Wednesday 3 December 2008

Pray to Jake

http://www.prayerstojake.com/

Prove to me that praying to your skydaddy is more effective than praying to Jake...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Okay so I will readily admit that I only gave a percursory examination to the website you posted due to the fact that there was offensive material on it and I am at work. For arguments sake you and Jake's claim is that individuals will get a better rate of return on their prayers when praying to Jake versus praying to God.

Hypothetically let's say that there is no God.

How could praying to a nonexistent God be any better than praying to this individual Jake?

I am glad you asked. (I kind of feel like the cat that ate the canary here, but anywho I will jump through that hoop.)

First I will provide two terms that should shed light on the situation.

placebo
noun

1. A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient's expectation to get well.
2. An inactive substance or preparation used as a control in an experiment or test to determine the effectiveness of a medicinal drug.
3. Something of no intrinsic remedial value that is used to appease or reassure another.


placebo effect
noun

any effect that seems to be a consequence of administering a placebo; the change is usually beneficial and is assumed result from the person's faith in the treatment or preconceptions about what the experimental drug was supposed to do; pharmacologists were the first to talk about placebo effects but now the idea has been generalized to many situations having nothing to do with drugs.

Okay so I think you can understand this phenomenon.

Basically individuals with psychosomatic or other illnesses can be aided by a placebo if they in fact believe that it will aide them.

So here we have the two placeboes. Jake and a for our argument a Non-Existent Deity.

How could either of these be more beneficial?

For most of the world it is as plain as the nose on one's face. Jake, I assume, makes no claim to deity while believers who pray to God believe they are praying to a transcendental Being who hears and responds to prayer.

Now I ask you which group: the individuals who pray to Jake, a known mortal; or the individuals who pray to God who they fully believe exists, would have the greater chance of incurring a placebo effect.

I sadly do not expect you to publically and honestly answer this question, but my hope is that you will think about it.