Bulletin # 154

Plan your visit to India now for the Year End

Fourth International Rationalist Conference

26-29 December 2006 at New Delhi

For more details and registration, write to
Conference@rationalistinternational.net

Luigi Cascioli, atheist fighter and author of the scholarly book "The Fable of Christ", has finally brought his case to the European Human Rights Court at Strasbourg. It will be taken up by famous lawyers Giovanni Di Stefano and Domenico Marinelli, who have acted in several high profile political cases, including that of Saddam Hussein, Tarek Aziz, Telekom Serbia, Milosevich and others.

Luigi Cascioli argues that there is no independent and reliable proof whatsoever for Jesus' historical existence and accuses the Roman Catholic Church of deceiving people with the Fable of Christ since 2000 years for financial gains. Cascioli's pointman for the church position is his old schoolmate Father Enrico Righi (76), parish priest from Viterbo, Italy, whom he accused three years ago of committing two criminal offences. By reasserting the church's claim of Jesus' historical existence explicitly in a parish newsletter, Righi "abused public credulity" and "impersonated" some historic figure as Jesus Christ, both punishable according to the Italian Penal Code. Cascioli lost his case in the courts of Catholic Italy, but fulfilled the necessary steps to move it to the European Human Rights Court. So far, the Vatican declined comment.

The belief in reincarnation is widespread and deep-rooted in India. It is inspired by Hindu religious beliefs and fuelled by the wish that there should be some kind of escape route from pressing social realities into another, better life. Tales of rebirth are catching people's imagination and get fast currency, especially among the poor in rural India.

In cooperation with Star TV, one of the big channels in Hindi language with nation-wide outreach, Sanal Edamaruku exposed two reincarnation cases within a few weeks, encouraging and enabling millions of viewers all over India to confront this superstition with reality, wherever they meet it.

In a live program on 30th March 2006, Star TV introduced a reincarnation case in Bagpat village in the north Indian state of Haryana. Villagers were thronging in a courtyard, where one of them, a man in his thirties, presented his four-year old son to the TV cameras. Some months ago, the boy expressed fear seeing a tractor, the father told the reporter. Strangely, he soon started insisting his name was Pavithra - the name of a well-off farmer in a neighboring village, who had been killed by robbers five years ago. They shot at him, when he was driving his tractor. The bullet hit his neck and he died on the spot.

To prove that his son was Pavithra's reincarnation, the father held the boy towards the cameras and quizzed him repeatedly: What is your name? What is your father's, mother's sister's name? And where did the bullet hit you? The boy answered in accordance with his father's tale. Without any hesitation, he gave his name as Pavitra and the names of his relatives as those of Pavitra's. When asked about the bullet, he pointed to his own neck: here! The villagers were impressed and completely convinced that the boy was Pavithra's reincarnation. And so was the dead man's family, who had already taken the child into their house and thought about adopting it.

Sanal Edamaruku pointed at some flaws and discrepancies of the case. The dates of Pavithra's death and the boy's birth, for example, did not match. There was a gap of two years between the two, where the "soul" wouldn't have had a body. Most disturbing, however, was that the boy's answers were obviously tutored. After he reacted several times "correctly" to his father's never changing sequence of five questions, the reporter put the same questions in a different order, and the child gave regardlessly his monotonous set of answers like a parrot: What is your father's name? - Here! (He pointed to his own neck.) Strangely, nobody was disturbed by this fact, before it was pointed out.

Since the farmer's fate had been on everyone's lips some years back, there was also nothing special or even miraculous about a child being aware of names and details. Reincarnation claims usually start as a child's fantasy in an age, when dream and reality are not yet distinguished, Sanal Edamaruku explained. By repeating their fantasies again and again, children use to grow and modify them according to the reactions of their surroundings into perfect stories and are convinced they are reality. In this case, the fantasy was obviously taken up by the boy's father, who became the operator of the claim.

Interestingly, nearly all reincarnation stories are - knowingly or unknowingly - suitable to serve social uplift. It is always a child from a poor family that claims - mostly supported by its parents and well-wishers - to be a re-born member of a comparatively richer family, never otherwise round. That explains that such stories use to be quite resistant. They offer benefits to all those involved. For the child and its parents, the story is a ticket into a better future; the other family finds consolation in the idea that their ill fated kin allegedly returns as a child. And the audience finds relief in the belief that there could be a better life waiting for them after death.

In another program on Star TV, nine members of a family from a village in Punjab were brought to the TV studio in order to piece together the story of a three-year-old girl, who was believed to be a reincarnation. Sanal Edamaruku started his investigation before the beginning of the program in the visitor's waiting room by casually interviewing all family members. There was something special about this case: the little girl's family was Muslim, while the deceased, a young woman from a far off village near Delhi, had been Hindu. The woman had been deserted from her husband, when she was pregnant. She died, according to a medical certificate, of pneumonia. This happened some three years back, fitting with the time, when her "reincarnation" was born. The little girl claimed to bear the woman's name and would proudly show her earlobes to everybody, which allegedly showed pressing marks of the heavy earrings, the deceased used to wear.

