Um...okay.

Via Mark Shea comes this story about an exciting new scientific study in the offing:From the Times (UK):

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”.

The pain experiments will be conducted under the direction of Toby Collins, who has a background in marine biology and the nerve systems of invertebrates. He said that many people in pain turned to faith for relief. Some looked to religious or secular healing systems.

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.

Dr Collins said: “We will simulate a burn sensation to see how people, through distraction or by accessing different strategies, can modulate and reduce the levels of pain.”

John Stein, a neuroscientist from Oxford’s physiology department, said: “Pain has been central to a lot of problems that religious and other thinkers have concentrated on.”

Professor Stein said that people differed widely in the extent to which they felt pain. “What we want to do is correlate that with their underlying beliefs.”

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.

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.

Is it the Times or is the Onion? You decide.

Comments

[Mark Shea]

"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."

Come on! Access your damn belief system! Do it! NOW!!!! Or so help me, I'll strictly and ethically turn up the voltage, damn you!!!

Too funny.

I dunno. This just feels too much like somebody's leg is being pulled. Either that, or it's a crowning illustration of the "Sin Makes You Stupid" principle.

[c matt]

Gotta be the Onion. You hope.

[Patrick Rothwell]

It does sound like an "April Fool" type story.

[Mark Shea]

Apparently it's the real deal. Here's a bio of Lewis Wolpert, one of the educated fools behind this silly study.

He's always right. He says so himself.

He'd make a fine researcher for the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments.

[Mark Kasper]

I cannot accept the religion as utility argument. God as an instrument to a higher goal. Christ as a tool to achieve wealth, avoid pain, find well-being and self-esteem.

I have never found Christianity to be a comfort. There is far more cost than comfort. Yes, Jesus paid a far larger cost than I ever will, but the price to pay for the Christian life is mighty.

I want to escape it but cannot. I wish it to be false. I run but my flight takes me no further away. I am not hunted, but haunted. Chain the door and turn off the lights, but it remains. The prospect of the moral life is horrifying, but I can make myself do nothing less than step into it day after day.

MKasper

[Will]

Perhaps an easier and cheaper way to make the world a better place is not to torture people at all. The proposed acts seem at a bare minimum equivalent to assault, to which one cannot, in any meaningfull manner, consent.

The article's repeated insistance that a denial of religious belief is logically irrefutable points out the rather obvious conclusion that either logic can refute such a denial or that people use means other than logic to accomplish the refutation. Failure to grasp that point of logic is intellectual incompetence.

[mizznicole]

They should consider a name change...perhaps, the National Institutue of Coordinated Experiments? or, NICE for short.

[Dave P.]

Beautifully said, Mark Kasper. Francis ("Hound of Heaven") Thompson must be smiling. Maybe even praying for you.

[Henry Dieterich]

What they are looking for is not religion in the sense that Christians understand it, but magic. Science and magic are closely related in that both depend upon a correspondence of cause and effect. Both involve human knowledge of the environment and envision control of that environment. Both science and magic prove their validity by what works. Religion is the subordination of both human knowledge and human power to God. It is not something through which we can exercise control, but through which we are controlled. If a person being tortured in a laboratory experiences relief from looking at a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it says no more about the Blessed Virgin Mary than if the person were relieved by looking at a statue of Ganesh or Homer Simpson. "Religion" in the sense that these unbelievers are using it is something that we do; for the Christian, religion is something that God does to us, in us, and for us.

[JM]

This crowd doesn't need a Generalissimo to tell them their effective (if perhaps unrealized) goal, which is to take note of what techniques of inflicting pain are most effective at taking away a person's religious beliefs. All such people need is permission and the Free World today hands it down like pennies from heaven.

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.

Perhaps the immediate goal is to learn how to "convince" terror suspects not to believe in Islam.

Um... not okay, IMHO.

Jesus Christ.

[JM]

There is no training manual on How to Survive a Crucifixion, and never will be. Therefore the only answers likely to come from such a study are those of use to the crucifiers, in particular which techniques a) cause the most harm and b) cause the most harm to particular groups. The notion that this will be of use to people about to undergo intense pain fails because it is a corrupted study from the beginning, providing a societally acceptable front for masochism, in the service of knowledge that corrupteth man's body and soul.

