Climate change is upon us....

[Nearly Sane]

There have been very few proper studies looking at the effect of prayer. And any that do so have to be designed to take account of the psychological impact of people knowing they are being prayed for - which isn't anything to do with 'god' intervening.

So the is certainly one major study that has been properly designed - this involved patients recovering from cardiac surgery and looking at the incidence of post operative complications. There were three groups:

1. This group did not receive prayer
2. This group did receive prayer but weren't told that they had received it
3. This group did receive prayer and were aware of this

Groups 1 and 2 were both told that they may or may not receive prayer, but were not aware which group they were in.

The complication rates for groups 1 and 2 were the same demonstrating that prayer does not work. Group 3 had statistically greater complication rates, indicating that knowledge of being prayer for had a negative effect in this case, presumable due to the psychological impact that being told you were being prayed for had on persecution of seriousness of the condition.

Naturalistic methods examining supernatural claims are a category error.

[ProfessorDavey]

Naturalistic methods examining supernatural claims are a category error.

Is that the case here - the two things being looked at - the prayer itself and the clinical outcomes are both clearly naturalistic. Sure there is a claim of supernatural stuff between, but I don't think that is what is actually being looked at in the study, which is looking at whether a naturalistic event (people praying for someone else) has a significant effect on another naturalistic event (clinical complications following surgery). The study, of course, needs to be designed to counter any psychological placebo or nocebo effects - but these are both also naturalistic.

Ultimately I don't see why this is different to studying whether homeopathic interventions work - the question being asked isn't how they work (which might stray into supernatural territory) but whether they work (which stays firmly on naturalistic grounds).

[Nearly Sane]

Is that the case here - the two things being looked at - the prayer itself and the clinical outcomes are both clearly naturalistic. Sure there is a claim of supernatural stuff between, but I don't think that is what is actually being looked at in the study, which is looking at whether a naturalistic event (people praying for someone else) has a significant effect on another naturalistic event (clinical complications following surgery). The study, of course, needs to be designed to counter any psychological placebo or nocebo effects - but these are both also naturalistic.

Ultimately I don't see why this is different to studying whether homeopathic interventions work - the question being asked isn't how they work (which might stray into supernatural territory) but whether they work (which stays firmly on naturalistic grounds).

Homeopathic claims are naturalistic - ergo you show the effect doesn't happen. Supernaturalistic claims are not about the effect itself but about things only being that good because of it. It breaks cause and effect. See Alan Burns posts here.

[ProfessorDavey]

Homeopathic claims are naturalistic - ergo you show the effect doesn't happen. Supernaturalistic claims are not about the effect itself but about things only being that good because of it. It breaks cause and effect. See Alan Burns posts here.

Not sure I agree - if you are unable to determine that naturalistic event A (someone praying for someone else or someone taking a substance that has been diluted so far that there cannot be active ingredient left) has an impact on naturalistic event B (some clinical outcome), then there is no point in going any further to try to determine 'why' it has an effect.

And those who think that prayer work, consider that on the basis of both the cause/effect and the supernatural mechanism. If the former isn't demonstrated then the latter is moot.

[ProfessorDavey]

Homeopathic claims are naturalistic ...

Are they - I would have thought they go beyond naturalistic as the claim is that something has an effect when it isn't there - that sounds pretty supernatural to me.

[Nearly Sane]

Not sure I agree - if you are unable to determine that naturalistic event A (someone praying for someone else or someone taking a substance that has been diluted so far that there cannot be active ingredient left) has an impact on naturalistic event B (some clinical outcome), then there is no point in going any further to try to determine 'why' it has an effect.

And those who think that prayer work, consider that on the basis of both the cause/effect and the supernatural mechanism. If the former isn't demonstrated then the latter is moot.

Again category error. Look at Alan's claims - the world is better vs less prayer. Good things happen because of prayer. Less bad things happen.

[Nearly Sane]

Are they - I would have thought they go beyond naturalistic as the claim is that something has an effect when it isn't there - that sounds pretty supernatural to me.

Then you have no knowledge of homeopathic claims. They are about things that they say are there.

[ProfessorDavey]

Then you have no knowledge of homeopathic claims. They are about things that they say are there.

Supernatural - phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature.

Homeopathy seems largely to be based on claims of water memory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory

'Water memory contradicts current scientific understanding of physical chemistry and is generally not accepted by the scientific community.'

