What if your life (seems) to go better with prayer?

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'm to tired right now to hunt for the sources but there is evidence prayer helps believers when the person knows they are being prayed about but not when they don't know.

Actually, funnily enough, the correlation was inverse. Telling people that others are praying for them actually was a bad thing. Possibly because now it put extra pressure on them to fulfil the expectations of those praying for them.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, I found an article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/...ical-study-questions-the-power-of-prayer.html

In a little over 1800 patients undergoing heart surgery, they studied the complications afterwards:

- actually being prayed for or not made absolutely no difference
- being TOLD that others are praying for them (whether it was actually the case or not) produced an increase in complications: 59% in those who thought they're being prayed for, vs 51% in those who didn't.

That's a 15% or so increase in the risk of getting complications after heart surgery, so it's a rather significant harm on the whole, I would say.

So yeah, the implications ARE obvious, but not what most people expect. The implication is that if a friend is undergoing surgery, the best thing you can do is NOT tell them that everyone's praying for them

Edit: or a link to a slightly more reputable source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-prayer-prescription/

 

[Pixel42]

Actually, funnily enough, the correlation was inverse. Telling people that others are praying for them actually was a bad thing. Possibly because now it put extra pressure on them to fulfil the expectations of those praying for them.

When I first read about that I wondered if it was just that it depressed the patients by reminding them how serious their illness was. If people are actually praying for them, things must be pretty bad. So people who might have been quite positive about their chances (which there is evidence does help recovery rates) were suddenly less so.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

When I first read about that I wondered if it was just that it depressed the patients by reminding them how serious their illness was. If people are actually praying for them, things must be pretty bad. So people who might have been quite positive about their chances (which there is evidence does help recovery rates) were suddenly less so.

It is certainly plausible. After all, according to the article in the Scientific American, they were told that a chaplain and no less than SEVENTY people were gathered to pray for their surgery. It would certainly make me wonder exactly how bad it is that they have to resort to such extreme measures.

 

[Minoosh]

Q

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited to remove quoted breaches of rule 0 and rule 12, and response to same

I'm sorry if the crack about eyesight offended you, it was snarky. But you persisted in ignoring at least 4 key posts:

- My original link to the Forbes story.
- Another poster, an atheist, saying you shared the burden of proof.
- A meta-study linked to by another poster.
- A nurse with a lot of of psych experience, also atheist, who said therapy did help some people.

It sure looked like you were ignoring any posts that did not support your claim. I had not talked about therapy until you stated it was useless.

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited to remove quoted breaches of rule 0 and rule 12, and response to same

Incidentally, from Wikipedia:

The burden of proof is usually on the person who brings a claim in a dispute. It is often associated with the Latin maxim semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit, a translation of which in this context is: "the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges."[17]

Of course, it's Wikipedia, but there are cites. I din't bring up the subject of the usefulness of therapy. And even if I could potentially win on a technicality, I'd still want to post my evidence, to compare positions head to head. I learn more that way; it makes the discussion more illuminating. But that's just me. Always wanting to understand things. How silly of me!

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Can you cite the post where you decided I felt personally attacked?

By all means. This is from your message #16, on the very first page of the thread:

This thread is sincere, but I also was curious if I could talk about it without notes of ridicule arising. It didn’t take long. [... snip ...] (Useless according to another poster, and if I think therapy ever helped me, I must be deluded, but that’s a given anyway

My highlight. Nobody was actually ridiculing anything at that point, nor saying anyone is delusional. And it was in answer to Thermal, who seemed to be actually quite serious about I Ching as a tool to focus your thoughts.

So yes, it was you who jumped straight to feeling personally called deluded when nobody was doing so.

Edited by Agatha: 

Edited further response to original rule breach and response

I'm sorry if the crack about eyesight offended you, it was snarky. But you persisted in ignoring at least 4 key posts:

- My original link to the Forbes story.

Which still isn't a refutation to what I was actually saying. Not the least because the only part that was actually including a (broken) link to a study, wasn't even talking about depression, but about schizophrenia. Which is a completely different dish. Nor even about imaging the areas which would be more relevant to depression. So it wasn't even remotely addressing what you were contesting, even if I'm to be as generous as I can possibly be with what counts as evidence.

So yeah, boo-hoo, there must be something wrong about my eyesight or my beliefs if I don't let you move the goalposts

- Another poster, an atheist, saying you shared the burden of proof.

