People who are ignorant of science sometimes speak as if the scientific method was some esoteric, arcane method of problem-solving, applicable only to a few highly specialized areas of inquiry and having no relevance to everyday life. But nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the scientific method is just a more sophisticated, more careful way of asking and answering questions about what is true, with extra safeguards built in to counteract the ways that human beings often fool or mislead ourselves. In principle, science can answer any question whose answer is a matter of empirical fact and not just a matter of opinion or subjective judgment.

This fact has implications for a broad range of religious claims, especially about the efficacy of prayer. Large, well-designed scientific studies have repeatedly failed to find any evidence that sick people who are being prayed for recover faster or more completely than people who aren't. In response, many apologists have retreated to claiming that prayer's effectiveness can't be tested scientifically, such as this one:

Luckily for everyone, scientific attempts to prove or disprove God are all doomed to failure. We live in exactly the world the thoughtful Christian would expect to find. For those who believe, hints of God are everywhere. But none are convincing. Faith remains a requirement...

But this claim probably says more than its originator intended. When theists say that prayer is untestable, what they're really saying, whether they realize it or not, is that prayer has no measurable effect on the world. If it did have a measurable, repeatable effect, we could easily design an experiment that would show it. But since believers say that this can't be done, they must mean that prayer has no benefits that can be proven by any test. Consider some of the consequences that necessarily follow from this claim:

• Sick theists who pray for healing are no more likely to recover than sick atheists. If people who were prayed for recovered more quickly or more fully than people receiving no prayer, we could easily show this with a test. That was the point of the MANTRA study I linked to above. But if prayer is untestable, then that must mean that prayer has no measurable effect on a person's recovery, regardless of how many people are offering prayers for them or how fervent those people are in their faith.

• Theists who pray for success and prosperity are no more likely to receive it than atheists. Prosperity-gospel churches often teach that the more money a believer tithes, the more God will reward them. Again, a longitudinal study tracking the amount of people's donations and comparing it to their subsequent financial success could easily show this to be so. If prayer is untestable, however, this must mean that the amount of money you give to your church has no effect on the odds of your subsequently becoming rich.

• More committed, more faithful believers have their prayers answered at the same rate as more casual, less committed believers. Even if you start with the assumption that God only grants prayers that agree with his will, it seems like a reasonable guess that more devoted, more committed believers would have at least a slightly greater understanding of God's will than casual, apathetic churchgoers, and hence their prayers would be more likely to come true. But if prayer is untestable, there must be no such measurable effect, which means that one's level of commitment means nothing to the effectiveness of one's prayers.

• The number of people praying for some outcome makes no difference to its probability. Even if the level of one's devotion makes no difference, you might guess that the number of people praying for some outcome would be correlated with how likely that outcome is. But if prayer is untestable, then it must make no difference whether one, a hundred, or a million people pray for something - it would be just as likely, or rather unlikely, to come true.

• The specific beliefs of the people praying for some outcome makes no difference to its probability. If there's one true religion, it seems likely that God would only answer the prayers of believers in that religion, or at least would answer their prayers more frequently than the prayers of heretics. But that would also be an easily testable effect. If prayer is untestable, there must be no such effect, and this means that people of all religions - Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Hare Krishna, Jain, Zoroastrian, Shinto - would see their prayers come true with roughly the same frequency.

• People who pray daily are no more happier, no more virtuous, and no more trustworthy than people who rarely or never pray. Some people claim that prayer doesn't produce miraculous effects in the world, but is intended to strengthen the faith and improve the character of the believer. But even this can't be true if prayer is untestable. If people who are otherwise alike in social standing are measurably different in any positive psychological trait, depending on whether or how often they pray, this would be a testable effect. We could measure it with the same kind of epidemiological surveys that measure the beneficial health effects of diet or exercise. If this kind of test wouldn't work, then it must be the case that prayer produces no detectable change in the character of the believer.

• Nations populated by people who pray frequently are no more socially healthy than irreligious nations. Building on the last point, if prayer has no measurable effect, this must apply to nations as well as people. This means that nations of fervent believers who pray frequently are no different from godless, atheist nations in every measure of social health: divorce rates, crime rates, number and severity of natural disasters, overall happiness of the populace, and so on.

Guest post by Peter Nothnagle

On June 30, someone stole a piece of the True Cross (you know the one I mean) that was enshrined in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. It had been kept in a small compartment in the base of a crucifix hanging on a wall in a chapel. Someone walked in, pried it open, and helped himself. That was a mean thing to do.

The faithful are very attached to their sacred relics. They see these bits of bone, cloth, vegetable matter, and globs of goo as links to the times, places and persons of their spiritual forebears. Many of these items are supposed to have had extraordinary powers in the past — raising the dead and so forth — although modern church leaders are much more modest in their claims.

The most famous relics have been the most studied — and study has cast serious doubt on their authenticity. Yet the faithful cling fiercely to the idea that they are authentic, as if the debunking of, say, the Shroud of Turin or the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe would undermine their faith. As for the True Cross, according to tradition (which will have to suffice in place of history), it was discovered after torturing witnesses, some 300 years after the (alleged) Crucifixion, and then repeatedly captured by invaders, held for ransom, concealed, rediscovered, divided into tiny pieces to be distributed among visitors and dignitaries — none of which gives much confidence in the authenticity of any surviving fragments.

The Bible is the most popular relic of all. Most Christians cherish the Bible as the foundation of their faith, considering it divinely inspired, but the poor thing has been cobbled together from many traditions over the centuries, redacted, amended, translated from translations and copied from copies, and cannot be an accurate record of any one faith tradition. In the 21st century, we have powerful tools for the scientific examination of historical claims, and we know things that should shake the faith of anyone who ascribes any more than the vaguest, metaphorical "truth" to the stories in the Bible: there was no Creation, no Adam, no Eve, no Fall, no Flood, no Moses, no Exodus, and on and on. The fact that all those stories are flatly contradicted by science and history must lead any rational person to be suspicious of all the other tales of angels, miracles, prophetic utterances, and even unimportant details like genealogies and place names, unless independent evidence should corroborate them.

Eventually the penny will drop for the faithful. Everybody has experienced that the provenance of an object, or the veracity of a story, is subject to being falsified. Everybody understands that, to paraphrase biologist Jerry Coyne, you can't be confident that you're right about something unless you can tell if you're wrong. When the faithful bolster their immaterial faith with evidence, they're playing our game, and unbiased examination of the evidence has only gone one way — badly for the faithful.