[Mark Shea]

But are we sure that crucifixion is really "torture"? Definitions are terribly complex, JM. It's all so fuzzy. Don't be so darn judgemental and mean-spirited. After all, if our crack research team discovers "slightly less disgusting" than truly disgusting forms of torture, Michael Ledeen says it's A-OK, so long as that torture is productive. So I think we should all salute these pioneering researchers! They are heros of the Fatherland in the War on Terror!

[Zhou De-Ming]

I thinks the folks in England are a bit misguided. Your average Christian has trouble with deciding whether or not to withstand another donut by faith; hot electrodes are way beyond their capacity.

They should try Buddhist monks, who have a long tradition of burning. See this article from the journal "History of Religions," for example:

"In fact, burning the body is one of the most obvious and commonplace features of Sinitic Buddhism, since all Chinese and Korean monks and nuns are burned at ordination, or at least were until recently. The scars of these burns are highly visible in the Chinese case, since it is the head that is burned. This article investigates the recommendation of burning the body (shao shen) in two apocryphal texts that were well known and extremely influential in the Chinese Buddhist tradition."

Also, burning off of ones fingers as a reverential gesture was a fairly common Buddhist practice in some places. I don't know if it is still practiced. From this article:

"Another practice which is mentioned as highly meritorious is the offering of the devotee’s own flesh and even his or her own life. ... The practice of burning fingers as offerings has also been occasionally seen at the stupa in Bodh Gaya in recent years."

I doubt that many Americans or Brits who find Buddhism fashionable will take up the practice of wrapping their fingers in oily cloths and igniting them while they chant as a way to demonstrate their devotion.

You get the idea. Sort of makes the old Catholic penetential ways look moderate by comparison.

[Roberto]

To me the telling sentence is "to examine the scientific basis of religious belief". It's the old attempt at discrediting religion as "just biochemical processes". As such it will not go anywhere.
What is disturbing, of course, is the use of turture and the tortured logic presented to justify it. But previous posters have addressed that very well.
We need to pray.

[David Hecht]

Speaking of burning and faith, what of Mucius Scaevola, the Roman officer captured by the Samnites during the Social Wars, who *voluntarily* put his hand into a brazier and held it there until it was burned away to the bone?

The only thing he believed in was Rome: I doubt he called upon the gods (except in the profane sense: "By Jove, that stings!") in the process of showing the Samnites how tough he (and by extension, Rome) was...

[Maureen]

This is pretty stupid even on its own terms. The only "don't feel pain" religious experience I can think of is being totally rapt in ecstasy. Which is slightly unlikely to occur even in saints while strapped into chairs, wearing doohickery, and watching a slideshow. I suppose some meditation techniques do remove or tone down pain, but that's a game of neurology and cognition.

Christ felt pain. Generally, the martyrs feel pain big time. God has only made it possible for them to endure it more bravely. If I'm ever martyred, I fully expect to scream a lot while I die; I hope I have strong faith but I know I have a low pain threshold! ;)

Really, though, I fail to see how any of this is useful for counterterrorism. Terrorism, more like.

[pml]

"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 ...."

http://www.pharm.ox.ac.uk/academics/greenfield.htm — biography

http://www.thefutureoflife.com/speakers/greenfield.htm

http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/issues/0212/brehan.htm—

Now why do I feel this headline below may some day be interconnected in the future to this one? Just wondering.

Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jan/05011109.html

LifeSiteNews.com
Tuesday January 11, 2005

Dutch Euthanasia Doctors May Now Kill Perfectly Healthy Adults

[chris K]

As Amy likes to quote:

"She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick"

In this case, however, sounds like some folks have just too much time on their hands - and actually get paid for wasting it.

[Mark Shea]

Here's an unpatriotic (and no doubt unscientific) soul who still is not on board with Torture for the Greater Good of the Fatherland. Perhaps he should be made a member of the Involuntary Human Subjects Sample Group. After all, the study is an invaluable contribution to "developing counter-terrorist strategies for the future". You can say what you like. Go ahead and call this study silly and wicked. But I'm not gonna sit here and let you badmouth the United States of America, Mr. Publius! When *we* torture it's for a darn good reason. Or don't you *believe* in Science and America?