Appeal to false authority much? Since when does someone's being an atheist make one an expert on anything?

- A meta-study linked to by another poster.

Which is why I said that OTHER people may have tried to meet that burden of proof, but YOU didn't. So, sorry, YOU're not in a position to say that I'm having eyesight problems if I don't just accept whatever irrelevant stuff your googling turned up.

That said, I did ask them how that was tested against placebo effect, far as I noticed, I got no answer. I'm willing to be educated, but it means just that. I'm not under any obligation to accept an answer that wasn't actually given.

- A nurse with a lot of of psych experience, also atheist, who said therapy did help some people.

Again, being an atheist isn't some kind of psych qualification.

And appeal to authority is a fallacy in any case in formal logic, but even in informal logic it is only as relevant as how much of an authority they are and what they are actually saying. With all due respect to their work and profession and all, "a nurse believes X" is hardly definitive proof of anything.

I mean I knew a (medical) doctor who believed in straight-up magic and fortunetelling, but that's no reason to take it as ok, it's been proven, magic is real if a doctor says so.

I am willing to read any actual information that they post in support of that belief, and even trust their judgment in selecting that information as relevant. But until that happens, I have no obligation to believe anything just on someone's word for it. Someone just saying it's so is NOT evidence.

It sure looked like you were ignoring any posts that did not support your claim. I had not talked about therapy until you stated it was useless.

It had been already mentioned, and explicitly the connection to using it as a substitute for therapy in messages #4 and #5 before I even first clicked on the thread at all. And believe it or not, not all answers in the thread are to you or about you. I can jolly well answer to what other people are saying.

Incidentally, from Wikipedia:



Of course, it's Wikipedia, but there are cites. I din't bring up the subject of the usefulness of therapy. And even if I could potentially win on a technicality, I'd still want to post my evidence, to compare positions head to head. I learn more that way; it makes the discussion more illuminating. But that's just me. Always wanting to understand things. How silly of me!

Even down the same page it has a section with a huge title called "Proving a negative". Which tells you exactly what I've been saying, namely that it's impossible to prove that something never ever happened. Even if I could dissect the brain of every single human currently alive to see if talking altered their serotonin levels, it still wouldn't disprove that maybe, say, some guy in 200 BC in China was cured of depression by talking to a priest. Yet that kind of proving a negative is exactly what you've been demanding.

But even if you understood the very first praragraph on that page, it tells youit's shortened from "Onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat", i.e., the burden of proof belongs to the one who affirms, not the one who denies. Or that when it talks about sufficient evidence to warrant a position, different positions need different amounts of evidence to be warranted. Not believing that a flying pig exists doesn't in fact need any more evidence than not having evidence that it does exist.

But, yes, there are better sources than Wikipedia. E.g., without even getting into the more serious philosophy pages, there's this one: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof

Which tells you point blank, "The person claiming something is possible or has happened needs to produce evidence to refute the null hypothesis."

 

[Minoosh]

You can measure it in the cerebrospinal fluid, or even in the blood, though the latter is much less of an indicator of actual brain levels than the former.

Cite? In human subjects?

But frankly, all you seem to be saying there is that it's ok to believe that something happens, just because (you think) it's unfalsifiable at the moment. Which is just as nonsense when it's about medicine as when it's about gods.

This sentence is so convoluted I can't tell what you're saying.

m not sure YOU understand why. Because even the text involved does say black on white that such chemical reactions ARE involved, and that the medication DOES produce an improvement.

Chemical reactions are involved, but that's true whether the chemicals are exogenous or not.

Which would imply that either they were not taking the right medicine, if the changes associated with healing didn't have anything to do with taking it, or the journalist didn't really understand what was actually being said by the actual doctors who did the study.

Or, you know, that schizophrenics can benefit from talk therapy.

And what you would see is not that new connections have formed per se, since MRI doesn't image the individual neurons. And ALL of the neural columns in your brain are connected by a high speed hub, so saying that the amygdala is any more or less connected than before is 100% nonsense.

PubMed (From NIH)
Cognitive behavioral therapy increases amygdala connectivity with the cognitive control network in both MDD and PTSD


Neuroplasticity in response to cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder

So, two more sets of researchers hoodwinked into thinking they can measure neural connections.

And for that matter, it's not very clear how more activity being triggered in the amygdala for those schizophrenia sufferers is a good thing.

