Skeptico

God confused about Da Vinci Code

God must be really confused. Either that or the faithful have done very little good in their lives. (Or maybe both.)

Filming of the “Da Vinci Code” has started at Lincoln Cathedral, but it apparently has attracted protesters who worry that the film calls into question many of the tenets of Christianity. A noted protester was Sister Mary Michael, a nun who prayed in protest for 12 hours. She is quoted saying:

"When I die," Sister Mary Michael said, "and I have to stand before almighty God — as everyone else will, whether they believe it or not — and he says to me, 'What have you done to defend me?' I can say, 'Well, I tried to come forward at Lincoln Cathedral.' "

Is that really the best thing she can thing of that she’s done in her life? No helping the poor or the sick? She protested a film – one based on a book that is now known to have been at least partly hoaxed. That’s it? Sounds pretty lame to me.

More to the point, what’s the deal praying to defend God? Surely God knows about this film? Why does he need someone to pray about it before he realizes it’s a problem? (For 12 hours – is God deaf or just a little slow?) Or is God just confused about whether this is a problem and needs 12 hours with a nun to be convinced? And if this film still gets made (which it will), is this just more evidence that prayer doesn’t work? Inquiring minds want to know.

Have you finished that book yet? My arms are getting tired.

Muslims safe again in Malaysia

The teapot and paraphernalia have been destroyed. Muslims in Malaysia can now sleep easily.  I know I feel safer.

God’s work is done

Prayer still useless

Why do they bother? Yet another group has performed a study into intercessory prayer and yet again has concluded that prayer doesn’t do anything:

Praying for patients undergoing heart operations does not improve their outcomes, a US study suggests.

A study found those who were prayed for were as likely to have a setback in hospital, be re-admitted, or die within six months as those not prayed for.

Duh! Numerous other studies have replicated this same (lack of) result. Praying doesn’t change anything, or only does when subjects thought they were in the prayer group (ie it is a placebo).

I’m not saying that there aren’t studies that show prayer has an effect. There have been several such studies, but eventually they are shown to be flawed, and/or when the controls are tightened the effect disappears, and/or they have been shown to be fraudulent. I give three examples below.

Byrd

One of the most frequently quoted “successful” studies was by Randolph Byrd of the San Francisco General Medical Center:

To evaluate the effects of IP (intercessory prayer) in a coronary care unit (CCU) population, a prospective randomized double-blind protocol was followed. Over ten months, 393 patients admitted to the CCU were randomized, after signing informed consent, to an intercessory prayer group (192 patients) or to a control group (201 patients).

[Snip]

The control patients required ventilatory assistance, antibiotics, and diuretics more frequently than patients in the IP group. These data suggest that intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to a CCU.

Byrd claimed that the prayer group did better than the control in six categories.

But there were severe methodological problems with this study. First, no significant differences were found among the other twenty categories being evaluated, including mortality, despite explicit prayers for prevention of death. Byrd had cherry-picked the six categories that happened to support his hypothesis and ignored the others.

Second, in looking at outcomes in those six categories that did support his conclusion, Byrd ignored the interrelationships between the categories. For example, the development of congestive heart failure automatically leads to the need for diuretics; the development of pneumonia automatically requires the use of antibiotics. Since these were not independent events he hadn’t really even reported success in six categories; three at most.

And third, there was no significant difference in length of recovery period, despite explicit prayers for a rapid recovery. This is what counts as success, apparently.

Harris / MAHI

A later study by the Mid America Heart Institute attempted to replicate Byrd, and claimed

Remote, intercessory prayer was associated with lower CCU course scores. This result suggests that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.

However, it is clear that this study failed to replicate Byrd’s so-called positive data in the six categories in which Byrd had claimed success. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the prayer and control groups in length of CCU stay, total days hospitalized or deaths, thus, replicating Byrd's negative data. So this study can hardly be considered a success either.

