spirituality research -have your say!

[Goldenmane]

Originally Posted by JohnFisher

Xeno,
I appreciate your polite manner in which you approach debate. My EdD is referenced on my first posting. I will not be continuing any contact with Geoff as his language displays an old adage, 'if the argumnet is weak, shout!' In his case, he uses obscene language.

Well fuck me diagonally with a pretty little hedgehog.

If the argument is weak, you should have no difficulty demonstrating it to be so, regardless of the naughty words I might use.

"Obscene language" is a fucking copout, intellectually bereft and meaninglessly absurd, employed by those who don't have the courage to accept that they could be mind-buggeringly wrong.

Welcome to Goldenmane's Third.

[Goldenmane]

Originally Posted by JohnFisher

To Geoff Rogers.
Ever heard of stellar evolution? - Stellar evolution is the process by which a star undergoes a sequence of radical changes during its lifetime. Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges from only a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the age of the universe.

Actually, since the academic malfeasance is on the table now, and blindingly obvious, I'd like to know exactly how this particular academic excuses his unattributed quoting of a wikipedia article - also known as plaigarism.

It's this sort of cack-handed half-arsed efforts at communication that leave me wondering how the hell anyone gets a PhD, let alone expects anyone to respect it.

Jesus, even first year students know not to make that series of dumbshit academic errors.

Is there some ivory to this tower?

[Logic please]

@JohnF:

Originally Posted by Goldenmane

I'd like to know exactly how this particular academic excuses his unattributed quoting of a wikipedia article

I note that this is covered in the forum rules known as The Great Big List (link originally provided in your AFA Admin Welcome Message), under point 14:

Originally Posted by TGBL #14 extract

Don't steal information: Ensure that you give academic credit to arguments that are not yours - if you paste in a quotation from some other source, please include a reference to that citation so the source is acknowledged.

I'm aware that a couple of the links within your copied text "jumped" to other wiki articles, and thus arguably provided a default clue to references. However, the scholarship benefits of explicitly referencing all material to source are fairly clear IMO. No doubt a similar attention to detail would be expected from students at your institution.

In relation to your comments about language, I also draw attention to point 3:

Originally Posted by TGBL #3 extract

Ideas and claims are robustly discussed here, to determine whether they have any credible basis. Objection to a poster's choice of language is not a relevant excuse to avoid dealing with the content of the discussion. Strong or colourful language used to attack ideas, does not equate to attacking the poster. (my emphasis)

Thanks in advance.

[Sieveboy]

Well, I gave it a try.

First off, some of your broad buckets to classify me as a respondent seemed rather limited, when we consider that NSW has at least one citizen who is listed as having no gender on their birth certificate. Somewhat surprising for a university but, onwards I marched. I honestly could not answer the question on genesis of the world. Before I expand this further, allow me to explain things:

In this place pretty every week we get a new "chew toy". A "chew toy" is the local label for a (usually) deluded theist of some brand who comes here to try and prove through preaching, lame attempts to overthrow huge bodies of scientific knowledge in the hope of sustaining bronze age views or pointless redescribing of words in the english language otherwise known as poor laymans philosophy, that an unevidenced god(s) exists. Thus, due to this often pointless philosobabble and dictionary bending we are sticklers here for meaning and choice of words. Add in that this is an internet forum, words do not come with emphasis or body language to convey meaning. You have already seen this a little bit of that in this thread.

So, you come here and announce "hey come do my survey" and the first question with substance is so piss poor in its description as to cause me to break it down so I can guage and rate the degree of fail in it:

*I believe the world was made
Choose one of the following answers
by chance, through evolution
by a Creator, through evolution, over millions of years
by a Creator, over 6 days
by some way that I am unsure of

First off "I believe the world was made"

First off, by world do you mean planet earth? If so, then you should clearly state that, if you mean the world to be something more, such as the solar system or galaxy or universe, then describe it as so. For arguments sake I will accept you mean earth for the world. Taking it further, believe is a poor choice of word, I don't believe, I accept the evidence.

Then, the choices, choice number one is nonsensical in that evolution is commonly accepted to refer to the grand unifying theory in biology, being evolution through natural selection. If you had said commonly accepted theories of stellar and planetary accretion, we might be able to move on.

Choices two and three are standard young or old earth creationist bullshit, covering those bases

Choice four covers the unusure.

No choice provides reasonable opportunities for other valid or weird and wacky beliefs that do no conform to these views.

Its not a good start, but for the sake of trying to finish the test I moved on.

Next question that caused me to choke was this one:

*Have you ever had an experience of the presence of God? If so, please pick the most significant one
Choose one of the following answers

As my answer should be this: no such experience

but it come with the unwanted bonus of this (bolded): no such experience/unsure

I think you have inserted some unwarranted assumptions here mate.

This question is going to get you some flawed answers:

"How often do you pray and/or meditate?"

Non spirtual meditation often prescribed as treatment for some psychologoical conditions, but this question dumps it in with the spirtual masturbation and prayer.

