Give me a good PS2/PC game any day :thumb:
(has to be a game that requires thought and strategy)
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Give me a good PS2/PC game any day :thumb:
(has to be a game that requires thought and strategy)
Like 3d marbles, or Pacman ;)
Amen to that bro! :lol:
If I really want to spoil myself I might even indulge in 'Manic Miner' or 'Jet Set Willy'
oo-er-missus ;)
People are always shocked when they find out that I don't own a TV. The telemarketers from the cable company get so flustered, they sometimes act as if they have just discovered intelligent life. Certainly not something they are familiar with.
A few years back, the TV licence people (in the UK we need to own a TV licence) came round and asked to search the house for a TV, or any other appliance that is capable of picking up the TV signals.
They didn't find one [edit] Nor did I have one, I should add [/edit]
Still, I got taken to court, and the magistrate didn't believe I didn't own a TV and fined me £600 for evading the licence, and £400 for wasting the courts time.
I tried not to pay, until the police arrested me and threatened me with jail.
My solicitor said I had no chance, and I had to pay.
Which I did.
:mad:
I eventually bought a lovely LCD TV just 18 months ago. The kids love it the wife loves it.
I still hate it.
I've cut the plug off on more than one occasion . . .
Perhaps I'm just a weirdo. :cry:
This is what I mean:
What's wrong with some music, some conversation, and a good glass of red wine. I drink Guiness when I'm at the pub.
I've had the most spell binding conversations when people who are SOOO used to the telly when they come round - but I switch it off and put on some music they're hardly likely to have heard.
It stimulates the brain, it stimulates friendship, it stimulates the soul (if you believe in that sort of thing - I don't want to go down to Capsule route again)
What's wrong with that?
It think that's why 'they' call it alive. That's what life is all about isn't it?
People, friendship, love.
Beautifully spoken yrwyddfa!
I read Guiness somewhere.. I agree with that :thumb:
Its not up to me to prove that something DOESN'T work.
Prove to me that it DOES.
If you don't believe that, then prove to me that the Easter Bunny doesn't really exist.
Or prove to me that Aliens don't control our government.
Or prove to me that there are no WMDs in Switzerland.
Quote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
As I said: every village needs it's plank.Quote:
Originally Posted by capsulecorpjx
Where did you find that I believed in God : are you a moron?
Where did you find that I was religous you ********
Leave it: learn, my fellow human being: learn: you are wrong; just accept it and we will both go on our ways.
Please don't argue: you are only going to look very very sttooopid.
Please. Leave it out: you have NO argument.
Ignore my last post.
Your are stuoid: anyone who reads yours post in this thread can see that.
Have you heard of the Darwin Awards? You're definelty in there.
Hear, hear! :thumb:Quote:
Originally Posted by yrwyddfa
The last two were a bit harsh, though. Leaping without looking is a favorite human pastime. Regrettable, but we've all done it.
I think that the mere fact you posted:Quote:
Originally Posted by capsulecorpjx
means that you must be prepared to have a little backup to that statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by capsulecorpjx
Correct me if I'm wrong but you appear to be saying that prayer is useless. If you believe that prayer is useless, one presumes you have some sort of evidence (emprical, or by induction - I don't care) to back this up. Even some observational experience might be a little helpful to your cause.
But for you to sit there and believe that you make statements and then expect everyone to simply accept that what you say to be the truth is, I think, a little erroneous.
If you followed what I've said, you'll find that I've all but admitted there's no evidence I can give either way. I cannot prove it, I cannot disprove it. I cannot say that prayer is either effective, or a waste of time. I do not know.
You are the one who thinks he knows. Well, tell the world then: don't keep it such a secret.
(BTW You've failed to back up almost every assertion you've made on this thread: you have still failed to point out the bit where I say 'I believe in God')
Yeah: tell me about it. I've said it more eloquently above (I think)Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
:blush:
Ya, but I've always admired your ability to argue from positions you don't hold as well as ones you do.
I can understand somebody mistakenly assuming your religeous (I can't spell that word) position from some of your earlier posts. Few people argue for a position they don't themselves hold. If you only argue for your own positions, then you only see the world from one point of view, and your view is thereby, restricted.
