The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

[Pixel42]

The skeptic's dictionary entry on double blind testing includes a couple of examples unrelated to medical trials which might give anyone struggling with the need for such precautions an idea of the sort of biases and sources of error which are eliminated by them:

The DKL LifeGuard Model 2, from DielectroKinetic Laboratories, can detect a living human being by receiving a signal from the heartbeat at distances of up to 20 meters through any material, according to its manufacturers. Sandia Labs tested the device using a double-blind, randomized method of testing. Sandia is a national security laboratory operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by the Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Co. The causal hypothesis they tested could be worded as follows: the human heartbeat causes a directional signal to activate in the Lifeguard, thereby allowing the user of the LifeGuard to find a hidden human being (the target) up to 20 meters away, regardless of what objects might be between the LifeGuard and the target.

The testing procedure was quite simple: five large plastic packing crates were set up in a line at 30-foot intervals and the test operator, using the DKL LifeGuard Model 2, tried to detect in which of the five crates a human being was hiding. Whether a crate would be empty or contain a person for each trial was determined by random assignment. This is to avoid using a pattern which might be detected by the subject. Their tests showed that the device performed no better than expected from random chance. The test operator was a DKL representative. The only time the test operator did well in detecting his targets was when he had prior knowledge of the target's location. The LifeGuard was successful ten out of ten times when the operator knew where the target was. It may seem ludicrous to test the device by telling the operator where the objects are, but it establishes a baseline and affirms that the device is working. Only when the operator agrees that his device is working should the test proceed to the second stage, the double-blind test. For, the operator will not be as likely to come up with an ad hoc hypothesis to explain away his failure in a double-blind test if he has agreed beforehand that the device is working properly.

If the device could perform as claimed, the operator should have received no signals from the empty crates and signals from each of the crates with a person within. In the main test of the LifeGuard, when neither the test operator nor the investigator keeping track of the operator's results knew which of five possible locations contained the target, the operator performed poorly (six out of 25) and took about four times longer than when the operator knew the target's location. If human heartbeats cause the device to activate, one would expect a significantly better performance than 6 of 25, which is what would be expected by chance.

The lack of testing under controlled conditions explains why many psychics, graphologists, astrologers, dowsers, New Age therapists, and the like, believe in their abilities. To test a dowser it is not enough to have the dowser and his friends tell you that it works by pointing out all the wells that have been dug on the dowser's advice. One should perform a random, double-blind test, such as the one done by Ray Hyman with an experienced dowser on the PBS program Frontiers of Science (Nov. 19, 1997). The dowser claimed he could find buried metal objects, as well as water. He agreed to a test that involved randomly selecting numbers which corresponded to buckets placed upside down in a field. The numbers determined which buckets a metal object would be placed under. The one doing the placing of the objects was not the same person who went around with the dowser as he tried to find the objects. The exact odds of finding a metal object by chance could be calculated. For example, if there are 100 buckets and 10 of them have a metal object, then getting 10% correct would be predicted by chance. That is, over a large number of attempts, getting about 10% correct would be expected of anyone, with or without a dowsing rod. On the other hand, if someone consistently got 80% or 90% correct, and we were sure he or she was not cheating, that would confirm the dowser's powers.

The dowser walked up and down the lines of buckets with his rod but said he couldn't get any strong readings. When he selected a bucket he qualified his selection with something to the effect that he didn't think he'd be right. He was right about never being right! He didn't find a single metal object despite several attempts. His performance is typical of dowsers tested under controlled conditions. His response was also typical: he was genuinely surprised. Like most of us, the dowser is not aware of the many factors that can hinder us from doing a proper evaluation of events: self-deception, wishful thinking, suggestion, unconscious bias, selective thinking, subjective validation, communal reinforcement, and the like.

 

[Dancing David]

What you are saying between the lines is that materialism is all that there is and the only evidence is scientific evidence.

Evidence is information indicating whether an idea or proposition is true or false. You no doubt have evidence of your subjective experience but there is NO scientific experiment that can be done by science that can verify the quality and content of your subjective experience.

So what do you do? Do you say you have no evidence for your subjective experience and thus discard it as trash? There is not even a hypothesis that can be made as to yours or anyone's subjective experience. So in your opinion all subjective experience is what an illusion, it fails and should have the honor of being wrong.

What your remark shows is prejudice.

Your remark shows a lack of understanding of the scientific process, subjective experience is subject to the scientific method.

