Terahertz

My latest attempt at non-fiction comes from Tom Harpur, writer of the book-turned-CBC-documentary “The Pagan Christ” which asked if Jesus was made up of earlier myths. Harpur however, is a self described

struggling Christian who has found the Anglican Church the most conductive to his own spiritual grown. But, I’m attached to it by an elastic band, not a chain. [Would You Believe? p. 45]

The book I’m reading is “Would You Believe? Finding God Without Losing Your Mind” subtitled “A book for doubters, sceptics and wistful unbelievers.” With this title and his form of liberal Christianity, I went in honestly expecting a decent argument or case for theism.

Unfortunately, after finishing the introduction, and Chapter 1: “Why I believe” I can say that there’s no new tricks in this bag. The first chapter starts off with a good teaser:

I should stress that when I talk about faith, I am decidedly not talking about blind faith… As rational beings we must have reasons for our beliefs. While any God worthy of the name is by definition far beyond reason’s total grasp, nevertheless a faith that will not stand rational scrutiny, that contradicts reason in any fundamental way, is not a faith for human beings. True spiritual belief is never “blind.” [p. 18-19, emphasis added]

He then talks about “non-rational” aspects of faith and belief that go “beyond reason.” These are his arguments of the “heart” or where he just really “feels” it’s true.

He tips his hat early and admits that his reason for believing is that “nothing else makes as much sense to [him].” [p. 20] With this he launches into a discussion of Gordon Sinclair and Paul Davies and their belief that the universe is too complex and seems like it just had to be “made for us.” This is the “argument from design” and essentially is another “god-of-the-gaps” in that we don’t have a complete understanding of the creation of the universe. Dr. Stenger (who I shall be seeing in Calgary tomorrow) has utterly destroyed these arguments in his books “Has Science Found God?” and “God: The Failed Hypothesis.” In short, there are reasonable naturalistic explanations for how the universe, in its current form, came to be.

Harpur’s second reason for belief is his gut again. He says “there is more than one way of knowing” beyond the rational/logical sense. He also claims the logical positivists and empiricists have been utterly rejected since their prime earlier in the last century. However, forms of empiricism still fills the heart of philosophy of science and epistemology today, and in fact, I doubt outside of theological circles that any academic seeks to gain knowledge (true beliefs about the world external to ourselves) by means other than dirty empiricism.  The main fact here is no “other way of knowing” has produced the concrete knowledge of the world that empirical science has.  When Harpur argues that he believes in God because it feels right, he has not given us a “rational” argument.

Harpur finishes off by citing that although he doesn’t believe in biblical inerrancy, he does find religious texts (as well as great arts) so moving that they had to be (at least partly) divinely-inspired. Again, we don’t have anything more than the last argument.

So out of Harpurs arguments, we see none that pass his own filter since they all “contradict reason.” However, there are still nine exciting chapters to go.

Chapter 2 is on “what he believes” and is a description of his own theology and beliefs, which I shall not repeat. However, I had to set the book down for a minute when I read the following:

Prayer, like gravity, is an unseen force. [p. 46]

Except when I let go of the book I could see an effect of gravity. There have been tests for observable results of prayer – they have all failed (or been methodologically unsound). He argues that he knows it works because of “personal experience as well as years of observing it working in the lives of many others.” [p.46] He then steps a bit towards the loony end and states:

What interests me is that while polls show the majority of ordinary people believe in the reality and power of prayer, the secular scientific and medical establishments carry on for the most part ignoring it completely. For example, pharmaceutical companies in North America are spending as much as $15 billion (US) a year to try to come up with a new antibiotic to combat the “superbacteria” that have evolved in response to previous antibiotics… They will spend absolutely nothing, naturally, on research into the effects of prayer upon health and healing. You can’t put that into a pill and mass-market it. Yet, recent research I did for my book on healing, The Uncommon Touch, showed me that prayer has a measurable effect on healing. The medical establishment could put protocols in place to make a beginning at least of documenting the effects of prayer scientifically. [p. 47-48]

Except, Mr. Harpur, “secular science” HAS looked into prayer (see above linked article, and Google “scientific study of efficacy of prayer”), and the evidence isn’t there. Your personal “research” likely found placebo effects. If prayer worked so damn well, why did the Plagues kill 30 to 60% of Europe during the height of the Dark Ages (a high time for theism)? Prayer doesn’t work, and promoting unscientific practices is dangerous to public health.

Harpur touts Dr. Herbert Benson, who made some work on relaxation techniques to aid in health care, however Dr. Benson pushes a bit too far with his conclusions, and isn’t entirely accepted within the scientific community.

He follows with a discussion of Dr. Randolph Byrd who did experiments on the efficacy of prayer (contradicting Harpur’s earlier claim no such work has been done), and finding it to be successful. A quick look reveals that Byrd was dead wrong:

The “landmark study” of Byrd and the recent confirmation attempt by Harris et al., both claiming therapeutic benefits of intercessory prayer, are shown to be invalid. One was improperly designed, the other fallaciously analyzed–and the two contradict each other.

I believe Dr. Stenger addresses this study as well in Has Science Found God?, however I had to return the book to the library, so I can’t pull a reference here (Dr. Stenger does devote a chapter to debunking intercessory prayer claims).

He finally cites a “successful, but as yet unpublished, doctoral thesis,” by Rev. Dr. Sean O’Laoire who did more research into intercessory prayer (and surprisingly found good results). However, little work has followed up on this thesis. One key thing to note about studies of this sort is that the threshold of crap (data that may be statistically insignificant) that is accepted in medical journals is much higher than in harder sciences. This is mainly to allow potential new treatments to get to the market to help people live, however it has the negative effect of allowing more statistical aberrations through. More studies should be done, at least that much I can agree with Mr. Harpur.

Chapter 2 finishes discussing Harpurs views on fear and doubt. Doubt is crucial to faith he says, and fear is often misused.

I will continue my commentary on this book as I try to finish it.