The parallel between placebo and belief is that both offer relief, not because they’re true but because they work. It's a powerful defense of faith’s practical value.
I've taken various strange and odd substances for pain, and migraine, and colds, and depression, and some of them actually help. They had herbs in, or fruit juice, or flower petals, or bicarb and liquorice. They were fancy sheets of sticky paper, or tablets certified by unknown boiled sweet makers, guaranteed to provide all night sleep. None of them free, none NHS. Many created in my grandmother's lifetime, or from a recipe in her old cookery book.
And every one that helps and has eased, Worked, Assisted, Cleared, is a remedy. So drop that wretched word 'placebo'.....if it works, it's real!
Please note: reality in religion depends on personal conviction. If you have it, it's real. If not, it's not.
Hi Graham, as a person who has no god(s), I can tell you that as I am fast approaching the end of life (EOL) and am, at age 92 well within the end of life cycle, that I have no problem with it. I know that all living things, including Planet Earth, have both a beginning and an end, that's just the way it is. I have paid for my cremation, and informed all my relatives that I will have no memorial services - at least none that I am willing to pay for. I suppose I have had the good fortune to study the sciences, so I have a pretty good idea that the "energy" which permits living things to live is indestructible so with death that energy will transfer somewhere else. I don't care.
In my view some people need god(s) to help them do the morally right things. I know the difference between right and wrong and I strive to do no harm, so, I'm good to be on my own. I also know that not all people can accept that, and I respect their right to their own beliefs without interference from me, unless those beliefs harm others, such as our current Executive branch lead by our president who is devoid of conscience, compassion, empathy or sympathy, then I hope his EOL ends very, very soon.
I shall miss you dreadfully when you go. Because I am right and you are wrong, I expect you to come back and apologise to me. Well, Fay, how can I say otherwise?
I shouldn't be partisan here, because a body of subscribers is a little like a class of pupils at school, no one should be the favourite. And yet you've always been there with your views and your comments and your contribution. Thank you. You are not short of pulling me up to think again, and that makes you a very valued contributor.
I just wrote this as a lengthy response to another writer on the Substack, and I can think of no more appropriate reply to you this evening than to post it again here. You are the only person who ever disagrees and says thank you at the same time. If we never meet again, it will be the fulfilment of a purpose neither of us can comprehend in this moment.
_________________
I’ve taken so much space today with you, Hans, but I must respond to this one.
First, my mother died in an English hospital on Friday, 24 February 2006 at 2.35 p.m. I know, because I was there. Whilst other family members came and went the evening before and gathered in the forenoon that day, I spent most of the previous evening alone with my mother. She could barely eat and when the orderly came around to take the order for teatime, my eyes alit on one thing I thought she could probably manage: fruit-flavoured gelatine pudding. It duly came an hour or so later and, for this last meal she would ever take, the roles for the first meal I ever took were reversed. This time, I fed her. That, I can assure you, is a circle very squared.
She was able to formulate thoughts and to speak them, but it was in a whisper that never appeared on a stage I knew. There was one fantastic mis-hear on my part, which changed the direction of my life and would not be resolved for fully ten years. But of much more relevance here is a question she asked me loud and clear. There was no mistaking it. There was no way I could demur on answering it either. But the true answer I did not know. So I acted on impulse and made it up. Her question was “Is there an afterlife?” My answer was “Yes.” And, with that, the question and answer session ended.
One of the most consequential questions and answers that you can pose and reply to in a whole lifetime. I felt bad. I had humoured her. I had not been honest. Easing her passage with fairy stories. And yet, my answer had come instinctively based on my belief. And whilst my belief stems from the teachings and evidence and learning of a lifetime, I did not qualify my answer with references to authority and supporting documentation. I simply said it. Because I believe it, and in the end, once belief is attained, the evidence that got you there becomes irrelevant. Belief changes from being a product of the rationale of the mind to being the visceral knowledge of the heart.
There is a footnote, an intriguing one, in the light of what I just said. In the years since her death, she has on several occasions come back to tell me I was right. Telling people that makes me feel uncomfortable, because even if belief stems from teachings, I or no one can make you believe. You cannot be led to God by the nose. You must sniff Him out yourself. Only you can. So adducing evidence of a key question in people’s lives, on their deathbed if not up to that point, sounds like oversell.
Belief is the precise opposite of judicial evidence. It rests on our spiritual senses, and not our 5 human senses, whereas a court will only hear evidence of the latter. Spirituality proceeds exclusively from intention. Our regulator in life in such matters is our conscience (and not the courts, which is our regulator for other things), and it is our intentions that betray our honesty or otherwise. But a court separates acts and intention from each other and then proceeds to deduce both based on evidential fact since, as Sir Thomas More said and every judge knows, “I have no window into another man’s conscience.”
But a court will lap up evidence. It will regale in heaps of documents and testimony, over days and weeks and even months. Yet its judgment is not predicated on knowing truth, but rather on knowing enough truth. Still, the bench will politely ask whether counsel has any further evidence to lead, and if they do, they will lead it.
All his said, spirituality defies evidence and here is a strange fact: the more evidence you adduce in support of your belief, the more sceptical the unconvinced are of its veracity. Evidence in spirituality weakens your argument.
Finally, to know whether your intentions are pure, you need to interrogate your conscience. It will tell you. But to determine whether court testimony is truthful, the usher asks the witness to swear before an entity evidence of whose existence would fall foul of the court’s own rules of evidence on a Bible whose authorship is unattested (in varying degrees, but most of it is attributed ex parte). That means that if you conducted a legal debate on whether God exists, you’d need to swear on the Bible that He does before you could argue that He doesn’t.
