[dylanjermiah]

>Time is a really good curator - if something survives a really long time (thousand of years scale) it is very likely to be of use.

Do you have any evidence to support this theory? I very much doubt this holds any truth. Time is not an indication of truth, empirical evidence is.

[ksk]

You are severely misreading what is being said here. "very likely to be of use" is not the same as being provably true. The point being made is that of usefulness and correlation. Those two things are essential to the way humans have and continue to think. In day to day life, nobody does 'studies' to prove every single thing to be true. That is why customs that survive time can sometimes have a grain of truth to them. And what's interesting is that even if they didn't it could be that blindly following something for years has created an evolutionary pressure on the body to adapt.

[mfringel]

How is "a practice that has been sustained across multiple cultures over thousands of years" not empirical evidence?

[dylanjermiah]

The fact that people have being doing the same thing over a certain period of time makes no indication to the effectiveness of the activity.

People have being praying for thousands of years, yet I have seen no conclusive evidence of its effectiveness.

[firethief]

Have you really never heard of the benefits of the placebo response? Plus there's the social benefits of people focusing on good things and potentially manifesting them, and the community benefit of coming together to pray, and psychological benefits are a possibility, although I don't think that's well-studied (or even measurable?) enough to start that debate.

Prayer is like meat - it isn't for everyone, but if you're not getting it you have to be careful not to miss out on certain things.

[dylanjermiah]

>"Have you really never heard of the benefits of the placebo response?"

Do you have any evidence to support the benefits of a placebo effect in relation to religion and/or prayer?

>"plus there's the social benefits of people focusing on good things and potentially manifesting them, and the community benefit of coming together to pray, and psychological benefits are a possibility,"

What social benefits? What good things? What psychological benefits?

>"Although I don't think that's well-studied (or even measurable?) enough to start that debate."

Seems very convenient to me.

>"Prayer is like meat - it isn't for everyone, but if you're not getting it you have to be careful not to miss out on certain things."

What certain things?

Your comment seems awfully shallow in content to me, lacking in any specifics.

[crpatino]

> Do you have any evidence to support the benefits of a placebo effect in relation to religion and/or prayer?

So, you are implying that there is a switch that will magically turn off beneficial parts of human biology (such as some well known and researched mechanisms like the placebo effect) for those and only those humans that engage in activities that you find personally disgusting (such as religion and prayer).

That's the most overtly religious belief I have seen expressed by a self professed rationalist, you know...

[dylanjermiah]

You've come to some incorrect conclusions.

If someone makes a particular claim, the burden of proof is on them.

[jfoutz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewan...

tl/dr; inconclusive, hard to get funding.

[duaneb]

> People have being praying for thousands of years, yet I have seen no conclusive evidence of its effectiveness.

Praying isn't likely to mess with the metabolism. It is, in fact, entirely difficult to tell what it would mess with. Fasting is relatively easy to observe: if it fails, people starve to death.

Meanwhile, people all over the world incorporate fasting into their world intentionally. Far before civilization, they probably did so unintentionally. I highly doubt the body is not equipped in some form to deal with regular period of not eating. It is only extremely recently that the median human has reliable food sources.

[snowwrestler]

At most you could say that fasting is not obviously harmful, because if it was, at some point someone would have noticed that all the fasting people get sick or die or whatever.

But it's a far jump from there to "very likely to be of use." The body is adapted to withstand all sorts of cultural practices that we no longer think are particularly medically useful, like haircuts, shaving, piercings, circumcision, branding, tattoos, foot binding, neck lengthening, bleeding (leeching), etc.

[duaneb]

I dont believe there is evidence for any of those practices predating biologically modern humans. How far back to you have to go to find a life form that did not face constant fear of starvation?

[pennaMan]

Consider an ailment like a mild flu. What's more beneficial? Going to the temple and asking a man in the sky to heal you or going to someone who calls himself a doctor who performs something way more harmful than the mild sickness like bloodletting or prescribing antibiotics? In that sense, "praying" or, more accurately described, "letting nature take its course" has ample evidence of effectiveness.

[dylanjermiah]

It has less detrimental effects as opposed to an inferior alternative, yes.

The question I was asking, and which your response does not address, is whether or not a certain activity that claims to be beneficial becomes beneficial purely on the basis that it is practiced over 'x' period of time. Which I do not believe to be true. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it.

[pennaMan]

Surviving the test of time is the ultimate empirical evidence. In fact I'd go so far to say it's the ONLY way we can test the truth of anything at all. This goes for anything, from biological systems (evolution), technical design - the wheel, to research papers. Look in your fridge: most of the food there has been consumed for thousands of years using basically the same cooking method and is for the most part considered healthy. The recent synthetic foods like margarine and recent cooking methods like deep frying are detrimental to health.

Keep in mind, practiced over 'x' amount of time where x > 2000 years.

[dylanjermiah]

You have misinterpreted the point of my post. The initial post was:

>"if something survives a really long time (thousand of years scale) it is very likely to be of use."

Whereby time was the factor by which something is considered 'of use'. The things you've mentioned evolution, the wheel, research papers etc. Have more concrete evidence than just time to back them up.

Although on the topic of food, do you have any evidence to support that?

[4ydx]

People have been believing lots of things in religious texts for many, many years. Often enough they are flat out incorrect. Just because something is "believed" doesn't make it necessarily true.

[4ydx]

You conveniently left out the individual who does neither. Or the individual who uses some sort of herbal "medication". Or the individual who chooses yet another solution to their mild flu. Your argument for prayer is equivalent to "doing nothing".

[juliangregorian]

Whether you believe in divine intervention or not, prayer is really just a ritual to alleviate stress, and it's cracking good at that.

[dylanjermiah]

Do you have any evidence to support that?

From an anecdotal perspective, I found that I suffered more stress and frustration via praying than not.

[fao_]

Because cultures and their beliefs can be stupid, and religious/cultural dogma can perpetrate a system that doesn't work. Humans tend towards efficiency only where there is no ideological dogma to hinder this.

Take the example of sacrifice. In dozens of cultures spanning ((in some cases) hundreds of) thousands of years, people have believed that the sacrifice of <insert species here> will stop the rain/volcano/thunder & lightning/etc. we now know this to be completely false, even though many of these cultures have writings and other 'empirical evidence' that says it does work.

[crpatino]

There are 7+ billions of "evidences" sitting around. Look at the people alive today, chances are that either their ancestors did something like this, may be as little as 1 or 2 generations ago. Over the last 10 thousand years (or any other arbitrarily large time-frame), there were large number of potential ancestors whose offspring did not make it to the 21st century. So those people must have been doing something right...

But of course, it is really easy to demand more evidence for the facts we "very much doubt" that for those that confirm our preexisting ideas.

[tsax]

Check out the 'Lindy Effect.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect Also read about 'Chesterton's Fence.' http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/03/chesterton-fe...