Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Tell you what, spendius, next plague, you pray and forego the vaccine. I'll take the vaccine and forego prayer. The one who dies puts flowers on the other's grave, ok?

Um, well, make that "the one who lives".

Sometimes the stuff one reads is based on a supposition.

One might need evidence not only of plausibilty but also of implausibilty.

The question is-does pious belief and praying strengthen or weaken the immune system?As an isolated factor I mean.It is well known that women live longer than men and also that they have a marked tendency to be more pious than men.I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to link the two but I wouldn't be so presumptious to not do either.

It isn't just about dying.It's about being healthy and happy as well in circumstances which are not basically conducive to health and happiness.

OHHHH, there ya go, back peddling.
I say that this is a noble experiment that we should all put our best to have funded. I propose a research grant. We will need some volunteers , a statistically significant number. I suggest that we appoint a committee to determine what "statistically significant" means and then we vote on that .
Then we would develop a resaerch proposal to some organization that would be so inclined to fund this research. I am , at this point, unaware of who that might be.

We set up a test group in a plague environment and test
1 meds with prayer
Meds without prayer
No meds withut prayer
No meds with prayer
A control group that has no idea about what is even going on here.They can do whatever they want, they just get the plague.

I figure, what with quartile significance needed , we should have about 50 subjects minimum.
Of course , if we get into problems defining "What is a sect" we will have to define further subgroups. I can see this study getting large and unwieldy. We will need a full time staff.
Ill volunteer to work on letterheads, logos, and business cards. Well need a website.

I smell movie deal.

Farmerman
Farmerman, instead of the black plaque, would it be easier to use Bird Flu since it seems most likely to happen within our lifetime? No flu vacine or antibiotic in favor of prayer.

BBB

To return to a previous point, yes, there is evidence that your god didn't choose to infect the impious only. Monasterial communities suffered just like the general population, in spite of their isolation. Whole monasteries and convents got wiped out (and the kings did their damnedest to get their hands on the properties, believe me). Not to mention general clergy dieing. The plague was no respecter of the church.

Do psychological states affect the immune system? There's some evidence that they have some effect. Unmarried men have higher death rates than married men in the same age cohorts. Family and social contacts seem to have some positive effect. Some studies show practice of religion may also have some effect, BUT it doesn't correlate with a particular religion. Since most major religions claim they are the only true path and the others are not, no more than one of them, at the most, can be correct. And of course, none of them may be correct. But since the effect seems to be independent of particular religion, it would appear to be more a calmer psychological state, as the family-vs.-single one does, than due to prayers being answered.

Those are alot of variables that we have to add to our proposal.
The Spanish flu of 1918 was of a different ilk. It killed the healthy with strong immune systems. The etiology of the disease was that it sent the immune system into an overload rather tha just giving in to the virus and surviving the progression of the disease. The strong immune systems were prepared to do battle to the death and the organism died. Consequently, from the remaining individuals who survived the flu strain evolved into a less virulent strain , thus assuring its preservation.
They think that the avain flu strain, should it jump the transmission barrier of human to human, the present etiology is similar to the original Spanish flu strain. It appears to me that dealing with it sysmptomatically had better be on the plate , perhaps immunosurpressant therapy.
If anybody comes up with something , I claim part development rights for coming up with this sentence.

Although I can't cite any evidence offhand, I have definitely heard of a lot of evidence to support this, as well as many other instances of psychological state being able to affect physiological state

double blind faith, farmer, I like it.

My grandmother......her name was Lola, died of the Spanish or Swine Flu in 1918. She was 26 years old and the mother of 4, the oldest being my mother when she was age 7. Sad story. But mutations happen.

fm wrote-



It looks like it has slipped your minds already that this was my idea.I had it years ago in relation to AIDS which I dubbed the Ability to Incubate Deadly ****.

I was talking about low self esteem which was quite common in the group which seemed most susceptible to Aids.I think people with low self esteem have weak immune systems.And I also think that piety correlates with healthy immune systems not directly through the piety but indirectly through self esteem which pious people have.The difficulty here is the difference between real piety and feigned piety which often looks more genuine than the real thing for obvious reasons.Appearences can be deceptive.Piety can easily be acted as we can see in movies.
Hence we are dealing with self esteem and not with prayer.

I must say,in passing,that some of the posts above betray a woeful simplistic attitude to scientific principles.When I mentioned this idea earlier I was well aware of the possibilities of a research project although I hadn't thought of film rights.The giving away of good ideas is a marker for high self esteem.The suspicious selfish attitude is a marker for the opposite.
My ideas on this vastly complex subject came from personal observation and my scientific propensity to think the unthinkable.
One can be pious towards housework.Perhaps conscientiousness is a less emotive word.

The principle may equally apply to all diseases.Smoking related illnesses,for example,may have as much to do with lack of conscientiousness as with the smoke and even then there is such a thing as abuse of smoke.I consider more that 20 per day linked to deep inhaling and sparse lung use to be abuse.And I roll my own with saltpetre free papers.And I've worked outdoors a lot.

stuh has the right attitude.A nice temperate post showing humility and interest.

Basically piety means worship of something other than the self.It may be God or it may be a job well done.I am pious towards the English Language.

In my orbit,which is fairly large,I have noticed an obvious connection between illness and having two or more daughters.Men who suffer from 3 or 4 women in close proximity have low self esteem.By the time their daughters leave home they are usually pulp.They get ganged up on.This fits with the well known traditional preference for sons.But in the raffle which takes place at the ovum high self esteem may have a bias.

Your last 7 presidents have had 12 daughters.And during that period the pants have been transferred to the ladies and feminism has run riot and domestic bliss is a thing of the past.

There you are fm-make a movie out of that.

Hello Lola my luuflee leetle cheeckeen.

Funds came from the Surrey school board's general operating budget and were paid to whatever private legal firm they had hired. It was considered a greater priority to keep the book (a fiction work) off any reading list in the school district than to put those funds towards teachers, texts, supplies, buildings, etc.

Bernie-

The money goes round ad round and it is simply a matter of choosing which routes it takes.To go for an oversimplified absurdity if all the school money went to buildings low class bars would prosper and if it all went to legal firms golf clubs and pedicurists and costume jewelry retailers would prosper.If you start there you can make the refinement into an art known roughly as keeping everybody happy or equally disgruntled.

Assuming legal mechanics are superior persons to builders,plumbers etc one can raise the tone of an area and with it property prices.

spendius,

I hope you did not miss that the book about the same-sex parents was a work of fiction. You previously insinuated that the same-sex couple made money from the lawsuit.

Nah. You could bankwire me all your savings under that theory and still count yourself in happy straits.

You must be joking Bernie.But you concede the point actually.If everybody bankwired you their money imagine what it would do for frippery shops in Manhattan and how that would ripple outwards.

I'm not running the country or a local authority.I'm one of the ones to whom it is done.But I know people at the local level who do a bit of the doing.It really is fascinating but what isn't eh.

What was the Nah for.

A lot of money doesn't go round and round. It goes kersplat.

There was a wonderful New Yorker cartoon some years past where a clearly affluent gentleman was sitting in his large leather chair in his large and ornate study, and immediately beside the chair his young son, in short pants, was standing waiting for a response to his query. The thoughtful father replied..."New money, son, is just money which has somehow gotten away from us."

wande wrote-



It matters not what the book was.I was simply using the thing to make a more general point which,I'm afraid,does not seem to have been understood.

Bernie-

The cartoon is about individualism.Running governing institutions is a different matter requiring certain styles of education and experience.