You wanna talk about torture?
Posted on 01/13/2005 2:59:18 AM PST by Piefloater
PEOPLE are to be tortured in laboratories at Oxford University in a US-funded experiment to determine if 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.
Oxford's 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.
Researchers believe the study will provide insights into the war on terrorism.
A central aspect of the two-year study, which has $US2 million ($2.65 million) funding from the US philanthropic group the John Templeton Foundation, 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 researcher Toby Collins, who has a background in marine biology and the nerve systems of invertebrates. He said many people in pain turned to faith for relief.
Dr Collins said the experiments would involve non-invasive simulation of burns and would 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.
"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," he said.
A neuroscientist from Oxford's physiology department, John Stein, said: "Pain has been central to a lot of problems that religious and other thinkers have concentrated on."
Professor Stein said 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.
Any volunteers?
Wow. That's whack.
I wonder if St. Peter would include those who suffer from this kind of tortures...
I think you hit the nail right on the head.
Well, this sounds like one of he dumber things science has found to waste taxpayer money on. More junk science for the left to add to its grab bag of junk science like "global warming".
I'm not too sure that God will be willing to relieve someone's suffering after they have engaged in this foolishness as a means to try and prove or disprove His existence (which, after all, IS the real reason behind this "research"). One either believes or one doesn't. God is not a science experiment and, if the results of this asininity fail to show that He relieved any pain, does it prove or disprove His existence?
Leftists will gleefully tell us that it proves that Christian conservatives are all weak-minded morons who have fallen for a scam called religion and that there is no God. This, then, will be used to push the leftist attack on religion and support the notion that reference to God should be eliminated from anything associated with government at any level.
So, take the concept of bad ideas and multiply it by this.
thank god we have institutional review boards in the states... i guess we can always count on europeans to carry out neo-milgramish studies.
I have a feeling there's going to be a Helen Thomas picture posted......
You wanna talk about torture?
In other words, we are learning how to torture more effectively as a tool.
Have we simply become Nazi Germany???? What seperates us from the terrorists??? Certainly not morality.
Incorrect. This is definitely Defense Departmant / spook stuff.
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