There is only one true and honest way to have faith, and that is to ignore evidence — to abandon it, even to flee from it. To base one's religious faith on evidence, even something as subjective as "I just feel in my heart that it's true", is to invite rational rebuttal, which should lead a sensible person to doubt.

With the historic passage of sweeping health insurance reform, Americans have reason to rejoice this week. For the first time, and despite hysterical opposition from the party of conspiracy nuts and theocrats, our government has enshrined in law the idea that every citizen has a right to affordable health care. Even if the law is far from perfect, it's still a huge advance over the alternative of doing nothing - and history shows that most major pieces of progressive social legislation, including Social Security and Medicare, started out flawed and were improved over time. With this bill now signed into law, we have a foundation to build on.

Atheists and freethinkers have another reason to celebrate (in addition to the removal of the noxious, theocratic Stupak language on abortion). Namely, one of the worst provisions of the bill - a clause mandating that health insurance companies pay for prayer - was removed in committee and didn't make it into the final legislation. This clause was originally inserted at the urging of the Christian Science church, the cult which shuns all modern medicine in favor of faith healing delusions and would rather see children suffer agonizingly and die slowly than take them to a doctor.

Or at least, that used to be the party line. In the last few decades, Christian Scientists' numbers have been in steady decline, and there are signs that the church may be giving ground on its absolute stance, as the New York Times reports:

Though officials do not provide membership statistics, scholars estimate that the church's numbers have dropped to under 100,000 from a peak of about twice that at the turn of the 20th century.... In New York City, falling membership forced the Christian Science church on Park Avenue to lease its building part time to a catering service in 2006. Another Manhattan church remains open; a third closed in 2005.

It'd be easy to snark that the reason Christian Scientists' numbers are dwindling is that so many of them tend to die. But I don't think it's sheer attrition that's the cause. In the past few years, there have been more and more cases of parents prosecuted for letting their children die of completely treatable illnesses. I think it's the onslaught of bad publicity and the church's public intransigence that have been turning people off - not to mention the fact that, as scientific medicine gets better and better and its benefits become more and more apparent, there are increasingly few people willing to give it up.

Like most churches in decline, Christian Scientists have turned to the state to prop them up. The healthcare reform bill was a perfect example, where church lobbyists pleaded with the government to force insurers to pay them for praying. Christian Science practitioners charge $25 to $50 per session, but since their "treatment" of the sick consists of nothing more than babbling superstitious gibberish, anything other than zero is far too high a price to pay. And if every sect or cult under the sun could demand payment in exchange for carrying out their own magic rituals, where would it end? Why should the rest of us have to subsidize, through higher insurance premiums, the religious nonsense of modern-day witch doctors?

The American Academy of Pediatrics deserves commendation for their strong stand against treating prayer as the equivalent of medicine:

"Given the complete lack of scientific evidence of the efficacy of prayer in treating any illness or disorder in children," academy officials wrote Senate leaders in October, "mandating coverage for these services runs counter to the principles of evidence-based medicine."

But, as I said, there are signs that the Christian Scientists have started to relax their absolutist stance - the pronouncements of their lunatic founder, Mary Baker Eddy, notwithstanding. Though Eddy demanded that believers forsake medicine under all circumstances, some modern members are taking a more tolerant stance and starting to push prayer as an alternative, rather than a replacement, for conventional, evidence-based treatment.

The faith's guiding textbook forbids mixing medical care with Christian Science healing, which is a form of transcendental prayer intended to realign a patient's soul with God.... Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879 in Boston, wrote in the church's textbook, "Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures," that anyone inviting a doctor to his sickbed "invites defeat."

But faced with dwindling membership and blows to their church's reputation... Christian Science leaders have recently found a new tolerance for medical care. For more than a year, leaders say, they have been encouraging members to see a physician if they feel it is necessary.

..."In the last year, I can't tell you how many times I've been called to pray at a patient's bedside in a hospital," said Philip Davis, 59, the church's national spokesman, who has been tending to the sick for three decades as a Christian Science practitioner.

This may end up being one of the very rare cases where a religion is forced to change by the sheer weight of the evidence against it. The Christian Science church is still going through a process of smoothing out the rough edges, and as the benefits of modern medicine become increasingly obvious, their leaders may no longer be able to persuade the rest to forsake it. We may wind up with a situation like modern Roman Catholicism, where the bishops and the Pope continue to preach against contraception, but the official teaching is almost universally ignored among educated followers. And the happy fact that payment for prayer was removed from the health care law - a rare triumph of rationality in Washington - can only speed that outcome.

Despite the serious-sounding title, I'm laughing as I write this post. Yes, Americans United for Separation of Church and State is under attack. Yes, the perpetrators are a group of radical Christian dominionists who want to turn this country into their own vision of theocracy. Yes, their aim is to cause great harm and possibly even death to members of Americans United. So why am I so unconcerned?

Because the attack is being waged through prayer.

In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God I ask the children of God to go into action with Imprecatory Prayer. Especially against Americans United for Separation of Church and State.... Specifically target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing. They are those who lead the attack.

It seems that Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, recently issued a press release on church letterhead endorsing former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in the Republican presidential primary. Drake also promoted Huckabee on a church radio show, and made it clear that he was endorsing Huckabee not just as an individual but in his official church capacity:

"I believe Mike Huckabee is, indeed, a man that I can endorse. As Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention, I put out a press release to that effect."

Naturally, Americans United took note, asking the IRS to investigate this blatant violation of U.S. tax law. Churches are tax-exempt organizations, and one of the restrictions that comes with that status is that they cannot endorse or attack specific candidates for office. If a church wants to endorse a specific candidate, there is no law preventing them from doing so, but they must rescind their tax-free status.

Furious at being caught out, Drake hastily issued a press release asking Christians to pray "imprecatory prayers" - in other words, prayers asking that God use his supernatural power to injure or kill someone - targeted at AU. Drake specifically suggests following the prayers modeled in "Psalm 109... [a]lso chapters 55, 58, 68, 69, and 83". Here are some of the prayers he presumably means:

"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

—Psalms 109:9

"Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell."

—Psalms 55:15

"Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth... let them be as cut in pieces."

—Psalms 58:6-7

"Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kison: which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth."