Elizabeth Targ

The granddaddy of fraudulent prayer studies has to be Elizabeth Targ’s study in the Western Journal of Medicine that was funded by the National Institutes of Health's Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to the tune of $1.5 million. This study originally showed no effect, so the experimenters un-blinded the study, data mined it for something, anything, that would show prayer was a benefit, found something, changed the study to make it appear they had been looking for those things all along, re-blinded it, then published. As Wired reported:

Targ asked him to crunch the numbers on the secondary scores - one a measure of HIV physical symptoms, the other a measure of quality of life. These came out inconclusive; the treatment group didn't score better than the control. Not what they wanted to find. In dismay, Targ called her father. He calmed her down, told her to keep looking. She had Moore run the mood state scores. These came out worse - the treatment group was in more psychological stress than the control group. Same for CD4+ counts. Targ flew down to Santa Fe to attend a conference at a Buddhist retreat run by her godmother. When she called back to Moore's office, Sicher answered. Moore was crunching the last data they had, hospital stays and doctor visits. "Looks like we have statistical significance!" Moore announced. Sicher told Targ, who turned and yelled out to her friends and the conference.

Bingo.

Later that week, Moore met with an AIDS physician at California Pacific Medical Center. This doctor thought distant healing was bogus but agreed to give advice. He remarked that the length of hospital stays wasn't very meaningful. Patients with health insurance tend to stay in hospitals longer than uninsured ones. He pointed Moore to an important AIDS paper that had been recently published. It defined the 23 illnesses associated with AIDS. He told Moore they ought to have been measuring the occurrence of these illnesses all along. Moore took this list to Targ and Sicher. There was only one problem. They hadn't collected this data.

They gathered the medical charts and gave them to their assistant to black out the names of the patients. This done, Targ and Sicher began poring over the charts again, noting the data they hadn't previously collected. Since Sicher had interviewed many of these patients (up to three times), Moore worried Sicher could recognize them just by the dates they came to the hospital and what they were treated for. Sicher admitted he could (there were only 40). He had also seen which group each patient was assigned to, treatment or control, but he swore he didn't remember and maintained he was therefore impartial. (Sicher remembers this differently. He insists he couldn't recognize the patients from their charts and never knew which group each was in.) Targ told her boyfriend she was worried about Sicher's impartiality, but she took him at his word, even though Sicher was an ardent believer in distant healing, by his own frequent admission. He had put up the money himself for the pilot study ($7,500), had paid for the blood tests. He had a vested interest in the outcome.

This isn't what science means by double-blind. The data may all be legitimate, but it's not good form. Statisticians call this the sharpshooter's fallacy - spraying bullets randomly, then drawing a target circle around a cluster. When Targ and Sicher wrote the paper that made her famous, they let the reader assume that all along their study had been designed to measure the 23 AIDS-related illnesses - even though they're careful never to say so. They never mentioned that this was the last in a long list of endpoints they looked at, or that it was data collected after an unblinding.

(My bold.)

And that really is the best there is. Isn’t it about time we recognized that getting down on your knees and muttering platitudes to the invisible daddy in the sky doesn’t change anything, and stopped wasting time and money on these ridiculous studies? If there is a god, he doesn’t intervene in medical procedures based on the number of people who tell him how wonderful and powerful he is and who go on to ask for medical favors.

Trouble brewing for teapot sect

Here’s a good one. The Sky Kingdom is an inter-faith sect located in Malaysia. It claims to promote harmony between all of Malaysia's religious groups, but is better known for its giant structures – a vase, concrete boat, umbrella and its centerpiece - a pink teapot:

The two-storey-high teapot was apparently inspired by the dreams of one of the cult's followers, and reflects a similar vessel in the sky which God uses to shower his blessings on mankind. 

Followers who come to the village for the first time have to drink "holy water" pouring from a giant vase that is perpetually filled by the teapot.

