History's Greatest Holocaust Via Atheistic Ideology

What more can you say? When you see Wirth, suspect chicanery. That he's now in legal trouble is no surprise. He evidently applies his fast and loose attitudes about honesty and integrity to more than just religious issues.I can't imagine what the Journal of Reproductive Medicine was thinking. A paper touting an experimental approach that improved the IVF success rate by similar stunning amounts would have been questioned by all the reviewers, yet a paper touting prayer made it through the review process. They must be cringing right now.We can only speculate on the specifics of what Wirth did, but clearly he had inappropriate access to the data. It could have been something as simple as post-facto edits to a table matching anonymous labels to actual medical records.--Percy

I notice from reading the paper that :1) There were 19 women under 30 in the group receiving prayer and only 6 in the group that did not. This group has a higher success rate. I have attempted to calculate the probability and I beleive the chance of a result this much in favour of the prayer group to be about 0.0073 - quite low.2) There were 24 women who received a treatment called ICSI in the group receiving prayer versus 17 in the group that did not. This group has a higher success rate. Within the group receiving prayer ICSI produced a lower success rate, while it produced dramatically better results within the group not receiving prayer.3) We do not have a similar breakdown by provider even though there were quite large variations amongst providers. For the worst provider even the percentage figures for the two groups are not included.4) There is no significant increase in the number of successes - we cannot say that the prayer produced any more pregnancies. If the result were due to manipulation of the data this is what we would expect.Based on these points I have to say that there are grounds to suspect the randomisation and that this study definitely needs to be replicated (the numbers are sufficiently low that this would be a requirement anyway).

Gilgamesh,You ask, First, they adopt the simple philosophical position that an idea has to predict something surprising before being taken seriously. Then they ask, "Has anyone, supposing this idea to be true, predicted and found something surprizing?"Then they look at the results of various studies where people have supposed that the ontology of orthodox theology was true, made predictions, and tested them. Dr. Larry Dossey summarized several hundred of such studies. NIH is currently funding replications of these studies. Over half of the medical schools in America are teaching their students to apply what is being learned. (See Newsweek, Nov 10, p 44). If the idea involves a paradigm shift, they then prepare themselves for rants of the sort you offer, from most "scientists."You have a choice. Stand with the good guys, who have open minds and do things this way, or stand with the masses of those history looks sadly back on, who scoff at scary, new ideas."Three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say, 'What happened.?'"StephenPS, Thanks for the Panin reference. And so it seems that the problem seems to be, to see if there are more sevens than one would expect by chance, since we know that we can get a lot by chance. Be a neat computer study. Based on Witztum and Washburn's studies, we might well expect this to be the case.Or, Panin's study may have just been a demonstration of God directing him to do what it would later take a computer to do. Have to ask Panin how many combinations he tried, that didn't work. Of course, one could argue that, reading the verse put it into his subconscious, which actually did jillions of computations, bringing only the sevens to his mind. There are folks who apparently do such things, idiot savants, etc.In any case, it kicked off a great research programme.Good tip.S.

I found that forum message by Principia to be pretty interesting.I also found even more interesting the follow-up research conducted at Duke by Koenig further down the link you gave at ARN. Specifically, Principia referred to the following article:http://www.science-spirit.org/articles/articledetail.cfm?...I will also blatantly borrow some of the selected quotes Principia took from the article, because I believe they shed some light on the subject:

quote:

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Despite positive results, the researchers still have not shown any such benefit, says observer Harold Koenig, associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and a leading researcher on spirituality and health. Koenig says that like other double-blind studies of intercessory prayerstudies where neither the researchers nor the participants know who is being prayed forthe study has severe scientific and theological flaws. It’s about sending one’s thoughts over space and time, Koenig says: that’s not prayer.
[...]
Spirituality and heath expert Koenig, however, says the study isn’t really about prayer at all. All double-blind studies must evaluate a phenomenon with a currently understood scientific explanation, he says. Because the study does not provide scientific evidence that God exists, it’s a better measure of the effectiveness of extrasensory perception than of prayer, Koenig says.

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[The study] is not at all supportive of that fact that this is the result of an act of God, a personal God in particular. says Koenig, co-author of the Handbook of Religion and Health (Oxford University Press, 2001).

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Because all study participants were trying to become pregnant, most were probably praying for help and had friends and family members praying for them as well, Koenig says. Therefore, the study actually measures the effect of more prayer versus less prayer, and it’s theologically troubling to suggest that God would intercede after hearing ten prayers as opposed to just five, he says.

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The God that we believe in the Western world is not the kind of God that counts prayers, Koenig says. He’s the God who risks the entire flock’s well-being to rescue one lone sheep. So the single prayer is very powerful in terms of our understanding of God, at least in the [Christian] Western world.

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Is this the research that Stephen is referring to at Duke? I'd be interested in hearing his comments about these quotes.Thanx

I just realized Stephen is from my hometown! Geez, he's got my zip! Probably neighbors, how 'bout that? What a small world.Okay, I'm done now. Just a teeny little revelation on my part.

Thank you PaulK. Excellent analysis and much better than just being suspicious without good reason. (other than Wirth's history).Stephen seems to be taking some time commenting on this study.

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Common sense isn't

I've considered a bit more. Although absolute numbers aren't given the differences amongst the providers are surprisingly high.One only had an 11% success rate - but we aren't told how that is divided between the two groups.Another had a 36% success rate for both groups - which is very close to the overall success rate.A third had a 67% success rate for the prayer group and only a 22% success rate for the non-prayer group.Now why should the providers have such an effect on the figures ? Why does one of them negate the apparent effects of prayer while another has triple the success rate with the prayer group over the non-prayer group ?