Validity of personal reports is a separate issue, but one can always ask people about it

 

[Donn]

Evidence is information indicating whether an idea or proposition is true or false. You no doubt have evidence of your subjective experience but there is NO scientific experiment that can be done by science that can verify the quality and content of your subjective experience.

You are merely upset that your god is in your head; nurtured by your subjective experience; in a bubble that defines him imaginary.

So what do you do? Do you say you have no evidence for your subjective experience and thus discard it as trash? There is not even a hypothesis that can be made as to yours or anyone's subjective experience. So in your opinion all subjective experience is what an illusion, it fails and should have the honor of being wrong.

You really want the subjective to be untouched by science, don't you?

What your remark shows is prejudice.

Indeed. Until my faculties betray me, I will heed doubt.

 

[IanS]

No subjective experience can be scientifically assessed.

What do you mean by talking about a "subjective" experience?

If you claim to have actually experienced something, then you are claiming that something real was experienced.

Please name anything that you claim to have actually experienced, that is inherently beyond the explanation of science.

For instance we can show the various neurons involved and surmise the sort of chemical reactions that take place in the brain in people who are in love but they do not say anything about the subjective experience of being in love. And the same is true of all other subjective experiences. We can show that everyone identifies a color by its name, eg red is identified as red but there is no experiment that we can do to show that what one person's subjective perception is the same or even similar to another's.

If you are talking about a concept such as "love", that is not a tangible or clearly defined actual thing. It's just a word describing a relatively vague and ill-defined idea about emotions and behaviour.

And even then, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to prevent any scientists studying what you mean if you say that you "love" something or someone.

The same is true of consciousness. We can only look at brain brain activity. And anesthetist has a number scale that indicates different levels of consciousness and subconsciousness but he cannot equate that to the experience of being conscious.

You can see that various scientists have various theories and some of them based on the idea that we are mere machines, that the physical is all that there is AND some of them based on "we are more than just the physical".

Hameroff an anesthesiologist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBHss9g0pB0

Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE, is a British neuro- scientist,
In the beginning of here talk discuss how we don't have a definition of conscious and the difficulties of "what is it" in scientific terms?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ZTNmkIiBc

Bruce Greyson: Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en-3Bz1RMig

Dr Pim van Lommel a cardiologist (part one) Consciousness Beyond Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOeLJCdHojU

When there is are vastly different hypothesis about consciousness by scientists how on earth do you see that my claims are "complete contradiction to everything ever studied and explained through science."

Well we are not talking about the age-old arguments about so-called "conciousness". That is another issue altogether. It's an ancient old conundrum beloved of theists, mystics and philosophers. And it's been discussed here to death in many previous threads. Have a look at all those if you want to know what people say about so-called "conciousness"

 

[MuDPhuD]

I have edited the post to
focus on some important points.

YES! and I am working on bring forth that evidence.



I have seen that organs can be rejuvenated and renewed

Exactly how have you seen this? Which organs in which organisms in which stages of development? Your statement is very broad, can you please be specific?

there is no reason why this is only limited to organs. I discovered this in addressing my own medical problems with cancer.

From what kind of cancer do you suffer? How was it diagnosed? Did you receive any medical treatment? How do you know you are in remission? How long a remission have you been fortunate enough to benefit from?

I found that cancer cells are not rogue cells but stem cells that have changed their gene expression

By what method did you find the changes in gene expression in these cancer cells? How did you distinguish the cancer cells from non cancerous stem cells? Did you use in situ hybridization, or perhaps PCR and direct sequencing? What kind of cancer cells were these? What kind of stem cells did they become?

...
I began to use insight meditation techniques I had learned many years earlier to see what was going on at the cellular level.

Please tell me you did not determine the changes in gene expression and the change from cancer to stem cells by. "insight meditation"! How can insight meditation tell you what is going on at the cellular level? Is this just another way to say you imagined it all?

I found that the cancer cells reverted back to normal cells and the excesses were removed by apoptosis...
.

...by insight meditation?

... I was able to then get my body to selectively keep the new cells and destroy older cells so that the tissue was rejuvenated and renewed in the process of getting
back to health.

how did you identify the new versus the old cells? What sort of cellular tagging protocol did you use?

i.e., cancer stem cells in my body
.

Again, from what kind of cancer do you suffer? How was it diagnosed? What medical treatment did you receive?

I have had spontaneous remissions from a number of different cancers. .

Which ones, how were they diagnosed, what treatments did you receive, how long is your remission, and how was it diagnosed?.


Before investigating what caused a remission you will need to establish what kind of cancer you had.

