Judge Not and Be Persuaded (or Healed)
Over at Inkling Magazine, Meera Lee Sethi reports on a brilliant study which shows that when believers are told that the person to whom they are listening has divine powers, the regions of their brain...
View ArticlePlacebo Effects and Shamanic Healing
There are some scholars — such as James McLenon and Stephen Sanderson, who contend that shamanic techniques of healing played in an important role in the evolution of religion. I tend to agree and...
View ArticleHard Science Meets Soft Religion
Over at HuffPo Religion, Dr. Rustum Roy — a geochemist — accuses the media of criminal conduct in its reporting of the non-existent war between science and religion. In the course of doing so, Roy...
View ArticleThe Desire to Believe
Yet another study has been published which demonstrates that the placebo effect is real and powerful. But the difference in this study is it did not involve deception — the patients were told they...
View ArticleOf Jinns & Shamanic Mullahs
As is the case with charismatic or evangelical forms of Christianity, some strands of Islam have a robust sense of supernatural agency that populates the world with all manner of malevolent spirits who...
View ArticleMeet New Shaman, Same as Old Shaman
Sometimes getting fooled again is good for you, as in healing good. Shamans have been healing people for tens of thousands of years, using their considerable powers of persuasion and that most...
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Neuroscientists Discover Shamanic Healing
Better late than never is a good thing, even if the delay is measured in many thousands of years. Western medical science is just now discovering that the mind is powerful and placebo works. Shamans...
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