RE: Does Prayer Really Work? Does God Even Care?
August 16, 2014 at 8:42 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2014 at 9:08 am by Brakeman.)
(August 15, 2014 at 9:54 pm)Michael Wrote: On the link between theism and charity, numerous studies have confirmed the positive link between religiosity and charity. For example, in the USA Brooks (2004), using a database of over 30,000 individuals, found that those identifying as religious gave more than 3 times more of their income away, and that increased charitable giving was to both religious and non-religious causes.
http://www.gordon.edu/ACE/pdf/BrooksS04.pdf
Did you vet your sources?? I surely doesn't look like it.
Just to start on the first one - Arthur C. Clark
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/01/17...ering-Sham
Quote:Once again demonstrating its gift for fiction, the Wall Street Journal offered a hilariously pathetic treatise on the hate-mongering and intolerance of liberals. Just three weeks after Bruce Bartlett took to the Journal's opinion pages to insist that Americans overlook the Republicans' racist present to instead focus on Democrats' racist past, Arthur C. Brooks in "Liberal Hatemongers" today argued that "political intolerance in America is to be found more on the left than it is on the right." Sadly, the misguided professor Brooks is confusing liberals' current disdain for conservatives with the political strategies, tactics and messages of hate. And that brand of hyperpartisanship and selective demonization of Americans is almost exclusively the province of the right.“Liberal Hatemongers.” The Wall Street Journal. (January 17, 2008).
Seems like Clark likes to pick the opposite conclusions from reality in order to sell himself on conservative media.
"Don’t Live Simply." Forbes.com (September 16, 2008). In Italian: “PER FAVORE CONSUMATE DI PIU'” Il Giornale (September 17, 2008). - Pro consumption
“Party of Disbelief.” National Review Online (November 30, 2007).
"The Left's 'Inequality' Obsession." The Wall Street Journal, p. A16. (July 19, 2007).
"The Political Gender Gap." The Wall Street Journal, p. A17. (July 12, 2007)
"The Politics of Happiness." The Wall Street Journal, p. A17. (May 21, 2007)
"What's Wrong With Billionaires?" The Wall Street Journal, p. A13 (March 19, 2007).
“The True Ideological Battle.” The Wall Street Journal, p. A12 (November 7, 2006).
"Right-Wing Heart, Left-Wing Heart." CBSNews.com (April 11, 2006).
“Bleeding Hearts.” The Wall Street Journal, p. A14. (January 16, 2006).
"The Upside of Bush’s Foreign Policy." The New York Sun. (January 8, 2008).
“Money Buys Happiness.” The Wall Street Journal, p. A16. (December 8, 2005).
“CNY Needs Don't Stop for Katrina.” Syracuse Post-Standard (September 25, 2005).
"Our Religious Destiny.” The Wall Street Journal, p. A11. (August 20, 2007).
I'm sure that Glen Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's sources are unbiased too!
Author Clark's modus operandi appears to be to publish lots of ""statisticy"" looking columns and phrases but not publish the questionnaires of the surveys so that one can examine the clarity and bias of the questions and he also does not seem to give any detail about the methods of canvassing.
Garbage in = Garbage out
Surely you are aware of this?
(August 15, 2014 at 9:54 pm)Michael Wrote: Again (like the effect of prayer), what is open and uncertain is the mechanism of this link (correlations identify potential links, but don't tell us whether the linkage is direct, or caused by some other related variable), but, returning to the theme of prayer, Bremner et al. (2011) found in a controlled setting that praying for someone, rather than thinking of someone, led to a more sympathetic view of the other person even when reciprocity was unlikely (that is the person praying is not likely to receive any return 'favour'). Praying did positively affect attitude to others, more than simply thinking of the other person.
http://psp.sagepub.com/content/37/6/830.short
Not very honest there are you??
You were aware that ALL of the participants were religious, as can be implied from the abstract.
Quote:Abstract
Although some religious teachings have been used to justify aggression, most religious teachings promote peace in human affairs. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that praying for others brings out the more peaceful side of religion by reducing anger and aggression after a provocation.
The idea that thinking of others by prayer can divert a theist's attention from being god's soldier does not go against common atheistic opinion.
Find the cure for Fundementia!