 

[jimbob]

A drug? And another couple of years? What! An ah ha experience works to bring the body to spontaneous remission AND it is FREE! And that is not all. The person not only has a spontaneous remission, they can avoid developing cancer ever again. AND live out their lives as normal.

But of course the person has to be humane/ non-toxic. The reason is that they must have autonomy, to be able to make their own independent choices. Inhumane people all belong to networks (gangs), which means they are bound by mob rule. If others in their "circle of friends" was them gone, then there is nothing they can do to avoid it.

The immune system aids cancer as I described in an earlier post.

Immunotherapy is about turning the immune system against the body (because cancer carries the signature of self) does give some result sometimes but at a price. There are numerous types of reactions /side effects from rashes to inflammation of endocrine glands. http://www.curetoday.com/articles/e...ide-effects-from-immunotherapy-in-lung-cancer

This is one of the most offensive posts I have seen on this site.

If the preferred magic approach by kyrani99 doesn't cure someone, it's their fault because they are a toxic individual.

As far as I can tell, the test for a toxic individual is if they don't get cured by kyrani99's magic approach.

A lovely way to apportion blame. Straight out of the Middle Ages.

 

[kyrani99]

Wow, your hypothesis challenges the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection? In what journal might I read of this world-altering breakthrough?

It will still take some time, maybe a year. I am developing my theory in scientific terms and I will need to find some way to test it. Then I can write it up as a paper and publish it.

 

[kyrani99]

Did I actually just read that?

I mean obviously if this is true you are in for a nobel, but I am guessing it's based on very little and you're going to end up peddling the line 'the scientific community won't listen to me and my ideas!'

There is a reason for this...

Until they have egg in their face.

Don't you at least have a little doubt when cancer is described as happening by clonal evolution, which means spontaneous, random mutations followed by natural selection for fitness. How strange that all people with the same cancers have cancers with the same genetic signatures.

 

[IanS]

So how honorable are doctors and the medical industry.
1. There is a push to try and say that a placebo is all about how a patient is treated and the doctors support and blah, blah, blah, when they know full well that IF a person BELIEVES that whatever they are given, will make them well again, they will get well again.

It is not hard. The person stops reacting and relaxes so they return to resting metabolism, which means the bodily reactivity is gone... i.e., health is restored.

The above probably the wins the prize for the most seriously (and dangerously) deluded thing I think I've ever seen anyone write on any forum like this.

If you really believe things like the above then frankly there is no possibility at all of anyone having any kind of reasoned intelligent conversation with you.


postscript - since I wrote the above (as a quick draft a couple of days ago), I notice that Kyrani has persisted with assertions about how sick people can cure themselves simply by having a faith-belief in something (where the "something" seems to be a religious god). Obviously beliefs like that are lethally dangerous. Though they are of course not usual in religions like Christianity and Islam.

In fact such beliefs are really an essential foundation of the faith. Where for example you are persuaded to believe that God is the final arbiter of whatever happens to you - if you get sick and die then that was God's wish (or if you recover and live, then that too was God's wish). Millions of Christians still believe that even today in 2016.

That's an obvious example of why religions become so dangerous. And anyone could give numerous examples of how that same basic belief becomes a lethal danger that pervades absolutely everything from belief in faith healing, to belief in demonic possession and churches that still encourage exorcism, to Popes declaring certain people to be "Saints" claiming that they performed miracles confirmed by science, etc etc. ... all the way up to group's like the Taliban, Isis and Al Qaeda murdering thousands of people all around the world where they actually believe (and insist) that their religious wars are commanded by God in their holy books ... but astonishingly, they do not actually believe their victims are really dead! Instead what they believe as irrefutable god-given fact, is that their victims are all judged by Allah, so that Allah decides whether the victim was rightly killed, in which case he or she is sent to everlasting hell ... or if the murder was a mistake and the victim was innocent, then Allah will grant them a place in paradise instead (apparently vastly better than being alive on Earth) .... the person who just had his head chopped off is not really dead! ... he's just being sent to Allah for final proper religious judgement in the after-life! Are these people religiously dangerous? .... rhetorical question.

 

[Pup]

Until they have egg in their face.

Don't you at least have a little doubt when cancer is described as happening by clonal evolution, which means spontaneous, random mutations followed by natural selection for fitness. How strange that all people with the same cancers have cancers with the same genetic signatures.

