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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (26212)	9/7/2001 3:43:42 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

That study was hardly an unalloyed endorsement. And the alloy was failure. They were instructed to pray for the patients daily "for a speedy recovery with no complications." In Harris' study, the length of the hospital stay and the time spent in the cardiac unit were no different for the two groups. Sloan has trouble with several aspects of the Harris study. The prayers were for a "speedy recovery" but there were no measurable differences in hospital stays for the two groups, he says. "Half of their predictions failed at the offset."

To: The Philosopher who wrote (26212)	9/7/2001 4:25:22 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Similarly, with our presumed deity, you're focusing on the why would it do this, or more exactly, why would it do it in ways not consistent with our human ethics. You can't have it both ways. If our morals are handed down to us by this deity, as you and others here have argued here, then it's reasonable to assume that the deity would act in a way that honors them. If, on the other hand, human ethics are a human construct, then you're right, the deity wouldn't be likely to honor them. But that doesn't prevent our ability to study and understand WHAT it does and HOW it does it. It just affects the WHY it does it. All you can tell from the study is what it does. To look at how something is done by a deity require a concurrent analysis about the why. The how, by itself, is pretty irrelevant. The how is that the deity is all powerful--magic or miracle is sufficient explanation. What's to understand? We can study how with natural phenomena independent of the why, but not the supernatural where it's the meaning that counts. Karen