Health and Prayer II - Why God still can't lose

I had a reply posted to a blog I wrote some time ago that I didn't feel I could do justice to in just the comments, so here's the full on reply.

The original post was one I made about the myth that prayer heals, and how patently ridiculous such an assertion is in the face of our need for modern evidence based medicine, you can find that here. The comment came here. I'll call the commenter littleinions in reference to the pseudonym they entered there.

The comment is, I think, a perfect example of what I was referring to in the original post - the "God can't lose" concept. That is to say, the seemingly miraculous is attributed to God and he gets all the credit for it, even in the face of the suffering that may have occurred. For example, God gets credit for saving one person in a plane crash and is praised for his miracle, but doesn't take the blame for the 250 other people who died in the same crash. If saving one is to God's credit, what is letting the others die? God can't lose because the majority of believers will then say they weren't meant to be saved, didn't pray hard enough or it wasn't part of the plan etc - God can't lose because only the good stuff is attributed to him - the bad stuff is rationalized away, but whatever the rationalization is, it is not God.

Carry this into health care though, and we often have people attribute someone's recovery from ill health to God and prayer or miracles - not to medical treatment and care, misdiagnosis or spontaneous remission. Yet, as I point out in the original post, if prayer really worked in the way that the religious claim we wouldn't have need of hospitals or evidence based medical care for two main reasons:

1. Nobody prays to become sick. People pray for good health and a long life - they don't pray to have a serious accident or incurable disease. If prayer worked no one would ever be sick - except I suppose the non-religious or non-devout, who either don't pray at all or don't pray enough (whatever that limit is).
2. If people were sick or injured then if prayer worked those illnesses or injuries would be immediately rectified or cured upon those people praying - nobody prays to continue to be sick or injured, they pray to be cured or to recover. If prayer worked they would not therefore need medical treatment and in countries where the religious are present in great numbers hospitals need not exist. This is demonstrably not true.

Further to these two points is the obvious one that the website Why Won't God Heal Amputees? makes. People who lose limbs, or who are born without them, never have those limbs come back despite praying for exactly that to happen. If prayer works, then why won't God heal amputees?

Pity? Anger? Amusement? I'm just not sure

Well, you didn't really think I was going to let the failed Rapture pass without comment, did you?

Now, I'm honestly not sure exactly what I should be feeling about this whole thing. Should I pity the people who believed Harold Camping and gave up money and more? Should I dismiss them as gullible and stupid? Should I feel they got what they deserved for their lack of critical thinking and arrogance? Should I direct my feelings towards Camping in the form of anger and disgust? Or should I just point and laugh?

Right now, I'm going for a mixture of most of the above. But I think I can rule out pity, except for the innocent victims. Those who have no college fund now because their parents are fucking morons. Those who will suffer because others fell for this fast burning stupidity.

How can you call yourself a skeptic if...

... you accept things on faith or believe in the supernatural? The answer is, I believe, you can't. And you don't get to call yourself a critical thinker either. What you would be is a hypocrite. Or, maybe a little more charitably, a part timer. At best, you'd be someone capable of fooling yourself.

Thinking about writing this post is what prompted me to write yesterday's post as well, and its all about getting my thoughts down on this whole silly shit about accommadationism and people trying to exclude atheism from skepticism, and those people trying to define who the real skeptics are and who gets to join in and how they should do it (this last I covered yesterday). So here goes.

Nazis, atheists and a Pope

With a title like that, you know this one has got to be interesting. Right? OK, maybe not. But this post will put me in the schizophrenic position of kicking the Pope in the arse and then picking him up and fetching him a cup of tea afterwards.

It may or may not have escaped your notice that the Pope recently visited the UK, an event that had the BBC falling all over itself to cover favourably. Anyway, whilst the child rape covering up pontiff was there he made a statement that was guaranteed to set off both the atheist and the historian in me.

The anthropic principle and Intelligent Design. And some other stuff

Careful - put the kettle on and get a brew, this is going to be a big one!

So, recently an anonymous commenter (that had better change - pick a name and use that to post with) has come by to defend Intelligent Design and offer up their evidence for it.

Nothing new or that hasn't been seen before, and the usual tactics employed I'm afraid. Since there is a lot to reply though I thought I'd write a new post dealing with it rather than spread a response over several comments on the original thread - and I'll probably use this tactic from now on whenever someone suggests some evidence in the ID post - I'll separate it into a post purely dealing with that evidence and link to it from the ID post.

Since our anonymous commenter didn't give themselves a name I'll pick one.

A musical interlude

One of the benefits of my eclectic musical taste is that every now and then I come across a CD in my collection that I had forgotten I had. Sometimes there's a reason I have forgotten said album or single - it's crap. Sometimes though it is good to revisit the stuff we used to be in to - for the memories and feelings they provoke.

The other day I came across an old Genesis album "We Can't Dance" and it provoked a lot of memories - but in particular were two songs off that album that I remember as being basically my first introduction to the idea that gods, religion and faith might all be utter bollocks, since up until then I had been raised as a Catholic and was still at Catholic school and very much a believer, albeit not devout.

Some thoughts on atheism

I've mentioned my position on my particular brand of atheism before (here) and I've been ruminating on it again today and wanted to put something down before the blogging dries up for this week. This is an idea that is still not fully formed for me so I'd ask that you give some feedback on it and excuse the disjointed nature of this post as well.

As I stated in my earlier post I think that there is no more reason to believe in gods than there is to believe in Sauron or Badger, Toad, Ratty and Mole. That's the reason why I say I think I know there are no gods - since there is no evidence for the existence of gods that can be scientifically verified or tested, or that is independent of the myths in which they appear I think that there are no gods just like I think that there are no Blue Meanies.

Why I think I know there are no gods

Believers often like to characterise atheism as a religion, I'm sure it makes them feel comfortable to tell themselves that we atheists just simply must have a religion too. There are plenty of serious and funny rebuttals to this point ('Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby' is one of my favourites), one of the more common rebuttals is to point out that atheism isn't really a belief system but a lack of a belief - a belief in gods. At the same time that believers throw this tired argument out they will often trot out the old 'You must have faith to believe there is no God.' Or 'Well you can't say there is no God because there is no evidence there isn't.' A variation I heard myself was 'You haven't been everywhere so you can't know there is no God.' Sorry, no prizes for being able to rebut that one.

Often the differences in various types of atheism have to be explained - implicit, explicit, weak or strong. The common responses from atheists shy away from the strongest assertion of atheism though - I know gods don't exist.