I'm sure that some believe it works. I think that they're in the minority.
I think that a lot of people work very hard to try and convince themselves that it works. You probably know at least a few of them, who credit prayer when things go well and offer up bizarre (and sometimes truly obscene) rationalizations when they don't. "Oh, the chemo didn't work and you've only got a month to live? It must be a blessing in disguise! I'm sooo jealous right now!"
I think that a lot of people work very hard to try and convince themselves that it works. You probably know at least a few of them, who credit prayer when things go well and offer up bizarre (and sometimes truly obscene) rationalizations when they don't. "Oh, the chemo didn't work and you've only got a month to live? It must be a blessing in disguise! I'm sooo jealous right now!"
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
