How and why I became an atheist, Part 6

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school.

In Part 4, I look at my "conversion" or transition period of my last year of school there and the first year after

In Part 5, I look at further personal, philosophical, unreligious and antimetaphysical development in my life during three years of living with my dad.

It's now 1997 and I'm on my own, editing a weekly paper. Working 60-70 hours a week, moving it from the red and into the black. Getting burned out. Drinking on the job.

At the same time, I'm now exploring more in things like cognitive science/philosophy, recognizing the origins in human brain dysfunctions of visions and hallucinations, etc. In short, I'm becoming more and more of not just an atheist, but an antimetaphysician in general.

I was eventually fired, for whatever reason. I listened to someone, and some inner part of myself, and quit drinking. And looked for support.

Well, the only game I knew of at the time for that was the religious-based sobriety support program of Alcoholics Anonymous. (And, that's what it is; don't believe the canard that "it's a spiritual program.")

Well, I was in such a post-alcohol mental fog, I didn't totally recognize that at the time. And, when I did, I was in a group, surprising for a small town in Texas, with many New Agey types and little in the way of people even approaching orthodox Christians. Well, I'd had enough happen in the last few months that I actually tried some Matthew Fox reading, even A Course in Miracles.

And, some degree of New Agey "power"-ness, but not a personal deity, "stuck" for a year or so.

That said, as noted on the previous part of this installment atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today. I don't find that necessary for myself today, but I'm not going to mock the people who have, not for 2,000, or even 5,000, but going by things like French cave paintings and some burials, but who have for 20,000 years sought out some sort of metaphysical support to help face the vicissitudes of life.

Anyway, I eventually moved on in many ways. I found a "secular sobriety" support group; I found a great group therapy counselor, and group, for some "childhood issues," after I moved to Dallas.

And, I moved beyond "just atheism." I could call it "positive atheism," or I could use the good old phrase "secular humanism."

I continued reading in philosophy of mind, cognitive science/philosophy and related subjects.

I saw more and more of how many of the allegedly metaphysical "artifacts" of religious belief, such as various visual and auditory "visions," deja-vu type events and more, were all parts of the wonder — and the humility — of the evolutionary cobbling together of the human brain and the eventual rise of what we could call an epiphenomenon, almost — human consciousness.

I saw that that, as well as Yosemite National Park and its falls, Grand Canyon and its vistas, Beethoven and the C sharp minor quartet and more, could all be approached with wonder, even with gratitude without having to be grateful to anybody, divinities included.

As I said in an op-ed column, riffing on Shylock in Merchant of Venice: "I am an atheist. Prick us; do we not bleed?"

But, as I said, at this point in my life, whether the term I use is "atheist," "secular humanist," "philosophical naturalist," "skeptic" or something else, I feel reasonably comfortable about where I am.

SSRIs no better than placebo? Not quite

The truth is, no new study claimed that. Rather, that story last week was based on meta-analysis. Regular readers know my feelings about meta-analysis. Worse yet, the meta-analysis included only 23 original studies, which in turn focused on just two antidepressants.

Hardly scientific.

The PLoS antidepressants study, the ‘looseness’ of medical research statistics and ‘faith’ in meta-analysis

Way too loose of p-values for false positives in studies, in medicine (and social sciences) compared to natural sciences, is one reason to not read too much into any individual study that claims antidepressants are ineffective, like the Public Library of Science meta-analysis of individual studies did.

P-values of the same looseness as in medicine/social sciences have been used to claim intercessory prayer actually works on sick people (halfway down the linked page), for example, or here (two-third down the linked page):

Targ's paper is not the only questionable study on the efficacy of prayer that has been published by medical journals. The editors and referees of these journals have done a great disservice to both science and society by allowing such highly flawed papers to be published. I have previously commented about the low statistical significance threshold of these journals (p-value of 0.05) and how it is inappropriate for extraordinary claims (Skeptical Briefs, March 2001). This policy has given a false scientific credibility to the assertion that prayer or other spiritual techniques work miracles, and several best selling books have appeared that exploit that theme. Telling people what they want to hear, these authors have made millions.

Also, per a blogger, I came across a good statement on how many people misunderstand p-values in general:

First, the p value is often misinterpreted to mean the “probability for the result being due to chance”. In reality, the p-value makes no statement that a reported observation is real. “It only makes a statement about the expected frequency that the effect would result from chance when the effect is not real”.

In short, as I’ve tried to explain to people over at Kevin Drum’s blog, p values in medicine are simply too loose.

But, as the study’s authors claim, doesn’t meta-analysis take care of all those p-value problems? No.

Meta-analysis, no matter how much it’s defended, can’t totally cover that up.

I’m not saying that the results of a meta-analysis are no stronger than the weakest study in its umbrella. I am saying that, with p values as loose as they are in health/medicine (and social sciences), is that no massive amount of individual research studies being included under one meta-analysis will make the meta-analysis’ results anything more than a little bit stronger than the best individual study.

In other words, in medicine, and in social sciences, meta-analysis adds a very modest bump, nothing more. The problem is, most people believe it does much more than that when it doesn’t.

Or, to put it another way, meta-analysis is no better than the material it’s analyzing.

So, what’s needed is medical studies to continue with the p of 0.05, because we don’t want to risk screening out potentially life-saving study, but, to re-crunch research studies at the same time. I’m not saying we need to do that with a p of 0.0001, or 1/100 of 1 percent, like the natural sciences, especially physics, normally do. But to re-crunch with a p of 0.01, or 1 percent instead of 5 percent? Absolutely.

Research that made the 5 percent cutoff but not the 1 percent cutoff would be categorized as “worthy of further study but without any immediate conclusions from it being acceptable.”

A sidebar benefit would be that a lot of alt-medicine research would get a less than full imprimatur.