What would you do if your beliefs were challenged?

[anarres]

OK, so here's my problem....

I would describe myself as a sceptical agnostic / curious athiest. That means that I root myself firmly in science and the observable world. I look for empirical evidence before I believe something, and I try to keep an open mind to those things science has not got answers for (and indeed, to a lesser exent also an open mind to those things science does have answers for).

Now, here is my dilemma:

* Suppose there are many aspects of the universe we have a very limited understanding of (akin to our knowledge of quantum physics 100 years ago). This is a given fact for everyone, I hope.

* Now suppose scientific evidence emerges that some unexplainable phenomenon exists - this is the "unbelievable" bit for most I guess. For this purpose I'll give 2 examples:

quote:
1) Healing power of prayer

If enough people prey for a group of sick people they are more likely to get better.

For this example the details are not too important, except that they have done numerous blind studies with people preying for sick patients that didn't know they were being preyed for. They would use control groups, etc - all the usual stuff to make these studies believable and repeatable.

quote:
2) Mind over matter

In this case a person is given a circle with lots of LED's around the circumference. One and only one LED is lit at any one time, and it goes out every second and randomly one of it's neighbours lights up. This creates a "random walk" of the light - it wanders back and forth around the circle at random.

Now people are put in a room with the circle and told to try and make it go clockwise (or counter-clockwise). The number of steps clockwise and counter-clockwise are counted - and for a statistically significant number the LED moves more in the direction they are trying for then the other.

For example: with 1000 people, say 680 end up with it more clockwise than not, instead of an expected 500.

My actual question is: how would I cope with this challenge to my beliefs? How would the scientific community cope with it?

I ask because it seems to be the complaint of many religous people that science is dogmatic and unable to change, just as they accuse religous people of being (thinking here specifically of Christians vs Scientists). Well, I think they may be right!

I for one would welcome the news - I would of course be very very skeptical, but the assumption above is that "this" (whatever it is) has been shown and is repeatable, and so my skepticism would be somewhat satisfied.

I however fear the reaction of the international scientific community - would we get denials and everyone trying to prove it wrong? Would we get people shunning the methods used in the examples above? Would the scientific community ever allow such methods to get funding in the first place?

This isn't an attack on science or religion, it's simply me trying to understand the scientific community more. More specifically I wonder how other "skeptics/scientists" feel about these things and how they would react if discoveries like this start to be reported in reliable and repeatable ways. Did you know both of my examples have actually been done in RL for example? Just AFAIK not in a repeatable manner or it would be (or rather should be) big news.

I'm scared of posting this at CFC because it's full of trolling assholes and religous nuts, but I'm gonna do it anyway because I think the reaction will be somewhat different, and I might learn *something*.

[Matrix]

I feel a bit compelled to answer here. I'm catholic, but also a future (spacial) scientist.

First of all, religion isn't, or shouldn't be IMO, an answer to those questions science doesn't give an answer for.
Secondly, religion is a matter of belief. That means you shouldn't try to look for scientific evidence that God does or does not exist (or scientific evidence of your examples). Then you're missing the point.
Religion is a way of looking to life, gives it a purpose, and provides a safe haven.
Religion also gives us rules that should increase our happiness if we follow it.
That last point is controversial; also some follow his/her religious rules more than others. Let me explain it by an example:
Jewism/Christianity/Islam tells us not to have sex before marriage. You can say you'd be happier if you are allowed to do so, but how much misery isn't there because of people being unfaithful to his/her partner? To me for most rules counts: break them if you truly feel you're doing the right thing, or do no harm, but if you break them you're on thin ice.

About "safe haven": I find that some people hold on to their religion too much and are unable or unwilling to use their common sense. Like a man scared of leaving his cave. That's the downside. However, as safe haven religion can give you mental support when in trouble or even help you get back on track.

