Religious Experience(6)

These are some other quotes from "The Varieties of Religious Experience".
I will write my own words after one or two other posts quoting from this book:

Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off her balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here below.

You see that at bottom we are thrown back upon the general principles by which the empirical philosophy has always contended that we must be guided in our search for truth. Dogmatic philosophies have sought for tests for truth which might dispense us from appealing to the future. Some direct mark, by noting which we can be protected immediately and absolutely, now and forever, against all mistake—such has been the darling dream of philosophic dogmatists. It is clear that the ORIGIN of the truth would be an admirable criterion of this sort, if only the various origins could be discriminated from one another from this point of view,

In forming a judgment of ourselves now," Edwards writes, we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last day. .

The good dispositions which a vision, or voice, or other apparent heavenly favor leave behind them are the only marks by which we <22> may be sure they are not possible deceptions of the tempter.
(posted by Farid)

Posted:Saturday, June 07, 2003 | 

Information and Internet

In my post on Tuesday , I wrote something about Internet and misinformation. My dear friends gave me several challenging feedbacks.
David says

Information outweighs the Misinformation and like other media, everything is polluted with outright lies or subtle spin. …readers should beware because with freedom comes risk and vice versa and with security comes chains.

Hooman believes

Internet has a state of confusion, but user should have the discretion and then asks a fundamental question what is misinformation? What is information? Information to me could be misinformation to other people and vise versa.

Rezwan looks at this issue as a matter of freedom and liberty with some political attitude. He believes

The Internet is a revolution Reaching and communicating more and more people.
He suggests researchers should filter out the intended information from millions of sources and make information free and accessible to anyone who searches

Hooman, however, says

Another reality is that most of bandwidth of the internet is used to download porn, music, or movies, hardly any information

David mentions the exiting usage of Internet like weblog, even finding a phone number, checking the spelling of a word, getting a quick background an a topic for discussion, finding friend in other continents. So he tolerates a little misinformation if I need to

I think Internet has been a revolution in our communication. If I can talk to my brother in Europe or family in Iran every day and know what they are doing there is only because of Internet. I came to Canada by means of Internet! I could not do the majority part of my research in Iran without Internet since I had correspondences with researchers in England and states. Even we did common project. Without Internet it was not possible to have such smart blogger friends in the world to help me to think about my questions and concerns.

Here in Canada, within 2 weeks, I have done what I could do in Iran in 6 months. Finding articles and some online courses about statistics and the like. (though majority of these things are not possible in Iran since people have to use Modem for their connection!).
Nevertheless, there is a challenging issue. How can we search in Internet? There is no doubt that we need a "Smart Search" to find useful information. And learning how to search takes time and you cannot find every thing you really need. Last year in a conference in Spain, one of the interesting topics discussed in several sessions was how we can give reliable information regarding Breast Cancer to our patients. Since there are billion piece of information in Internet. So how can we tell them which one is important. In the west doctors tell their patients that they have to search for their questions regarding their disease and then make a decision (which is not an issue in Iran since Internet is not popular, say available). And this confusing for many people. I think you need skill to search for reliable and safe information. When we look at the political issues, we find more difficult situation. You need smart search, thoughtful interpretation through a critical point of view, which is not possible for majority of people. And I repeat Hooman's question what is information and what is misinformation?


PS: I quote what these guys said since I think they mentioned more important things than that I wrote!!.

(posted by Iman)
Posted:Saturday, June 07, 2003 | 

Doctors' ties ' in Britain!!

Doctors are being urged to stop wearing neckties in British hospital.. BBC reported .They believe ties may carry bacteria and bugs, which doctors may be inadvertently passing onto patients! Ties can brush against patients' skin during examinations or dressing of wounds and then pass on bacteria to others.
We have to ask Mojtaba about what is going on.It is good news for messy people like me who do not care about their dressing. Though I do not practice right now, I hope that Canadian Medical Association will have the same attitude in future.

(posted by Iman)

Posted:Saturday, June 07, 2003 | 

Religious Experience(5)

This excerpt is from "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James.
I will later write about importanceof this book and also quote more of the arguments that led
to conlusion he draws here:

In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to refute opinions by showing up their author’s neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author’s neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.
Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria.

(posted by Farid)
Posted:Thursday, June 05, 2003 | 

Death(16)

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark;
and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales,
so is the other.
(Francis Bacon)
(posted by Farid)
Posted:Wednesday, June 04, 2003 | 

Modesty and Nudity

I am thinking about this matter, while I am passing through streets in Montreal from downtown to the hospital every morning and evening, I have enough time to see what people do. It has been a challenging issue for a long time that this tendency toward Nudity and Modesty is original, say natural, or cultural based matter. I do not know what a woman feels when she wears a short skirt in a cold day! Or when she can see naked women’s photos everywhere.
I have written something about Hijab and Modesty before.

(posted by Iman)

Posted:Wednesday, June 04, 2003 | 

Uncertainty in Medicine

Dr. Steven N. Goodman is an epidemiologist in Johns Hopkins University. Reading his articles about evidence-based medicine was turning point in my thought in Medicine. Though that topic was not original, he explained the matter in the best way. Here I quote some parts of his article Probability at the Bedside: The Knowing of Chances or the Chances of Knowing? in Annual of Internal Medicine, 1999;130:604-606

Consider what would happen to 100 identical copies of Mr. Smith if each underwent the operation, with a 40% mortality rate. Would 40 Mr. Smiths die? Or would all 100 Mr. Smiths either live or die, with 40% representing our uncertainty about which it would be? The first of these scenarios represents the stochastic interpretation of risk, implying that risk is a physical characteristic of Mr. Smith. In the second scenario, Mr. Smith’s fate is determined, and potentially explainable. What we are calling his risk is actually a measure of our incomplete knowledge: the degree of-belief interpretation. We cannot ascertain scientifically, which of these scenarios is true, yet our view affects how we manage patients, how we talk to them, and how we are heard.

He quoted an interesting part of Tanenbaum’s article entitled What physicians know in New England journal of medicine, 1993;329:1268-71.

Uncertainty is inherent in medical practice because patients present individual and complex medical circumstances. Physicians can never be certain how to transpose a biomedical theory or a clinical research finding to a particular case. In an act of interpretation, not application, physicians make clinical sense of a case, rather than placing it in a general category of cases. As interpreters, physicians draw on all their knowledge, including their own experience of patients, and laboratory-science models of cause and effect.

I will write more about this matter though I think many of you know this kind of challenge in every science.
(posted by Iman)




Posted:Monday, June 02, 2003 | 

The Internet is an Epidemic!


During my search in the Internet for my project, I came across the following sentences by Prof Branko Cesnik, Monash University

The Internet is an Epidemic
Growing at a rate of 10% per month
All ages are involved with a prediliction for the young
No vaccine is available
Those not infected often feel left out and seek out carriers who can transmit the condition
The greatest collection of misinformation the world has ever seen


(posted by Iman)

Posted:Monday, June 02, 2003 | 

Death(15)

Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, "Did you bring joy?" The second was, "Did you find joy?"
(Leo Buscaglia)
(posted by Farid)

Posted:Sunday, June 01, 2003 | 

Religious Experience(4)

I would like to repeat Iman's question here to get more feedbacks :

"What is difference between people who claim that they are prophet and we treat them as schizophrenic patients and real prophets as we believe?"

Iman, I asked you a question in the comment under that post that you forgot to answer.
(posted by Farid)
Posted:Sunday, June 01, 2003 |