Not sure why the umbrella. I would have thought giant milk and sugar bowls. Or maybe a giant cup, saucer and spoon. Anyway, religious authorities in Malaysia – an Islamic state - have outlawed the sect as a deviant cult. Well naturally.  You can see the problem - if this isn't stopped, before you know it there could be cucumber sandwiches. Or perhaps the authorities are just coffee drinkers. Either way the sect has seen troubles recently, including instructions to demolish the teapot , an arson attack, and a police raid:

Malaysian police have arrested 21 suspected followers of a religious sect called the Sky Kingdom.

They were arrested for possessing documents contrary to Islam, according to an official

They failed to detain the prime target – cult leader Ayah Pin – despite searching his three houses in the commune. (Apparently the cult is profitable even if it is failing to promote very much religious harmony.) In explanation, State Islam Hadhari Development Committee deputy chairman said:

We will investigate whether there was a leak

Investigate whether there was a leak?  Hahahaaa. Teapot - Leak. You can't make this stuff up.

Who’s afraid of Harry Potter?

Pope Rat is, apparently.  Or at least he was two years ago, when he wrote to one Gabrielle Kuby, author of Harry Potter - Good or Evil (sic):

...thanking her for sending him a copy of "your informative book". He said: "It is good that you are throwing light on Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions that work imperceptibly, and because of that deeply, and erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly."

Apparently Rat approved of Kuby’s argument that the Potter stories “blur the boundaries between good and evil and impair young readers' ability to distinguish between the two”

Bwahahaha!

First, a catholic priest is hardly the best person to complain to about "subtle seductions" of children  - they've been known to dabble themselves remember?  Secondly, as for blurring boundaries and impairing young readers' ability to distinguish between them, this is the perfect excuse to cite an article by The Chaser – something that I can only wish I had written:

Harry Potter fans warn against dangerous effects of Bible

OXFORD, Tuesday: A number of concerned British Harry Potter fans have spoken out against the Bible, claiming that the holy text of the Christian Church can cause serious damage to children. “Reading the Bible teaches children to believe in the supernatural,” said one English Literature academic from Oxford University, Lewis Williams. “The tales of Jesus turning water into wine are fairly harmless, but there is a serious risk of children drowning if they try to walk on water,” he said. “And the chance of serious bodily harm isn’t exactly minimised by that whole ‘resurrection-from-the-dead’ story either.”

Christians have responded that reading the Bible assists with literacy skills, but Williams rejects this idea too. “The Bible is only ever read in very small chunks, a few paragraphs at a time. It’s never read as a long sustained narrative like the Harry Potter series. Reading too much of the Bible promotes a very short attention span," he says.

Critics such as Williams warn that without appropriate parental guidance, reading the Bible may make children unable to enjoy quality children’s literature. “Enjoying books such as Harry Potter or the Narnia series requires the ability to suspend disbelief,” he said. “When children are taught that the Bible is absolutely literally true, and that a story like Noah’s Ark actually happened, the imagination is completely stifled – it’s very detrimental.”

Williams has also pointed out that some of the scarier elements in fantasy novels will really frighten children if they think they are true. “Some children may think that murderous Dark Wizards such as Voldemort (the villain of the Potter series) are actually real if they’ve been corrupted by Christians who believe that devils and magic actually exists,” he said.

Yeah. “Blur the boundaries between good and evil and impair young readers' ability to distinguish between the two” my ass.

EBay here we come

Jesus Christ on a tortilla they’re at it again. This time a woman in Florida has found an image of Jesus on a crisp (potato chip to the Americans), according to Ananova.  "Oh my goodness", she is reported to have said. (Wouldn’t “Jesus Christ” have been more appropriate?) Presumably the next thing she did was log in to eBay: recently someone sold a toasted cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary for $28,000. Seems to me Jesus is worth more than Mary, but then I’m not religious. (Why don’t I ever find valuable snacks like this?)

I’m reminded of the old Johnny Carson interview with the potato chip lady. She had a plate full of potato chips she had collected over several years, each with some kind of image in them. Johnny’s sidekick Ed McMahon distracted the lady for a second, and Johnny picked up a chip from a bowl he had hidden under his desk and noisily ate it. The woman’s expression when she thought Johnny had eaten one of her chips, was priceless.