I especially like to know what Stapel has to say about this. I know he's a-religious as hell. (Now there's an expression. )

[Lt. Killer M]

well, there's a history of fakes, some smartly done, some iditically simple....

the prayer example breaks down logically when you ask whether prayer helps for agnostics or atheists... or, when prayers are opposing each other.

so, I'd always be skeptical - much more skeptical than with 'proper' science. But, if there's evidence, it's just a matter of designing a proper test to show it's wrong, so I'd never refuse anything on principle. Science is sturdy, it can cope with things ti can't explain - usually by showing they are wrong This DOES involve giving funds to research, why not? I can well imagine that scientific explanations are found in the process of trying to disprove the claims.

And, why do you fear that? Why is it bad if people look to dispove - it adds detail knowledge!

[Socrates]

A quick reply without thinking too much...

I myself am without religion, though born and raised as a Catholic. I'm not an atheist, maybe I'm agnostic. What I'm sure of at the moment is that I don't need religion to be part of my life, so I just forget the concept altogether. I think it won't get me more happy or more in touch with the Truth.

I once read a book written by 2 people, 1 being a French physicist who won the Nobel Prize in the 90s. They described many examples of the like, only to "solve" them, ie. each example had a logical explanation. It helped being even less impressed by such phenomenons. Statistical study was key to solve many of them BTW.

How I work is a bit like this. Science is a living matter, whereas religion is not (or hardly). As science advances, we can explain more and more phenomenons. It's always a fight against ignorance. A new discovery will destroy some myths but will also create some new unexplained phenomenons, on a higher level. I will always believe in what science "says", and wait for science to find a solution to unexplained things. Until then, if some people want me to believe in a wierd thing, they'll have to prove it with some statistical answers. Your example about the LEDs may be a lucky roll, anyone heard about a spear defeating a tank ? BTW, getting 500 times "left" and 500 times "right" would be a "lucky" roll by itself !!

[Energy]

Just a few weeks ago was in the news the result of a similar project you describe here. They did a test where people where praying for patients in the UK. The outcome here was that there was no scientific prove that praying helps at all. Most of these research projects heavily depend on how you measure things. How many studys have been done to prove that smoking causes cancer and how many prove that there's no connection between the two? Numbers lie, big time!

So, if we can't explain a phenomenon, for me that means we're not measuring the right things or not measuring it right.

[romeothemonk]

Hmm, I feel almost compelled to answer here. I am maybe as close as to a religous nut as you can get here at CDZ. I also have a B.S. in Physics, a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Chemical Engineering.
As both a science and religious person, I get tossed into this debate a lot. I have my own spin on this. Fitst of all the main error seems to be the definition of terms. Science gets credit for everything we see and "understand," while religion gets everything derived from faith, or lacking a logical explanation.
In my background in physics, I have to take lots of things on faith to even describe quanta effects or nuclear particle effects. My religious belief has lots of history to go back on. There is quite a bit of archeological nad textual data that there was a Jesus of Nazareth and that he was crucified by Pontious Pilate over the Passover weekend.
In my limited thinking capacity, I find that religion and science are inseperable. I believe that God maintains the universe, and uses bounded rules of science to help us see that. Because for every limitation of science, you can find examples that break the statistical mold set forth by science.
I realize that I am rambling quite a bit and probably bordering on the illogical.
For anyone interested, I recommend the book,"The Case for a Creator," by Lee Stroebel. It chronichles an agnostic/atheist and his quest for undersdtanding. He was a reporter for a major Chicago Paper, and the book is actually full of scientific quotations references and such. (I would rate it as a 7 out of 10 on a technical content scale with Harry Potter being a 1 and a Quantum Textbook being a 10)
Caveat, I have not finished the book yet, and there is a leaning in the book towards a Creator. However, with Lee's writing skills it reads fairly easily, and he outlines points much better than I can, and has interviews with leading creationists and evolutionary scientists.

[Rik Meleet]

Anarres: they are not challenges to your believe; if you ask me.

