Atheist reactions to real research

I'm still thinking about the lunacy on CARM. how silly thier appraoch to all kinds of God-oriented thinking is. None more absurd than the 200 studies on religious expedience and the M sale. Remember the M scale is invented by Dr. Hood and it's rapidly becoming standard procedure becuase it has such great vaildation form other studies. Even so an atheist yesterday said "you have never shown any actual empirical proof of these studies. They are studies published in peer reviewed academic journals they are their own empirical proof. The M scale has been validated by a dozen or so other studies. they don't know the basics of social science research.

Here's another comment from Deist.

Originally Posted by Deist

Hood is a kook. He even looks like a kook. Just because someone has a "D" at the end of his name doesn't mean anything. He's a religious zealot. He's not an unbiased researcher. He has an agenda, and he made a third grade test that any atheist here or in Iran would test the same on.

defense of M scale

two major researchers in the field:

Dale Caird
originally in journal for the Scientific study of religion 1988, 27 (1) 122-126

"Research into mystical experience has been greatly facilitated over the last decade by Hood (1975). Utilizing the conceptual framework of Stace (1960) he devised a 32 item questionnaire tapping eight categories of mysticism. This questionnaire the M scale was shown by Hood to have respectable internal consistency and reasonable construct validity.

Michael E. Nielsen, Ph.D.
Georgia Southern University
feb 2000

"Ralph Hood (1998), a major figure in American psychology of religion, suggests six psychological schools of thought regarding religion. The psychoanalytical schools draw from the work of Freud, and attempt to reveal unconscious motives for religious belief. Although Freud reduced religious belief to a natural, if ultimately flawed, attempt to cope with life's stresses, contemporary psychoanalytic interpretations are not necessarily hostile to religious faith. Analytical schools find their inspiration in Jung's description of spiritual life. Most psychologists, however, consider such descriptions to be undemonstrated by scientific research, and therefore it plays a limited role in psychology. Object relations schools also draw from psychoanalysis, but focus their efforts on maternal influences on the child. Each of these three schools rely on clinical case studies and other descriptive methods based on small samples, which runs counter to the prevailing practice of psychology in America." \\

"Modern social scientific evidence does not refute the possibility that some mystical experiences are associated with scientifically unknown processes. Parapsychologists have accumulated a body of evidence supporting belief in paranormal phenomena (Broughton 1992). Even though their evidence has been criticized, the existence of universal features within collections of mystical experience accounts supports the argument that some forms of these perceptions are not fully cultural products but have important impacts on religious belief (Hufford 1982, McClenon 1994)"

post 30

backup, I did read that. Meta doesn't understand that meditation alone, which is done by non believers, will bring about states of heightened awareness, oneness, peace, calm, etc., and that hypnosis can do the same thing. My wife was a hypnotist. The mind can do many things, and religious zealots want to use what the mind does as some sort of evidence for the existence of their imagined personal type God.

This is a silly argument. Meditation can be done by anyone of cousre, but it began as a religious practice. that also evokes mystical experience, (it's a trigger not a cause) is not proof that mystical is not connected to God, it merely proves that pathways can be open if you evoke the triggers.

That someone would suggest God believers in different countries report similar experiences as evidence of anything other than that a generic God is the same the world over tells me that humans, even those with PHDs are either stupid, liars, or at a minimum, dis ingenuous. I mean, what ELSE would a belief in a god mean? Are these idiots saying a Christian God isn't similar to a belief in a muslim God? This is beyond ridiculous. It's inafantile.