[Avodah] effects of religous worship on health

[Steven J Scher]

> On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:41:33 -0700 Steven J Scher <sjscher at eiu.edu>
> wrote:

>> R'Yitzchak Grossman:
>>> We are not saying that He would do so "simply to convince people
> of His
>>> existence"; on the contrary, I am saying that as long as He can
> be
>>> expected to act according to the normal ways in which we are
> told He
>>> acts, i.e. as a Shomai'a Tefillah, we ought to be able to
> measure and
>>> quantify this effect. ...
>>

ME (Steve Scher):

>> Yes, He's a Shmoai'a Tefillah, but He is also an Ohavei Mishpat
> v'Tzedek.
>> HaShem hears all prayers, but doesn't necessarily act on all of
> them ...
>> So, what would be His reasoning for
>> treating those patients who are not deserving, but just happened
> to be
>> prayed for as part of our study, better than those who are more
> deserving,
>> but were randomly assigned into the non-prayer group?
>

R' Daniel Israel

> Another possibility is that He would arrange so that the supposedly
> random groups are not random.  The scientists can pick any random
> number generator they like, HKB"H can always "game" the system so
> that the prayed-for group contains the people he wishes to give a
> better outcome to.


Yes.  I think this is the right answer... although I hadn't thought of it 
until recently (as part of thinking about this discussion on A/A).  What's 
random from our perspective is never random from HaShem's perspective, no?

But... For HaShem to do this, He would have to want to provide the 
evidence of his existence ... this wouldn't be the way that He carries out 
his normal activity (i.e., as a Shomea Tefila as discussed by RYG above). 
So, there's the question: Not only should we be seeking evidence of His 
existence, but does HE want to provide the evidence.  Do we require 
evidence to have emunah?

Perhaps we should: 'vayaminu baShem u'vmoshe avdo' comes AFTER 'v'yar 
yisroel es haYad haGedola asher Asa HaShem'...

on the other hand, did Avraham Avinu wait for evidence before he rejected 
his father's idols?


In any event, this is a separate question from whether we should TRY to 
get the evidence.  If we do a study like the one we're talking about, we 
are essentially testing HaShem.  Is that a good idea?  Especially since 
its 'failure' could be used by atheists, etc, as evidence of THEIR case, 
despite the fact that, as R'DI points out:

>
> OTOH, it is important to note that while a strong positive
> correlation would be plausible piece of evidence for existence
> (although it could also be a statistical anomaly or the result of a
> methodological error, the latter being very common in this type of
> study), a negative result (no difference between the samples) would
> not be evidence for anything, really.  HKB"H could simple choose
> not to reveal Himself in this way.
>
> In fact, when I hear studies of this sort showing positive results,
> I tend to be skeptical, not because I don't believe HKB"H exists,
> chv"sh, but because I don't believe He runs the world in a way such
> that this kind of test can work.