute terms here - "No one wants to die of an illness, but people die of illnesses all the time, so God never changes his mind." That's not a valid conclusion. For this to be true you would need to prove that nobody has ever successfully recovered from a life-threatening illness, and even if you were able to do that, you haven't proved that God does not intervene before an illness escalates to being life-threatening. And even if you did somehow prove that, all you end up showing is that God does not answer prayers regarding life-threatening illnesses, not all prayers in general.

God's omniscience doesn't change whether or not prayer works, that is irrelevant. Imagine a scenario when a father is observing his child attempt a task that they are struggling with, but which they want to accomplish on their own. So the father watches intently, knowing that the child can't do it on their own, until finally the child asks the father for help, to which he happily helps. Is this so far fetched?

It depends on how you define, "harmonizing". I can agree if you mean something like what James 4:2-3 says:

"You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures."

Faith also plays a role as seen in James 1:6-8:

"But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."

There are certain conditions one must adhere to. Faith is foremost, and your motives must be pure. It seems to me that you're looking at this through a strong fatalist perspective which is unwarranted here, and overlooking what prayer is really about in the biblical sense. It's not just about treating God as a magical wish granting genie. Also, this particular focus on prayer is only dealing with petition prayer, which as previously mentioned, is only one part of prayer in general.

Don't forget this part of the definition which is what applies to you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice

You prejudge everyone with religious beliefs. It is impossible to know the relevant facts about each person and what they believe and why...

Therefore to avoid being prejudice I suggest specific discussions of specific beliefs. When you consistently choose to make broad sweeping statements about large groups of people, of which you are largely ignorant, that is prejudice.

You prejudge based on perceived group membership not actual beliefs or actions of each individual.

Reasons and experience should only apply to individuals.

Consider this example: if I have bad experiences with a handful of black people that doesn't give me permission to extrapolate that to all black people. If I try and make negative descriptive statements that somehow apply to all black people I will probably end up being accused of prejudice.

Becoming self aware of ones own prejudice is obviously a difficult task.

This is simply uncharitable. You are holding to the view that health care professionals with religious convictions will somehow come at a cost to the care you receive. If you don't have evidence for this isn't it just prejudice paranoia?

Just think how much further along the genome project would be if Francis Collins wasn't heading it up. All that time wasted praying... if an theist was in charge think of all the mapping they could have completed already....

My personal theology of prayer will probably just convolute things. Stick with what Orp, WN, and NR have to say about prayer to get a baseline understanding.

I have no reply to this, as the extrapolation is incorrect.