So talk therapy can't change the brain in measurable ways, but it if could, it might be bad.

Since, you know, more activity in the amygdala is associated with things like depression.

I wonder if it's possible that neuroscientists know more that you do.

Actually, it's you who's trying to move the goalposts, with an article that addresses something completely different than the my statement which it was supposed to refute.

I posted an article saying that CBT caused changes in the brain. This was in response to your claim that talk therapy could not change the brain.

Yet you accused me of covering my ears and whatnot if I don't accept that link as refutation of my claim. If you didn't claim anyone could actually do what I said couldn't be done, then on what basis do you accuse me of not accepting evidence? How is it then even a refutation? Or was just the slinging accusations that was supposed to be the refuting evidence in your world?

What accusations did I sling? You did ignore posts that did not reinforce your point of view.

The rest of this, I couldn't tell what you were saying.

I wasn't aware I was supposed to justify posting on topic. [Or that I'd actually get any OP actually asking me to stay on a tangent instead of the topic.

Where did I ask you to justify posting on topic?

But I suppose sometimes keeping your own thread derailed is the best thing you can do to avoid actually supporting anything, eh?

You're the won who started the "derail." You made a rather extraordinary claim, and I wondered what evidence, if any, informed your thinking. You did not appear to have any, except for a family anecdote.

Never said only the conscious stuff is happening in the brain, but I AM saying that your brain can't pull expert knowledge (medical or otherwise) out of nowhere.

Your subconscious it not nowhere.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Your subconscious it not nowhere.

Your subconscious also doesn't just produce expert knowledge (medical or otherwise) out of thin air. Which is what would be involved in order to be getting competent CBT therapy from it. (Which is what I was talking about.) If you didn't actually learn that knowledge, nor all the studies from which it was deduced, that information won't just pop up into your subconscious.

Nor will whatever your subsconscious came up with have been through peer review, nor studies trying to disprove it, nor the rest of the scientific method. So you have no reason to believe that whatever wild idea popped into your head (conscious or subconscious alike) is actual medical knowledge, as opposed to just wishful thinking.

Again, unless you wish to claim telepathy.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

That said, about the burden of proof: we don't even need to debate generalities about it.

If it's about medical stuff, the null hypothesis in any medical trial is that whatever effect (healing or otherwise) you wish to show, it didn't happen. The one wishing to say that method X produced result Y has the burden of proof. You don't start from postulating that it works, and then act as if it's true unless someone disproves it.

Not the least, because it pretty much just boils down to statistics. Where the null hypothesis for ANY correlation is, basically, "nope, that's just coincidence." Showing that any correlation exists involves presenting enough statistical evidence to disprove that specific null hypothesis, beyond a certain threshold. At the very least it has to be less than 5% probable that the correlation observed was just a coincidence, though for various fields you may be held to a stricter standard than that.

So regardless of what one may argue about the burden of proof on other domains, we already have a pretty clear standard for medicine.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I wonder if it's possible that neuroscientists know more that you do.

It's not only possible, but actually probable. But you'd first have to show exactly what that knowledge is. It doesn't mean that one can believe whatever one wishes, just because some unspecified experts MIGHT possibly know some unspecified thing that MIGHT justify that belief.

The notion that some belief is justified just because SOMEONE out there might be a bigger expert and have a good way to refute the guys you disagree with, even has a name when it's about religion: the sophisticated theology defence. It's actually an ironic and sarcastic name, because it's for a theology so sophisticated that it doesn't actually exist.

And frankly, I see no reason to take it any more seriously in other domains either. If you know some experts whose knowledge supports your point, by all means, please show it. But just the possibility of such support existing isn't worth much.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Or, you know, that schizophrenics can benefit from talk therapy.

No. From specifically CBT, not from any kind of talk therapy. More importantly, CBT is not the kind of therapy you get from talking to God in your head.

I'm more than willing to accept that I generalized too much, and CBT does have merits. But that's still not the kind of therapy you'll get by talking to God in your head.

PubMed (From NIH)
Cognitive behavioral therapy increases amygdala connectivity with the cognitive control network in both MDD and PTSD


Neuroplasticity in response to cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder

So, two more sets of researchers hoodwinked into thinking they can measure neural connections.