To make sure we're on the same page, here's a list of some of the mutations just in ELM4-ALK lung cancer. ALK lung cancers are only ~5% of adenacarcinoma lung cancers, so we're talking about a subset of a subset of lung cancers only.

https://www.mycancergenome.org/content/disease/lung-cancer/alk/

Multiple different ALK rearrangements have been described in NSCLC. The majority of these ALK fusion variants are comprised of portions of the echinoderm microtubule-associated protein-like 4 (EML4) gene with the ALK gene. At least nine different EML4-ALK fusion variants have been identified in NSCLC (Figure 1; Choi et al. 2008; Horn and Pao 2009; Koivunen et al. 2008; Soda et al. 2007; Takeuchi et al. 2008; Takeuchi et al. 2009; Wong et al. 2009). In addition, non-EML4 fusion partners have also been identified, including KIF5B-ALK (Takeuchi et al. 2009) and TFG-ALK (Rikova et al. 2007).

And at the link, figure 1 lists them.

Are you saying that we should find it strange that all people with EML4-ALK-E14;A20(v7), who account for a tiny percent of all people with cancer, all have the same EML4-ALK-E14;A20(v7) genetic signature? Maybe you could explain why, because I don't find it particularly strange.

Speaking of natural selection, these cancers are treated with targeted drugs, and they mutate in response. Someone who is EML4-ALK-E14;A20(v7) might mutate to any of the other ALKs, or even out of ALK entirely and into EGFR, for example. A rebiopsy after a year or more of treatment will show.

Personally, I think it's obvious you're in way over your head, and rather than being skeptical of cancer research because you understand it so well, you're skeptical because you don't understand it, and don't even realize what you don't know, but might be able to fool vulnerability people by slinging around enough sciency sounding lingo. That's what concerns me.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Isn't it strange how every mouse on the planet has mouse DNA? I mean... what are the odds?

 

[kyrani99]

The skeptic's dictionary entry on double blind testing includes a couple of examples unrelated to medical trials which might give anyone struggling with the need for such precautions an idea of the sort of biases and sources of error which are eliminated by them:

What do you mean by "The causal hypothesis they tested could be worded as follows: the human heartbeat causes a directional signal to activate in the Lifeguard"? If it involves ESP then I can see a way the results can be tampered with as to make them appear less.

 

[kyrani99]

The skeptic's dictionary entry on double blind testing includes a couple of examples unrelated to medical trials which might give anyone struggling with the need for such precautions an idea of the sort of biases and sources of error which are eliminated by them:

In the second experiment you said "The dowser walked up and down the lines of buckets with his rod but said he couldn't get any strong readings. When he selected a bucket he qualified his selection with something to the effect that he didn't think he'd be right."

This smacks of fraud. The dowser can be affect by ESP, which is of course not obvious and may appear as the person's own thinking. So when they are on the bucket with the metal they are given a suggestion of "Ummm no not this one" so they move on to the next. And that does explain why they think they are not right when they are on an empty because that statement could be just another mental suggestion made to make them look stupid.

Then you said "He was right about never being right! He didn't find a single metal object despite several attempts." If he hadn't been given suggestion he might have got the 20% right!

"His performance is typical of dowsers tested under controlled conditions. His response was also typical: he was genuinely surprised."
This is also telling.

Firstly the "controlled conditions" are those that cause them to get it wrong.

And secondly of course he's surprised because under ordinary conditions he does get a good result and even under normal test conditions he should have at least got 20% correct.

Cognitive bias in what direction?

 

[AdamSK]

This smacks of fraud. The dowser can be affect by ESP, which is of course not obvious and may appear as the person's own thinking. So when they are on the bucket with the metal they are given a suggestion of "Ummm no not this one" so they move on to the next.

Except that the metal was not hidden by the person observing the tester, either. So who is sending these negative ESP signals?

Can you send these negative ESP signals? If you can get a person to select an option less than is predicted by chance, that's a testable prediction in and of itself.

 

[Pixel42]

What do you mean by "The causal hypothesis they tested could be worded as follows: the human heartbeat causes a directional signal to activate in the Lifeguard"? If it involves ESP then I can see a way the results can be tampered with as to make them appear less.

The claim made for the Lifeguard by its manufacturers was that it could detect a human heartbeat at certain distances and through certain materials. The experiment tested that claim, using a double blind protocol to ensure that no sources of information other than the Lifeguard were available to its operator. The claim was proved false.

 

[Pixel42]

In the second experiment you said "The dowser walked up and down the lines of buckets with his rod but said he couldn't get any strong readings. When he selected a bucket he qualified his selection with something to the effect that he didn't think he'd be right."

