Seversky
Posts: 442
Joined: June 2010
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| Quote (Maya @ Aug. 22 2010,13:13) | William J. Murray gets it completely backwards:
| Quote | | If one cannot even provide a real-world example of a thing, how can anyone say science cannot investigate that thing, much less explain why? |
Um, Billy J, if you can't provide a real-world example of a thing, what the heck are you talking about? |
I dunno. UD is full of claims and beliefs that are just - unreal - there in black and white.
For example, kairosfocus backs it up with this little GEM of a story:
| Quote | | More directly and personally, I personally knew Shelly B, a Jamaica Scholar, ace med student, daughter of a bishop and all around lovely young lady, who in the mid 80?s was seen to have ovarian cysts with Bad C being raised. After prayer, they vanished, and he clinical records are there on the case, at the university hospital. |
Being a scientist, of course, Gordon is careful not to overstate the significance of this case by pointing out that
1) Without verification this is no more than an anecdote
2) If the disease "vanished" after prayer you have coincidence but not necessarily causation
3) If the patient was receiving conventional treatment for the condition why should we assume that prayer rather than medical science was responsible for its disappearance?
4) If cancer was present then spontaneous remission is still the more probable explanation than a miracle.
5) The significance of such a case, if any, can only be judged in a statistical context. How many cases are there where patients have recovered following prayer compared to the number of cases where patients have died in spite of intercessory prayer?
Oops! Sorry! No, I'm wrong. He didn't point all that out.
Perhaps, like Wells and Hunter, he's one of those fair-weather scientists. He does science up where it conflicts with his religious beliefs at which point science goes out the window and faith takes over.
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