The parallel between placebo and belief is that both offer relief, not because they’re true but because they work. It's a powerful defense of faith’s practical value.
I've taken various strange and odd substances for pain, and migraine, and colds, and depression, and some of them actually help. They had herbs in, or fruit juice, or flower petals, or bicarb and liquorice. They were fancy sheets of sticky paper, or tablets certified by unknown boiled sweet makers, guaranteed to provide all night sleep. None of them free, none NHS. Many created in my grandmother's lifetime, or from a recipe in her old cookery book.
And every one that helps and has eased, Worked, Assisted, Cleared, is a remedy. So drop that wretched word 'placebo'.....if it works, it's real!
Please note: reality in religion depends on personal conviction. If you have it, it's real. If not, it's not.
Hi Graham, as a person who has no god(s), I can tell you that as I am fast approaching the end of life (EOL) and am, at age 92 well within the end of life cycle, that I have no problem with it. I know that all living things, including Planet Earth, have both a beginning and an end, that's just the way it is. I have paid for my cremation, and informed all my relatives that I will have no memorial services - at least none that I am willing to pay for. I suppose I have had the good fortune to study the sciences, so I have a pretty good idea that the "energy" which permits living things to live is indestructible so with death that energy will transfer somewhere else. I don't care.
In my view some people need god(s) to help them do the morally right things. I know the difference between right and wrong and I strive to do no harm, so, I'm good to be on my own. I also know that not all people can accept that, and I respect their right to their own beliefs without interference from me, unless those beliefs harm others, such as our current Executive branch lead by our president who is devoid of conscience, compassion, empathy or sympathy, then I hope his EOL ends very, very soon.
I shall miss you dreadfully when you go. Because I am right and you are wrong, I expect you to come back and apologise to me. Well, Fay, how can I say otherwise?
I shouldn't be partisan here, because a body of subscribers is a little like a class of pupils at school, no one should be the favourite. And yet you've always been there with your views and your comments and your contribution. Thank you. You are not short of pulling me up to think again, and that makes you a very valued contributor.
I just wrote this as a lengthy response to another writer on the Substack, and I can think of no more appropriate reply to you this evening than to post it again here. You are the only person who ever disagrees and says thank you at the same time. If we never meet again, it will be the fulfilment of a purpose neither of us can comprehend in this moment.
_________________
I’ve taken so much space today with you, Hans, but I must respond to this one.
First, my mother died in an English hospital on Friday, 24 February 2006 at 2.35 p.m. I know, because I was there. Whilst other family members came and went the evening before and gathered in the forenoon that day, I spent most of the previous evening alone with my mother. She could barely eat and when the orderly came around to take the order for teatime, my eyes alit on one thing I thought she could probably manage: fruit-flavoured gelatine pudding. It duly came an hour or so later and, for this last meal she would ever take, the roles for the first meal I ever took were reversed. This time, I fed her. That, I can assure you, is a circle very squared.
She was able to formulate thoughts and to speak them, but it was in a whisper that never appeared on a stage I knew. There was one fantastic mis-hear on my part, which changed the direction of my life and would not be resolved for fully ten years. But of much more relevance here is a question she asked me loud and clear. There was no mistaking it. There was no way I could demur on answering it either. But the true answer I did not know. So I acted on impulse and made it up. Her question was “Is there an afterlife?” My answer was “Yes.” And, with that, the question and answer session ended.
One of the most consequential questions and answers that you can pose and reply to in a whole lifetime. I felt bad. I had humoured her. I had not been honest. Easing her passage with fairy stories. And yet, my answer had come instinctively based on my belief. And whilst my belief stems from the teachings and evidence and learning of a lifetime, I did not qualify my answer with references to authority and supporting documentation. I simply said it. Because I believe it, and in the end, once belief is attained, the evidence that got you there becomes irrelevant. Belief changes from being a product of the rationale of the mind to being the visceral knowledge of the heart.
There is a footnote, an intriguing one, in the light of what I just said. In the years since her death, she has on several occasions come back to tell me I was right. Telling people that makes me feel uncomfortable, because even if belief stems from teachings, I or no one can make you believe. You cannot be led to God by the nose. You must sniff Him out yourself. Only you can. So adducing evidence of a key question in people’s lives, on their deathbed if not up to that point, sounds like oversell.
Belief is the precise opposite of judicial evidence. It rests on our spiritual senses, and not our 5 human senses, whereas a court will only hear evidence of the latter. Spirituality proceeds exclusively from intention. Our regulator in life in such matters is our conscience (and not the courts, which is our regulator for other things), and it is our intentions that betray our honesty or otherwise. But a court separates acts and intention from each other and then proceeds to deduce both based on evidential fact since, as Sir Thomas More said and every judge knows, “I have no window into another man’s conscience.”
But a court will lap up evidence. It will regale in heaps of documents and testimony, over days and weeks and even months. Yet its judgment is not predicated on knowing truth, but rather on knowing enough truth. Still, the bench will politely ask whether counsel has any further evidence to lead, and if they do, they will lead it.
All his said, spirituality defies evidence and here is a strange fact: the more evidence you adduce in support of your belief, the more sceptical the unconvinced are of its veracity. Evidence in spirituality weakens your argument.
Finally, to know whether your intentions are pure, you need to interrogate your conscience. It will tell you. But to determine whether court testimony is truthful, the usher asks the witness to swear before an entity evidence of whose existence would fall foul of the court’s own rules of evidence on a Bible whose authorship is unattested (in varying degrees, but most of it is attributed ex parte). That means that if you conducted a legal debate on whether God exists, you’d need to swear on the Bible that He does before you could argue that He doesn’t.