I. Healing/Health

II. Spiritual/Religious Environmental Approaches

I. Healing/Health

1) Really long-lived human

2) Louise Hay

3) Christian Science

4) Joseph Murphy

5) Positive Psychology: Martin Seligman, PhD.

6) Crime Reduction from Transcendental Meditation: J. Hagelin et al.

1) July 7, 2006

World Briefing | Africa

South Africa: The Stories She Could Tell

By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

... A South African woman may be the world's oldest person — 132 years old. Moloko Temo was born on July 4, 1874, according to a government identity document, the newspaper Beeld reported. Ms. Temo has 29 grandchildren and 59 great-grandchildren. She has been blind for 54 years but is generally healthy.

2) Louise Hay was diagnosed with cancer. She told the Doctors to wait for 3 months, and immersed herself in holistic healing. After three months, they could find no trace of the cancer. Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life.

3) A group of spiritually minded soldiers in World War II were in an Imperial Japanese P.O.W. camp, and being fed starvation rations. Soldiers were losing their ability to think straight, and suffering nutritional diseases. These spiritually minded soldiers prayed regularly together, and kept their health. One began conducting classes in Electrical Engineering. When the camp was liberated, they were left until last because they were in such good health. - James Connell Brown, England 1954 in A Century of Christian Science Healing

4) One man on board the Princess Italia told me that years ago he was pondering over how poor he was. He also worried about the poverty and want he had observed in others. He visited a spiritual counselor who told him that his thoughts were neutralizing his own prayers. He reversed his procedure and began to claim God's riches for every person he met, and he still does it. As of 1972 he had two airplanes and was very successful - Miracle Power for Infinite Riches by Joseph Murphy

Relationships, family, friends, neighborhoods, businesses, and more have all been helped through prayer and spiritual practice and wisdom.

5) Positive Psychology: How to make a good summer better: three strategies that can boost your happiness quotient and make your season the best it can be - Essential Guide to Summer

Lynda Liu

For a century, the study of psychology was pretty much limited to what can go wrong with your mind and emotions: for example, depression, anxiety, major mental illnesses. But in the past few years, a whole new approach to the field has developed: Called "positive psychology," it is the study of what can go right with the human psyche.

Positive psychology examines positive emotions (confidence, hope, trust), positive traits (valor, integrity, loyalty, intelligence) and positive institutions (democracy, strong families, free inquiry) -- and how these can help you be a happier, more fulfilled and satisfied person.

Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., is known as the father of positive psychology. Though many of us are content, says Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (Free Press, 2002), "we do wonder how our lives could improve:' Use the following tenets of the positive-psychology movement to help you shoot up the happiness ladder and make this summer (and the rest of your life) even better.

1 Wear rose--colored glasses. It's not enough to take your mind off the negative. You have to actively and deliberately focus on the positive. In a University of Michigan at Ann Arbor study, subjects were given 60 seconds to prepare a three-minute speech. They were told there was a 50 percent chance they would be selected to deliver the speech to a video monitor, which would later be shown to students in another study. Their cardiovascular responses to this stress, such as heart rate, were measured. The participants were then shown one of four possible video clips: ocean waves (to induce contentment), a small dog playing with a flower (to induce amusement), a neutral video of abstract shapes or a sad clip of a crying boy watching his father die. The heart responses of the people who watched either the contentment or amusement video returned to normal much more quickly than those of participants who watched the neutral or the sad video.

This summer Do something special that triggers positive emotions. Take a hike or go swimming in a lake, says Michele Tugade, Ph.D., one of the study's co-authors and a research scientist in Boston College's psychology department. "Connecting with nature has been associated with joy, gratitude and contentment." If it's a rainy day, watch a movie that makes you laugh or take time out for yoga or meditation. Remember, you don't have to wait until you're in a difficult situation to TAP into these good feelings. Building up "credit" in positive emotions will help you better cope with challenging situations when they arise.