Buzsaw,
Your posts to this thread have been heavy in emotion and fervor and light on logic and reason. When you are asked to provide references to your claims you need to provide a reference! This means approximate numbers of people that were killed for religious beliefs not abusing the fact that they were political enemies who happened to be Christian. This also means you need to rationally explain why when given present day examples of killing that goes on under God-oriented regimes that this is somehow "godless". I challenge that you can't because the same logic would have to apply to "godless regimes" which would mean your assertions are baseless. But, let's see:
1) Explain Israel and Palestine
2) Explain Bosnia
3) Explain what happened in the OT.

Howdy, neighbor,Guess I'm commanded to love you as myself, so I better get busy.The heart prayer studies were successfully replicated, and Koenig's work will give us more. Something's going on.The present study needs to be replicated. Hope it happens soon.Whether God did it, or telepathy, remains to be researched. The point is, the idea that God did it is more plausible than it was. The claim of "no evidence" is proven false.Koenig is dead wrong about prayer, though. Right and wrong prayer, and weak and strong prayer, frequent and scarce prayer, all biblically claimed to be important. I don't think he consulted with a theologian on that one. He's also wrong about how science works. But I'm praying for him, so even in his ignorance, he'll come up with some good stuff.Wirth's reactions and situation are not too surprising. If the devil exists, what would you expect him, the devil, to do to Wirth? Yeshua, who might be Wirth's model, was arrested for fraud after healing people. Or, more likely, Wirth has a poor idea how to fight the devil, who then successfully goes after him to make him do what he ought not do. That's why replication is the test, not too close a study of Wirth.If religion is based on delusion, it's a long ad hoc stretch to see it producing such consistently useful results. In all my studies on delusion and deception in birds, deluded individuals lost fitness, not gained.If I were God, of course, I would always leave these things in potential doubt, to be resolved only by persons who are willing to replicate experiments themselves personally. (In this case, praying or not praying for sprouting plants is the easiest household experiment.) I certainly wouldn't want to invite as an eternal house-guest, to be there every night at My banqueting table, anyone who insisted on others proving everything to them. Who hope so hard that He isn't answering prayers, they wouldn't dream of finding out for themselves. It's why Yeshua taught in parables. Getting into heaven is a legal matter, and anyone who believes gets in no matter how big a jerk they are. So, Jehovah makes it hard for the jerks, who don't really love or want to buy the truth, to believe.So, since the Christian prayer is based on the Bible, which is really what is being tested, this is about all that can be expected.Stephen

When you say that the heart studies were successfully replicated were you aware that the large-scale MANTRA study at Duke, completed last year failed to find any significant benefit ? BBC NEWS | Health | 'No health benefit' from prayer

Thanks for your response, Stephen.Attempting to help out my spiritually lost and gullible brother, I personally investigated Bible Numerics, and in doing so uncovered that link.I also did a simple analysis of Panin's claims myself. Here's a snippet of my own assessment that I sent my brother:"Nevertheless I sat down with a calculator, Ivan's calculations, Greek and Hebrew alphabets and gemantria. The first thing I discovered was that all of Ivan's claims are indisputably correct. There is no "cooking" of the texts needed (as in Bible Coding). However, a sceptical mind led me to question whether the issues lay in what was not claimed: for instance some of the names for satan are divisible by 13, but satan has dozens of additional names and those not listed by Ivan are not divisible by 13. Indeed the gemantria of "satan" (ironically not included in the list of satan's names) had a gematria divisible by 8. The number Panin associates with Jesus. I find that quite amusing."Satan's gemantria: 100 + 1 + 1 + 200 + 50 = 352. 352/44 = 8.It's just number shuffling designed to mislead. So much of Christianity is founded on this sort of stuff. Creationism is entirely. What is most depressing is the response received when this stuff is actually demonstrated.It doesn't take much to extrapolate this on (which I did). They lie and are mistaken about this and that. Turns out there are more valid explainations for all their claims. Goodbye Christian God.

James Randi is a big self-promoter, which is somewhat of a put-off for me, but I've nonetheless read several of his books and not a few of his magazine articles, and I'm convinced that he's correct when he says that scientists often become hapless dupes when in the hands of a trickster like Wirth. I'm not in favor of conducting or replicating studies whose true purpose is to validate religious beliefs. There was no scientific principle or phenomena upon which to base any expectation of positive results, but only the interests of certain religious communities. The study apparently didn't even have a sound theological basis according to an article someone cited in this thread.That being said, the interest of people in the Almighty guarantees that such studies will continue to be made, and the existence of people like Wirth guarantees the occasional "spectacular" result.By the way, if true your observation that the overall success rate was unchanged across the total subject body, that indicts the study all by itself. It means that not only did people prayed for do far better, but people not prayed for did far worse. Such a result is ludicrous on its face, but it's surprising that the other authors didn't notice this. Or maybe they did, but as Randi has noted many times, scientists make great dupes because they are so unwilling to accept that they could be fooled or misled.--Percy

I think there is one good reason for doing these kind of studies very carefully. It is to put to bed the idea that there is anything to it. If the only studies done have individuals with crooked fingers in the works then the only studies will be biased and probably wrong.

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Common sense isn't

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hmm......I've read read this thoughtfully three times and still not sure whether she believes anything can be proved or comprehended, whether pertaining to science or anything else. Or is it that science can both prove and comprehend some things but if other things are to be found in the same way to be true/proven they will never be comprehended??If the latter be the case, it appears that Darwin, like Adam, heeded too much of his wife's advice.

Tagless, the focus of my thread is on the fact that the greatest holocaust in history by far has been by secularistic communist regimes. I guess the implication is that this madness of so many of our own secularist humanistically minded citizens to sterilize our own government into staunch secularism may produce very alarming and bloody results in the end.The three conflicts you''ve asked me to go into would require three new threads for making any sense, so I'm not getting bogged down with that.