But i had to stop at this question:

*Please respond to each of the following items, by selecting the choice that indicates how important you think each area is for an ideal state of spiritual health. Each response is graded 1 = very low, 2 = low, 3 = moderate, 4 = high, 5 = very high

Sorry, spirtual health is a fucking bullshit term utterly meaningless and devoid of evidence beyond the woolly ramblings of peoples bias and feelings. I strongly suggest if you wish to follow this path of inquiry, you contact Justin Griffith at Freethoughbogs (http://freethoughtblogs.com/rockbeyondbelief). Sargeant Griffith is trying to deal with exactly this bullshit in the US Military, he fails their "spiritual fitness" test because he is an atheist. It is the example to the numpty bullshit your trying to examine here: A sane, competent, physically fit veteran of Americas war and he fails this test because he doesn't believe in zombies or similar bullshit. I am not sure what you are really driving at John, but from my point of view it looks like new age mental masturbation.

[DanDare]

I can clearly point out the bias.

As stated earlier, spiritual can have two meanings. One is valid to a materialist, the other is not.

Imagine 100 spiritualists answer based on the magic definition and 100 materialists based on the non magic version. How do you differentiate? You wont. You will say you have 200 answers supporting the dualist concept of spirituality. That would be a lie hidden carefully behind the questions ambiguity.

[DanDare]

How are you going to deal with the selection bias in your survey?

Obviously rationalists with an understanding of science are going to refuse to answer your survey while chrystal healing astrologers wont blink an eye.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Originally Posted by DanDare

How are you going to deal with the selection bias in your survey?

Obviously rationalists with an understanding of science are going to refuse to answer your survey while chrystal healing astrologers wont blink an eye.

Most cynical of me, but I fear that might be what John wants, perhaps unconsciously.

[DanDare]

Originally Posted by Darwinsbulldog

Most cynical of me, but I fear that might be what John wants, perhaps unconsciously.

I suspect that is so. Which means that his supervisor also probably likes the idea.

[Xeno]

John, I have looked briefly at your paper, specifically, your introduction and discussion of spirituality, and your conclusions. I have only glanced at some of the tables. They seem unimportant for the moment compared with discussion of assumptions and their effects on conclusions.

I grant that you include under the section "Limitations" that:

Originally Posted by JF

I am an evangelical christian.

I will propose to you that your fear expressed there that this may cause bias has in fact occurred. I see this as something to fix rather than something to excuse.

In your introduction you state (and repeat in different form later)

Spirituality is posited as existing at the very core, or heart, of being human.

This proposition is not in fact defended, yet conclusions are drawn on its basis. That statement by me might surprise you but I suggest that will be your bias talking. Please continue reading.

You grant that there is tension between "religious and existential bases" for spirituality, and you have discovered here on this forum, if not earlier, that it is not sufficient to allow a non-religious basis for spirituality, one must also question spirituality. Your definition of spiritual well being (SWB means short wheelbase to me) as pertaining to Personal (relationship with self), Community (relationship with others), Environment (relationship) and Transcendent Other (relationship) holds self-referentially for each scale, and no scale necessitates another scale. However, on page 12 you show a diagram in which Transcendence encompasses the other three factors (and so on from right to left where the least is self). The diagram contains your bias and it is later expressed in your discussion.

I believe your factor analysis determined the scales to be independent, and there is no experimental basis or discussion that I noticed to say that one scale is a sub-set of another.

Covering a point I raised in an earlier post, it is sound to use a self-referential scale for the object scaled. What you go on to do is to anchor each object in your perception of spirituality. This is not valid and it is not founded in your experimental results rather than in your chosen definition. This anchoring is where systematic bias is applied to the study. Some of the questions also need repair for bias on the same basis, as has already been pointed out.

Taking each of the scales without the bias of spirituality, each of them will receive a rating from a person about its importance, followed by a rating of the extent to which they are satisfied with their situation on that scale, the congruence between self-appraisal of importance and accomplishment. In your text you soundly describe this as

... the extent to which people are in harmony with the things they consider important to them.

We could add that atheists are in perfect harmony on your fourth scale in that importance of "transcendent other" is zero and one is in complete harmony with that. However, your survey and your analyses do not admit of zero, of non-existence.

It seems to me quite uncontroversial in the psychological literature to say that incongruence or dissonance on any one of those scales will lead to personal dissatisfaction. In other words, your statement quoted above is sound and well supported. It is then your bias which re-labels this a matter of spiritual well-being rather than an ordinary psychological state, and then leads to discussions of pastoral care or spiritual advisers which have no bearing on those not accepting this ill-defined transcendence you stick out there as the fourth scale, one which you diagram as encompassing others and discuss as an assumption rather than on evidence.

This is why your survey and interpretations are open to error, systematically by the external anchoring not experimentally linked to the self-referential scale, systematically again by errors and bias in some of the questions, and randomly by undefined terminology. Your conclusions overreach the data.

[Goldenmane]

Hmm.

So, he can't get his head around attributing responses to the right person, not capitalising words that don't require it, responding in-thread rather than by email, or the various difficulties he has with simple fucking facts.

So much for a science education.