[Christopher Rake]

Don't be so darn judgemental and mean-spirited. After all, if our crack research team discovers "slightly less disgusting" than truly disgusting forms of torture, Michael Ledeen says it's A-OK, so long as that torture is productive.

What's with the jihad against Michael Ledeen?

[Christopher Rake]

Here's an unpatriotic (and no doubt unscientific) soul who still is not on board with Torture for the Greater Good of the Fatherland. Perhaps he should be made a member of the Involuntary Human Subjects Sample Group....

Ah. Not a very surprising pose from a site whose author maintains that To be blunt, George Bush and the Pentagon leadership have been wrong on every single major foreign policy decision they have made.. And that we didn't send enough troops to Afghanistan, of all places. And that approvingly quotes a comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. zzzzzzzzzzz

It would reflect better on Administration critics if they recalled that President Bush is also "one of those unpatriotic souls who still is not on board with Torture for the Greater Good of the Fatherland." One must contend with this.

President Bush's stance against torture has been described in a number of forums by Atty General nominee Gonzales and by Bush himself. I have linked to those comments before. I will not repost those links at the moment since some of those most in need of reading them apparently have not taken advantage of the opportunity.

[Mark Shea]

Pay me no mind, Chris. I'm just one of those bedwetters Victor Morton despises for their inability to sign on with Realpolitik. Owing to my effeminate inability to Face the Real World, I find myself congenitally unable to endorse Ledeen's prescriptions for Strength Through Torture. So naturally, when Ledeen writes, "I know there are forms of torture that are both disgusting and counterproductive, and they should be rejected. But I'm quite prepared to believe that there are slightly less disgusting yet significantly more productive methods that we should employ" and Catholics call complaints about this a "jihad against Ledeen" I have this Euroweenie, America-hating notion that a nation which embraces his monstrous and evil recommendations is doomed as a civilization. I even go so far as to think that a Catholic who makes excuses for such thinking is involving himself in mortal sin. Can you believe what a persecuting wimp I am? I mean, what's worse, a little electro-shock horseplay in the prisons of the Fatherland for a good cause, or the cruel jihad against a respected Conservative Thinker launched by a despicably unpatriotic person like me?

[c matt]

A better understanding of the physiology of belief, the conditions that entrench it in the mind

Hey, give me all your grant money and I will explain the secret to understanding the physiology of the belief in Catholicism, and the condition that entrenches it in the mind. Aw, what the heck, I'll tell you for free - it just so happens, by lucky coincidence, that the Catholic Faith is THE TRUTH. Darn lucky, that. Makes it easier to stick in your head.

[Mark Shea]

To quote Publius:

when you add up the memos that have already come to light, the sophistication of the allegations (eg, playing on islam fears of nakedness/homosexuality), the claims of the those on the bottom who claim they were ordered, the strange similarities in all three theaters, and yesterday's FBI memos (which claim there is an executive order floating around), it makes the "few bad apples" theory very hard to hold.

Chris says: President Bush is also "one of those unpatriotic souls who still is not on board with Torture for the Greater Good of the Fatherland."

Pity that it took the public revelations at Abu Ghraib to get the Administration to drop the "what can we get away with" fishing expeditions and suddenly come out with condemnations of torture. But then, what else *could* they do? Announce that they were four square in favor of torture? Nope. Not without the proper softening work of torture apologists like Ledeen.

I can't tell you how depressing it is that only Andrew Sullivan has had the cojones to speak clearly about this stuff.

Sullivan: "This brutal treatment occurred, according to various government reports, only at internment facilities which were also designed to get intelligence. Up to 80 percent of the inmates at Abu Ghraib - which was used to get better intelligence - were utterly innocent. The torture was done by hundreds of different U.S. military officers and soldiers from almost every branch of the military. There is no assurance that it has stopped."

Hundreds. In every branch. Golly, that's a strange coincidence. Mass spontaneous and simultaneous insubordination or obedience to approved policy?

Never mind. Bush must be defended at all costs (even though this sounds eerily like the Left's loony defense of Clinton at all costs).

