Pharyngula

no idea of the topic, issue or substance but

Posted by: Kevin | January 14, 2008 11:29 PM

Ah, maybe we shouldn't pick on 'em too much. It's cruel to taunt the handicapped.

(UM students and alumni should feel free to defend the honor of their school in this thread.)

And everyone should feel free to defend the (genuinely) handicapped.

Shame on you, PZ!

Posted by: Azkyroth | January 14, 2008 11:35 PM

kevin, you weren't supposed to smoke it all at once.

Back to the topic at hand.

If some prayer is all it takes to solve the world's ills, then I hereby indict every religious person who believes in prayer on multiple counts of murder, since they've clearly allowed millions to die needless deaths through their inaction.

These brave kids should get medals and Nobel Prizes for having the courage to actually sit down and do what no religious person has ever done before, despite all their preaching.

Those who are about to pray, I salut you.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | January 14, 2008 11:43 PM

hmm, if hands clasped in prayer could essentially be said to be idle...

Posted by: Ichthyic | January 14, 2008 11:47 PM

Oh wait lets discuss how prayer works so that everyone is on the same page.

there is a cancer that kills 9 out 10 people that get it.
they do a study.
10 atheist/agnostics get the cancer - 9 people die.
10 random people get the cancer and people pray remotely - 9 people die.
10 evangelical christians get the cancer, everyone and their brother prays night and day - 9 people die.
The 10th person says god saved him.

Posted by: qedpro | January 14, 2008 11:55 PM

It's stories like these that make me fear for the future. Instead of doing something productive to either improve themselves or others, they get on their knees and do nothing but invoke some invisible sky king that will solve all their problems. Making things worse, this is happening in a supposed school of higher learning (and two engineering students are organizers *cries*).

Posted by: Lledowynn | January 15, 2008 12:06 AM

I'm sure it's more like 40,000 who have been praying for better football seasons...and, overall, that only mildly worked at the very best.

Posted by: Math Maniac | January 15, 2008 12:10 AM

While they're at it they also need to make sure that everyone, everywhere has a pony.

er, don't forget someway to clean up after 6 billion ponies while yer at it.

we have enough bullshit from all the fundies themselves, without having to add copious amounts of horseshit to it as well.

Posted by: Ichthyic | January 15, 2008 12:21 AM

I came in a bit late. What does blog #2 mean ? (kevin: I claim the petty annoying .....) Can someone translate that ?

Oilboy

Posted by: Oilboy | January 15, 2008 12:27 AM

If an infinite number of Christians say an infinite number of prayers, they'll eventually manifest divinely all the great works of literature?

no that can't be it.

... they'll eventually fail out of university due to lack of study?

maybe

For sure a handful of Christians saying prayers for 40 days will manifest divinely all the great works of ridicule.

Posted by: Evolving Squid | January 15, 2008 12:30 AM

you might in fact be the very first person to suggest that as a prayer.

I like it.

That settles it. Everybody put aside your nonreligious nature and get cracking. I want these things on our doorsteps in 40 days time.

Posted by: Karley | January 15, 2008 12:32 AM

You know, it would be a great natural experiment if they would just let some science types design the controls. Hypothesis: if you did have a significant number of folk committed to prayer for 40 days and nights, people would overall report feeling better about their community, but there would be little objective indicators of impact. I'd like to take a shot at falsifying that one.

Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | January 15, 2008 12:35 AM

That settles it. Everybody put aside your nonreligious nature and get cracking. I want these things on our doorsteps in 40 days time.

I'm gonna name mine "Jamie".

Posted by: Ichthyic | January 15, 2008 12:42 AM

His name is Vicars . . . Is that "ridiculous coincidence . . . embarrassing" enough?

Posted by: merkin j. pus-tart | January 15, 2008 12:50 AM

Scott - there have been several studies of he effect of prayer. My favourite is Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial. Also note Martin Bland's criticism in the Rabid Responses.