2 "Elevate" yourself. "Elevation" isn't just the title of a popular U2 song. It's also the name of an emotion we feel when we witness acts of goodness, kindness and compassion. It's the emotion that gives you a warm, tingly feeling and makes you want to be a better person. In a recent study from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, some students were shown parts of a documentary on Mother Teresa's life and others a different video (a comedy or a nonemotional documentary). Those who watched the Mother Teresa clips felt more inspired and were more willing to volunteer at a charitable organization than were the other study participants.

Witnessing or being around inspiring people can uplift you, but being kind yourself has its own benefits as well. "Doing good deeds is often surprisingly enjoyable," says study author Jonathan Haidt, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology. "People often volunteer for social reasons. For example, a friend got them to do it or they thought it would look good on their resume, but then they discover how rewarding it can be."

This summer Volunteer for a beach cleanup or to plant a community garden, so you'll contribute to something positive and feel elevated by the actions of those around you. To really elevate your mood, volunteer at a summer camp for inner-city youth. "Doing good things for others, especially children, is even more powerful than doing good things for nature," Haidt says.

3 Lose track of time. If you were ever so engrossed by an enjoyable activity that you lost track of time, you were experiencing "flow." Whether you're playing an intense game of tennis, rock climbing or reading a novel, flow can happen if you're engaged in something that challenges you, requires skill and concentration, gives immediate feedback and allows you to retain a sense of control. Aside from letting people feel fully alive, flow helps a person develop skills, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, director of the Quality of Life Research Center and a professor at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. -- and the man who coined the term flow.

This summer Sail on a lake, act in summer-stock theater, bird-watch or read a novel while lying in a hammock. Your interests and skills will determine what brings you flow. To figure out what works for you, "think back on the things that gave you joy as a child or teenager," Csikszentmihalyi says. "Also, try as many new things as possible, and pay attention to which make you feel best. Can you do more of those things, and less of the ones that are boring or stressful?" It's something worth thinking about.

Lynda Liu is a health and fitness writer in New York City.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0846/is_9_22/ai_100106674/print

6) Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, DC: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July 1993

John S. Hagelin, Maxwell V. Rainforth, David W. Orme-Johnson, Kenneth L. Cavanaugh, Charles N. Alexander, Susan F. Shatkin, John L. Davies, Anne O. Hughes, and Emanuel Ross

This study presents the final results of a two-month prospective experiment to reduce violent crime in Washington, DC. On the basis of previous research it was hypothesized that the level of violent crime in the District of Columbia would drop significantly with the creation of a large group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation^® and TM-Sidhi^® programs to increase coherence and reduce stress in the District.

This National Demonstration Project to Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness brought approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs to the United States national capital from June 7 to July 30, 1993. A 27-member independent Project Review Board consisting of sociologists and criminologists from leading universities, representatives from the police department and government of the District of Columbia, and civic leaders approved in advance the research protocol for the project and monitored its progress.

The dependent variable in the research was weekly violent crime, as measured by the Uniform Crime Report program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; violent crimes include homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. This data was obtained from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department for 1993 as well as for the preceding five years (1988-1992). Additional data used for control purposes included weather variables (temperature, precipitation, humidity), daylight hours, changes in police and community anti-crime activities, prior crime trends in the District of Columbia, and concurrent crime trends in neighboring cities. Average weekly temperature was significantly correlated with homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes), as has also been found in previous research; therefore temperature was used as a control variable in the main analysis of HRA crimes. Using time series analysis, violent crimes were analyzed separately in terms of HRA crimes (crimes against the person) and robbery (monetary crimes), as well as together.

Analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, revealed that there was a highly significant decrease in HRA crimes associated with increases in the size of the group during the Demonstration Project. The maximum decrease was 23.3% when the size of the group was largest during the final week of the project. The statistical probability that this result could reflect chance variation in crime levels was less than 2 in 1 billion (p < .000000002). When a longer baseline is used (1988-1993 data), the maximum decrease was 24.6% during this period (p < .00003). When analyzed as a separate variable, robberies did not decrease significantly, but a joint analysis of both HRA crimes and robberies indicated that violent crimes as a whole decreased significantly to a maximum amount of 15.6% during the final week of the project (p = .0008). Analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, revealed that there was a highly significant decrease in HRA crimes associated with increases in the size of the group during the Demonstration Project.

Several additional analyses were performed on HRA crimes to further assess the strength of the main findings. These indicated that the reduction of HRA crimes associated with the group of participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs could not be attributed to changes in police staffing. These secondary analyses also found that the reduction of HRA crimes was highly robust to alternative specifications of the statistical model-that is, the effect is independent of the isolated details of the models used to assess seasonal cycles and trends. No significant decrease was found in any of the prior five years during this period of time, indicating that this effect was not due to the specific time of year. Furthermore, the intervention parameters for the group size revealed that the effect of the group was not only cumulative with the increase in group size, but also continued for some time after the end of the project.

Based on the results of the study, the steady state gain (long-term effect) associated with a permanent group of 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs was calculated as a 48% reduction in HRA crimes in the District of Columbia.

Given the strength of these results, their consistency with the positive results of previous research, the grave human and financial costs of violent crime, and the lack of other effective and scientific methods to reduce crime, policy makers are urged to apply this approach on a large scale for the benefit of society.

Reference: Hagelin, J.S., Rainforth, M.V., Orme-Johnson, D.W., Cavanaugh, K. L., Alexander, C.N., Shatkin, S.F., Davies, J.L, Hughes, A.O, and Ross, E. 1999. Effects of group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program on preventing violent crime in Washington D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July, 1993. Social Indicators Research, 47(2): 153-201.

A Rebuttal to “Voodoo Science”
by Maxwell Rainforth, Ph.D.

The Skeptical Inquirer recently published an article by Robert Park (“Voodoo Science and the Belief Gene” (Park 2000a) which he excerpted from his book, “Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud” (Park 2000b). In his book and his article, Park lampooned the scientific research of Dr. John Hagelin and collaborators (Hagelin 1994, 1999), myself included. Based on 41 previous studies, we predicted publicly that a large group practicing the Transcendental Meditation program would lower violent crime levels in Washington, DC, by reducing stress and tension in society. During the 8-week experiment in the summer of 1993, violent crimes against the person (homicides, rapes, and assaults) decreased by 23% and closely tracked the rise in the number of participating meditators. The results were published in Social Indicators Research, a respected, peer-reviewed, scientific journal (Hagelin 1999).

Park charges Hagelin and colleagues with “pseudoscience,” but this very serious allegation of scientific misconduct is based on a critique that is superficial, highly polemical, and seriously flawed. Park abstains from any serious consideration of the study data and the appropriateness of the statistical methodology. Neither his book nor his article contains a single statistic, and they betray no evidence that he read either the initial research report (Hagelin 1994) or the published study (Hagelin 1999).

It is surprising that Park’s article was printed in the Skeptical Inquirer, as it appears to contravene its editorial standards concerning responsible scientific discourse, as set out in the magazine’s Guide for Authors. The Editor of the Skeptical Inquirer agreed to print a brief rebuttal, but space limitations in the magazine prevent us from responding to all of Park’s false and misleading statements that appeared in his article and in his book. This web page is a detailed rebuttal of his claims, in lieu of a fair opportunity to adequately refute them in print.

