Random Links & Snippets #3
Posted in Miscellaneous on | 3 minutes | 9 Comments →
A study published in the journal Liver Transplantation suggests that religiosity is associated with prolonged survival in liver transplant recipients. From the study:
This study shows that liver transplant candidates with high religious coping (defined as seeking God’s help, having faith in God, trusting in God, and trying to perceive God’s will in the disease) have more prolonged posttransplant survival than patients with low religiosity.
Via Ana, the story of Daniel Ekechukwu, who was apparently dead for three days before coming back to life. From the account:
Mr. Manu showed me his ledger where he enters important information concerning every corpse that is brought to his mortuary. It contained hundreds of entries. He showed me Daniel Ekechukwu’s name listed there, and the date his corpse was received was recorded as November 30, 2001. The date recorded that the corpse was taken by the relatives was December 2, 2001. Mr. Manu related to me the story of the arrival of Daniel’s family with his body, and how he injected embalming fluid into Daniel’s fingers in order to keep them straight. He also related how he had twice attempted to cut Daniel’s inner thigh to inject embalming fluid, and the shock he twice received. The second time his arm became partially paralyzed, and remained so through the night. He told me about the worship music that emanated from his mortuary during the first night Daniel’s body was lying there, and the light, “something like little stars” that floated above Daniel’s head when he searched for the source of the music in the mortuary. He told me how he located Daniel’s father the next morning, and urgently requested that he remove Daniel’s body from his mortuary because of the strange occurrences. He told me how Daniel’s father came early Sunday morning, December 2, with Daniel’s wife to take the body to Onitsha. He said that he had dressed Daniel’s body in a white suit, stuffed his nose with cotton, and laid his body in a coffin that the family had purchased.
Then he told me something I hadn’t known. Mr. Manu had gone in the ambulance with Daniel’s wife, son and father to the church in Onitsha. He was in the room when Daniel came back to life, an eyewitness!
I added Ana’s blog to my links: A Little More Sentience.
An interesting article about the decline effect.
Those interested in the “eternal torment” vs. “eternal annihilation” discussion might appreciate Jeremy K. Moritz’ Hell: Eternal Torment or Complete Annihilation.
From Reuter’s: Faith Rites Boost Brains, Even For Atheists.
Lastly, I came across these on the Gallup website: Very Religious Have Higher Wellbeing Across All Faiths, Very Religious Americans Lead Healthier Lives, Very Religious Americans Report Less Depression, Worry, Religious Attendance Relates to Generosity Worldwide, Worldwide, Highly Religious More Likely to Help Others, and In More Religious Countries, Lower Suicide Rates.
woodchuck64
says...Came across this regarding Daniel Ekechukwu:
http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/ekechart.html,
which references
http://letusreason.org/Popteac13.htm
Both sites employ skeptical techniques to conclude the story was fabricated or exaggerated. Warranted or not? I happen to think so, but then I’m a skeptic.
Ana
says...In regards to hell, the alternative views (to eternal burning in a fire) that I have personally heard in the past are
– annihilation (like the article you cited discussed)
or
– eternal state of torment (but the torment does not involve a literal burning in a fire, the biblical fire is allegorical)
While I have for a little bit of time now, doubted the traditionalist view of hell, neither am I convinced of the alternatives.
At the moment, all I can seem to conclusively agree with, is that hell does involve torment. What kind, and for how long, is what I have yet to revolve in my mind.
Where the article said:
So, if someone truly believes in the two fates, they may correctly decide to come to Jesus, but what is their heart’s motivation? Is it out of love for their Savior or out of fear of Hell?
Approximates a point that I’ve seen atheists make, where they say that instilling the fear of burning in hell forever into people is very effective for gaining converts. And it is, and therein lies something troubling — that there may be a great mass of people whose faith has more to do with what they want to avoid than what they want to partake in — eternity with God.
woodchuck64,
David Servant, the author of the resurrection article cl linked in his post, wrote a response “here”, to the skeptical reviews of the resurrection story of Daniel Ekechukwu.
I haven’t taken an official stance yet as to whether I think the story is legitimate or not, but it is a story that’s intriguing to me.
Ana
says...and of course. my hyperlink attempt failed.
Here’s the URL of the response I mentioned:
http://www.heavensfamily.org/ss/answering-skeptics-on-resurrection-daniel-ekechukwu
mrs. neutron's garage
says...I think it would be foolish for anyone to be surprised by the finding that ..”religiosity is associated with prolonged survival in patients undergoing liver transplantation”..