[Christopher Rake]

Hi Mark. Somewhere in there is a response. I will try to find it.

Ledeen does say part of what you said. But it is not the only thing he says. It comes down to cases, of course. I agree that his reference to "slightly less disgusting" methods is a disturbing phrase. But Ledeen has said many other things on the subject and other than the possibility of your own reason being clouded by rage, Mark, I do not understand why you have not addressed them. I am sure you would not want your own most heated words on any subject examined in isolation, thus distorting what you actually believe when all aspects of your position are considered.

For example, Ledeen says the following:

First, the matter of the "abuses" of the prisoners. Maybe the temperature of the rhetoric has cooled enough for us to address the most important aspect of the debacle: Torture and abuse are not only wrong and disgusting. They are stupid and counterproductive. A person under torture will provide whatever statements he believes will end the pain. Therefore, the "information" he provides is fundamentally unreliable. He is not responding to questions; 99 percent of the time, he's just trying to figure out what he has to say in order to end his suffering. All those who approved these methods should be fired, above all because they are incompetent to collect intelligence.

Torture, and the belief in its efficacy, are the way our enemies think. And remember that our enemies, the tyrants of the 20th century, and the jihadis we are fighting now, are the representatives of failed cultures. Our greatness derives from the superiority of our culture, and we should, as the sports metaphor goes, stick with what got us here....

Ledeen's separate remarks about "slightly less disgusting" interrogation methods are in the context of a discussion about whether there is something useful and permissable in between tearing your tongue out (one of Saddam's milder methods) and making sure your air conditioning isn't set too high. Ledeen thinks there is. So do I. We might disagree about where that line is drawn and that is an important discussion worth having.

I believe you are guilty of misreading Ledeen and then misrepresenting him. I think you should reconsider or at least take into account Ledeen's repeated comments against torture, even if they are substantially (though far from only) utilitarian.

[Christopher Rake]

Mark, there is at least something approaching directness in the following:

Pity that it took the public revelations at Abu Ghraib to get the Administration to drop the "what can we get away with" fishing expeditions and suddenly come out with condemnations of torture. But then, what else *could* they do? Announce that they were four square in favor of torture? Nope. Not without the proper softening work of torture apologists like Ledeen.

I take it that you now believe President Bush is a liar when he said he was against torture. I also take it that you believe Atty Gen. nominee Gonzales lied in his Jan. 2002 memo when he noted that prisoners not covered by the Geneva Conventions will not be tortured because of President Bush's orders.

I take it that you regard the abuses at Abu Ghraib were simply a result of Administration policy rather than a breakdown of military discipline that was already being investigated before the public revelations. I guess opinions differ.

[Mark Shea]

Chris:

I again note that we are talking about a pattern of torture and murder that involves hundreds of people in all the branches of the military--and only at intelligence gathering facilities. Doesn't that strike you as fishy? If the whole military is that prone to infrastructure breakdown, I would suggest we are in deep trouble. Except that I have trouble believing that's what it was.

Your excuses for Ledeen's rhetoric, like the previous excuses of other posters for his calls to shoot the wounded since one of them might grow up to be Hitler, are lame. Ledeen has a pattern of double talk. He calls for cold-blooded murder, then says, "Of course, Murder is wrong." He says, "Of course, torture is wrong" and then calls for torture, just so long as it's slightly less disgusting and, above all, productive.

I'm willing to grant that the Gonzales memo about Bush is important evidence in Bush's favor. But I also think that the various points Publius makes are significant. I mean, it's not like it would be a shock to discover that a politician has lied about something embarrassing to his Administration. And since we don't even have assurance yet that torture has ceased, the idea that we should lay off the Administration for this little boo boo seems rather premature.

The mood of the conservative zeitgeist has really reminded me a great deal of the liberal defenders of Clinton. "It never happened, it was no big deal when it did, and besides they deserved it." Ledeen's double talk, Andy McCarthy's frank calls for "non-lethal torture" and Linda Chavez appalling attempts to make torture palatable to the average Joe are all of a piece with the Right's attempts to cover the Administration's butt. I'd be much happier to see the Right holding the Administration accountable rather than working so very hard to make the public approve of torture.