Bob

Posted by: Bob O'H | January 15, 2008 1:03 AM

Oh how I wish I could pick on UMichigan. But the Orlando police department along with church groups did the same thing last year. However I can't find out how well it worked. But we had 3 murders in the first 3 days of the new year. So that might be a plus? http://www.cfnews13.com/News/Local/2007/11/18/40_days_prayer_to_end_violence_wrap_up.html

Posted by: Chris | January 15, 2008 1:10 AM

Icky:

Would you mind dredging up a reference for that one? I vaguely recall the Templeton study and was, very recently, trying to convince someone of the possible (likely?) negative effects of prayer.

Cheers, mate!

Posted by: Avekid | January 15, 2008 1:48 AM

I will be mightily disappointed if I don't get that giant dung beetle now...

I will hug him and squeeze him and pet him and call him George.

Posted by: CanadianChick | January 15, 2008 2:04 AM

I second the motion - A dung beetle in every pot.
Mine's going to be called mohammed. Do you think anyone would get upset?

Posted by: qedpro | January 15, 2008 2:12 AM

I will hug him and squeeze him and pet him and call him George.
I think that already happened; right now he's in the middle east trying to convince everyone that a couple of guys in a dinghy are a WMD so it's time to nuke Iran...but I digress. I was actually going to say that you'd be better barbecuing on an open fire -- that wasn't the first time in Thailand (these ones were dug out of pig piles of elephant poop) I invoked my Vegetarian Get-Out-of-Eating-Weird-Stuff Free card.

Posted by: AlanWCan | January 15, 2008 2:23 AM

Y'know what? Screw the ponies

Cue Sal Cordova quote-mining in three, two, one...

Posted by: Azkyroth | January 15, 2008 3:00 AM

Y'know what? Screw the ponies, just give everyone, everywhere a giant dung beetle.

you might in fact be the very first person to suggest that as a prayer.

Actually I think you might be wrong. You see back when they started ranching in Australia they soon ran into a large and smelly problem, no native coprophiliac invertebrates. So they shipped in some scarab beetles from Egypt. Now I can bet that somewhere along the process leading to the dissemination of said Sacred Dung Beetles, someone prayed for them to arrive.

Sorry.

Posted by: Peter Ashby | January 15, 2008 3:10 AM

The Templeton negative cardiac outcomes prayer study is this one:

http://tinyurl.com/yrmcpc

For those familiar with PubMed the PMID is:16569567

If found it by simply searching PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
for prayer AND cardiac. After a an initial look at the result I added NOT Jehovah* to remove all the articles about how to do bloodless surgery in JWs. it was then easy.

Posted by: Peter Ashby | January 15, 2008 3:29 AM

sgp religion is simply superstition writ large and since false positive behaviour in pigeons that looks remarkably like human superstition has been demonstrated it seems likely that the old false positive fallacy is in action.

Children get inculcated into this by being urged to pray for things that are bound to happen anyway and adults carry on with the reinforcement of the occasional apparent 'hit'. You see the same thing with gamblers.

You are probably aware of the evolutionary advantages of being prone to false positives. Jumping at shadows in the long grass is good if occasionally the long grass conceals tigers (insert danger of your choice here if tigers don't do it for you). Or sticks and snakes. There are no negative effects of prayer beyond wishful thinking and time wasting and the believers have all sorts of trite excuses when it doesn't work.

Posted by: Peter Ashby | January 15, 2008 3:38 AM

Don't they know that "You cannot petition the Lord with prayers." -- Jim Morrison (anagram for "Mr Mojo Risin'")

Posted by: Atanu Dey | January 15, 2008 3:44 AM

Woe for the state of Michigan. As an alumni of UM-Flint (sister school from Ann Arbor) I ran into this all the time I'm afraid. The sad thing is that these kids would be standing in a hallway with a handful of tracts and almost violently shaking due to fear. The problem is that with our economy so bad right now people have lost hope and when that happens they look anywhere for direction. It scares me because I know that the christian fundies target places like this because it makes for easy recruiting. In short, for now we're screwed

Posted by: Jon | January 15, 2008 5:21 AM

Some of the comments on the Blog that goes with the prayer marathon (are they attempting a Guiness record?) are quite symptomatic :

"So I do not have time for much, but going to share this with you: the friday before our kickoff, some of the leaders fasted and prayed all day wherever we were on campus. As I was partaking in this, God revealed a couple of things to me: 1) history will be made and 2) the world will be changed

I was consumed in this and held on to it. One glimpse of that came this week as I helped lead a girl to Christ that we had been praying for for a while. The other cool thing for me personally was that I realize that God is using me and then I am trying to adapt a Paul mentality- nothing, absolutely nothing is matters in comparison with knowing Christ."