When faced, explicitly, with some form of danger where personal life is threathened the use of prayer (and so in) increases exponentially. As does calling out for God, Mum, Husband/Wife, Children. (I read this somewhere, but can't now find the source)
What I object to is the 'off-the-cuff' dismissal of an emotional response a human being has had to what can only be described as mortal danger.
Even worse is the fact that Capsule dismissed 4/5ths of the world's population in one go (in case he didn't know: secularism accounts for only 1/5th of the worlds population. Being a believer of democracy (I presume) shouldn't he agree to concede to popular opinion: which is, of course, that God exists)
He would argue that there was no evidence. But there's no evidence either way. Therefore his safest bet must be to agree that there is a God [edit] on the basis that that's what the majority believe [/edit] But he can never do that. Years of televised secularist propoganda have taken away his freedom of thought. Like the majority of the western populations.
The decision to believe, or otherwise, in the existence of a God has been stolen from him. It was taken before he had a concious power for rational thought; around 4 years old. It has, since then, been constently reinforced, monitored, and censured. You believe exactly what the establisment want you to believe.
Not that I think this is some sort of programming against the masses. I think that it's all happened by accident. There was no master plan. A small decision here, another there, and, according to the laws of emergence, you get the (desired or otherwise) complex result.
Summing up my thoughts: it is irrelevant whether or not you might believe in God, or not. Some people do - and all people deserve respect.
They are, after all, human beings, just like you, and just like me.
This should be a very easy thing to investigate. Get 200 cancer patients, have 100 pray for survival, 100 not pray. How many survive from each group?Quote:
I doubt you could find any empirical evidence one way or the other with regards to the effectiveness of prayer.
This is not verifiable.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
If there is a God, then how can you verify that it was His assistance/lack of assistance that provided a result?
To verify that a prayer is effective you will need to demonstrate that
(i) The prayer was a righteous one.
(ii) There is a God to listen to the prayer
(iii) That God heard the prayer
(iv) That God acted upon that prayer.
(v) The patient was cured directly because of i,ii,iii,iv.
I think that apart from (i) which still extremely subjective and will thus be subject to some form of morality test, none of others are verifiable one way or the other.
I do not think that there is a test that can verify the effectiveness or otherwise of prayer.
But attitude can impact cancer survival, so how do you control for that?Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
Yeah: it's even worse than that. Most cancers exhibit completely different DNA signatures (by their very nature) Therefore the proteins that the cancerous cells are spitting out will have a different effect on each person in the group.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
So how do you split the control group effectively in order to make the test valid?
Not at all. All you care about is whether the group that prayed had higher survival rates.Quote:
To verify that a prayer is effective you will need to demonstrate that
(i) The prayer was a righteous one.
(ii) There is a God to listen to the prayer
(iii) That God heard the prayer
(iv) That God acted upon that prayer.
(v) The patient was cured directly because of i,ii,iii,iv.
Better yet, select two groups of cancer patients and two groups of prayers/non-prayers. One could pray to God for cancer group A and and one to the devil for cancer group B if you want. The patients need not know that someone is praying for them. Also, standardize the praying to avoid questions about whether the correct prayer was said.Quote:
But attitude can impact cancer survival, so how do you control for that?
Collect your cancer patients based on similar prognosis. Then if the sample is large enough (100 is large) the small variations will average out.Quote:
So how do you split the control group effectively in order to make the test valid?
Interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
What would you determine if the targets of those that prayed to the devil had a higher cure rate than those that prayed to god, but both had a higher cure rate than those patients that had no prayers said for them at all?
Or...
What would you determine if the targets of those that prayed to god had a higher cure rate than those that prayed to the devil, but both had a higher cure rate than those patients that had no prayers said for them at all?
Or...
hmmm, abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba ???
Even similar prognosis can have large variations in results. You'd need a much much larger sample.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
Also you'd need to do significance tests on the group that were prayer. A simple chi-squared test should tell you if there's any significance (once all the variables are included) to the group that prayed.
I'd bet money that the results were inconclusive.
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/co...p?sitearea=ETO
It's not conclusive - but I'm glad I haven't been to the bookies :eek:
That's a great site. I had heard of some of those studies, so I'm glad you went and found it, as I would have been too lazy, and would just have told Moeur: Good idea, it's been done, I'm sure of it.
Unfortunately, some patients were aware that they were being prayed for and there were other problems with these studies
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-05/prayer.html
To draw a conclusion, this test needs to be repeated under more controlled conditions.