—Psalms 83:9-10

Apparently alarmed by these threats, Bruce Prescott of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists announced that he would be praying counter-prayers, and was enlisting others to join him. (Perhaps he envisions his prayers as a sort of supernatural antiaircraft fire, shooting down the hostile prayers as they fly in to attack their target.)

While I appreciate Dr. Prescott's concern, I can assure him that his efforts are unnecessary. AU and its employees are not in danger. Prayer is a useless superstitious ritual that cannot directly affect anything outside the believer's own mind. No matter how many people Drake gets to pray along with him, the greatest effect their prayers will have is to slightly stir some air molecules around them. We ought to greet this ridiculous threat with the same amused disdain with which we would regard a witch doctor who announced that he was going to cast a hex on AU by dancing in circles and sticking pins into wax dolls. Both these rituals are powerless relics of a credulous age.

Mainstream believers will doubtless dismiss Drake as a fringe kook. But he is not the first Christian conservative to fantasize that his prayers have magical power to strike down his enemies. Recall this incident from the 700 Club in August 2005, in which Pat Robertson asked God to kill some sitting Supreme Court justices so that George W. Bush could appoint replacements:

"Take control, Lord! We ask for additional vacancies on the court."

...Lynn noted that Robertson has a history of controversial activity, whether it's commanding hurricanes to go out to sea or smiting communities that incur his wrath. He once speculated that Orlando might be hit by a meteor for allowing gay flags to be flown on city streets.

(And let's not forget when Robertson, like a none-too-subtle mafiosi, suggested that God would smite the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania with natural disasters to punish them for voting out several pro-creationist school board members: "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city.")

All levity aside, there is something to be concerned about here. It's not the prayers themselves that should concern us, for it's been amply documented that prayer does not work. The real issue of concern is the hateful, aggressive attitude that lies behind them, the one which holds that believers are always entitled to have their own way and that anyone who opposes them is an evil infidel who deserves suffering and punishment. This attitude fosters militarism and intolerance and encourages religious groups to think that they never have to compromise or cooperate. At its worst, it may even tip the mentally unhinged over the edge into actual violence.

Throughout history, groups such as the Puritans have railed against what they see as the overly elaborate and ostentatious ceremony and ritual surrounding religious events. But despite the fulminations of religious reformers, ceremony and ritual are not superfluous add-ons to faith, but very much at the core of it. Belief in the supernatural is usually intended to give the believer a sense of control over events, and a highly elaborate, ritualized ceremony is often more effective at this than a simple, unadorned prayer. The ritual gives the practitioner a sense that they are doing something to bring their will to fruition, rather than leaving it all up to the whims of an inscrutable deity.

This tendency perpetually recurs in Christianity, but it can be seen most clearly in modern New Age religions such as Wicca. As opposed to prayer, Wiccans believe that performing certain rituals can give them direct influence over the workings of the universe. Practitioners of these rituals often call them "magick", rather than "magic", presumably to differentiate themselves from Harry Potter or the professional conjurers on TV. This is a frivolous and ridiculous coinage, and I will not go along with it. Magic is magic, and this post will refer to it as such.

Many so-called magical practices lend themselves to mockery even more easily than most religious practices, especially when the intent behind them is so obviously to fleece the gullible. Consider this apparently serious site, whose creators soberly inform us that they are "an Elfin tribe" and "nature spirits in human form". Among the pieces of magical paraphernalia they're hawking is the following:

The Merlin Flipper : An Instant Decision Maker
When you are having trouble with a Yes-No answer, this very special spell disc from Merlin's Cave can help you find the answer that is right for you. All you have to do is to voice the question whilst flipping the disc into the air like a coin. As this disc has been impregnated with a special spell, you will find that 'Fate' will take a hand and cause it to fall with the answer is 'Right For You', uppermost.

"Like" a coin - because, take note, this is most emphatically not an ordinary coin. If it was, there would be no way to justify selling it for twenty-five American dollars. I hear this site's next product will be that miracle of divination, the "Gandalf Octo-Sphere", which is guided by the invisible hand of Fate to show the humble seeker the true answer to his entreaties, but only after being vigorously shaken.

Or take this "Negative Energy Shield":

At a mere £65.(each) it will render you, invincible to all forms of Psychic Attack: giving you full defence without you feeling a thing. By reflecting the energy back at the sender, your assailant soon begins to realise that they are hurting nobody but themselves and so they desist leaving you to enjoy your freedom. It will ward off the stress and strain of modern life and help you to cope with all of the frustrations and irritations that can build up into up - tight situations which result in a high level of Anxiety and Nervous Tension.

As my girlfriend said upon reading this description: "I already have one of those. It's called a tinfoil hat."

Or, consider the much-touted "magic pebble":

If this very special pebble is placed in a container of clear spring water it will after ten minutes or so, have a profound effect on the energy level of the water, turning it into a very powerful Healing Elixir.

...This, is because it raises the Angstrom Energy Level of the water and thereby increases its potency by an amount that has a very beneficial effect on all living things. For the good of your health, we unreservedly recommend that you drink this water, every day. According to Prof. Angstrom, the average healthy person has an energy level of 6.5Å to 7.0Å. In order to stay healthy, we should eat food and drink that has an energy level of seven of more Angstroms.

(Combine this product with some homeopathically prepared water for twice the pseudoscience in every glass!)

Apparently, the creators of this marvel are banking on their customers not knowing that an angstrom is a unit of length, equal to one ten-billionth of a meter. Claiming to raise the "angstrom energy level" of a glass of water makes about as much sense as promising to increase a person's intelligence by ten miles per hour. As far as the illustrious "Prof. Angstrom", he was a real person (his full name was Anders Jonas Angstrom), but he also died in 1874, so I find it highly unlikely that he first took the time to endorse a crackpot New Age website selling pebbles its proprietors picked up off the sidewalk.

And, of course, no magic vendor would be complete without some good old-fashioned love spells:

This formless flint with a highly erotic shape, has been impregnated with a very potent magic spell or thought form and for many centuries has been known affectionately as 'Old Nick's Finger'. This very powerful virility charm for men has the effect of making your body more sensitive and your mind more relaxed, whilst also increasing your libido and fecundity. For best results, keep beside your bed.

Seriously, why on earth would anyone buy this? If it's sexual potency you want, there are plenty of spammers who will be only too happy to sell you the latest pharmaceutical innovation - which, however much it says about the misguided priorities of drug companies, at least has the advantage of scientifically verified efficacy.