[Christopher Rake]

Your excuses for Ledeen's rhetoric, like the previous excuses of other posters for his calls to shoot the wounded since one of them might grow up to be Hitler, are lame.

Obviously I do not regard my links as excuses, but the full picture of what a man truly believes. I think you are cherry-picking to make him look as bad as humanly possible. That wouldn't be hard for either one of our own opponents to do, would it, Mark?

In my comments above, I have portrayed Ledeen as someone who says 1. Torture and abuse are wrong and disgusting; 2. torture doesn't work because it generates lousy information; 3. Torture is the method of our enemies, not us and our superior culture, which is another reason not to do it.

Ledeen also says

4. There are "slightly less disgusting and more productive methods" that he would approve of. Since we haven't gotten down to cases, we don't know what he has in mind.But surely, if we want to form an honest opinion of the man, we have to take into account points 1,2 and 3 whenever we are condemning 4. Most of your commentary on the subject pretends that those points simply do not exist. In this respect you really are misrepresenting the man.

Your excuses for Ledeen's rhetoric, like the previous excuses of other posters for his calls to shoot the wounded since one of them might grow up to be Hitler, are lame.

That is not what Ledeen said, in a post that you called Perhaps the Most Evil Thing NRO Has Ever Published. Possibly an exagerration?

Ledeen's comment actually was a fairly unremarkable reminder that a man who could have killed a wounded Hitler in the battlefield regretted not having done it. The punchline was also that evil can be the result of doing good:

Murder is surely evil, yet every reasonable person will agree that the cause of good would have been greatly advanced if Henry Tandey had killed Hitler in that trench. History abounds with examples of good actions furthering the cause of evil...

Is this not true? From a Catholic point of view, does this not point to the fatally wounded nature of the world we live in, where even good works are corrupted by bad results?

Now that we know what Hitler "achieved," the choice facing Tandey is at least a moral quandary. Of course we don't always know in advance what the consequences of our actions will be, which back in Christopher Rake Land is probably a good reason to not endorse a "call to shoot the wounded." Not that Ledeen issued such a call. I honestly do wonder about your perspective when ordinary observations such as Ledeen's and Tandey's generate such rage.

But the main thing is that you should not portray people in the worst possible way by selectively quoting them and ignoring counterclaims. When you do acknowledge Ledeen's objections to torture, I guess you regard them as lies, which I suppose is one way to acknowledge them. But to my knowledge you have never presented a convincing case as to why he's telling the truth when favoring some form of coercion but lying when he objects to torture.

As to "hundreds" of people across all units abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, suffice to say for now that it is fishy but I have not come to rely on Andrew Sullivan for quite a long time. I need to acquaint myself further with those facts, however.

[Jane M]

Thank you Christopher for your reasonable comments on some quite nasty provocation.

[Mark Shea]

In response to the *possible* murder of an unarmed wounded man, Ledeen called, not for an investigation to see whether murder was committed or not, but for us to "enter into evil" and "do those things we know to be morally wrong." It's quite true that he performed extraordinarily fancy footwork to appear to be saying that he condemned murder (he's not a complete idiot, after all). But in fact, what he was saying was "If the Marine knowingly *did* shoot an unarmed man, well, is that really so bad?" That was the clear message. It was a profoundly wicked bit of agitprop for murder or "doing things we know to be morally wrong" as he euphemistically put it, followed by a faux disclaimer that, of course, he wasn't really calling to legitimize murder.

And I can't tell you how depressed I am to still see Catholics making excuses for it.

I give up. Back to the book.

[Jimmy Mac]

I'm curious what the results would be if non-believers were put to the same test and items appropriate to their non-belief were presented to them, what would the results be? Better yet, what items would be used?

I've asked my non-believing friends, but they have chosen silence as opposed to retort. But hope springs eternal.

[John Prangley]

It is heartening to read Catholics expressing outrage at the acceptance of torture that the administration appears to have instigated.
In Europe we hear not only of the numbers of Americans involved, but also that the CIA have many secret prisons where the prisoners have no outside support, so God knows what happens;we also hear that America exports some prisoners to countries which torture for her....