Thought travels faster than light, although confined in your head. Just a thought. Synaptic signals certainly do not travel at superluminal speeds, although at the tiny distances involved, even nerve signals are pretty fast...

"The speed of thought" is a silly concept. Of course my thoughts can move from one internal model to another at a very great 'speed' even if the phenomena or items modelled are very far apart. This does not mean that I send out some kind of mind energy to the sun every time I think about it. To believe otherwise is roughly equivalent to thinking that you can jump across oceans because you can step over even quite a large map, or a step down from the "I crush you!" thing where you peer at someone's head between your finger and thumb.


Even Christians teach that prayer in a group for the same cause ( like when someone is sick or lost a job, so on ) will have a better chance of being answered. So was it God or Universal Law ? I don't know about that; I do know that in the only double-blind study I've ever heard of, prayer was shown not to work (it was run by the Templeton foundation, so they weren't terribly happyw about the results). In fact, it did nothing except make patients who knew they were being prayed for worse (due to 'performance anxiety', it is speculated). (Source (http://www.topix.com/forum/topstories/T6SMQ7J8IFV949FFN), source (http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ap_060330_prayer.html), Google (http://www.google.ca/search?q=templeton+study+prayer+doesn%27t+work&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a))

Whoever thought of that stuff should get into some honest competition. Preferably one where they might get KTFO. It can be a very enlightening experience.

Quute: I don't know about that; I do know that in the only double-blind study I've ever heard of, prayer was shown not to work (it was run by the Templeton foundation, so they weren't terribly happyw about the results). In fact, it did nothing except make patients who knew they were being prayed for worse (due to 'performance anxiety', it is speculated). (Source, source, Google)

Did you by chance read that report, in paticuler Page 2, paragraph 2. Thats the part were they decided that they would not let the people in the study groups pray the way they normally do. They told them how they wanted them to pray.

Could it make a difference, sure. For example, your in fight, bell rings and off to your corner when a stranger tells you to fight the way he wants you to instead of what you know.

I'm not arguing that it's very strong evidence. Stronger by far is the complete lack of affirmative evidence. My point is that the only study I have ever seen points in a negative direction. I also find it suggestive that it was a study commissioned by a foundation seeking to prove the power of prayer -- more likely, then, that the conditions (however inappropriate you may consider them) were in place to make the test manageable or to fit experimental parameters than to deliberately cause the experiment to fail.

But if you can cite a proper study showing contrary evidence, I'll be interested to hear it.

The Secret is a steaming load so big I can't find a shovel big enough. It combines some of the good of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that involves a perspective shift leaving an individual more joy, with quantum quackery based entirely on the scientific ignorance of the readers.

The idea that desires create anything positive other than actions of oneself or others (through way of communication) is ignorant at best and lunacy at worst. Petter has already addressed one prayer study, and I'm sure he's heard this one too:

If prayer actually had any power, consider the health of the British royal family. Numerous churches pray as group for their health on a weekly basis and quite possibly in different personal ways. The health of the British Royal family is notoriously unexceptional, despite having an absurd amount of money to spend on medical care. I suppose all who pray for them are doing it wrong, but maybe someone should tell them to try another way because their way isn't working even with so many doing it.

There are other prayer studies, and this is informal at best. I may dig up one wherein groups of patients were prayed for and told, groups were prayed for and not told, groups were told they were being prayed for and they weren’t, and groups weren’t prayed for at all. The groups told they were being prayed for did the worst health wise.

According to The Secret, every kind of prayer is the right way though. This kind of thinking is not only flat out wrong, but also dangerous both financially and physically. Someone seeking wealth in a state of poverty relying on the universe's magic powers might be in an okay, mood, but never escape their state. Someone who is sick, potentially seriously so might forego seeing a doctor. Even one person dying because they are bamboozled by this dreck is far too much.

Dear Oprah,
Blow me. Learn yourself some goddamn science before you start peddling dangerous ideas to your legion of gullible feel good soccer moms.
Love GJ xoxo

I'm not arguing that it's very strong evidence. Stronger by far is the complete lack of affirmative evidence. My point is that the only study I have ever seen points in a negative direction. I also find it suggestive that it was a study commissioned by a foundation seeking to prove the power of prayer -- more likely, then, that the conditions (however inappropriate you may consider them) were in place to make the test manageable or to fit experimental parameters than to deliberately cause the experiment to fail.

But if you can cite a proper study showing contrary evidence, I'll be interested to hear it.

Hi Petter, I cannot site a study on the subject. For most of us, I know for me especially, we have all faced crisis in our lives.

Some of us turn to others, family, freinds and so forth. But for the most part, 90 % of the worlds population believe in a God or Creator and often pray in a time of crisis.