But so I'm not accused of picking on easy targets, let's consider a slightly more serious perspective on magic. The following is a love spell excerpted from The Wicca Bible, by Ann-Marie Gallagher, which discusses magic without quite so many irresponsible claims:

Cast this spell on a waxing moon, preferably on a Friday, ruled by lovely Venus.

...Leave the water for this spell out in the moonlight prior to closing the circle. In magic the Moon is a patron of the tides and this spell asks that a lover comes to the supplicant at the right time.

...1. Light the red candle, saying: "Passion burn bright like the Moon above me that I will meet with one who will love me."
2. Hold the rose quartz in one hand and the clear quartz in the other and visualize yourself walking on a seashore. A new love walks out of the waves toward you. As you walk toward each other, bring your hands together and transfer the clear stone to the hand holding the rose quartz.
3. Place the stones in the chalice and pour in the water, saying: "May the light of the Moon bring the gift I desire. Washed in by the tide and blessed by the fire."
4. This fire is the candle flame which should be allowed to burn down completely.
5. Leave the stones in the chalice for three days, remove them and place together in the red cloth which should be tied tightly into a pouch with the cord and worn about your neck for one moon cycle.

One wonders, how were the methods and ingredients of this spell and others determined? Are there records of past Wiccan researchers who tried different colors of candles or cast the spell on different days of the week? Or do these practitioners simply claim to have acquired their knowledge through oracles?

Unlike the site discussed before, The Wicca Bible does not make extravagant claims about the efficacy of magic to control the external world. In fact, it offers so many provisos and disclaimers that it is sometimes difficult to tell if it is claiming magic rituals have any supernatural effect at all. Its discussion of healing spells, for example, says that "healing magic is not about curing terminal diseases..." (indeed not - you need science for that) - but rather, "if those suffering with terminal or chronic illnesses feel that they will benefit from having strength, calm and tranquillity sent to them, then this is the healing that we can send." (Then again, it does say that "Sometimes spells do have remarkable results").

These elaborate disclaimers are the theological equivalent of the fine print at the bottom of used-car ads. They inform overeager believers that their supernatural ritual usually will not have dramatic effects, lest the practitioner become disillusioned - but on the other hand, they hold out an implicit, wink-and-nudge "But hey, you never know..." In this respect it's similar to Christian apologetics which counsel the believer not to expect blatant answers to prayer, but coyly mention the amazing miracles which they claim happened in the past. The goal is to get believers to live in a state of constant expectation and excitement, but never to expect anything actually verifiable, so they do not lose hope and deconvert.

As part of this, magic practitioners invariably apply their powers to large, complex problems not susceptible to controlled conditions - finding love, getting a promotion, telling the future - where failure can always be blamed on unpredictable factors. Can magic prove its worth in a situation where success is clearly distinguishable from failure? Is there a magic spell that will, for example, make a dice roll turn up a particular number more often than chance would dictate? Can magic practitioners use their deep and intimate connection to the intricate web of the universe to discern which of the five Zener cards an experimenter has selected, at a rate greater than the 20% average of random guessing? Have healing spells ever been compared to placebos in a double-blind scientific study? Such tests have never been done, because they would prove that claims of magical ability are nothing but futile wishful thinking.

Noah's Flood

Today I'm introducing a new post series on Daylight Atheism, "Do You Really Believe That?" The purpose of this series is to highlight religious claims that are so extravagantly bizarre, so manifestly at odds with everything we know about the universe, or so just plain ridiculous that even religious believers shouldn't be able to take them seriously. I'll begin today with one of the most obviously ludicrous and implausible parts of the Bible, the story of Noah's flood. As absurd as this ancient tall tale is, it is taken literally by many believers even today. Consider the following from Answers in Genesis' Statement of Faith:

The great Flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide (global) in its extent and effect.

There are far more absurdities in this story than a single post can cover, and regarding the perennial issue of where the flood waters came from and where they went, I refer readers to the excellent Talk.Origins article Problems with a Global Flood. This article will highlight some of the problems that would have arisen within Noah's ark.

First: How in the world did Noah gather all those animals? The number of known, described species in existence has been estimated as 1.5 million, and there may be as many as ten times more that have not yet been discovered or described. The Bible is adamant that all land animals not on the Ark died in the flood (Genesis 7:21-23), so everything that survived must have been taken on board. Even if, as some creationists postulate, different species just represent variation within a smaller number of fixed "kinds" and the post-flood world underwent a period of ultra-rapid evolution to produce today's present biodiversity, it is still clear that any plausible catalog of the pre-flood world must have included tens of thousands of animals from wildly different habitats all across the globe, including many that live on islands, deserts, mountains, jungles, and other remote and inaccessible habitats. Even granting the 900-year pre-flood lifespans the Bible mentions, there is no plausible way that Noah and his family could have trekked, climbed and sailed all over the planet to find all these animals, capture a healthy breeding pair of each species, and bring them all back to the Middle East in the allotted time. A hundred lifetimes would not be enough to do this. And even if Noah somehow did manage to gather that many, how would they all fit in the Ark?

Second: How did Noah keep the animals from killing each other, or from dying in the cramped conditions? By definition, for every prey animal, the Ark carried its predators - and not just large predators like lions and wolves, but every species of infectious microbe and parasite: bacteria, viruses, lice, fleas, ticks, worms, flukes, fungi, and many others that can only survive on or in the living bodies of their prey. In the necessarily cramped and unsanitary conditions, the Ark would have been a hothouse of sickness and disease. How did the Ark's passengers not die off in droves?

But again, discounting such problems, there is the inherent hardship of the voyage itself. Few animals adjust well to captivity, even in conditions that attempt to recreate their natural environments. The Ark would have been a far worse environment: living in necessarily tiny cages, in densely crowded, dark, dirty conditions drastically unlike their natural habitat (did animals from the polar zones and from the tropics live side by side in the same temperature and humidity?), in the constant turmoil of rough seas for months on end. The stress and terror of such a voyage would certainly have killed many of these animals, and left many others so weakened and traumatized that their long-term survival would be in serious doubt.

