Taking No for an Answer

This is probably the most unsurprising news I've read in a while. But despite the fact that this study upholds rational logic over superstition, the supporters of remote prayer won't be discouraged. That's, after all, a central tenet of faith: one must continue to believe in spite of the evidence. This quote demonstrates what happens when scientific processes are placed in the hands of people with non-scientific agendas:

The new study was rigorously designed to avoid problems like the ones that came up in the earlier studies. But experts said the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

This is bullshit, pure and simple. If one assumes that the anonymous prayer cohort has an effect on the study, one must recognize that such prayers affect all subjects equally, thus washing itself out of the analysis. The prayer of family and friends should amount to a small margin of additional prayer for a given individual, compared with the numbers accumulated through participating congregations. Unless these objections are based on the presumption that the prayer of loved-ones is somehow worth more than the prayer of strangers, this uncontrolled independent variable should affect the data as nothing more than a bit of statistical noise. If one does assume that friends and family prayers are weighted more heavily, there's no reason to believe that the pattern of family prayer matches the pattern of remote prayer, which is demonstrated not to correlate with dependent outcome disparities, except to cause additional anxiety.

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that nobody mentioned one of the more common "proofs" of divine intervention: God works in mysterious ways. Mightn't He answer prayer with further suffering, offering His subject greater opportunity to demonstrate his grace? Just ask Job.

Eventually, I predict, the remote prayer argument will devolve into something along the lines of the following standard religion as mock science logic:

Assumption: God works in mysterious ways
Hypothesis: Thing A will occur in situation B
Observation: Thing A does not happen
Conclusion: Since A did not happen, we have a mystery, thus proving the existence and intervention of God.

Um, guys?

Are Kurtz and Kaus really this ignorant? They're asking why polling organizations only compare their new polls to their own old polls, I think. But it's hard to be sure because it's such brain-dead basic reason: polls differ in their methodology. Therefore, two polls by different organizations that span the same time period may yield different results for reasons other than natural fluctuation within the margin of error. They really will reach for every last inch of lift to put under Dear Leader's shoes.

It's the Sex, Stupid

Among the many problems I have with anti-choice activists, a couple things demonstrate the hypocrisy of their position.

The first has to do with the more radical element among them, those that bomb and support the bombing of abortion clinics. By engaging in such terrorism, they not only threaten the lives of providers and women excercising their legal rights, they also endanger the fetus whose life they claim to be protecting. If a pregnant woman is killed, so is her child. There is no legal argument that can absolve them of this. Even though the pregancy would be terminated regardless of the bombing, the bomber is culpable. It's the old riddle of who's at fault if you shoot a man on his way toward the pavement after he's jumped off the roof of a building. The legal answer: you are.

I'm reminded of the second by this Dibgy post. The argument that rape victims deserve exceptional consideration by anti-choice laws has significant emotional appeal. However, it makes no sense if you believe that abortion kills an innocent child. The fetus conceived in rape is morally indistinguishable from that conceived in consensual sex. Unless, of course, the moral question is directed at the pregnant woman. The "sodomized virgin rape exception" takes this a few steps further. Let's wonder for a moment whether if a prostitute were raped would she still be entitled to an abortion under the law. For some reason, I think certain people would say no.

So Much for Fly-Overs

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via Pandagon