Ark who’s talking

Here’s a good one. Archeologist Dr. Vendyl Jones (allegedly the inspiration for Indiana Jones), claims he knows the location of the Ark of the Covenant and plans to excavate it by August 14, 2005. And get this - his reasoning for this date is it was prophesied, according to the Israel National News:

He believes the ark will be discovered by Tisha B'Av (Aug. 14), a day of repeated tragedy in Jewish history. Most notably, it is the anniversary of the destruction of both the First and Second Holy Temples.

Noahide guru Jones says that the State of Israel is passing through the same biblical straights as the generation that first entered Israel after the exodus from Egypt. “If history repeats itself, the history itself is prophecy,” Jones says.

“Israel is different from all other nations in a lot of ways, but more than anything else, Israel is the only nation whose history was written before it  happened.”

That would make Israel different, it’s true. Apparently Jones has made successful prophesies before, based on interpretation of biblical texts. It’s claimed he:

Predict(ed) the precise outbreak of the Six Day War, based on his analysis of the period from the Exodus from Egypt up until the First Temple Period. He says that applying biblical analysis to modern times points to major events that will “turn the world right-side-up.”

Jones calculated the war in 1967 by analyzing the sequence of events in the First Temple Period and transposing them onto the "Third Temple Period” – the period beginning with the Jews’ foundation of an independent State in the Land of Israel in 1948.

Sure he did. I wonder how much “interpretation” post-hoc (a-la Nostradamus) was required to make the prediction fit actual events. For example, this piece seemingly by Jones entitled please excuse my miscalculations, seems to allow considerable wiggle room based on which calendar you use and what you decide is the start date. Of course if he already knows where the arc is, “discovering” it on his “predicted” date should be a breeze. Jones says:

the discovery of the lost ark will “flip the whole world right-side-up.”

“I just gotta drill a bore-hole into the chamber, drop a pin-camera in and there it is. And everything is gonna change, believe me. The Jewish people are gonna come back.”

That’s all he gotta do.  OK, everybody mark your calendars for August 14^th. Look out the window and see if the world looks a different side up from the way it looked on August 13^th. You can probably guess which way up I think it will look.

Polio rises – thanks anti-vaxers!

Thanks to religious anti-vaccination propaganda, Polio is on the increase:

Nearly two years after radical Islamic preachers told parents to refuse to have their children vaccinated against polio for fear it was part of a U.S. plot against Muslims, the repercussions are still being felt: A Nigerian strain of the virus that causes the crippling disease has cropped up as far away as Indonesia.

In this case it is Islamic preachers who have been causing the problems. We shouldn’t feel too smug though: the West has its own anti-vaxers who also rely on ignorance to oppose such proven solutions. These range from quacks such as Naturopaths to celebrity idiots like Bill Maher. Whatever its source, it results in unnecessary suffering. Polio is a horrible crippling disease that has been eliminated in the Western world.

The same old fallacies are being employed, including:

I do not agree that we exported polio to any country. If these countries were carrying out vaccinations ... they should not have had any cases.

Wrong. Vaccination is not always 100% effective; it relies on what is known as “herd immunity”.  That is, if a sufficiently large proportion of the population is immune through vaccination, few people will get the disease because it can't gain a foothold.  However, there will always be people who cannot be vaccinated or for whom vaccines will be ineffective, for example people who are:

• Receiving immunosuppressive treatment, perhaps for cancer
• Allergic to the vaccine
• Too young to be vaccinated
• Unable to mount an immune response to the vaccine
• Inflicted with immunosuppressive diseases like AIDS.

These people need the herd immunity, it is their only protection. A small number of healthy people can freeload in this group also. But once more than a few start doing it, the whole thing breaks down. The lack of vaccination in Nigeria allowed the disease to gain hold and it spread to other countries where the disease had been eradicated, and presumably they had ceased full vaccination:

Fifteen other countries where polio had been eradicated have been re-infected from Nigeria since 2003, when northern Islamic leaders led a vaccine boycott.

