PEOPLE are to be tortured in laboratories at Oxford University in a United States-funded experiment to determine whether belief in God is effective in relieving pain.
Top neurologists, pharmacologists, anatomists, ethicists and theologians are to examine the scientific basis of religious belief and whether it is anything more than a placebo.
Headed by Baroness Greenfield, the leading neurologist, the new Centre for the Science of the Mind is to use imaging systems to find out how religious, spiritual and other belief systems, such as an illogical belief in the innate superiority of men, influence consciousness.
A central aspect of the two-year study, which has $2 million (£1.06 million) funding from the John Templeton Foundation, the US philanthropic body, will involve dozens of people being subjected to painful experiments in laboratory conditions.
While enduring the agony, they will be exposed to religious symbols such as images of the Virgin Mary or a crucifix. Their neurological responses will be measured to determine the efficacy of their faith in helping them to cope.
The aim is to develop new and practical approaches “for promoting wellbeing and ultimately maximising individual human potential”.
…He said that the experiments would involve non-invasive simulation of burns and will be conducted according to strict ethical rules. As they suffer, the human guinea pigs will be asked to access a belief system, whether religious or otherwise. [Source]
Access a belief system? This almost sounds as if faith is being viewed like a file on a hard drive. Please wait – accessing belief system. For atheists it must be "file not found." For syncretist you would then proceed to select from a menu of choices. For Sunday Christians the file is archived during the week. When losing your faith maybe you should first check the Recycle Bin before panicking.
Reading science stories like this really makes you feel that we have come a long way. That we are truly enlightened now. Pick up your cross daily while we calibrate the potentiometer of pain and measure your belief response. No pain no scientific gain. What that hurts? Then look at this religious symbol and see if that helps your neurological response.
Now a non-invasive simulation of burns sounds like something out of the Dune series. In Dune a Gom Jabber (needle with lethal poison) was held to the neck of Paul Atreides while he placed his had in a box that simulated burning pain to determine if he was a "true human." If he removed his hand to soon the Reverend Mother would poke him with the Gom Jabber.
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I can’t believe I’m seeing this. I was sure it was one of your parodies until I followed the link.
Science really is the new religion – now it has it own auto-da-fe. “We’ll virtually burn you alive, and see if your bizarre, irrational belief system holds up under the ordeal!”
Oxford – that reminds me… has anyone read That Hideous Strength? This sounds like a N.I.C.E. project. Of course, the head-kept-alive-in-a-jar thing has already been done by American scientists…
I really like this part:
The aim is to develop new and practical approaches �for promoting wellbeing and ultimately maximising individual human potential�.
By torturing “human guinea pigs.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to dig through my faith cache in the hopes that a good page hadn’t been overwritten with an error page.
And this sounds sinister:
The study is considered of vital importance in the present world climate, given the role of religious fundamentalism in international terrorism. A better understanding of the physiology of belief, the conditions that entrench it in the mind and its usefulness in mitigating pain could be crucial to developing counter-terrorist strategies for the future.
So… getting a terrorist suspect to lose his Muslim faith will make him easier to break? That seems to be the drift of this passage.
Scientists have long been baffled at the persistence of these beliefs in the face of seemingly irrefutable logic. Professor Lewis Wolpert, the biologist, has speculated in the past that a belief in how the world was created and what happens after death may have conferred an evolutionary advantage.
An evolutionary advantage? I thought that religious belief was supposed to make people into genocidal madmen, cause economic stagnation, and propagate behaviors like self-mortification and even–horrors!–celibacy. Pity the poor atheist scientist. He hates religion, and considers it a destructive, life-denying force – but his naturalistic worldview requires him to explain religion in terms of evolution: if religion has survived this long in humanity, there must be some evolutionary advantage to it. But never fear: he will elegantly escape from this quandary by saying that belief was advantageous in the past, for some unknowable reason.
Irefutable logic would be St. Thomas five ways. there has to be a God at the ground of existence, not matter how elaborate and evolutionary theory, they’ll never get around that.
The virtual pain thing would be the microwave area denial device being developed by the military. On an airforce website the term Active Denial Technology is used.
Active Denial Technology: Related to high-power microwaves is this millimeter wave technology that penetrates less than 1/64th of an inch into an individual�s skin to stimulate the person�s pain sensors into feeling severe pain without physical damage. The technology is proving extremely effective as a non-lethal means of turning away an aggressor. http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/HPM.html
Pain with no lasting effect, doesn’t sound like fun to me.
SchuBob
This study is flawed on so many levels, but one error in particular jumped out at me. Part of the capacity for faith-filled people to endure suffering is the knowledge that suffering isn’t meaningless. In a lab, “simulated suffering” is known by the participants to have no purpose other than research. They will not be able to “access a belief system” in the same manner as with natural suffering. Looking at a cross doesn’t ease pain, identifying with the Suffering Servant does. And “simulations” aren’t going to help a person do that.
Bravo Matthew! Ditto! Not to mention that there’s no requirement that the subjects who “access” a “belief system” have any real or prior personal interest in it at all.
I liked the part about “Past Torture.” Mentions the Inquisition, of course, but not Thomas Norton, Richard Topcliffe, or Sir Francis Walsingham.
“I can’t help but wonder if this is just a really contrived way for some pissed-off atheist researcher to torture Christians without getting in trouble.”
Well, if the next phase of this experiment involves “virtual gladiatorial games” I guess we’ll know for sure 😉
Zorak’s idea opens a wide field for speculation. I foresee research proposals seeking to compare resistance to pain among mothers-in-law, landlords, bosses, and excessively perfect neighbors.
“I can’t help but wonder if this is just a really contrived way for some pissed-off atheist researcher to torture Christians without getting in trouble.”
Yeah, I wonder too. Why do they only mention “images of the Virgin Mary or a crucifix”? Why not a picture of Jesus or a cross? Or a statue of Buddha? Why Catholics?
They’re being very unscientific. They don’t know what faith is, but they’re trying to research its effects on people anyway.
I think I might have an answer for Meredith. This is one of the things one isn’t supposed to say, but in the view of large parts of the world in general, and journalism in particular, religion IS Catholicism. Everything we do is news; even the Episcopal church can only get ink when they have a major schism, or when a bishop marries his boyfriend. I’m not sure why this is so. It may be because lots of people have a general idea that the Church does teach, and the teachings are not (supposed to be!) open to interpretation. This makes it stand out among religions in this country.
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