Led-example: If it turns out [u]scientifically</u> that a person can influence the leds; than scientifically the person is part of the equation. That leads to more questions such as "What if we put 2 people in the room, 1 with the desire to go clockwise, 1 with the desire to go counterclockwise" ; "does the distance the person has to the leds matter?" ; "what if the person cannot see the leds?" ; "does the color of the led matter" etc.
It is not uncommon for the measuring device/human to have an influence on the outcome. Quantum mechanics also is bothered by that (Not my field, so I may be talking bullshit here). IIRC the Heisenberg incertainty principle; If you can determine the location of a particle very precisely; you've given it so much disturbance you cannot say anything about its speed any more; and vice versa.

Praying:
More difficult and at first glance a challenge to your beliefs. If I got your example correctly interpreted: Person A prays for sick person B, but not for sick person C, without sick persons B and C knowing it. The outcome is that person B gets healthy and person C doesn't ?
That has been tested and it is true. That would definately raise scientific questions. It's no proof for a God though; it's proof that praying helps to get healthy. How it works I cannot explain, so more scci questions.

Perhaps finally a purpose for religion? Just lock em all up in the hospital-cellar and force them to pray to reduce medical cost.

[grahamiam]

quote:Originally posted by romeothemonk

In my limited thinking capacity, I find that religion and science are inseperable. I believe that God maintains the universe, and uses bounded rules of science to help us see that.

I was brought up Catholic, and this is how many of my teachers explained science vs religion. In fact, my high school biology teacher was a Christian Brother and yet, emphatically believed that evolution was true and Creationism was just a story for people 4000yrs ago to explain the world as they saw it. With this backround, it's interesting to me to see how the current ID debate is going in the US. My bet is that Brother Talbot is firmly against ID, except in the case that God created the Big Bang. From there, he believed that that God just wrote the rules such that man would eventually evolve.

As far as the 2 items presented by Anarres, I have no idea on how much work has been done on analysing the results, nor do I know how many tests were run. In today's media, it seems that results of studies are published to the whole world before they are given a proper peer review. This is not the way the scientific method works, and these studies must be replicated by skeptics as well for them to gain wider acceptance. These claims remind me of the 2 groups that claimed they created cold fusion at the end of the '80s. Since these were scientists, they completely documented thier work and results. Others have tried to replicate the results and failed, thus thier work is not considered proof of cold fusion. Whether or not cold fusion is possible is still unknown. Ditto goes for the "Healing Power of Prayer" as I the Mayo Clinic studied this recently and found no known effect, countering an earlier claim by other studies. Never heard of the light test, but it sounds interesting.

[romeothemonk]

The whole ID case is a rather simple case for me to believe, as I am happily confident that people are created in the image of God, given our free wills, and proceed to muck it up, then shaved apes.
It is interesting to note that apes live in male dominated packs, where the leader has supreme power. It kind of goes against the grain that as humans "evolve" we tend towards representative rulership rather than just might makes right.
Based on my readings of Darwin, (Yes I read the whole Origin of Species, Technical content 4 out of 10) and my study of human psychology and habits, (no formal training) I notice something odd about our governments.
In the Animal kingdom the most dominant male gets the choice females to mate with. In todays human world, the most dominant males do not get all the choice females. Instead guys like Johnny Depp, George Clooney, JFK etc, get all the choice females. A lot of the UFC and Special forces guys I know just get prostitutes. Does this signify that selective breeding for the advancement of the species is bunk?
Anyway, that rambled to the side a little bit. I would just note that making myself stronger definitely increased the quality of the females that I hung around with (and eventually married). Maybe it is not all bunk.
I am not convinced of the big bang occuring, but I am convinced of a singularity point in space time. This could allow for the big bang, it could be the starting point of "let there be light". regardless of what occured there, examples like the Cambrian Explosion lead me to believe that if God did use the big bang, He also just reached down and made plants, animals, creatures, etc after the big bang started. From my undergraduate studies in physics as well as studies into creation science, The big bang theory adequately describes the distribution of matter, but not of life. Thus the acknowledgment that after the singularity in space time, life needed an intelligent design.

[grs]

I am far from talking bad about anyones religous belives, but you can't be serious in believing "UFC and Special forces guys" would be the top choice in selective breeding. I guess we live in a time where it is brains not brawns, don't we