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TEMPLETON: BEHIND THE BOGUS CLAIMS OF FAITH & HEALING |
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by Kevin Courcey, RN |
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The Templeton Foundation has been busy, once again funding "research" which they hope will entice (or force) people to "reintegrate faith" into their lives. In a recent report entitled "So Help Me God: Substance Abuse, Religion and Spirituality," Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) simultaneously claims that non-believers abuse substances at significantly higher rates, and that preachers should be trained to treat them. The report was co-sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and the Bodman Foundation, a conservative, religiously oriented foundation known for funding religious homeless programs, school voice/voucher research, sexual abstinence-only programs, welfare-to-work reform, and faith-based solutions to drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and youth violence. It was at the request of the Bodman Foundation that this research was undertaken. While the report uses a variety of techniques to skew their results (See: "The Devil Made Me Do It" in the upcoming issue of The American Atheist Magazine), the primary problem was in overestimating the religiosity of the American public. The authors use Gallup poll figures for religious belief, notoriously unreliable and skewed to increase the apparent numbers of believers, as it states that 95% of the American people believe in God and 91% of us are affiliated with a specific faith or denomination. Fortunately, City University of New York just completed its American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) for 2001, which gives significantly more reliable figures. The percentage of American adults who self-identify with a specific religion has dropped to 81%. Of those who DO claim a religious affiliation, an amazing 40% stated that neither they nor their family members attend services. The ARIS survey also found that over 14% of those polled chose "no religion." This means that a substantial majority of the adults in this country either profess no religion, or have so little interest in organized religion that neither they nor their family members go to services. This completely undercuts the CASA assertion that pastors, rabbis and priests should be trained to combat substance abuse. Their conclusion merely reflects Templeton's goal to reintegrate faith into American life by using religious clerics in substance abuse programs. It would seem that appropriately treating substance abuse is not nearly as important as bringing the wayward sheep back into the "faithful" fold. This also plays into the drive to allocate taxpayer funds for "faith-based" treatment programs. Two other research ventures have also made the news recently. The first was a study done in a Korean pregnancy clinic which claimed miraculous results for women who were prayed for. The researchers said that women in the prayed-for group had a 50% pregnancy rate, while those who were not prayed for had only a 26% pregnancy rate. There are several aspects of this study that are suspect. First, the study used a two-tier prayer system. The first tier prayed for individual women (they had pictures and first names), and the second tier prayed for the prayers of the first tier to be heard. The researchers did not explain why they felt their God was getting hard of hearing and in need of such amplification. Second, the overall rate of success at the clinic remained essentially normal during this study. So if prayer accomplished anything, it simply distributed the usual clinic success rate into the prayed for and non-prayed for groups. This means that the non-prayed for clients were robbed of a chance to get pregnant merely by agreeing to participate in this study. This seems unethical, even for a God. To top it off, in two subgroups (those under 30 and those who received a specific type of treatment) the non-prayed for group actually had better success rates. The non-prayed for patients under 30 had a 25% better pregnancy rate than those who were the objects of prayer. This is exactly the type of random outcome one would expect for a non-efficacious treatment. The final study that is generating press these days is one where patients undergoing cardiac catheterization (the threading of an IV catheter near the heart) were offered prayer, "healing touch," relaxation exercises, or guided imagery to lower their anxiety about the procedure and prevent complications. Dr. Harold Koenig of Duke University is a co-author of this study, and sits on Templeton's Board. He is also a member of the Templeton faculty. The authors are claiming in the press that the prayed-for group had better outcomes than any of the other groups. To quote the summary of the study as published in the American Hearth Journal, however, "Results were not statistically significant for any outcomes comparison. While this study will get press coverage, and already has been showcased on WebMD, the truth is that the headline should have read: "Prayer found clinically insignificant in yet another study."
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