I would have thought that water memory is a supernatural claim as it contradicts the laws of nature and therefore to be accepted requires that the phenomenon operates beyond the laws of nature.

[Nearly Sane]

Supernatural - phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature.

Homeopathy seems largely to be based on claims of water memory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory

'Water memory contradicts current scientific understanding of physical chemistry and is generally not accepted by the scientific community.'

I would have thought that water memory is a supernatural claim as it contradicts the laws of nature and therefore to be accepted requires that the phenomenon operates beyond the laws of nature.

You and Vlad seem to have a similar issue here in that supernatural is defined by being outside of 'laws' you accept. Homeopathy claims are about the 'laws' you accept being wrong. Miracle claims are about breaking those laws. Hence category error.

[ProfessorDavey]

Again category error. Look at Alan's claims - the world is better vs less prayer. Good things happen because of prayer. Less bad things happen.

AB's claims are, of course, vague, ill-defined and unevidenced.

But nonetheless, on the most basic level the phenomenon of people praying is a clearly naturalistic things. Likewise assessment of good vs bad stuff going on in the world is also naturalistic, if at times highly subjective. But in some cases the effects are clearly objective and measurable - e.g. clinical outcomes, global temperatures.

So in simple terms ABs claim that more prayer will result in less global warming is an entirely naturalistic claim of cause and effect. Very difficult to study, I grant you, but nonetheless perfectly amenable in principle to naturalistic methods of study. His claimed mechanism for the cause/effect isn't amenable to naturalistic method, but that is pretty well irrelevant until/unless you demonstrate a cause/effect and further that you are unable to explain that cause/effect through naturalistic phenomena.

[ProfessorDavey]

Homeopathy claims are about the 'laws' you accept being wrong. Miracle claims are about breaking those laws.

You say potato, I say potato - hmm, doesn't work in text!

But you get what I am saying - there is no fundamental dividing line between a claim of 'your laws are wrong' and 'I'm breaking those laws' - largely they would be used one or the other on the basis of the person making the claim and the point they wish to make.

As far as I'm concerned water memory can only work if it breaks the laws of chemistry, so is a supernatural claim. Just like the claim that a god can intervene in the world. Both are, as I see it, supernatural claims as they contradict the laws of nature.

[Nearly Sane]

AB's claims are, of course, vague, ill-defined and unevidenced.

But nonetheless, on the most basic level the phenomenon of people praying is a clearly naturalistic things. Likewise assessment of good vs bad stuff going on in the world is also naturalistic, if at times highly subjective. But in some cases the effects are clearly objective and measurable - e.g. clinical outcomes, global temperatures.

So in simple terms ABs claim that more prayer will result in less global warming is an entirely naturalistic claim of cause and effect. Very difficult to study, I grant you, but nonetheless perfectly amenable in principle to naturalistic methods of study. His claimed mechanism for the cause/effect isn't amenable to naturalistic method, but that is pretty well irrelevant until/unless you demonstrate a cause/effect and further that you are unable to explain that cause/effect through naturalistic phenomena.

And you and Alan fall into the same category error but from different sides
Let's say for example that Alan made a claim that his praying made climate change less worse, and after measuring you found that he'd prayed, and climate change was less worse than you had thought it was going to be - is there a chance in valhalla you would attibute it to thd praying?

What claims like Alan's are is that without the prayer it would be worse. Even dignifying that with a response that says you haven't proved it is a category error (and yes,I have made that error)

[Nearly Sane]

You say potato, I say potato - hmm, doesn't work in text!

But you get what I am saying - there is no fundamental dividing line between a claim of 'your laws are wrong' and 'I'm breaking those laws' - largely they would be used one or the other on the basis of the person making the claim and the point they wish to make.

As far as I'm concerned water memory can only work if it breaks the laws of chemistry, so is a supernatural claim. Just like the claim that a god can intervene in the world. Both are, as I see it, supernatural claims as they contradict the laws of nature.

As so often, you use your subjective ideas as objective.

[ProfessorDavey]

Let's say for example that Alan made a claim that his praying made climate change less worse, and after measuring you found that he'd prayed, and climate change was less worse than you had thought it was going to be - is there a chance in valhalla you would attibute it to thd praying?

If the study was properly conducted and controlled, yes I would say that a causal relationship between the act of someone praying and the climate change had been demonstrated. That isn't the same as assuming we know the mechanism and it would be completely wrong to ascribe that, without thought, to god.