Sole representative of the deceased woman's family in the TV studio was her fifteen-year-old niece, who had been very close to her. It was through this niece, who happened to live in the same Punjabi village as the child's family, that the "reincarnation" was identified. The niece's school was adjacent to the kindergarten, visited by the little girl, and the two befriended each other. It is easy to guess, how the child's knowledge about her friend's aunt and her earrings transpired. It was also obvious that the niece, who never overcame the death of her beloved and unlucky aunt, was extremely happy to see her living on as the friendly little girl. On inquiry another interesting aspect of the story came to light. There had been strong criticism in the village about the close friendship between the Hindu niece and the Muslim kindergarten girl. It was silenced at once, when the reincarnation story came up.

The suspect that the niece was the operator of this reincarnation claim proved correct. It turned out that she had successfully spread confusion about the woman's cause of death. According to the belief, only victims of a violent death - by murder or accident - are entitled to be reborn. Since the niece had a strong desire to establish the reincarnation, she fantasized a different death for her aunt. She insisted that the aunt had died of a bicycle accident and that she herself had seen bruises and wounds caused by the accident on the dead body. There were many contradictions in her tale, but still the girl's family and obviously also some (absent) members of her own family believed her. The medical certificate, however, exposed her.

Sanal Edamaruku's sensible and careful handling of both the cases called to mind that exposing superstitions without consideration for the individuals entangled in them can cause much damage. In a live TV program of one hour, it is hardly possible to help victims of superstition to resist the social and psychological drives behind their unreasonable thought and behavior. With tact and great skill Sanal Edamaruku succeeded, however, in exposing the absurd claims of reincarnation and their roots and mechanisms uncompromisingly for the audience to understand without inflicting pain and personal embarrassment on the victims that could disturb their mental balance.

A research project aimed at rescuing the multi-billion prayer-industry backfires

Finally, there is solid statistical evidence for the obvious: It does not have any impact on heart patients' post-operative recovery, if someone is praying for their health or not. The imagination that somebody is praying for them, however, has an impact: it considerably increases the chances of medical complications.

The long awaited results of a medical study about the power of prayer to support the success of coronary bypass surgery, published in the latest issue of The American Heart Journal, are a bit of a blow for the prayer lobby. It turned out that patients, for whom the monks and nuns from three congregations delivered personal prayers, suffered 18 per cent major post-operative complications like heart attacks and strokes, while those, who did not enjoy any spiritual support, suffered only 13 per cent. The highest rate of post-operative complications was observed among patients, who were told that someone was praying for their health. They suffered 59 per cent post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythm etc. - while it was only 51 per cent for those, who did not know, if prayers for their recovery were offered or not.

The study was conducted over nearly 10 years and observed the cases of 1802 patients in six hospitals. It is considered to be the scientifically most rigorous investigation of its kind. The results have severely disturbed Christian prayer propagandists, especially since it was lead by cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson, director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston, who is known to be a proponent of the theory that "intercessory prayer" supports the recovery of patients. Dr. Benson "proved" his pious theory with an earlier, more improvised study, before he took up the challenge of a thorough scientific investigation, rigorously designed to exclude manipulation. Though as a scientist, he has to accept the somewhat blasphemous results, Benson showed his disappointment and announced that this was not the last word in prayer research, anyway.

It looks quite ridiculous when scientists of the 21^st century seriously try to prove that prayers work – or even consider it possible that they work. It is absurd to pretend scientific investigation of a phenomenon that contradicts the very principles of science. But prayer research enjoys great public interest worldwide and immense support. The study has eaten up 2.4 million US-Dollars and was heavily sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, who promotes research into spirituality. There have been at least ten similar studies in smaller range during the last six years in the USA. Prayer – not the private conversation with some private god, but paid professional intervention on believers’ behalf – is the most flourishing business worldwide - in temples, mosques and churches. It is the pillar, on which several multinational business corporations are resting. If the belief in the power of prayers dwindles, their economic base is gone and they collapse like houses of cards. The Christian churches in Europe and the USA have started to maximize their profits by outsourcing the prayer work to cheap-labour countries like India: in Kerala, for example, hundreds of priests are praying routinely and systematically for the benefit of unknown customers of far off western churches (who, by the way, would not even be able to understand the language of those prayers on their behalf). But every pooja, every candle, every Ave Maria has its price.

Interestingly the focus of prayer research has shifted in recent times. The question is no more if prayer is directly responded by divine powers, but if it – independently from god’s responsiveness and even existence - "somehow" works on a base of psychological or other mechanisms. Despite prayer lobby’s desperate effort to rescue their fading base by "scientifically proving" that prayer works, it is relieving that the results could not be used any more to convince the customers of the prayer inc.