GinohnNews

G: Happy Thanksindians! On Saturday John and I went to Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary for a vegan pot-luck pre-Thanksindians feast, and to visit the sanctuary. We hadn't ever visited before, which is a little strange since I spent 3 months after college interning and a similar place, Farm Sanctuary, after college in New York. It was a lovely place and I recommend a visit. We saw a handful of friends and acquaintances there - Cam, Midge, John, Anja, and Joe. There were probably at least 200 people there, and each group brought a dish, so there were tons of great vegan food. We saw and spent time with turkeys, chickens, other fowl, pigs, goats, sheep, and a couple of mules. Some were very friendly and came up for petting. John helped hand out pumpkins to people, for throwing to the pigs. Pigs love pumpkins.

On Monday night we went to Franklin's for Alfredo and Luisa's divorce celebration. When I met each of them, I didn't know they were married until a few months later. They've been good friends ever since they split up, and now they've made it official. We hope for the best for them in their new lives. We had a great time and many people came out to toast them. Congratulations!

Of course this week I've been busy getting ready for Thanksindians. We had a few good friends over for a vegan pot-luck feast and had a lovely time. Dorian and Amethyst came and brought Brandon and his girlfriend Jordan. She brought her little Yorkie puppy, Tyson, from Indiana. He was the hit of the party. I took many videos of him licking John's face all over, including the inside of his mouth, which John tolerated for the sake of everyone's amusement. Chris came from Philly with his awesome new girlfriend Patti, and we had a good time getting to know her. Izolda came without Rich, he had a gig in Texas. Margit, Sev, TVTom, L'aura, and Janet came too. Most of us played Moebius Corpse at the end of the evening (everyone who was still there). We hope you had as nice a Thanksindians as we did.

Even though I'm a nonbeliever, I might surprise some with my positive thoughts on certain "supernatural" exercises, like tarot reading or prayer.

I've found that tarot cards can be a great tool for brainstorming problems, in the same vein as dream analysis. When strong symbols and pictures are placed randomly but viewed in the context of a specific subject, problems can be approached from unexpected angles. This can be helpful. But I'm not convinced that tarot cards or dreams can predict the future.

As for prayer, I see four kinds of prayer:

• Meditation - communion with God.
• Worship - giving thanks.
• Counsel - asking guidance or forgiveness.
• Petition - asking for intercession.

Of these types, the first three are useful, because they allow access to unused parts of the brain that help solve personal problems or alleviate stress. Because these types of prayers can tap into the irrational, they sometimes answer erroneously, putting the prayerful at risk. Depending on the secular power of the people who pray, the consequences of such risk can be huge for those around them. A guy who claims "God told me to rob the 7-11" isn't as dangerous as a U.S. president who says, "I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.'"

The fourth type of prayer, prayer of petition or intercession, has not proven to work at all. Experiments for intercessory prayer are very easy to do, and many have determined no measurable effect. According to a recent prayer study (researching heart surgery patients' response to prayer), prayer doesn't help. In fact, the data show that if you know someone is praying for you, your condition can worsen:

A total of 600 of the patients received the prayers of others before surgery after being told they might or might not get them. Another 600 were told the same thing, but were not prayed for. The third group of 600 received pre-surgical prayer and knew it.

The researchers report that the prayers had no effect on the recovery of the first two groups of heart patients, those who did not know whether others were praying for them. Co-investigator Herbert Benson, a physician at Harvard Medical School in Boston, says the effect of a patient's prayer for his or her own health differs. He says the patient may be more relaxed and that has been found beneficial to health.

"We were not studying the relaxation response in this study," said Mr. Bensen.  "We were studying the extension of that. Could external prayer perhaps do the same thing? In this particular study, we did not find that was the case."

To their surprise, the researchers found that the third group of heart bypass patients, those who knew others were praying for them, had more surgical complications as a whole than the other two.¹

Prayer is similar to tarot. Both stir up thought processes that help discover solutions. Both can be salves for troubled minds. But neither predict earthquakes. Neither prevent droughts. It's easy to make such claims when only noticing the positive spikes in the data, but "successful" instances of prayer and fortunetelling are equivalent to random coincidence. Supernatural claims have always failed the scrutiny of reasonable statistical tests.