Trying to tie it together with the original post, it all does impact how we view truth and how faith interacts with our day to day lives in ways similar to but yet different than religious belief. It even has impact with apologetics and how we attempt to justify our beliefs with ration arguments, when ultimately we much admit that rational arguments are insufficient. Jon I am sure would have some good insight from a somewhat different perspective.
If interest remains in pursuing this line of thought, perhaps we should divide it into a new post.
The material I had read focused on true placebo pills⌠with absolutely no pharmaceutical value of any kind. I didnât want to muddy the waters with any other considerationsâŚ
⌠though I suppose there must be many who think âminor pharmaceutical value PLUS placebo effectâ is a better value.
Linking a little bit to the original subject of the topic. The point Iâm trying to make is that I agree with Alister that atheists post-rationalize and justify their beliefs just as much as theists do (which of course doesnât mean the arguments are bad), but most of them donât think they are doing that, because they take some of their beliefs (like âreligion is superstitionâ) as self evident and obvious, while I honestly donât think they are. One example I can give is the fact that many atheists say themselves that they originally lost confidence in religious belief because of the problem of evil (Bart Ehrmann, John Horgann, and even Michael Shermer and Dawkins heavily uses it as an argument even though they donât claim that it was the starting point of their atheism), and just then they started to research more about atheism and atheist arguments (and no, Iâm not trying to use the âatheists are just angry with Godâ argument, which I think is dishonest), that really sound to me like trying to rationalize previously held beliefs (I.E. the world is a cruel place so a benevolent God must not exist). Iâm not criticizing atheists for that, I actuallly think it is a positive thing to check if your beliefs can be hold at a rational coherent basis, but not acknowledging/being blind to the fact that you are doing that can be intelectually dangerous.
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Good point. I struggle with that, too. However, I think that we depend on God for many more than just one thingâhealing being only one of them. The thought that He is aware of our suffering, and like the person of Jesus, having suffered with us at one time, is reassuring.
When I pray with my patients, I usually ask not only for wisdom for the doctors in taking care of (read: cancer, etc), but also thank Him that we know that Heâs there with us, no matter what happens.
Itâs a tough one.
There was a blinded study between magnet bracelets and non-magnetic bracelets. As I recall, both were equally powerful (placebo) with 60% improvementâno difference between the twoâin helping pain. The only thing that has ever been proven, to my recollection from residency, is an alternating electromagnetic field may help stimulate bone growthâitâs used for fracture healing in the feet, sometimes.
Have you see the homeopathy TED by the Great Randi?
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Itâs even possible that the fact of paying lots of money for the placebo would reinforce the purchaserâs faith in the placebo (âitâs expensive; it must therefore be top-of-the-lineâ) and render it more effective! Definitely needs to be expensive.
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That has actually been demonstrated and granted the researchers the IgNobel prize, hahahaha
MEDICINE PRIZE. Dan Ariely of Duke University (USA), Rebecca L. Waber of MIT (USA), Baba Shiv of Stanford University (USA), and Ziv Carmon of INSEAD (Singapore) for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicineâŚ
REFERENCE: âCommercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy,â Rebecca L. Waber; Baba Shiv; Ziv Carmon; Dan Ariely, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Dan Ariely
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Hi Jay - Iâll bite, briefly, not on the âIs modern medicine a con and are placebos the biz?â (though thatâs an interesting question, especially with the perspective of 10 years out of the profession), but on combining the professional stuff with prayer for healing - or even just prayer.
In general, although in a Christian practice, I was a bit of a coward over praying with patients. That was partly personal funk, and partly because, over here more than there, I believe, a culture developed over my career that âthe NHS pays you to be secular, and praying for the vulnerable is abuse.â That assumption, of course, is a firm belief that God cannot be involved with doctor or patient, but only cynical proselytizing.
In fact, I was a private contractor to the NHS, and patient and doctor are in a living, negotiated, relationship in which professional guidelines are just that - guidelines, and not a straitjacket. I believe the physician in America (unlike the school-teacher) is less constricted about prayer than in the UK, but you may know better.
In fact, I would now still find it hard to consider offering healing prayer in a clinical setting - except, perhaps, where I had just admitted that medicine had run out of ideas. I knew others - more Charismatic than me - who did it naturally all the time and, at times, successfully. However, as Iâve said before here, Iâve prayed for healing in a church setting with people who knew I was a doctor, and that was fine, because the roles were not confused.
What I can say about the last situation is that, considering how relatively uncommonly Iâve been involved with healing prayer, itâs been effective more than one might expect. The difference being a doctor makes is being more surprised at the genuine, and less impressed by the common. âMy cold got better next dayâ is common. âMy tenosynovitis got better as you prayedâ is impressive.