The SI Guide for Authors advises writers to direct critiques towards ideas, not individuals. Yet Park’s critique of Hagelin’s study opens by attempting to discredit Hagelin as one who has rejected the norms of mainstream science. Park claims that while holding a research appointment at Stanford Linear Accelerator, “one day he simply vanished,” reappearing a year later as chairman of the Physics Department at Maharishi International University (MIU) in Fairfield, Iowa. Park’s book elaborates, stating that Hagelin was once regarded as a competent theoretical physicist, but disappeared in the midst of personal problems. We are glad that this and other unsupported, derogatory statements that Park made in the book were omitted from the excerpt in the Skeptical Inquirer. These statements clearly indicate that Park’s evaluation of the Hagelin study was strongly biased.

The alleged vanishing act and personal problems are pure fiction created by Park. Dr. Hagelin shifted his academic appointment from Stanford University to MIU for scientific reasons. It enabled him to continue his physics research and to pursue his long-standing interest in brain and cognitive science research. He took up his new appointment directly after leaving his position at Stanford Linear Accelerator, and he remained in close contact with his former colleagues at Harvard, Stanford and CERN. These scientists, including many at the forefront of physics, published numerous scientific articles with Dr. Hagelin as he continued his contributions to theoretical physics while at MIU funded by competitive scientific grants from the National Science Foundation. Hagelin has published 74 scientific articles on unified quantum field theories and related topics, including some of the most cited references in the physical sciences, to quote Current Contents magazine, which follows such trends. By making these unfounded and defamatory statements against a well-credentialed scientist, Park clearly placed himself outside the bounds of responsible scientific discourse.

Hagelin’s experiment tested the following hypothesis: that a large group of meditation experts, practicing together, can reduce stress and tension in the social atmosphere, and thus reduce violent crime. Based on many previous studies on the Transcendental Meditation program® (TM), a widely practiced and thoroughly researched method of stress reduction, it was predicted that such a group would produce a measurable calming influence in the city, resulting in reduced “Part I” violent crime, as defined by the FBI. The predicted outcomes of the experiment were announced publicly to the media, and were lodged in advance with a 27-member panel of scientists and civic leaders.

In his book, Park advocates subjecting scientific claims to rigorous testing and carefully scrutinizing scientific evidence. He explains that science is supposed to show the way to resolving controversy, by taking recourse to experimentation. Despite his lip service to the cause of objective science, Park appears to feel the hypothesis of Hagelin’s study is ridiculous on its face, and that no serious investigation of the claim is necessary. Although this notion is not directly expressed in the SI article, it is explicitly stated in Park’s book. There, in the context of dismissing Hagelin’s study, Park quotes H.L. Mencken: “The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.” In other words, Park maintains that it should have been obvious at the outset that the theory being tested was false, so why bother to examine the evidence? Apparently he believes that ideas that do not tally with the current scientific paradigm can be written off without serious consideration.

What chance is there that groups practicing Transcendental Meditation can reduce violent crime? If Park had been interested in a serious scientific discussion of this question, he should certainly have mentioned that:

• Extensive published research has shown that, for the individual, the Transcendental Meditation® technique reduces stress, anxiety and hostility more effectively than any other technique tested to date.
• The generalization of this reduction of stress and hostility from individuals to societies — when large groups practice both Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi program together — had been documented in more than a dozen scientific studies which had previously been published in mainstream, peer-reviewed academic journals.

At the least, such previous research would indicate that the Washington, DC, study should have been carefully analyzed.

Park also does not mention that the results were published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. He ought to have been aware of this because his SI article came out over a year after Hagelin’s study. Park’s article indicates that he was following Hagelin’s public activities shortly after the study was published in Social Indicators Research, during which time Hagelin repeatedly and consistently mentioned the publication.

Park’s failure to mention any of these facts can be attributed to only two factors, ignorance or bias, neither of which is acceptable from a responsible scientist, particularly one who takes a strong stand.

Park’s book and article put forward the specious claim that the D.C. experiment was a failure. Yet violent crimes against the person (homicides, rapes and assaults) not only decreased during the 8 weeks of the experiment, but also closely tracked the rise in the number of participating TM meditators, as predicted. The 23% drop in violent crime was confirmed to be statistically significant using time series analysis: the probability that the decrease was due to chance is less than two in a billion. The analysis showed that violent crime decreased when it usually reaches its peak during the hot summer weather, and a direct relationship between the size of the meditating group and the drop in violent crime.