(My bold.)

All thanks to anti-vaccination propaganda.  Good job.

It’s only rock and roll…

Jesus Christ on a tortilla! The faithful are flocking to a salt stain on a Chicago underpass that they say is a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary. Wow, I’m convinced. “This will help someone have faith” says one creduloid. Listen lady, if you believe this image is a miracle you don’t need help with your faith, you need help. I guess these people don’t know how to say pareidolia. (Actually, I don’t know how to say pareidolia. No one does.)

I’m not sure about this image though. I originally thought it looked more like a giant upright lizard. Perhaps it’s a message from David Icke.

But when I looked at the stain from a different angle, the real image was revealed. It’s Keith Richards:

Left: Keith Richards

Right: The Virgin Mary

61 years old and he’s touring with the Rolling Stones. Hey, he’s still alive – if that isn’t a miracle I don’t know what is. Hallelujah, we’re saved.

Heaven scent

I just heard on CNN that someone is selling the “scent of Jesus”. I immediately thought, cripes, someone has a 2,000 year old fart in a bottle! Keep the cork in Judas.

But no, apparently it is a candle called “His Essence”. 

Light up the candle called "His Essence" and its makers say you'll experience the fragrance of Christ.

Hope it smells good. If not, you might need some of this stuff.

What would Jesus say?

He would recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on his back, according to the manufacturer of these dolls:

A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families.

The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on its back, while the Moses doll will recite the Ten Commandments. The Mary doll will recite a long Bible verse.

The company expects to sell about 50,000 of the Biblical dolls by the end of the year, with the Jesus doll -- not surprisingly -- expected to be the top seller. It hopes to also bring out an Esther doll by the end of the year and hopes to have other Biblical character dolls introduced in future years.

Jesus is the one on the left. Not sure why Moses has blue hair. Or why the both of them look like they just emerged from a Turkish bath together.

They’ll need to introduce a Mary Magdalene doll though, if they want to compete with Ken and Barbie. If you believe in the Da Vinci code, anyway. Although it looks like they’ve been beaten to it with this GI Jesus® action figure which comes with a “Marine Magdalene®”. Who said religion isn’t fun?

There is Superstition

David Morris, writing in the Alternet, describes the reality of religious faith:

…when it comes to organized religion, no burden of proof is required. On the contrary, by definition, religion requires faith and faith renounces evidence. Taking a proposition "on faith" means to consciously and willfully refuse to examine the facts.

And that is one of the basic problems I have with religion.

Morris goes on to suggest we replace the word “faith” with “superstition”, and asks us to examine a statement by George W. Bush in this light:

I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

I have already replaced “religion” in my lexicon with “fairy tale” (as in “what fairy tale are you?” or “what fairy tale do you believe in?"), and replaced “bible” with “book of fairy tales”. Replacing “faith” with “superstition” does seem to be the next logical step.

Prophesy – US has only two more years

From Secular Blasphemy we learn that the US is doomed, doomed I tell you:

A thorough analysis of the Koran reveals that the US will cease to exist in the year 2007, according to research published by Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi.

The study, which has caught the attention of millions of Muslims worldwide, is based on in-depth interpretations of various verses in the Koran. It predicts that the US will be hit by a tsunami larger than that which recently struck southeast Asia.

There you have it – a definite date. (Well, year.) Remember that on 01.01.08 as you’re ringing in the happy New Year.

Of course, this particular “prophet” will have his excuses and rationalizations for why Armageddon didn’t arrive (although he will hope no one remembers by then). They all do. Remember this nut job who, two years ago, told us Planet X was going to destroy the world? Did she admit she was wrong? Don’t make me laugh. She wasn’t the only one though. Get a load of these: hundreds of failed prophesies from 2800 BC to the present day.

The big one in NewAge (rhymes with sewage) circles is 2012 – the supposed end of the Mayan calendar (which it isn’t). Anyway, there’s hardly a kook in town who doesn’t think something bad is going to happen then. And we’ve got seven more years of listening to them banging on about it. By 2007 I might be wishing for that tsunami.

