Comments on: Prayer fails again

By: grumpypilgrim

grumpypilgrim — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:28:15 +0000

“That is the story of this two-faced baby who was recently born in India….”

Wow, and here I thought Picasso just made that stuff up in his imagination…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dora_Maar_Au_Chat.jpg/.

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:34:33 +0000

Grumpy: Prayer can also work miracles. It can turn a child with a dangerous birth defect into a Goddess to which we should pray. That is the story of this two-faced baby who was recently born in India. http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/08/baby.heads.ap/index.html

By: Dan Klarmann

Dan Klarmann — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:19:13 +0000

To take an Ayn Rand view (as discussed here): If more people who openly eschewed the roots of biological science would also reject its products (as in this case), the variation in survival rates would eventually improve the overall emotional acceptance of its benefits through attrition among the detractors.

Think “Evolution in Action” as in Niven/Pournelle’s “Oath of Fealty”

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:48:30 +0000

Quite often, religious beliefs inspire real world ignorance. This is such a sad example of this.

Other times, people who claim to be religious are smart as can be; they don’t allow their religious beliefs (whatever they are) to trump their need to deal intelligently with the world.

The big question for me is what is the difference between religious folks who can deal with the world and those who can’t? Is it a matter of degree of belief, or type of beliefs, or something else? I’m more and more convinced that it isn’t religion per se that determines whether people thrive in the physical world.

Having written this, though, I wonder how many non-believers would have allowed their child to die of treatable diabetes (even though there’d be no religion to blame). In sum, was this girl’s death really due to religion or just ignorance? Or was it religiously-inspired ignorance?