The Skeptical Inquirer’s Guide for Authors asks those who submit manuscripts to “state other’s positions in a fair, objective, and non-emotional manner.” But Park’s critique is anything but even handed. He merely lampoons our use of time series analysis as “technobabble”, only “meant to give the appearance of science.” Park’s only allusion to the overall study finding is to complain about the use of time series analysis, which is clearly the correct statistical tool in this type of study. He waves away the evidence and state-of-the-art statistical analysis, proclaiming in his article that “It was a clinic in data manipulation,” with no supporting data or analysis for that assertion, and makes not another comment about it. In his book he uses more direct pejoratives, preferring instead the phrase “data distortion.” He concludes, both in the book and the SI article that: “This was pseudoscience” [emphasis in the original]. “Technobabble” and “pseudoscience” are loaded words, which the SI editorial guidelines say should be avoided.

Moreover, in his book he writes: “This . . . is not to say that those involved were not sincere in their belief. They may have believed so fervently that they felt a responsibility to make the facts support their belief” [emphasis in the original]. In other words, Park makes the unfounded claim that the researchers falsified evidence supplied by the Washington, DC, police. With high-handed condescension he acknowledges the “sincere belief” of the researchers, while making the most serious charge of scientific misconduct. These statements amount to a charge of scientific fraud. In his SI article and the book, Park also tries to insinuate that the researchers made fraudulent scientific claims — repeating the charge of “pseudoscience,” referring to the “experiment” in quotation marks, and again implying that the researchers were so biased that their beliefs were unalterable by the outcomes of the experiment. His statements are an insult to the integrity of the researchers, the Project Review Board, the editors and reviewers of Social Indicators Research, and the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department’s statistician, who provided the FBI crime data and co-authored the study.

Park’s objection to our use of time series analysis is not based on any scientific argument, but merely echoes the comments of a reporter regarding the use of time series analysis to predict levels of violent crime: “How could you know what the rates would have been?” But, there is no mystery here. Violent crime levels are predictable on the basis of temperature — a fact that is well known among criminologists, and was clearly explained at the press conference to present the research report that Park attended, and in both the report and the published paper.

This shows up clearly in Figure 1, which is a graph of the Washington data over the five years prior to the experiment (1988-1992). When average levels of temperature and average levels of homicides, rapes and assaults are plotted over weeks of the year, the crime and temperature curves are right on top of each other, if the vertical axis scales are appropriately chosen. This shows that usually the violent crime levels were directly proportional to temperature — and therefore that violent crime could be accurately predicted from the previous pattern in the data. The same thing happens in the first months of 1993, but then in the middle of the experimental period (when the meditating group was approaching its maximum size) the violent crime curve drops well below the temperature curve — and stays down for several weeks (see Figure 2). In other words, during the experiment in 1993, a drop in violent crime was clearly evident in the raw data, even without using time series analysis.1

Park objects to our calculation of how much violent crime dropped, but this calculation was an adjunct step performed after the time series analysis, and therefore challenging it does not contradict the main result. As our published paper clearly demonstrates, and as Park should have known, the calculated drop in violent crime was extremely robust, and not at all sensitive to the assumptions of the statistical model used.2 Therefore, our main finding stands.

Park rejects out of hand statistical modeling of the data using time series analysis, because to do otherwise would be to give credence to this main scientific finding of the study. Time series analysis is a sophisticated statistical tool for investigating whether factors other than the presumed causal variable might account for the results. Hagelin’s study used time series analysis to rule out a long list of alternative explanations, including weather variables, seasonal effects, changes in police surveillance, and trends and cyclical patterns inherent in the crime data.

