prayer

Well. I was about to write about the whole prayer dispute, and when I clicked 'Save as Draft' I got an error message after i was redirected to an error page and consequently I lost the numerous paragraphs of tightly argued prose elaborating the position I had articulated in sweeping strokes on the entry of 8 December 2005. I will attempt to reconstruct these here, but after working on it for like 30 minutes (without saving it, yeah, i'm a dumbass) i'm rather tired, so its bound to be somewhat sketchy.

First we ask what it means for there to be "scientific evidence" that "prayer works." Here's the obvious answer. Either (1) one can show by repeatable experiment that there is a positive correlation between the event (P) "A prays that E occur" and (O) "E occurs" or (2) one can show for any person A, and any event E, that there is a chain of scientifically observable events E1, E2, E3, ..., En such that Ei causes Ej (when i does not equal j) and such that P causes E1 and En cuases O. Most likely (1) will obtain before (2) in the course of scientific inquiry. And by "there is evidence that prayer has instrumental value" we simply mean that at least (1) is the case.

We must make a distinction. It may seem obvious and inconsequential at first, but in my opinion it lies at the heart of the matter. If we are not strict materialists then we may distinguish the super-natural world from the natural world. Think of these "worlds" as sets. So the set super-natural world is merely the complement set of the set natural world. Note that this is merely an analogy to illustrate how these two "worlds" are mutually exclusive.

Now, here's why this distinction is important. By definition, the business of science is the investigation of the natural world. Science simply cannot allow any notions from the super-natural world. Consequently such statements as "God does not exist" or "God does exist" are not statements belonging to a scientific arena of discourse (the scientific agon). Similarly statements such as "Prayer works" or "Prayer does not work" are not statements belonging to the scientific agon.

This conclusion may seem strange especially since we have already seen a clear condition under which we have evidence for the "instrumental value" of prayer--i.e. the condition (1). That is, it seems I have specified a clear criterion under which one is allowed to assert "Prayer works"--i.e. when condition (1) holds, so how can I then say that science cannot make a statement about prayer when clearly I have shown it can do so? The first, intuitive, response is to say that science is not really talking about prayer but an idealization of prayer. By itself this claim does not really amount to a refutation of the objection just stated. But it does gain some validity if we rephrase it in the following way: certainly, if condition (1) holds, then prayer works, but that does not mean (we have not yet investigated this) that if prayer works, then condition (1) holds. We cannot yet claim that the concept of prayer is exhausted by condition (1), therefore condition (1) is not really a criterion for prayer working but is merely a sufficient condition for prayer to work.There may be something to prayer which (1) does not account for.

Consider the following argument: "There is no statistical evidence of the instrumental value of prayer, therefore prayer does not work." (I am not quoting anybody but just giving my rendering of Mr. Cline's argument against prayer...unfortunately at this time I am not able to access his web-site so I cannot give a direct quote...if I have misrepresented his argument I would gladly accept correction on this matter.)We may render this argument in the following way:

(A) Condition (1) does not hold.
(B) If condition (1) does not hold, then prayer does not work.
(C) Therefore, prayer does not work.

This is simple modus ponens so the argument is obviously valid, but for now it is not clear whether or not the argument works since we have not yet settled the question as to whether (B) is true. But deciding whether or not (B) is true leads us into an interesting quandry. This is because the truth of (B) hinges upon the meaning of the term 'prayer.' What concept does this term denote? According to a scientific world-view the concept of prayer involves, essentially, what we have already stated as condition (1). Prayer consists of a person A desiring that E occur (e.g. someone's being cured of a disease or so and so being (not) elected to the Presidential office), and so A prays for E to be the case. And, according to this same scientific outlook, it is absurd to say that this sort of thing would be successful if E in fact did not occur. I can identify with this sort of scientific intuition about prayer: in what sense is it possible to say that prayer works even if E does not occur? It would seem to be the height of folly to say that a prayer "worked" and yet E did not occur. But this is only a scientific outlook, not the only possible way of looking at the situation. It is only the "height of folly" for the scientist/logician. So according to the scientific world-view, (B) does in fact hold true simply because the concept of prayer is identified (made equal to) the concept of condition (1) holding true. So according to the scientific outlook the argument is also a sound one.

But is the concept of condition (1) holding true the most just rendering of the concept of prayer? Many would disagree with such a statement, I think, and this is why the above argument cannot be accepted by all: (B) is not true for those who understand 'prayer' to mean something more/entirely different than merely (1).

Furthermore, science, by its very nature, cannot possibly say more about prayer than (1). This is because of the distinction we made earlier between the natural and the non-natural worlds. The condition (1) is given entirely in naturalistic terms--observable, documentable events--and this is all that a scientific statement can ever do. But in order to provide a just rendering of the concept of prayer perhaps one must cross the barrier between the natural and non-natural worlds into the non-natural.

I must stress that my mind is not as clear about this distinction as about some of the other things I have said. I'm not even sure at this point (as I was when I first started writing this entry) that the natural/non-natural world distinction is really a distinction at all. To be sure it is one that gets thrown around a lot, but often I wonder if its all just a linguistic trick and that there really isn't a hard and fast distinction between the two. But such a reservation comes from my more scientific personality, so I cannot allow that free reign just yet. I think the argument that I have given against Mr. Cline's argument can be leveled even without the notion of natural versus non-natural by using the notion of a world-view or world-outlook which is something that can be understood a little better because, e.g., you can ask someone about their world view and thereby come to undersand their belief system as the result of that framework. The argument becomes, then: (B) is true for the scientific world view but not for world view X, therefore the argument does not work.

Really, this is an even better argument than before. The notion of natural vs. non-natural is not really an absolute distinction but a relative one: one's world-view will determine its validity or if it is valid what things go into which category.

Note also that I am applying a principle of argument critique which, according to many perspectives is dubious (perhaps even from my own perspective at times): If a proposition P is true for world view X, but not for world view Y then P is not objective and its truth is un-decidable from either perspective X or Y. This principle was just used in my argument that the argument concluding (C) is not sound.

At least a few comments about this principle are in order since it seems to be some sort of relativistic principle. Well...it is. I am unapologetic about that because I have my moral reasons for holding it which stem from my own world view which could be characterized as a sort of philosophical altruism with respect to other world views. I can sum this philosophy up in the "motto" (though I hate mottos) that all perspectives are valid but it is not the case that "anything goes," but it is also not the case that what does go is held by any privileged world view. Well...i guess that's not really a motto...too long and complicated. Anyway, this is the basic assumption which informs my critical principle mentioned above.

This implies that while it is fine for world view X to hold that P is false, X cannot criticize world view Y for holding that P is true, nor vice versa. You can be a scientist and hold that prayer is a bunch of nonsense because there is no insturmental value to it but that does not give you the right to criticize those who think that prayer is anything but nonsense. This is because to do so is to deny their experience as human beings. If there is anything evil in this world it is surely this: to deny the experience of another human being simply because it does not square away with your own experience.

Anyone wishing to comment on this at length can do so by sending me an email (pennedav@yahoo.com) since the commenting feature on this blog is pretty poor. I'm hoping to change that sometime.

Anyway, now it's snowing outside real nice and I want to go get some lunch.