----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 7:18 PM Subject: Re: Praying for the Poor RE: Christian insanity.
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2002 at 07:14:29PM -0600, Julia Thompson wrote: > > > No, because the pebble in your shoe will affect your body language > > negatively. :) > > I beg to differ. It may make you slow down and stoop down, maybe > appearing to be more concerned :) Besides, what if you are gently > sucking on a good piece of candy, that can affect your body language. Is > eating candy good for the homeless? Let us consider what praying for something in this case. It is communication with God your concerns with a person's needs. I am perfectly willing to allow an atheist to say that its to a non-existant God; I am not relying on the intervention of God to make my arguement. In doing so, one is setting up an internal positive awareness of the other person. Someone could argue that a non-theist who just thought good thoughs about the other person would do the same thing. I'd have no problem with that arguement. My arguement is that people can pick up many non-verbal signals about the internal mental states of others. Your arguement appears to be that people can pick up false signals. They do. But, if the signal is high enough, they will accurately pick up the true signal out of the noise of false signals. IIRC, there are repeated emperical studies that show that people do this. Indeed, one of the well known problems with mail lists is the absence of such non-verbal clues. > > And general attitude has an affect on whether you pray. Cause and effect > is pretty tenuous here, I think. Why make up such tenuous chains of > cause and effect? Why not just say that having a good attitude and > pleasant body language could help a homeless person? And even that isn't > likely to have a significant effect. Because the question was whether prayer could. I also beg to differ as to whether a nasty or positive attitude towards the other people in the world matters much. But, then we've differed on that for a long time now. > > > If the prayer is part of the process shaping the attitude, though, > > then in that particular case, prayer does make a difference. > > Just like the pebble or the candy. Do you really believe that? Do you have experiments showing that people who have friends with pebbles in their shoes recover faster than those who have friends who don't. There are studies that show a difference in the recovery rate of people who are ill and who are supported by their community with prayers and those who are not? No, I'm not talking about signs and wonders here, there is a perfectly obvious and mundane explanation for this. And AFAIK the experiments have been reported in serious journals and are accepted as valid in the medical community. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