However, Robert Park abstains from any serious consideration of the data and gives no consideration whatsoever to the appropriateness of the statistical methodology used to analyze it. This is remarkable, given his advocacy of scientific standards and careful scrutiny of scientific evidence. And despite Park’s emphasis on the importance of scientific replication of experimental findings, he neglects to mention that the Washington crime experiment was consistent with 41 previous studies of the effects of Transcendental Meditation on social quality-of-life variables, many of them studied in the previously published research mentioned above.

We are baffled how Park reaches his conclusion that our time series analysis is “pseudoscience.” In his own writing, he has no difficulty with the use of statistical modeling to make predictions in the context of research on global warming, and does not advocate that Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board be sacked for their heavy reliance on time series models in economic forecasting and policy making. His conclusion is unreasonable and without scientific justification.

In spite of this evidence, Park asserts that levels of violence actually increased to record levels. He confuses homicides — which accounted for only 3% of violent crime in Washington during 1993 — with violent crimes in general. Park asserts that the murder rate soared during the experiment, and claims that “participants in the project seemed serenely unaware of the mounting carnage around them.”

It is true the murder rate did not drop during the course — as we acknowledged in the initial research report and in the published study — but the facts were very different. For six weeks ending the month before the experiment, from mid-March through April, homicides in Washington averaged ten per week. Beginning one week after the course and for twelve weeks thereafter, homicides also averaged ten per week. During the eight weeks of the experiment, in June and July, the average was again ten per week — except for one horrific 36-hour period in which ten people died. Apart from this brief episode, which was a statistical outlier, the level of homicides during June and July of 1993 was not significantly higher than the remainder of the year.3

According to his article, Park apparently took his lead on the murder issue from a Washington Post reporter who had been impressed that the one 36-hour period had led to a sudden doubling of the murder rate that week. The reporter, and Park, did not notice that the very next week the murder rate dropped from its common rate of ten by more than twice — that is, the totals went up to 20 one week and down to 4 the next. This is precisely the type of sporadic fluctuation one must account for when total numbers are small. The average incidence of murder in Washington was little more than one per day, and with numbers as low as this, as Park and all scientists know, random fluctuations can appear extremely high when listed as percentages.

Another type of violent crime with low incidence is rape, yet Park makes no mention of this, perhaps because during the two months of the experiment, rapes decreased by 58%. If Park were interested in an accurate presentation, he should surely have balanced his statistic-free assertion of a murder wave with this arresting fact. The most comprehensive measure of deliberate violence, of course, includes assaults (the most common aspect of violent crime, which accounted for 92% of the study’s outcome variable) along with rapes and murders — which together declined by 23%. Park’s brouhaha about the murder rate is to distract the reader’s attention from the main issue: whether a group of people practicing meditation achieved a reduction in violent crime.

When scientists fail to evaluate evidence of scientific studies on their merits they mislead the public about science. As he is a professor at a major university, most lay readers would be likely to take Park’s “expert” opinions at face value. In this regard, his willfully misleading statements are highly irresponsible. Ironically, Park set out to expose deliberate attempts of scientists to mislead non-experts. In attempting to label Hagelin’s research as an example of scientific misconduct, his book and SI article merely provide a further example of such scientific deception of an unfortunately common type: misguided attacks on novel scientific theories based on blind disregard of evidence.

References

Hagelin, J.S., Orme-Johnson, D.W., Rainforth, M.V., Cavanaugh, K., and Alexander, C.N. 1994. Results of the National Demonstration Project to Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness in Washington, D.C., June 7-July 30, 1993. Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy Technical Report, ITR-94:1. Fairfield, IA: Maharishi University of Management.

Hagelin, J.S., Rainforth, M.V., Orme-Johnson, D.W. Cavanaugh, K. L. , Alexander, C.N., Shatkin, S.F., Davies, J.L, Hughes, A.O, and Ross, E. 1999. Effects of group praqctice of the Transcendental Meditation program on preventing violent crime in Washington D.C.: Results of theNational Demonstration Project, June-July, 1993. Social Indicators Research, 47(2): 153-201.