Or, as I see it, you finally got around to actually showing some evidence. Would have been nice if you got to it BEFORE deciding that someone has eyesight problems if they don't believe whatever irrelevant stuff popped up on Google

Of course, it would also help if you understood what "functional connectivity" actually means, or that the second link above talks about grey matter volume, not about actually observing the actual neural connections -- even when shown actual images of what they saw on that MRI -- but I guess baby steps

 

[bruto]

Actually, funnily enough, the correlation was inverse. Telling people that others are praying for them actually was a bad thing. Possibly because now it put extra pressure on them to fulfil the expectations of those praying for them.

Just guessing here, but I'd imagine also that it depends on what the circumstances are. A lot of people will tell you they're praying when there's no other option left. If you've just told a person that you're in some bind, and he says "I'll pray for you," it means "I'm not going to help you." If you're sick, it can mean you're in worse trouble than you thought. I recall my mom, who always had some stock of comforting things to say, and if she cheerfully said "your color is good," it was pretty certain that it meant "you're as good as dead."

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Just guessing here, but I'd imagine also that it depends on what the circumstances are. A lot of people will tell you they're praying when there's no other option left. If you've just told a person that you're in some bind, and he says "I'll pray for you," it means "I'm not going to help you."

Especially the part I highlighted was my impression so far too, but then some people in this thread tell me that's not true. (Apparently they're also willing to put up an obituary for you. Well, after seeing if nobody else does it first, anyway)

But anyway, I'd say it does say something about how much people actually believe in the power of prayer, when it's about THEM, doesn't it?

Everyone seems willing to think that when THEY'RE the ones praying for someone, it means they're actually doing something useful. There, they threw a 30 second prayer up, that means they did SOMETHING, they can start feeling better about themselves. Even IF someone's not at the level of considering that the prayer means their job is done in full, they seem to think it did SOMETHING.

You'd think that when someone offers to do the same job for them -- in fact, a whole church squad AND a minister -- they'd also expect it to do SOMETHING. I mean, for any other task, if 71 people (including the priest) show up to help, and you actually believe that it's actually possible to help in whatever way they're offering, that's just it: you expect it to help. I mean, if for some study 71 people showed up to help me move, or to mow my lawn, or even just to babysit the cat, you'd expect it to actually help, not to mean you're boned. Even by sheer chance alone, out of 71 guys, at least one of those is going to actually help carry a box, or push the lawnmower, or remember to feed the cat, right?

But anyway, you'd expect some kind of being more optimistic about it (which, as Pixel42 said, actually does seem to improve outcomes), have less stress (which definitely improves outcomes,) or generally that kinda thing. After all, someone mobilized a whole 71 people to do a helpful job, including one licensed and experienced guy on exactly that kind of job. (The minister.) Hooray. It's going to do SOMETHING positive, right?

Nope, doesn't seem like there's a lot of trust in it when someone ELSE offers that kind of service

 

[Minoosh]

The same applies to neurology or any other domain. Just because something isn't yet possible to measure in real-time in humans (but we can measure it just fine in lab rats) yet, ...

So the answer is no ... no test available for humans.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

So the answer is no ... no test available for humans.

Which would still mean you can't just believe any non-falsifiable nonsense instead. I mean, we also don't have a test for the existence of Odin, but we don't default to believing that he does exist

 

[Minoosh]

I'm more than willing to accept that I generalized too much, and CBT does have merits.

You've withdrawn your claim that talk therapy is useless. I'm satisfied with that result.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

In as much as we're talking specifically CBT, not any talk therapy. Just because they're all involving some talking doesn't mean they're all the same.

 

[Minoosh]

Which would still mean you can't just believe any non-falsifiable nonsense instead. I mean, we also don't have a test for the existence of Odin, but we don't default to believing that he does exist

Thanks for conceding that at the present, no test for measuring neurotransmitters in humans is available.

 

[Minoosh]

In as much as we're talking specifically CBT, not any talk therapy. Just because they're all involving some talking doesn't mean they're all the same.

No one ever said they were all the same. Thanks for acknowledging that CBT is talk therapy.

ETA: I'd still be interested in your answer to several questions I posed.

 

[Minoosh]

Which tells you point blank, "The person claiming something is possible or has happened needs to produce evidence to refute the null hypothesis."

What was my positive claim?

ETA: Hans, I don't react well to your repetitive, insulting, browbeating walls of words. It might be better if I stop engaging with you on this issue. You've already conceded that psychotherapy can be helpful. That's enough for me.