What's so fascinating about the recent published results on the effects of prayer on cardiac surgery patients is how it is spun. Patients where randomly assigned to three groups: a third were not prayed for and didn't know it, a third were prayed for and didn't know it, and the last third were prayed for and did know it.
Results?
There was no significant statistical difference between those who didn't know if they were being prayed for or not. The third that did know they were being prayed for had increased levels of complications. Researchers were at a loss to explain why.
Having been raised Catholic, I can tell you from direct experience that when someone says they are going to pray for you, it creates an obligation on the part of the person being prayed for. This is also known as guilt.
What I find most interesting is that a Google search of the news stories, most headlines say something about prayer not working or having no effect. Only The Age reported the significant findings in the headline. This begs the question, what would the headlines say if prayer worked?
Welcome to the age of faith without reason.
March 31, 2006
Don't Pray for Me
March 29, 2006
Director's Cut
In the opening scene of the movie, "Blade Runner," Ridley Scott shows a long shot of the Los Angeles skyline at night. The view to the north is of a pyramid-shaped mega-structure that seems to cover all of south-central. In the foreground are the oil refineries of Carson and Wilmington. This is not a future, but the location of my present typing moment. Nearly every day when I step outside I hear the doppler-less drone of the Goodyear blimp as it shuttles between its home and quick junket tours of the Long Beach Harbor. Sometimes I find myself commuting in tandem with the airbag.
Near the end of Blade Runner we find ourselves on the roof of the Bradbury Building on the corner of Broadway and Third. Roy Batty the replicant has returned to earth to meet his maker and find a way to extend his brief but shining moment in time. But as he finds out, "A candle that burns twice as bright burns half a long." His last words go something like this:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. "
While the moments he mentions are fictions, mine are not. And thus is the reason for this blog: I have seen things you wouldn't believe and I type them so they won't be lost, like tears in the rain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