Park, Robert L. 2000a. Voodoo Science and the Belief Gene. The Skeptical Inquirer, Sept/Oct: 24-29.

Park, Robert, L. 2000b. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. New York: Oxford University Press.

Notes

1. The analysis reported in the published paper ruled out the possibility that this could have been due to seasonal effects, because a significant reduction during the summer in violent crime levels compared to the expected levels did not occur during any of the five years prior to the experiment.
2. For the interested reader, the calculation of the decrease in violent crime was based on a specific time series model that was justified on several grounds: First, this time series model was constructed based on the strong empirical relationship between temperature and violent crime levels seen in five years of preceding data in the same city, and in numerous studies by independent criminologists. Second, the time series model fit the data closely during the period before the meditating group assembled, and therefore would be expected to accurately predict the behavior of violent crime during the experimental period. Third, during the experimental period, the level of violent crime deviated from its prior trajectory, and this shift was accurately accounted for by adding the size of the meditating group to the time series model. And fourth, as we mentioned, contrary to Park’s claim that the researchers fudged the results to come out the way they wanted, the conclusions drawn from the time series analysis were highly robust, and not sensitive to how the model was constructed.
3. After removing the outlier of June 22, Poisson regression analysis indicated there was no significant difference in the level of homicides in June and July 1993 from the remainder of the year.

http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html

II. Spiritual / Religious Environmental Perspectives:

.5) 12 Step perspectives

1) Unitarian Universalist

2) World Council of Churches

3) Episcopal

4) Evangelical

5) Church of Christ

6) Reformed Church of America

7) Christian Science

8) Shamanic

9) Interfaith

10) Universal Life Church

11) Article: Creation Care: Evangelical

12) Article: 12 Steps and Politicians

13) Article: Christians, Money, Ecology

14) Buddhism and Ecology

15) Islam and Ecology

.5) Al-Anon: http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/english.html

Overeaters Anonymous: http://www.oa.org/index.htm

Codependents Anonymous: www.codependents.org/

Sex and Love Issues Anonymous: http://www.slaafws.org/

Alcoholics Anonymous: www.alcoholics-anonymous.org/

1) Unitarian Universalist:

http://www.uua.org/aboutuua/principles.html

2) The World Council of Churches Ecological Network:

http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/jpc/ecology.html

3) The Episcopal Ecological Network: http://eenonline.org/

4) Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Environmental Policy:

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/environment/theology/evang_luth.html

5) National Council of Churches of Christ: http://www.nccecojustice.org/antholumc.htm

6) The Reformed Church of America: http://www.rca.org/aboutus/perspective/environment.html

7) Christian Science:

http://www.spirituality.com/

7.5) Church of Religious Science

http://www.religiousscience.org/ , http://www.scienceofmind.com/

8) The Foundation for Shamanic Studies

http://www.shamanism.org/index.html

9) Interfaith discussion: www.beliefnet.com

10) Universal Life Church: www.ulc.org

Article:

On The Care of Creation

An Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation

www.creationcare.org

The Earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof - Psalm 24:1

As followers of Jesus Christ, committed to the full authority of the Scriptures, and aware of the ways we have degraded creation, we believe that biblical faith is essential to the solution of our ecological problems.

Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation.

Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator's work.

Because in Christ God has healed our alienation from God and extended to us the first fruits of the reconciliation of all things, we commit ourselves to working in the power of the Holy Spirit to share the Good News of Christ in word and deed, to work for the reconciliation of all people in Christ, and to extend Christ's healing to suffering creation.

Because we await the time when even the groaning creation will be restored to wholeness, we commit ourselves to work vigorously to protect and heal that creation for the honor and glory of the Creator---whom we know dimly through creation, but meet fully through Scripture and in Christ. We and our children face a growing crisis in the health of the creation in which we are embedded, and through which, by God's grace, we are sustained. Yet we continue to degrade that creation.