Wow, God revealed that history will be made and the world will be changed ! That's something really new and unexpected.

http://worldreachintl.org/university/um/leadersblog.cfm

Posted by: negentropyeater | January 15, 2008 6:36 AM

How do you find Michigan from Ohio?

Go west until you smell it, then north until you step in it!

Yet another reason why Woody Hayes wouldn't call the state up north by its name.

Go Bucks!

Posted by: Mr. B | January 15, 2008 6:58 AM

I've always liked this story from The Onion (the last line is the killer):

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/95_96_prayers_finally

Posted by: Geoffrey Alexander | January 15, 2008 7:24 AM

qedpro wrote:
"they should know better anyway, don't they all pray for the football team to win and look at how that turns out."

As a UofM alum and Wolverine football fan, I couldn't let this pass. Let's take a look at how it has turned out for the team:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Wolverines_football

"The Michigan Wolverines football program represents the University of Michigan. They have the most all-time wins and highest all-time winning percentage in NCAA Division I-A history."

Seems like it's turned out OK, doesn't it qedpro?

Posted by: JoeyJoJoJr | January 15, 2008 7:33 AM

As a Michigan graduate I decided to post, so here are my comment and the response:

Originally posted by
Jack McCullough
As a U-M graduate (Law, 1979) I have to wonder about the weak-minded students that will attempt such a thing. Do you imagine that your god, who by your theory has the power to remedy any problems that anyone might have, is unaware of the problems until you call them to his attention by praying? Or that the person on whose behalf you are praying are less worthy of divine intervention if you don't pray for them?

REPLY:
Sir, with all due respect, if we students are weak-minded, then you are too because you graduated from here as well.

Posted by: Jack McCullough | January 15, 2008 7:37 AM

the weak-minded students that will attempt such a thing.

REPLY: Sir, with all due respect, if we students are weak-minded, then you are too because you graduated from here as well.

Ha, ha, ha... Typical. They fail to see they're just a subset, a superstitious subset, of all Michigan students. And while your description of them may be quite accurate, their description does not apply to all potential UM graduate hecklers, of which you are one.

Posted by: Moses | January 15, 2008 7:50 AM

@48:

You forgot the USS Cole

Posted by: SteveM | January 15, 2008 8:38 AM

Sorry, try again:
USS Cole

Posted by: SteveM | January 15, 2008 8:40 AM

I hope they're getting all squinty-eyed when they pray. Studies have shown that to be the most effective way to ask the big daddy for something.

I also like how they say that praying is a humbling experience. What is so humbling about believing that the laws of the natural universe can be altered to serve your own interests if only you can keep some nut in a chapel for a certain amount of time mouthing words to themselves.

Posted by: savagemickey | January 15, 2008 8:46 AM

It's good to see UMich producing new generations of Coulters.

Posted by: MAJeff | January 15, 2008 8:50 AM

Another UofM grad here (Aero Eng, '00)
In so much as this prayer event is means for students to come together as a community I think it is a good thing. Eliminating the isolation that comes about in a large university like U of M (small fish in a huge pond) can certainly prevent a lot of the more stressful issues that come about during college life. Arguable if Vicars was not engaged with the church event he would not have been in the right place at the right time to offer assistance. (To me it's more of a "luck favoring the prepared" sort of situation rather than divine intervention.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that this event primes students to be engaged with the community so that they can be available to help others. So I do read this so much as "prayer" making good things happen, but "community involvement" making good things happen. I'm focusing on the "united" part of "united prayer". (Even the article notes: Organizers of the event said 40 Days of Prayer serves to bring otherwise segregated groups closer together to work for a common goal.)

Admittedly there is no reason that a non-religious event can't achieve this effect (and I suspect they probably do, U of M has pretty much a club, team, or association for any interest.)

I just don't get the impression that the 40 days of prayer is the cure, but the comming together as community certainly helps.

