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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (7899)	9/9/2001 12:07:36 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Actually, that sentence was from the Web site too. I ham-fisted my use of italics. I don't personally know of the studies or know how well they were executed. I had heard about them anecdotally. I'm not inclined to think there are a lot of them. There were not a lot from what I'd consider credible sources when I did my quick and dirty Web search. A lot of the references were from sites that would have a clear agenda - like Christian, New Age or Mystical type of bents. That isn't the kind of study I'd want to see.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (7899)	9/9/2001 1:28:19 PM
From: E. Charters	Respond to of 28931

There is a race in south pacific which prays to the god placebo. Apparently an american medical team had arrived on the island during WWII, and since they were short of medicines, they used gelatine capsules with sodium bicarb inside for real and imagined illnesses of the islanders. Many of them got well spontaneously of course, and much was their praise of their benefactors. Naturally, the islanders hung around and asked the Americans what was in those medicines, or so they doctors thought. They really wanted to know what they called the spirit, the medicines produced their magic from. Since the doctors knew the islander's English was not so good, they had casually mentioned the reference to the medicine's lack of active ingredient in front of them. The euphonious word was unmistakable to the ear, however and the natives picked it up. Hence we have the great placebo spirit that now rules this coral reef somewhere in the vastness of that sea. One of the doctors from that medical team, Maxwell Maltz, observed that effect and went Stateside to coin the term "Psycho-Cybernetics" to mean the science manifestation of "relief from belief", and wrote a book of the same name. Returning many years later some sociologists noted that these islanders had a complete religion with white gods and spirit medicines that co-incidentally were nothing but rolled up leaves with some flour paste inside them.But cure these medicines did, and better by far was the health of these people than adoining islanders that had not had such visits from white gods in white coats. The sociologist coined the term "cargo cults" from the American cargo ships that visited the islands. Some natives on other islands worshipped, the gods Cargo, G-I, P-T and of course the mighty, feared but benificent Landing-Craft that ate people and disgorged them. Strangely no-one worships Sub-Looie, Colonel, Corporal, or Sargeant. These are relegated demon status, and are of the other world. Then the Americans returned with more of their government and foreign aid. But it will kill a beautiful religion and all that belief. It is instructive that we near Native Americans talking today of "the Great White Father" derisively. that is because we stayed. If we had left after giving them medicine and guns, we would still be worshipped today. If a technology is sufficiently advanced, it is indistinguishable from badly written Perl code. EC<:-}