This smacks of fraud. The dowser can be affect by ESP, which is of course not obvious and may appear as the person's own thinking. So when they are on the bucket with the metal they are given a suggestion of "Ummm no not this one" so they move on to the next. And that does explain why they think they are not right when they are on an empty because that statement could be just another mental suggestion made to make them look stupid.

Then you said "He was right about never being right! He didn't find a single metal object despite several attempts." If he hadn't been given suggestion he might have got the 20% right!

"His performance is typical of dowsers tested under controlled conditions. His response was also typical: he was genuinely surprised."
This is also telling.

Firstly the "controlled conditions" are those that cause them to get it wrong.

And secondly of course he's surprised because under ordinary conditions he does get a good result and even under normal test conditions he should have at least got 20% correct.

Cognitive bias in what direction?

The claim made by the dowser was that he could detect objects using a dowsing rod under certain conditions. The experiment tested that claim, using a double blind protocol to ensure that no sources of information other than the dowsing rod were available to the dowser. The claim was proved false.

 

[turingtest]

In the second experiment you said "The dowser walked up and down the lines of buckets with his rod but said he couldn't get any strong readings. When he selected a bucket he qualified his selection with something to the effect that he didn't think he'd be right."

This smacks of fraud. The dowser can be affect by ESP, which is of course not obvious and may appear as the person's own thinking. So when they are on the bucket with the metal they are given a suggestion of "Ummm no not this one" so they move on to the next. And that does explain why they think they are not right when they are on an empty because that statement could be just another mental suggestion made to make them look stupid.

Then you said "He was right about never being right! He didn't find a single metal object despite several attempts." If he hadn't been given suggestion he might have got the 20% right!

"His performance is typical of dowsers tested under controlled conditions. His response was also typical: he was genuinely surprised."
This is also telling.

Firstly the "controlled conditions" are those that cause them to get it wrong.

And secondly of course he's surprised because under ordinary conditions he does get a good result and even under normal test conditions he should have at least got 20% correct.

Cognitive bias in what direction?

All this amounts to "the conditions weren't right." The controls are put in place to verify the effect only- that's it, full stop. If no effect is demonstrated, the reason for the lack of effect is irrelevant to the test (though simplicity makes the conclusion obvious). To say that the controls are what negated the effect is to say that no controls are possible, and that the effect is not empirically demonstrable. That's an excuse not to test, not a reason for failing one.

And how do you know it was ESP? It could have been the alignment of the deep quantum field particles that was off, right? I mean, if you're going to invoke one imaginary effect to defend the absence of another, any imaginary effect will do.

 

[Resume]

It will still take some time, maybe a year. I am developing my theory in scientific terms and I will need to find some way to test it. Then I can write it up as a paper and publish it.

Have you queried any journals with your hypothesis?

 

[I Am The Scum]

Can you send these negative ESP signals? If you can get a person to select an option less than is predicted by chance, that's a testable prediction in and of itself.

Exactly. This is easy to test.

Get 5 buckets and a metal object. Hide the object under a randomly-selected bucket. Then, have an "ESP sender" set aside, where the dowser cannot see him. The sender flips a coin. On a heads, he sends negative thoughts. On tails, he sends positive. The dowser cannot observe the coin toss. Repeat many times over. If the ESP hypothesis is true, we should expect more successes on the tails flips than on the heads.

Of course, the most rational expectation is that yet another excuse will form when this one fails. Turtles all the way down...

 

[Pup]

No discussion of genetic mutations in lung cancer? I'd think that someone who laughs at scientific research on cancer, could explain why the genetic signatures of cancer are wrong.

I went to see one of the upper tier oncologists specializing in ALK+ and EGFR cancers yesterday, and after we talked a bit, he said, "Are you a scientist?" I laughed and said, "no, I'm a historian. But I read the latest papers on ALK."

So I do think an amateur can become knowledgeable, especially if their knowledge is limited to a small field. (I don't know a thing about EGFR, for example, let alone smoker/asbestos/chemical lung cancers, let alone all the others.) To go beyond and prove the research wrong requires even more knowledge, far more than I have.

Most people have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which "occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence — or specifically, their incompetence — at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence robbing them of the ability to critically analyse their performance, leading to a significant overestimate of themselves."

I would think that someone, either professional or amateur, who was only a year away from overturning or seriously revising our understanding of oncology and the theory of evolution, would have no problem discussing current oncology papers, that they would soon prove wrong. Unless there was some Dunning-Kruger effect going on, and they skipped right to "consider[ing] themselves much more competent than everyone else," without developing the "ability to critically analyse their performance."