The cardiac surgery study is interesting in this respect. It found that prayer had no effect, when the person being prayed for did not know whether or not they were being prayed for. This is the equivalent of a blinded placebo study. However the study found that there were greater complications when the patients were told they were being prayed for. Does this mean we should automatically accept that god has it in for people recovering from cardiac surgery? Of course not, as we have a perfectly well established psychological explanation to fall back on - in this case the nocebo effect.

There are plenty of perfectly naturalistic ways in which prayer could impact climate change. For example people may feel motivated or inspired by their own prayer or known prayer of others to make a difference by changing behaviours. Alternatively prayer could result in people thinking they'd done something, when they'd done nothing, or that they had left it to god to intervene through their prayers making matters worse.

But the fundamental point is that trying to determine the mechanism between a cause and effect is completely pointless until you've demonstrated that there is a cause and effect.

[Nearly Sane]

If the study was properly conducted and controlled, yes I would say that a causal relationship between the act of someone praying and the climate change had been demonstrated. That isn't the same as assuming we know the mechanism and it would be completely wrong to ascribe that, without thought, to god.

The cardiac surgery study is interesting in this respect. It found that prayer had no effect, when the person being prayed for did not know whether or not they were being prayed for. This is the equivalent of a blinded placebo study. However the study found that there were greater complications when the patients were told they were being prayed for. Does this mean we should automatically accept that god has it in for people recovering from cardiac surgery? Of course not, as we have a perfectly well established psychological explanation to fall back on - in this case the nocebo effect.

There are plenty of perfectly naturalistic ways in which prayer could impact climate change. For example people may feel motivated or inspired by their own prayer or known prayer of others to make a difference by changing behaviours. Alternatively prayer could result in people thinking they'd done something, when they'd done nothing, or that they had left it to god to intervene through their prayers making matters worse.

But the fundamental point is that trying to determine the mechanism between a cause and effect is completely pointless until you've demonstrated that there is a cause and effect.

And s supernatural claim is that there is no connection between cause and effect as you are looking at it there - so again category error.

Edited

[ProfessorDavey]

As so often, you use your subjective ideas as objective.

Not really - it can be completely objectively demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that most vials of homeopathic solutions contain no active ingredient molecules at all.

And once the placebo effect is factored out, guess what, they don't work. Nothing subjective about that at all.

[Nearly Sane]

Not really - it can be completely objectively demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that most vials of homeopathic solutions contain no active ingredient molecules at all.

And once the placebo effect is factored out, guess what, they don't work. Nothing subjective about that at all.

'Completely objective' is laughable. We are subjective.

[ProfessorDavey]

And s supernatural claim is that there connection between cause and effect as you are looking at it there - so again category error.

I think you are scrambling your words.

But no - I'm not looking to investigate supernatural claims using naturalistic methods. No I am investigating the cause/effect relationship between two naturalistic things, namely the act of someone praying and clinical outcomes/global warming. Nothing supernatural in any of these. It is only those that wish to overlay supernatural mechanisms that get into problems - I'm not doing that.

[Nearly Sane]

I think you are scrambling your words.

But no - I'm not looking to investigate supernatural claims using naturalistic methods. No I am investigating the cause/effect relationship between two naturalistic things, namely the act of someone praying and clinical outcomes/global warming. Nothing supernatural in any of these. It is only those that wish to overlay supernatural mechanisms that get into problems - I'm not doing that.

See updated post

[ProfessorDavey]

'Completely objective' is laughable. We are subjective.

So the notion of molarity, molecular weight, Avogadro's number etc is simply subjective 'true for me, but no true for you' stuff NS? I think you've been on the homeopathic coolaid diluted to the extent that you bottle contains only water.

[Nearly Sane]

So the notion of molarity, molecular weight, Avogadro's number etc is simply subjective 'true for me, but no true for you' stuff NS? I think you've been on the homeopathic coolaid diluted to the extent that you bottle contains only water.

Those are intersubjective. If you think you've managed to solve the problem of hard solipsism, on you go and show it.

[ProfessorDavey]

And s supernatural claim is that there is no connection between cause and effect as you are looking at it there - so again category error.

Edited

Nope still makes no sense.

Until and unless there is valid demonstration that naturalistic action x causes naturalistic effect y there is no supernatural claim to even look at. If it is determined that x causes y then we can look at mechanism, which would obviously involve looking at naturalistic mechanisms that may link cause and effect, in the case in point to look at human behaviours and psychology, which are naturalistic.