Posted by: SpotWeld | January 15, 2008 9:01 AM

Actually, if you check the michigandaily link at the top of this post, you'll see enough healthy scepticism expressed (see what "Dustin" wrote) to restore your faith in the students of Michigan university.

As for #57, my Christian upbringing still has sufficient clout with me that I find the idea of God answering prayers for someone's football team utterly revolting.

Peter

Posted by: Peter | January 15, 2008 9:14 AM

I should have read the rest of the comments before posting being as how a dozen different people brought up that study before I did. That's what I get for being late to the party.

Posted by: Boosterz | January 15, 2008 9:20 AM

[God]Stop grovelling![/God]

What good is being god then?

Posted by: MAJeff | January 15, 2008 9:32 AM

I wonder if they know that the repeated biblical use of the number 40 merely refers to a long period of time, and not an exact count. As someone above mentioned, they might need 41 instead of 40. I suggest they all remain on their knees until we all receive our dung beetles, ponies for those that want them, a replacement for oil, world peace, winning lottery tickets for me, and rainbows with pots of gold. And of course, while they are on their knees, I'm sure we can think of other things for them to do.

Posted by: Randy | January 15, 2008 9:56 AM

- palau # 70, that weevil rather looks like a wolverine.

As to wolverine, "A solitary, burrowing carnivorous mammal (Gulo gulo) of northern forest regions, related to the weasel and having a heavyset body, short legs, dark fur, and a bushy tail. Also called carcajou, glutton; Also called skunk bear."

From another definition of "wolverine": "The anal glands secrete an unpleasant-smelling fluid."

Similar to the badger in that way. Hello UW.

- Of course prayer is nothing new to UM.

http://www.michigansportscenter.com/2007/12/keep-elliott-mealer-in-your-prayers.html

"If you're going to take anything from this, it is that you should wear your seatbelt at all times. No one in the car was wearing their seatbelt, and you have to imagine that lives could have been saved if seatbelts were worn. Regardless of that, my thoughts and prayers are with the entire Mealer and Richer (his girlfriend) family and anyone affected by this tragedy. Stay strong, Elliott."

Well, why didn't Gawd remind them to put on their friggin seatbelts?

Posted by: bernarda | January 15, 2008 10:12 AM

I would try to defend my former school, but some how I just can't find anything good to say about it. Other than they finally got rid of Carr.

Posted by: chris rattis | January 15, 2008 10:38 AM

"Ridiculous coincidences started happening that got to a point where it was embarrassing to call them coincidences,"

Posted by: Gobaskof | January 15, 2008 10:48 AM

As football is the most important subject at UM, well at many other major universities as well - just look at coaches' salaries compared to professors salaries - here is how it ends up.

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=21277

"Feely's epiphany occurred Jan. 1, 1998, in Pasadena, Calif., just hours after his college football team, the University of Michigan Wolverines, defeated Washington State 21-16 to win the Rose Bowl, capping a perfect 12-0 national championship season.

The raucous post-game celebration at the team's hotel that New Year's Day was just a noisy backdrop for Feely's encounter with a 10-year-old boy who was dying of a brain tumor. The boy's mother had brought him to meet Feely after the game."

- Of course he didn't ask why Gawd gave the boy a brain tumor. Not at all.

""He knew he was very ill," Feely told the Catholic Advocate, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., recalling his impromptu meeting with the boy. "I told him God had a purpose for him; that God has a plan for everyone.""

- Yeah, Gawd had a purpose in murdering a 10-year-old boy. The boy was just part of Gawd's Plan.

"The kicker and the boy connected, albeit briefly, amid the hoopla in the hotel lobby. Feely recalled seeing a visible, remarkable difference in the boy's appearance and expression - evidence that Feely's words somehow had touched a chord.

"I think about the impact I had on that little boy," said Feely, who was second in the NFL last season with 148 points, sitting in the locker room of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. "That was my moment of clarity. It solidified my faith. That was when I understood my life as a man, how I could use football to affect people's lives in a positive way. God gives us different gifts.""

- Yeah, I bet they connected briefly. Mainly because
Gawd killed the kid.

The article has other asswipes like Feely in it.

Posted by: bernarda | January 15, 2008 11:02 AM