Sent to The Star, Johannesburg, Thu
23/04/2015 18:08 in response to the reader’s letter below. Not published.
Sir
I refer to the
letter “Proof angels are among us” in The Star, Thursday April 23, by Judy
Bennett.
Linden Cycle Shop
is to be praised for their “angelic” behaviour. They are obviously good
people.
However, the letter
can hardly convince us that real angels –mythical spirit beings commonly
depicted with wings, haloes, and harps— exist. Good people, or at least
people who behave commendably in certain circumstances, definitely exist: The
letter is proof of that. Taking it as proof of the supernatural is not a
logical conclusion.
It is also not
logical of Ms Bennett to thank her god and pray for Linden Cycle shop.
What evidence does she have that a god was responsible, let alone the specific
one that she believes in?
If I were the
unnamed owner of Linden Cycle Shop, I would be annoyed that Ms Bennett believes
that a supernatural agency made me behave well, rather than that I did it
myself out of my own goodness!
As for praying,
scientific studies of the effects of prayer have concluded that it does not
work. The most extensive of these was the "Study of the Therapeutic
Effects of Intercessory Prayer" in 2006 (see the STEP project in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer).
It found that prayer had no noticeable effect on healing, unless patients knew
they would receive prayers, in which case (on average) the patients fared
worse!
Ms Bennett’s letter
may be good for the cycle shop, but her prayers are just a way of pretending to
do something, while doing nothing.
Thanks and RICKgards
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