You can’t handle the truth!

This is from the “I wish I’d said that” file. James Randi in his column yesterday reports that the Archbishop of Genoa is advising people not to read “The Da Vinci Code” because (and I’m not making this up):

There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true.

Hahaha. Of course, I do agree that The Da Vinci Code and its precursor Holy Blood Holy Grail have been conclusively debunked. However, as Randi points out, the Archbishop:

…sees no conflict in the fact that a very much more popular book — also written with a background of actual historical characters and places — has similarly attracted a huge number of persons who have chosen to accept and embrace the conviction that its contents are not fables, but factual.

Randi is, of course, referring to this book, that he suggests should also be examined for truth. Ha, reminds me of when Harry Potter fans were warned about the dangers of reading it:

Critics … warn that without appropriate parental guidance, reading the Bible may make children unable to enjoy quality children’s literature. “Enjoying books such as Harry Potter or the Narnia series requires the ability to suspend disbelief... When children are taught that the Bible is absolutely literally true, and that a story like Noah’s Ark actually happened, the imagination is completely stifled – it’s very detrimental.”

(More at the link.)

Here’s an idea. Lets all email Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone (source, translate it with Babelfish), and recommend that he get some of these stickers:

With his obvious passion for the truth, the Archbishop will want to stick them on any Da Vinci Codes or Bibles he happens to see lying around.

God flakes on Owens

So God didn’t come through for Terrell Owens then. Oh I know… works in mysterious ways etc etc. Perhaps the other side just prayed harder. Reminds me of the joke about the two nuns off on a car journey. The first nun says to the second nun, “you drive and I’ll pray”. The second nun says, “what’s the matter, don’t you trust my praying?”

Here’s a thought. Perhaps there is no such thing as a God who intervenes in our lives based on who prays for what. I’m not saying this proves it. It’s just that this explanation fits all the observed facts perfectly, and we don’t have to postulate a supernatural being who can't make his mind up which team he supports.

Kudos to Don Banks

I was pleasantly surprised and happy to see an item in the news this week.

It seems pro footballer Terrell Owens, who broke his leg in December, will be OK to play in the Super Bowl this Sunday. That isn’t what made me happy though.

Owens says his recovery is part of God’s plan to give him an even bigger platform during Super Bowl week than he otherwise would have had, thus proving God's greatness, a minor miracle. But that isn’t what made me happy either.

What gave me reason to hope the world hasn't gone entirely insane, was how this “miracle” was reported by SI's Don Banks:

…let's keep things in perspective. The normal recovery time for Owens' ankle injury was put at eight to 10 weeks. If he returns Sunday, it'll be seven weeks since Owens last played, and about 6½ weeks since his surgery. Impressive, and perhaps courageous? You bet. But miraculous? Even if you're willing to stretch, it's not really going to give the whole turning water into wine thing a run for its money.

(Snip)

… it really hits me as the height of self-absorption for a professional athlete to claim that his speedy recovery from an ankle injury -- in time to make the Super Bowl -- would be God's chosen way to manifest his miraculous powers.

Can I get a reality check from someone? Anyone? It's a football game. Owens is a football player. Sometimes football players get hurt, and sometimes, if the game is meaningful enough, they return to the field earlier than what is advisable. And that's never going to change. If Owens had played two weeks after his surgery, that would be miracle territory. But almost seven weeks? That's a fast healer who has a considerable threshold for pain and the utmost motivation.

Yes, finally, a rational angle from the media on a paranormal claim. Of course, you need to compare Owens’ recovery time with the normal recovery period for this type of injury on a fit, motivated, professional athlete. If the recovery time is not significantly quicker than expected, there is no need to propose a supernatural explanation.

I’m sure God will his hands full this Sunday, trying to decide which side’s prayers he is going to listen to when fixing the Super Bowl, without concentrating on Owens. Running the universe must be a confusing business.