Third: How did just eight people care for such an enormous menagerie for so long? Zoos today, which represent a far smaller fraction of the earth's biodiversity than the Ark was claimed to carry, require thousands of employees just to keep the animals healthy and happy. For example, the U.S. National Zoo has a staff of 350 full-time employees and over 1,500 part-time volunteers to care for 2,000 animals representing 400 different species. Does it make any sense at all to claim that just eight people, for an entire year, could have seen to all the needs of a far greater number of living things requiring far more diversity of treatment and care? Feeding and watering the animals, cleaning their cages, keeping them healthy and exercised, treating medical problems that surely would have arisen - eight people working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week could not possibly have done this.

Fourth: How was the world repopulated after the flood? Once the waters receded, the Earth must have been in a terrible state: a dead planet of mud, debris, rotting bodies, and decaying vegetation. The smell would have been indescribable. Even discounting the months it would take to plant and harvest new crops, most would have died in the briny, salt-soaked soil. There would have been nothing to eat for the herbivores, and no food for the carnivores but the herbivores that had just disembarked - and once they consumed all their former shipmates, they would have starved in turn.

But even assuming this problem could be somehow surmounted, there is a more serious one. Living things are not islands - they can only exist and thrive in a complex, interconnected web of relationships that cannot just spring up overnight. Releasing all these animals into the wild and expecting them to spontaneously return to their correct habitats and reconstitute their former ecosystems would be ludicrous. The certain result would be not repopulation, but chaos. The serious problem of invasive species shows what happens when living things are thrown together at random without regard for the intricate relationships among them - multiplying these scenarios by a thousand gives some idea of what the post-flood world must have been like.

The flood story teems with impossibilities, and can be rescued only by postulating a parade of miracles at every turn. Maybe the animals obediently trooped to Noah's side from all over the world, laid down side by side without harming or attacking each other, and went into hibernation for a year on the Ark without needing food, water or exercise. Maybe miracles produced all the water for the flood from nowhere, held the boat together in rough seas, and made the water drain back into nothingness at the end. Maybe more miracles cleared away the millions of rotting bodies, replenished the soil so it would give crops again, and then made those crops grow in super-sped-up time so that the Ark's passengers would have had something to eat. Maybe yet more miracles prevented the deleterious effects of inbreeding so a whole species could be repopulated from just two individuals, resorted the animals all over the world, and recreated their former ecosystems.

If continual and arbitrary violations of physical law are invoked at every turn, any chain of events, no matter how ridiculous or impossible, can be allowed. But the sheer number of miracles that would be needed gives some idea of just how implausible the flood story is. Nevertheless, there are a significant number of theists who believe this silly story really happened and want to see it adopted into the scientific canon and taught in public schools as fact. Yet most of these people, I'd wager, want this only because they have been told by their trusted religious authorities that this story is true and have never thought through its implications for themselves. To theists who fit this description, I suggest you take a closer look at the story of Noah's flood and all it entails, and then ask yourselves: Do you really believe that?

Other posts in this series:

• Do You Really Believe That?

Lately, The Secret - a movie and its companion book produced by Rhonda Byrne - have been burning up the bestseller lists and have attracted endorsements from influential celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. Marketed in the self-help genre, it promises viewers the key to achieving all their life goals through the power of positive thinking. (The name is a misnomer, since The Secret's teachings are hardly a secret but have been a prominent part of New Age belief systems for decades, dating back at least to 1906 and William Walker Atkinson's book Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction. Antecedents can also be found in the Christian "Word of Faith" movement). The only original part about any of this is the marketing, and slick marketing it is: a video with flashy computer graphics, ominous whispers in the background, and dark hints of a grand, Da Vinci Code-type conspiracy to suppress this film's supposedly explosive truth.

The idea that a person, by keeping an optimistic and hopeful attitude towards life, can notice opportunities they might otherwise have missed and succeed by persevering where a pessimist might have failed - this is uncontroversially true. But that is not what The Secret is claiming. Its central claim is a far more radical one: that you can have literally anything you dream about or wish for delivered to you by supernatural power, with no effort required on your part, if only you believe strongly enough that this will happen. This is what the film calls the "Law of Attraction", or as it is summed up in the obligatory pithy slogan, "Thoughts become things". The film also states that this is an infallible natural law, as certain in its operation as gravity.

Some people have misinterpreted The Secret as saying merely that a person can achieve their goals through positive effort and hard work. Again, this is an incorrect description. The Secret is explicit in its claim that no work whatsoever is required to make your wishes come true. All it takes is a clear expression of your desire and sufficient faith in the power of the "law of attraction". The film lists three, and only three, steps to having your desires fulfilled: "ask, believe, receive". In fact, hard work is actively discouraged, as in one section of the movie where an interviewee suggests adjusting one's attitude from the negative "You have to work hard for money" to the allegedly more positive "Money comes easily and frequently". The film goes so far as to compare the universe to Aladdin's genie, who in the original version of the tale granted not just three but an unlimited number of wishes.

Most New Age philosophies make at least a token effort to urge viewers to use their superpowers for spiritual growth and moral development, but The Secret is unabashedly materialistic in its implications. It is calculated to appeal directly to its viewers' sense of greed. It goes out of its way to dazzle with stories and images of multimillion-dollar bank accounts, mansions on the beach, luxury cars and speedboats, marriage to beautiful trophy spouses, and checks arriving in the mail apparently for no reason at all. All these things can be yours, we are told, if only you believe. To no one's surprise, I'm sure, there is no evidence whatsoever presented at any point that any of this works - only scattered anecdotes.

But The Secret is not just selfish and frivolous, it is dangerous. Consider posts by Secret believers such as this one, in which the author informs readers that weight loss can be achieved magically, without any need to eat healthy food or exercise:

You see...it's not about how you eat, exercise (none) or anything like that. It's the representation in your mind of where you actually are. If you believe the perfect you is 185 lbs and you can see yourself as that weight every day, your body has no choice but to move you closer to that state.

The logical conclusion of such transparently absurd reasoning is that it does not matter how many donuts, sodas, hamburgers, or other sources of empty calories and fat you consume. If you wish hard enough to be thin, you will be thin. This is grossly irresponsible advice and could very well endanger people's health.

But even more horrifying is this woman who proudly informed Oprah Winfrey that, based on her belief in The Secret - in particular, a scene in which another interviewee claims to have cured herself of cancer by watching funny movies - she was choosing to stop medical treatment for her own malignant breast cancer and start wishing to get better:

After watching the DVD and seeing The Oprah Show about The Secret, Kim wrote to Oprah after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Three doctors told Kim she would have to have a partial radical mastectomy of the right breast and treatment. Kim writes that "after much thought, I have decided to heal myself."