Here a report of another study. Conclusion: no benefit from prayer beyond the placebo effect.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/health/0...lig-249660.htm
Have there been any studies done on praying for restraint to not get caught up in a meaningless discussion concerning praying?
Everything is meaningless. Didn't you know?
What were they ill with? I see that they weren't talking about survival rates, eh? They were talking about recovery rates; implying they expected every patient to get better.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
Why would God feel the need to intervene if we could manage it on our own?
Actually scrub the above: I didn't read the link properly. Whoops :eek:
I hope for your sake, and the company you work for, you do not carry out research on a large scale. To simply have two groups and conclude on one set of results from 100 people is absurd. There are too many variables to result in a conclusive result.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
As yrywddfa pointed out, there would be no way to prove that the praying was actually responsible for the survival of a person so the research would be pointless from the very beginning. Also, with any research the research group has to be more than 100 people, a more respectable sized group would be 1,000 or 5,000
100 people is a large sample for narrow distributions. I don't know what kind of distribution we would get with the illness we would measure but we could simply choose a larger sample if the distribution is broader.
If this were true, then there would be no point in doing any kind of study on illnesses because you can never prove that the effect is caused by the variable you are monitoring. However, if you take measures to control or eliminate the effects of other factors you can draw conclusions about the effects of prayer with a high degreeof certainty.Quote:
there would be no way to prove that the praying was actually responsible for the survival of a person
On another point, I would not vote to fund such a study since I see no scientific basis for the study. I put it into the same category as all the New Age health nonsense such as homeopathic remedies.
You seem to feel quite happy to say 'nonsense' with no empirical evidence whatsoever (unless you call the lame link you provided as empirical evidence?) So called scientists with little or no regard for the scientific method. And I believed you were secular, once, too. It's amazing how badly you can read some people.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
If you had any regard for the scientific method your response would be 'It is an NP hard problem. There is no evidential test I can provide, no statistical method nor mathematical regime that I can support, no proof that leads to empirical certainty that will guarentee a postive outcome on one side or the other'
If you wanted to be entirely honest with your audience you would probably say 'I can see no evidence supporting either one case or the other so it is therefore my position that I'm undecided'
If we were talking about the existence of a creator you would be duty bound to say 'I cannot preclude the existence of a creator'
But you don't, you can't or perhaps you won't.
I guess you've watched too much telly, too.
I was not referring to any of the studies we discussed above, but simply that there is no reason to investigate the effects of prayer since I cannot show a linkage between prayer and health. It is not a hard problem but a simple one.
I cannot preclude the existence of a creatorQuote:
If we were talking about the existence of a creator you would be duty bound to say 'I cannot preclude the existence of a creator'
I cannot preclude the existence of alien intervention
I cannot preclude the possibility that we we actually dreaming.
I cannot preclude the existence of fairies, goblins, the Easter bunny or Santa Claus.
No, I am not a religious person. I know many people who are and derive much benefit from their religion. I don't understand however, how a rational logically thinking person could actually hold, what appears to me to be superstitious beliefs.
In which case I apologise; it appears I might have somewhat got the wrong end of the stick :blush:Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
BTW you probably can prove that the Easter Bunny, fairies, goblins and certainly Santa Clause are works of fiction; they probably have a definite non-contested author for a start.
As for the other three points you make - I agree: there is no proof either way.
100 people is a large sample? You're joking right? 100 people is nowhere near enough for an accurate result.Quote:
Originally Posted by moeur
No point doing this kind of study? Definitely not.
Imagine the situation. A doctor informs his cancer patient that they are currently undertaking a study to see if prayer is effective in cancer treatment. To gain an unbiased result has to be taken off ALL scientific remedies (chemotherapy, drugs, surgery etc) and rely only on prayer. How many do you think would take up that study? None, because they know that modern science is the best chance they have of survival.
Ask yourself, would you encourage a loved one (Wife, Daughter, mother, father etc) to refrain from surgery or drugs for a scientific experiment that will likely be inconclusive? Of course not.
A skewed, bias, subjective start to any study.Quote:
Originally Posted by Valleysboy1978
There is no empirical evidence that this is the case. There may be some minor inductive evidence - but certainly rationalisation, however; [edit]that is that there has been significant success in the past, and the result is more known than that of prayer[/edit]