In article <web.4760733a922777eb2067189c0@news.povray.org>, 
nam### [at] gmailcom says...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1072
638.ece
> 
> So, prayers were comissioned to pray for people they did not know and pat
ients
> were not told they were being prayed for and participating in a study by 
a
> bunch of skeptics in a campaign to ridicule religion?
> 
"This $2.4 million study, funded in large part by the John Templeton 
Foundation, which seeks "insights at the boundary between theology and 
science", was intended to cast some clear light on the matter."

The Templeton Foundation is a religious institution whose **goal** is to 
try to prove that this BS you keep yammering about is real, has a 
positive effect, etc. The reason this study is so damn funny to some of 
us, as unfortunate as the deaths where, which where not funny, is that a 
**Christian** group funded research to prove the usefulness of prayer, 
and found that people died more often when prayer *for* than those left 
alone.

Numerous other studies have also been done, **all** of them *also* 
funded by groups like Templeton, and all of them either distort the data 
to make it "look" like some benefit happened, or show no effect at all. 
And, the truly stupid thing about it all is, those studies where they 
intentionally distorted the data to make it look like some effect 
happened only showed like a 1-2% difference. If prayers worked, then one 
would expect an effect that *exceeded* what one would expect from 
feeding people sugar pills. It didn't, but it was called, "miraculous 
proof!".

Oh, and just to be clear, where the $#@$#@$ do you see anything 
suggesting that they paid any of the participants who prayed? It 
certainly says nothing of the sort. I am sure, given the number of 
people that believe this stuff, that you would have had to build 
barricades to "prevent" volunteers from showing up to help. And, I am 
reasonably sure that some place, where I saw a more detailed report on 
this study, they clearly said that all of the people doing the praying 
where in fact unpaid volunteers.

Spin it all you like. It not only doesn't imply that prayer works as you 
think it does, it implies a god that gets pissed off at people praying 
for the impossible, and kills the dying people faster, as punishment for 
it. Or, its just a statistical fluke. Either way, if god just didn't 
listen to "bought prayers" as you put it, the result should have been 
"no" result, not "more deaths among those who knew people prayed for 
them."

Other believers, and Templeton, haven't had any more luck spinning it in 
favor of belief than you do, and they don't start out denying that it 
was religious people running and paying for the study.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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