The anxiety reduction potential alone, I would think, could easily account for better outcomes in any medical procedure.
When one considers that for 99.9% of human history “health care” consisted mostly, and in many cases entirely, of shamanistic, supernaturally orientated “magical” treatments… it’s easy to see how highly suggestible (dissociatable) individuals were genetically selected for. The placebo effect is INDEED powerful. This, no doubt, explains the correlation between religious belief and hypnotizability as discussed in John F. Schumakers “The Corruption of Reality” (A Unified Theory of Religion, Hypnosis and Psychopathology).
woodchuck64
says...If true, it has some fascinating theological implications for Christianity, especially that stuff about synchronized worship in heaven and self-cannibalism in hell (below).
If false, it demonstrates interesting ways that legends start and gain credibility.
http://www.heavensfamily.org/ss/resurrection-from-the-dead-pastor-daniel-ekechukwu:
Ana
says...woodchuck64,
What he describes as heaven and hell is indeed very interesting, but, it is not the internal/mental experiences of a person that are investigatively veridical, but the external experiences.
For comparison, out-of-body experience of NDE. If someone is declared brain dead, and remains such for a substantial enough amount of time, and then revives and tells of an incident that is 10 miles away — and this incident that took place during the time the person suposedly had no consciousness — the incident this person reports, as well as the phenomenon of being genuinely revived, can be investigated and potentially verfied. However, if the person additionally spoke of heaven/hell as part of his/her experience, and desribed those places, we don’t have a method to empirically verify that part of the testimony.
So, a resurrection story has the potential of being veridical (because a resurrection would have accessible physical and contextual factors involved). But we cannot physically or empirically assess what Daniel said about heaven/ hell.
cl
says...Personally, I don’t put too much stock in many of these stories, either of the “died and went to heaven/hell” variety, or the “scientific study X suggests Y” variety. I mainly include these types of things as “peaks and valleys” along the trajectory of (a)theist discussion. I trust my own experiences both alone and with others far more than I trust an account from people I’ve never even met and know next-to-nothing about, and I’ve had enough experiences that challenge the atheist / naturalist / materialist paradigm to accept those positions.
Ana,
The problem is, even if you can use legitimate evidence to corner the atheist / naturalist / materialist here, all they have to do is respond something like, “Well, all this proves is that we don’t fully understand consciousness and the brain yet. It is still more probable that the explanation is going to be natural than supernatural, because science has given us thousands of natural explanations and never a supernatural explanation.”
When it comes down to it, I can’t avoid Descartes, and the concept that one can doubt the existence of seemingly anything except their own doubt. A chasing of the wind: that’s how (a)theist argumentation tends to make me feel sometimes lately.. :)
dguller
says...cl:
And what is wrong with saying that? Most phenomena that were viewed as supernatural and divine have been found to have underlying natural causes. There is nothing wrong with assuming that the remaining alleged supernatural phenomena will share the same fate.
And as for the NDE, it is not enough to find a few cases here and there. Again, you have to take into consideration the possibility of chance. You would have to collect a number of NDE’s that have made observations of the sort that you describe, and analyze just how accurate they are. If it turns out that their accuracy is equal or less than chance, then they are not genuine phenomena, but only random events that appear to be genuine.
I mean, there are plenty of ways to study these events rigorously in order to take into account chance, confounding factors, cognitive illusion or bias, and so on. Yes, it is really, really hard, but so what? Establishing the existence of the atom was hard, as was plumbing its depths and underlying its composition and properties, but it was done.
NDE’s may hold the key to mind without body, which would overturn an enormous amount of science, and ultimately lead to a Nobel Prize, for example, as well as other accolades. I highly encourage someone to step up and engage in this study. Just remember that debunking well-established scientific theories can never be done with a limited set of anecdotes. You need more solid pieces of evidence.
woodchuck64
says...cl,
True, repeatable evidence that the mind transcends known laws of physics could certainly lead me to say that there must be an unknown law of physics that accounts for mind. But more importantly, such evidence would force me to go back and revisit the huge number of religious and supernatural claims that I’ve previously dismissed as due to legend and/or fraud. If those claims were right after all, maybe Jesus really did accomplish all the Bible claims he did, maybe Jesus really was a special being having unique abilities and insights into the fabric of the universe. Maybe that’s really what “God” is, who’s to say?