I myself have prayed and seen the prayers answered. So is this God, Universal Law or just plain coinsidence.

There is no correct answer, only a correct observation to that which had or has occured. You decide.

Nothing sells more than hope- that there is some secret knowledge that will help you rise above the rest, and hey- for $99.00, you can learn those secrets on my series of CD's/tapes/booklets. As a salesman, I see it all the time, with seminars about how you can sell your way to $$$. These guys make money on selling the seminars themselves- not on doing outstanding deals as salesman. Look at "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"- no one fact checks this Kiyosaki guy- most of what he says is absolute blather. Sure, most successful people think positive, but there have been plenty of salty bastards that have risen to the top as well. Basically, you can wish all you want, but if you don't have plan, you're probably SOL.

Hi Petter, I cannot site a study on the subject. For most of us, I know for me especially, we have all faced crisis in our lives.

Some of us turn to others, family, freinds and so forth. But for the most part, 90 % of the worlds population believe in a God or Creator and often pray in a time of crisis.

I myself have prayed and seen the prayers answered. So is this God, Universal Law or just plain coinsidence.
Coincidence, yes, but not coincidence only. Regression to the mean is a very important factor: Consider the Governor of the state of Georgia organising prayers to pray for rain. The moment I read the first article about it, I knew that the faithful would consider it a success. After all, it is bound to rain sooner or later, and it is always possible to argue that the time when it specifically did start to rain was due to prayer. Then there are placebo/nocebo effects, and so on; not to mention the active agency of other people that is often attributed to divine assistance for no discernable reason -- I'm often perplexed and saddened when people thank 'God' for curing them of disease when there's a team of surgeons and EMTs who are demonstrably real and surely had something to do with the miracle and really, I think, deserve the credit.

How many times have you prayed, and how many times have other people prayed, with their prayers left unanswered? If you sum it all up, is the number of apparently-successful prayers really above what you would expect from sheer chance (and other factors unrelated to the efficiacy of prayer)? There are reasons -- many and good -- why anecdotal evidence is considered useless in science.

This is a good article. (http://wanderingprimate.blogspot.com/2007/05/beyond-illusion.html)


There is no correct answer, only a correct observation to that which had or has occured.
One of the mantras of reason: "Correlation does not imply causation."*

* (Note that the word 'implies' is here used in its strict logical sense, not the colloquial.)

I haven't read the thread, but basically, positive thoughts do benefit you. If you are fighting in the ring and you think "oh **** I'm gonna get raped" then you're going to lose.

But the rest is ****. I hope that woman gets raped and killed. Let's see her positive thoughts then.

No, I'm serious. That **** bag is making people who are truly sick and truly in a bad situation think that it's their fault for getting cancer, or it's their fault for getting mugged. Let's see how she likes blaming the victim when she gets run over by a bus.

I haven't read the thread, but basically, positive thoughts do benefit you. If you are fighting in the ring and you think "oh **** I'm gonna get raped" then you're going to lose.

But the rest is ****. I hope that woman gets raped and killed. Let's see her positive thoughts then.

No, I'm serious. That **** bag is making people who are truly sick and truly in a bad situation think that it's their fault for getting cancer, or it's their fault for getting mugged. Let's see how she likes blaming the victim when she gets run over by a bus.

If I deck Oprah, or really anyone who subscribes to "the law of attraction"I shouldn't be able to be fined, sued or anything really. They brought it upon themselves. Similarly if I killed someone who was dumb enough to think The Secret was a science book, then it's suicide, right?

Shut up. Django didn't want his fingers back enough, so he sucks.

Please slap anyone in the face immediately if you find that they read and believe this ****.

Please slap anyone in the face immediately if you find that they read and believe this ****.

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, She's one of yours mate.

Thought travels faster than light, although confined in your head. Just a thought.

Light in vaccum travels at: 670,616,629.2 MPH.
Neural impulses travel at: 2-270 MPH.

So if you're talking about physical thought, then no. Thought does not travel faster than light.

That psychic-medium-life-counselor chick at www.formerfatguyblog.com goes one step further: she channels the spirits of dead Atlanteans and dead women from Sparta (even the Afterlife is not immune to the effects of a big summer movie with an awesome catchphrase, apparently) who then tell her readers that they should study the Law of Attraction.

Apparently the Law of Attraction was well known in the time of Thoth the Atlantean. I guess the Atlanteans thought a lot of negative thoughts along the lines of "Man, things are going well and all, but what if the whole fucking island just sank into the ocean one night? That would suck!"
And you see what happened to them.

Thought travels faster than light, although confined in your head. Just a thought.

Travels where?