I might add that with a professional scruple about milking the placebo effect, Iâve usually been at pains to say, when praying, that God chooses whether to heal or not, and weâre just bringing the problem to him. The âgift of healingâ, in my book, is a gift to the person healed, not the super-spiritual person praying. In fact, for that very reason, at my church we always got several people praying.
My favourite couple of cases were where, on medical grounds, I didnât expect prayer to be effective and where, on their own admission, the âpatientâ wasnât expecting much either. I guess the faith involved was simply being willing to pray.
Supportive prayer (I say to my shame) ought to be a common part of the Christian docâs consulting. I say that from the way that, when I plucked up courage to ask, people always saw it as a positive and kindly thing. It was even better when the request led someone to say theyâd been looking for God in their illness, and how could they become a Christian? Paradoxically, there appears no close link between healing and coming to faith.
Is that useful?
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My experience is similar to Jonâs, as I pray with patients if they ask me to do so, and will tell patientâs a quick, âYouâll be in our prayersâ when faced with a life changing procedure or test.
I think medicine from a doctorâs standpoint is a little more mechanical than from a patientâs, and it is sort of like asking a plumber to pray for your commode before clearing the clog from the docâs viewpoint (and with fecal impactions, very analogous)
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Oh, that makes me laugh. It reminds me of my partner, a general surgeon in our multispecialty practice. Whenever I asked how he was doing, he would say, âWell, my bowels moved this morningâbetter than I can say for some of my patients!â
People do appreciate prayer. I think they recognize that we realize that there are limits to modern medicine, and that we wish them the best we canâbeyond being just physicians and mechanics, that way.
Thereâs been a bit of a debate in the news lately as to whether politicians should say they are praying for someone sufferingâimplying that by praying, they donât mean anything will be done physically. James does criticize Christians for saying âgo, I wish you wellâ in that veinâbut itâs only a partially valid criticism, and only if it means that the piety takes the place of action (in which case, itâs not piety anyway)
I know that we mostly think of involving God when we feel overwhelmedâbut in âChariots of Fire,â one of Eric Liddellâs pastors said, âYou can peel a spud to the glory of Godââyou donât have ask specifically for guidance on the spud, but I think he was saying that it can transform our lives to do the best we can to his glory.
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Totally agree. It always made me angry to see the Benny Hinnâs of the world up on stage performing healings on cue and dispensing the Holy Spirit to people like candy on Halloween.
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I think it is worth adding that atheism is just a lack of belief in deities. Thatâs it. Atheism doesnât describe how people arrived at their disbelief, nor is atheism a methodology or epistemology for determining truth. It is true that many atheists also subscribe to some form of skepticism, but there is no rule that all atheists must subscribe to skepticism.
Well, they usually subscribe to naturalism as well, which is a belief. I agree that simply stating âI donât believe in your Godâ is not a belief, but a lack of. Claiming that the natural world is all there is and that there is no transcendence at all on the other hand is a metaphysical belief. And that belief is usually justified by evidence that cannot be ultimately proven as well.
Do you think there os a inevitable contradiction between believing in God and skepticism? Iâve always considered myself a skeptic as well, but I donât think skepticism demands that you have no opinion on metaphysical issues. When you canât find experimental proof of something I think it is valid to consider the (incomplete) arguments from each side and coming to a conclusion as to which one you think is more likely to be right, as long as you recognize that and donât claim that this informed opinion os at same level as scientific proof. It is different from, lets say, believing in astrology or homeophaty despite all the studies falsifying both.
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It would be interesting to see a poll of atheists on the question of methodological v. ontological naturalism. I fall on the methodological side, and I suspect a fair number of atheists do. However, I would say that many atheists havenât really given the matter much thought.
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This ties in with my previous post. Skepticism is focused on methodology and doesnât make any real ontological or metaphysical claims. The only axioms that skepticism seems to have is that there is a real objective reality out there and that we can reliably observe it.
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It is interesting to consider both belief (on one side) and lack of belief (on the other side) within the Christian context. By this I mean that a Christian believes that faith itself is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and also the response of the person is free and untainted by material considerations. So (for the sake of adding humour), we may all commence as atheists until and unless Godâs grace is manifest at a personal level.
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I guess nearly all atheists who donât adopt a âstrongâ atheist stance and simply state âI donât believe in your Godâ will not adopt ontological naturalism as a belief, either.
One of the limiting factors of the human experience is that we canât know what is going on in someone elseâs head.
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That would be my assessment as well, although I could be wrong. I tend to find that when atheists are really pressed to take an ontological position that they usually donât. They usually end up at, âI guess God could exist, but it just seems so unlikely as to be ignoredâ.
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