..."But we do have choices, and I'm making a choice. And in six months' time, I am believing that the cancer will be gone — and if it is not, it has shrunk so much that I can have a lumpectomy not a partial radical mastectomy," Kim says. "It's about holding onto my right for choice."

Breast cancer that is caught and treated early can very often be cured. Breast cancer that is allowed to grow, while the bearer concentrates on wishing for magical healing, may not be so treatable. It is very possible that this woman's belief in The Secret will lead to her early and needless death.

The Secret's metaphysics are inconsistent and contradictory even when taken on their own terms. In one scene, we are shown a man who wanted to promote his self-help books through the National Enquirer and was then approached by a writer from that very paper who was interested in interviewing him. He bragged about how his positive desire had "attracted" her to him. But in a scene just a few minutes later, we are informed that "we cannot control other people, no matter how hard we try".

A related and obvious issue which The Secret never even touches on is this: what happens if two people desire contradictory things? What if one person wills a particular political candidate to be elected, for example, while another wills their opponent to be elected? What if one person wills there to be war and another wills peace? What if one person tries to use the "law of attraction" to get to work quickly and with no traffic, while another person using the same road tells themself, "I hope I don't get stuck in a traffic jam" and thereby unknowingly attracts that very thing?

If the answer is that whoever wills their desired outcome more strongly will get it, then The Secret's repeated claims that the "law of attraction" always works are false. You might wish for something with all your might, and still fail to get it because someone else wished that even more strongly. Or Secret advocates might claim that whoever has the more "positive" desire will get what they want; but in that case their claims about the infallibility of the "law of attraction" are still false, and this still does not answer the question of what happens when two people wish for positive but incompatible outcomes.

There is one more claim made by The Secret, the most vile and invidious of them all. The film's interviewees claim that you get whatever you think about - even a claim such as "I wish I wasn't in debt" will attract more debt. The consequence of this, and it is a consequence that the film states explicitly, is that anything bad that happens to you is your own fault for "attracting" it to yourself. Anything - poverty, cancer, the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or a home, or any other disaster or misfortune - is the victim's fault.

Not only is this attitude cruel and callous in the extreme, there are many cases where it would discourage people from engaging in the hard work actually needed to improve everyone's lives. For instance, the film states that the reason for the enormous wealth gap that existed in the early 1900s was not because of entrenched societal inequalities and political corruption, but because the robber barons knew the Secret and ordinary working people did not. Similarly, we are told that "the anti-war movement creates more war" and instead people should concentrate on wishing for peace. If this attitude was widely adopted, people would soon cease participating in political action to bring about change for the better, and instead spend their time sitting at home and wishing for things to improve. Not only would this not work, it would clear the way for the selfish elite who so often are the cause of society's problems.

There is much more I could say about The Secret, such as the laughable pseudoscientific claims dispensed by the interviewees ("a positive thought is scientifically proven to be a hundred times more powerful than a negative thought"), the even more laughable and simply wrong scientific claims ("no one knows how electricity works"), the obligatory invocations of garbled quantum physics, and so on. But I will not belabor the point. Instead, I'll point out in closing that The Secret, which represents humanity's desire for magic distilled down to its essence, is a letter-perfect illustration of what I wrote about last August in the post "No Miracles":

More than anything, we desire easy answers, and all these different types of supernatural belief stem, ultimately, from that desire. When life is difficult and troubled, we want miracles that will fulfill our needs and supply our wants in a supernatural flash, without the work otherwise needed to get what we want...

The appeal of magic is that it promises easy answers, easy victories, easy achievement of our goals with little effort and toil. But this is, and always was, a childish dream. Through cooperating with each other and studying the world around us, we can learn to better control our circumstances and improve our lives, but such improvement will always take labor and work. The lure of easy answers is an illusion; there are answers, but they are difficult to obtain and always were. Yet that does not make them worth any less. On the contrary, it makes them even more precious, and should increase our appreciation for what progress we have brought about and our resolve to make further progress in the future.

Although I have little to say to people who are at this moment fervently wishing for their ski lodge in Aspen or beach condo in Hawaii, I have nothing but sympathy for people in hard straits trying to use The Secret to obtain the basics that they need. Truly, I understand this drive. I'm not saying everyone does not deserve health and happiness. But this is not the way to go about it. Puerile mysticism has never brought humanity anything but disappointment and heartbreak, and the only people who will get rich thanks to The Secret are its creators, who are at this moment very handily fattening their bank accounts with the hard-won dollars of those who are ever eager for miracles.

I have written several times in the past about how religious superstition, when it is taken seriously, causes harm and suffering to real people by dissuading them from seeking the evidence-based treatments they need. But a new story from the March 31 edition of Newsday, Trying to change minds in the Congo, is one of the most horrifying illustrations of this principle I have yet seen.

The African Republic of the Congo, a country of 3.7 million people, has only one clinical psychiatrist. Dr. Alain Mouanga works against heroic odds, in desperately poor and dilapidated conditions, to treat people suffering from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression. The Congolese government provides him buildings - albeit run-down and unsanitary buildings, still damaged from a 10-year-old civil war - to work out of, and pays the salaries for him and his staff. But everything else, including medications, patient meals and even sheets for the patients' beds, must be paid for by patients' families or by funds that Dr. Mouanga raises himself from individuals or aid groups.

All this would offer a tremendous challenge for a doctor in any country, and for his tireless, dedicated efforts on behalf of his patients, Dr. Mouanga deserves to be recognized as a true humanist hero and an inspiration to everyone who works to reduce human suffering. But this is not the end of the story. There is one other major obstacle that he must face:

Mouanga knows that if patients don't believe in him, they will leave, instead seeking help from the hundreds of spiritual leaders, herbalists and other traditional healers who claim to cure the mentally ill in this poor country.

Less than a mile from Mouanga's hospital clinic is his chief local competitor - a Pentecostal church that claims to heal the mentally ill through faith in God.

...The church's treatment program is founded in the belief that mental illness is caused by evil spirits and sorcery.

"Evil spirits and demons can't be seen or interpreted by a microscope," said Galouo, head of the church's mental-illness program.

Yes, you guessed it. In this poor, predominantly Christian nation, primitive superstitions are still dominant - including the superstition that mental illness is caused by demonic possession. As the article explains, Dr. Mouanga's greatest struggle is to convince potential patients that he actually can help them. And many only come to him after "traditional" magical treatments fail:

Very few patients walk through Mouanga's gate without having visited a traditional healer first. Their treatments range from fasting to more extreme methods such as scarring and burning of the flesh.