[Nearly Sane]

Nope still makes no sense.

Until and unless there is valid demonstration that naturalistic action x causes naturalistic effect y there is no supernatural claim to even look at. If it is determined that x causes y then we can look at mechanism, which would obviously involve looking at naturalistic mechanisms that may link cause and effect, in the case in point to look at human behaviours and psychology, which are naturalistic.

Let's take this very slowly for you. I'm not, and did not claim that there was a supernatural cause evidenced. Got that?

It's about the whole thing being a category error.

You using naturalistic methodology, which is what I use, is useful when we assume naturalism .



When someone makes a supernatural claim, this doesn't work because any outcome can be caused by any effect.

Got it?

[ProfessorDavey]

Let's take this very slowly for you. I'm not, and did not claim that there was a supernatural cause evidenced. Got that?

It's about the whole thing being a category error.

You using naturalistic methodology, which is what I use, is useful when we assume naturalism .



When someone makes a supernatural claim, this doesn't work because any outcome can be caused by any effect.

Got it?

Nope - you are getting is completely haywire.

Let me make it simple.

AB conflates two claims into one when he make the following kind of statement:

When we pray god intervenes to reduce climate change - or
When we pray god helps people recover from cardiac surgery

Those two claims are firstly
Prayer causes an alteration in climate change - or
Prayer causes an improvement in recovery from cardiac surgery

And a second claim about the mechanism of action, namely
The mechanism is due to intervention by god

But the second claim is completely irrelevant until or unless the first claim is proven, and the first claim makes no assumption of mechanism (whether natural or supernatural) merely there is an assumption of a causal relation between two things both of which are naturalistic, specifically people praying and climate change/cardiac surgery recovery.

So the first claim is entirely within the realms of naturalistic methods to assess. If it is proven that there is a causal relationship then, and only then, might we want to move onto looking at the mechanism. But here again we do not assume supernatural mechanistic claims, but naturalistic ones, as these the only ones we have methods to assess.

So on recovery from cardiac surgery we can look at psychological mechanisms associated with placebo, nocebo effects - this is what the study I mentioned did and found clear evidence of a psychological nocebo effect. For climate change we can look at personal motivations/actions etc that might be linked to people praying. Now I'm not saying this would be easy science, but it isn't impossible.

So we aren't in the territory of assessing supernatural claims using naturalistic methods. The first type of claims are entirely naturalistic, the second could have a supernatural claim associated with them, but we would restrict ourselves to assessing alternative naturalistic claims as these are the only ones amenable to the methods we have available.

[Nearly Sane]

Nope - you are getting is completely haywire.

Let me make it simple.

AB conflates two claims into one when he make the following kind of statement:

When we pray god intervenes to reduce climate change - or
When we pray god helps people recover from cardiac surgery

Those two claims are firstly
Prayer causes an alteration in climate change - or
Prayer causes an improvement in recovery from cardiac surgery

And a second claim about the mechanism of action, namely
The mechanism is due to intervention by god

But the second claim is completely irrelevant until or unless the first claim is proven, and the first claim makes no assumption of mechanism (whether natural or supernatural) merely there is an assumption of a causal relation between two things both of which are naturalistic, specifically people praying and climate change/cardiac surgery recovery.

So the first claim is entirely within the realms of naturalistic methods to assess. If it is proven that there is a causal relationship then, and only then, might we want to move onto looking at the mechanism. But here again we do not assume supernatural mechanistic claims, but naturalistic ones, as these the only ones we have methods to assess.

So on recovery from cardiac surgery we can look at psychological mechanisms associated with placebo, nocebo effects - this is what the study I mentioned did and found clear evidence of a psychological nocebo effect. For climate change we can look at personal motivations/actions etc that might be linked to people praying. Now I'm not saying this would be easy science, but it isn't impossible.

So we aren't in the territory of assessing supernatural claims using naturalistic methods. The first type of claims are entirely naturalistic, the second could have a supernatural claim associated with them, but we would restrict ourselves to assessing alternative naturalistic claims as these are the only ones amenable to the methods we have available.

Prolixity is not an argument. If all possible outcomes are possible under supernatural arguments, no putcome is useful in judging. That doesn't mean that you can't argue that if someone says if X, then Y is wrong if it doesn't happen but all it shows is that claim is wrong.