But let's take a closer look at that Pentecostal Christian church that competes with Dr. Mouanga. How do they attempt to treat the mentally ill people who come to them seeking help?

There, patients can be seen chained to their beds nearly 24 hours a day. The men sleep under ratty plastic tarps, which offer little protection from Congo's tropical rain and sun.

If patients complain or try to leave, they are beaten. "We hit them to discipline them," said Pastor Pierre-Clotaire Galouo, head of the church's mental-illness program. "Those who menace us have lost all reason. They no longer understand anything."

...Less than a mile from Mouanga's psychiatric ward, patients are limited by the length of their chains at the Assemblées de Dieu de Pentecôte. Men and women are tethered to their beds like bicycles to a lamppost.

Some of the patients clearly chafe at the chains. One young man bore a large gauze bandage around his ankle during a visit in November. Others make them into a joke. A woman coquettishly dangled her ankle for a reporter, showing off her shackles as if they were jewelry.

...The patients stay for as little as a few weeks and as long as several years, waiting for church leaders to announce that God has healed them.

They are unlocked only to wash and to relieve themselves. They are not unlocked to pray.

You read that right, readers. The Assemblées de Dieu de Pentecôte does not rely solely on prayer and exorcism to treat their mentally ill supplicants - that would be bad enough, but no. Instead, their method involves chaining patients to their beds and beating them, doubtless to "drive the demons out". Sick people are kept in this cruel and degrading imprisonment until the church officials decide that they are permitted to leave. The article does not say if everyone at this church came voluntarily or if some were coerced or abducted by relatives or friends, but it seems very likely, if not inevitable, that some were.

There is one correction to the Newsday article I must make. The article says that Congoloese churches are "seasoned with African beliefs" about demon possession. This errs by calling demon possession an "African" addition, as if this were some superstitious add-on not present in Christianity originally. In fact, the idea of demon possession as the cause of both mental and physical illness is a prominent and obvious theme in the New Testament itself, as shown by verses like this:

"Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils."

—Mark 16:9

"Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw."

—Matthew 12:22

"And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not."

—Luke 4:33-35

"And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.... And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour."

—Matthew 17:18

"And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils."

—Mark 3:14-15

If anything, it is the African churches who are following what the text says. Meanwhile, Western denominations who recognize this for the embarrassing anachronism it is have added these passages to the vast category of Biblical verses that modern churchgoers do their best to quietly sweep under the rug and disregard.

Beliefs in demon possession are a legacy of humanity's superstitious past, when people ignorantly imagined that any phenomenon they did not understand was caused by supernatural agents. But there is no longer any excuse for holding such beliefs, now that we know so much about the natural origins of the mind. Especially, there is no excuse for using these superstitions as an excuse to degrade and abuse our fellow human beings and treat them like animals, as these despicable Pentecostals are doing. This whole sorry episode just goes to show that when we abandon reason as a means of understanding the world, evils and cruelties visited on our fellow human beings are sure to follow. That is why we as atheists should oppose faith, superstition, and irrationality of all kinds - not just because it is false, but because of the immeasurable harm it has wreaked on the lives of human beings.

I write the Popular Delusions series to critically investigate widely believed pseudosciences and superstitions. And while the topic of my latest entry in this series may seem odd, I think it fits - for after all, are there not tens of millions around the globe who are taught to believe in Santa Claus or other seasonal gift-givers? There are many pseudosciences believed by adults that do not command such a wide following.

The figure of Santa Claus is uniquely paradoxical for atheists. On the one hand, this teaching is used to accustom very young children to unquestioning supernatural beliefs. On the other hand, we do eventually disillusion children about the reality of this figure, and is this not a valuable lesson about rational skepticism and the inadvisability of putting total trust in authority figures? Is it not possible that getting children to realize the truth on their own is a more potent lesson in skepticism than if we told them the truth from the beginning?

What I find remarkable is that many of the very same arguments which apologists use to defend God's existence are also used to defend Santa Claus' existence to children, or can be used with almost no modification. In the latter case, however, there comes a point where all admit the fallacy of these arguments, while in the former case their use persists into adulthood.

For example, take the way we deal with the argument from divine hiddenness as applied to Christmas. We tell children that Santa only comes after they have fallen asleep, so they cannot see him with their own eyes, just as apologists for religion say that God works in mysterious ways not perceptible to human beings. And just as the existence of presents under the tree on Christmas morning is held up to children as evidence of Santa's existence, so the occasional instance of apparently answered prayers is proclaimed to be evidence that there is a god who cares about us.

Or consider the way Santa Claus is used as an inducement to good behavior. We warn children that they must behave during the year if they want to receive presents (and that they are under supernatural scrutiny all this time), and that children who misbehave or throw tantrums will get lumps of coal or some other undesirable object. In much the same way, religious preachers warn people that they must behave if they want to achieve salvation, or else they will be damned; and many people regard this teaching as a necessary inducement to morality, the only thing that will keep society in check. However, when children eventually become enlightened as to the non-existence of Santa Claus, we do not fear that they will suddenly become uncontrollable.

Third, consider the argument from desire. Many religious apologists argue that every human desire has an object that satisfies it, and that humanity's widespread belief in and worship of God is best explained by assuming that there is a deity who is the proper object of that belief. But the very same argument is applicable to Santa Claus! After all, there is a truly remarkable array of Christmas gift-giving figures, from cultures from all over the world, who bring gifts to children during the holidays. If the argument from widespread desire is convincing evidence of God's existence, it should also be convincing evidence of Santa's existence. How could so many different traditions have gotten started unless there was a real being to which they all refer?

Even the way more guileful theologians defend their religion finds parallels in Santa belief. Take the mall Santas we send our children to see so that they can tell him their Christmas wish list. Children who believe that the person they are meeting is the real Santa are usually allowed to continue in this belief. However, when slightly more skeptical children wonder how Santa could be in so many different malls, parents often explain to them that these men are not the real Santa, but just Santa's "helpers" who report back to him later. This is uncannily similar to the way in which more "sophisticated" theologians blast atheists for supposedly buying into the overly literal, anthropomorphic fundamentalist conception of God as a being. These learned men explain that the vision of Jehovah as a bearded figure in the clouds is hopelessly simplistic, and in reality, God is pure meaning, or pure love, or some other reified concept vague enough to evade clear definition that would render it susceptible to attack. (Notwithstanding this, these theologians continue to pray, to invoke God's blessing and talk about God's will, to participate in church rituals like communion, to profess belief in miracles, and otherwise act in ways that only make sense under the "overly literal" conception of God they supposedly do not believe in.)

But the strongest and clearest parallel can be found in the emotional argument for belief in Santa Claus. It is widely assumed that belief in this figure fills children's lives with a sense of magic and wonder, and that without Santa Claus, childhood would be gloomy, meaningless, and bereft of the uplifting power of faith. This viewpoint is summed up in one of the season's most famous epistles, the 1897 editorial Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus:

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

These very arguments are used later in life, to adults, to defend belief in God: without such belief, we are told, the world would be bleak, meaningless, adrift without purpose. And yet, we do not consider the inevitable disillusionment of children about Santa to shatter their world or withdraw all beauty and meaning from life. On the contrary, we expect that as children grow up, they will find more abiding sources of meaningfulness, deeper and more powerful than faith built on illusions. Yet many otherwise perfectly sensible, rational people somehow fail to grasp this lesson when it comes to God and religion. Though they concede that those illusions are childhood fancies that can safely be surrendered, they persist in believing that these ones really are necessary, and that we must cling to them or admit life is purposeless.

Other posts in this series:

• Popular Delusions

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Shivering under a tattered blanket, a young woman tries to sleep at the foot of the mist-shrouded Entoto Mountain, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

..."I decided to come to Entoto to seek a cure from the holy water after a doctor told me that I am HIV-positive," Abebech Alemu, 35, said.

"I am a follower of the Orthodox faith. I strongly believe that I will be cured by drinking the holy water rather than drugs," she added.

—Tsegaye Tadesse, "Believers seek AIDS cure at Ethiopian springs". Reuters, 29 November 2006.

Though past killers such as tuberculosis and influenza have their place in the history of human suffering, any list of the most deadly epidemics ever to afflict our species will have to rank AIDS near the top. The World Health Organization estimates that over 40 million people are currently living with the disease, while over 25 million have died already, with several million added to that grim total every year. Africa especially has been devastated by HIV; in some sub-Saharan countries, the virus has infected up to a quarter of the population, decimating an entire generation and creating millions of AIDS orphans. Though progress has been made in battling this deadly disease, the poverty-afflicted people hardest hit by it are the very ones for whom expensive antiviral medications are furthest out of reach, and the ultimate goal of a safe, inexpensive vaccine still seems far from sight.

And that brings us to Entoto Mountain, where a spring that courses from a ravine in the shadow of the peak is reputed to have miraculous healing powers that draw desperate people from all across the Horn of Africa. This belief is actively promoted by the clergy of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, most of whom make a living by soliciting alms from pilgrims (although the Reuters article mentions "wealthier visitors").

If this were a story of desperate people turning to religion to help them when human effort could provide no solace, that would be one thing. But that is not the case. The woman quoted earlier states her awareness of a free program distributing antiviral medicine that could keep the virus in check and potentially extend her life by decades, but chose to pass it up in favor of foolish superstition. And she is not the only one:

"I know about the free distribution of HIV medicine, but I have decided not to take it. I am convinced I could be cured by the holy water," Abebech said.

...Dr. Solomon Zewdu, administrator of Johns Hopkins University HIV/AIDS Drugs Distribution Center in Addis Ababa, said he had appealed to the Orthodox Patriarch to tell HIV-positive people that they can take anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) along with the water.

"HIV drugs are life-saving. Those who are drinking the holy water can also take the drugs. I do not see any contradiction," he said, adding he had seen patients abandoning their hospital beds and the ARV regime, opting for holy water.

Although I do not believe a religious person cannot be a scientist, this story is a compelling argument against the philosophy of watered-down accommodationism that would treat faith and reason as equally valid ways of knowing. If we as a society promote such a vapid compromise, this is what we will end up with - doctors and scientists reduced to pleading with religious leaders to permit their flock to accept treatment that could save their lives, along with their daily dose of muddy spring water.

When we hold back for the sake of "respect" and treat religious faith as if it were a decision-making method equal in validity to the scientific method, which it is not, this is what we inevitably end up with - faith dominant and reason at best allowed to tag along by the wayside, at worst thrown away entirely. After all, once we grant that reason and faith are equally good ways of finding out the truth, science will inevitably lose out, because what believer in their right mind would choose the scientific findings of fallible human beings over what they believe to be the certain and perfect wisdom of God?

To grant parity to religion is to surrender the battle. Instead, we should be telling people like this, as loudly and frequently as possible, that this is a sham, that the people promoting the holy-water treatment are frauds and con men, and that if you trust in this faith-based quackery, in all likelihood you will die a painful and needless death.

Are these harsh words? Yes, but they are justifiably so, because people's lives are at stake. When a house is on fire, firefighters do not knock gently on the door and politely entreat the people inside to come out. The same applies here. There is no time for meekness and diplomacy. Instead, to save these people's lives, we must jolt them out of their complacency. Polite and self-effacing efforts at persuasion will probably only encourage them to believe the danger is not so serious.

It is all well and good to say that most believers are more rational and will not fall into such lethal self-deception. But the truth of the matter is that a believer is irrational to the precise degree in which they believe their religion and take its claims seriously. After all, the Bible clearly does record many instances of miraculous healings in the past, and it clearly does promise that all the believer's prayers will be answered if only they have faith. Why, therefore, would a serious, knowledgeable Christian not trust in holy water to cure AIDS? There is one and only one reason: because they know that there are no miracles and that supernatural treatments do not work. And that realization did not originate from religion, oh no. Much the contrary, it was knowledge that humanity arrived at after long and painstaking empirical study of the world, almost always in the teeth of fierce opposition from the advocates of dogmatic faith.

I have written before about the folly of trusting in superstition over science when life and health are at stake. But I would like to go further, and assert that reason and faith cannot exist side-by-side in the same society as equivalent means of forming beliefs. The latter inevitably undermines the former, and we end up with clashes like this, or creationism, or apocalypticism, or any of the other pernicious human beliefs rooted in religiosity. The only solution to our troubles is reason, and we must insist on that strongly. The self-destructive effects of faith-based decision-making are intolerable to any enlightened civilization and should not be tolerated.