These degradations of creation can be summed up as 1) land degradation; 2) deforestation; 3) species extinction; 4) water degradation; 5) global toxification; 6) the alteration of atmosphere; 7) human and cultural degradation.

Many of these degradations are signs that we are pressing against the finite limits God has set for creation. With continued population growth, these degradations will become more severe. Our responsibility is not only to bear and nurture children, but to nurture their home on earth. We respect the institution of marriage as the way God has given to insure thoughtful procreation of children and their nurture to the glory of God.

We recognize that human poverty is both a cause and a consequence of environmental degradation.

Many concerned people, convinced that environmental problems are more spiritual than technological, are exploring the world's ideologies and religions in search of non-Christian spiritual resources for the healing of the earth. As followers of Jesus Christ, we believe that the Bible calls us to respond in four ways:

First, God calls us to confess and repent of attitudes which devalue creation, and which twist or ignore biblical revelation to support our misuse of it. Forgetting that "the earth is the Lord's," we have often simply used creation and forgotten our responsibility to care for it.

Second, our actions and attitudes toward the earth need to proceed from the center of our faith, and be rooted in the fullness of God's revelation in Christ and the Scriptures. We resist both ideologies which would presume the Gospel has nothing to do with the care of non-human creation and also ideologies which would reduce the Gospel to nothing more than the care of that creation.

Third, we seek carefully to learn all that the Bible tells us about the Creator, creation, and the human task. In our life and words we declare that full good news for all creation which is still waiting "with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God," (Rom. 8:19).

Fourth, we seek to understand what creation reveals about God's divinity, sustaining presence, and everlasting power, and what creation teaches us of its God-given order and the principles by which it works.

Thus we call on all those who are committed to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to affirm the following principles of biblical faith, and to seek ways of living out these principles in our personal lives, our churches, and society.

The cosmos, in all its beauty, wildness, and life-giving bounty, is the work of our personal and loving Creator.

Our creating God is prior to and other than creation, yet intimately involved with it, upholding each thing in its freedom, and all things in relationships of intricate complexity. God is transcendent, while lovingly sustaining each creature; and immanent, while wholly other than creation and not to be confused with it.

God the Creator is relational in very nature, revealed as three persons in One. Likewise, the creation which God intended is a symphony of individual creatures in harmonious relationship.

The Creator's concern is for all creatures. God declares all creation "good" (Gen. 1:31); promises care in a covenant with all creatures (Gen. 9:9-17); delights in creatures which have no human apparent usefulness (Job 39-41); and wills, in Christ, "to reconcile all things to himself" (Col.1:20).

Men, women, and children, have a unique responsibility to the Creator; at the same time we are creatures, shaped by the same processes and embedded in the same systems of physical, chemical, and biological interconnections which sustain other creatures.

Men, women, and children, created in God's image, also have a unique responsibility for creation. Our actions should both sustain creation's fruitfulness and preserve creation's powerful testimony to its Creator.

Our God-given , stewardly talents have often been warped from their intended purpose: that we know, name, keep and delight in God's creatures; that we nourish civilization in love, creativity and obedience to God; and that we offer creation and civilization back in praise to the Creator. We have ignored our creaturely limits and have used the earth with greed, rather than care.

The earthly result of human sin has been a perverted stewardship, a patchwork of garden and wasteland in which the waste is increasing. "There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land...Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away" (Hosea 4:1,3). Thus, one consequence of our misuse of the earth is an unjust denial of God's created bounty to other human beings, both now and in the future.

God's purpose in Christ is to heal and bring to wholeness not only persons but the entire created order. "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross" (Col. 1:19-20).

In Jesus Christ, believers are forgiven, transformed and brought into God's kingdom. "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation" (II Cor. 5:17). The presence of the kingdom of God is marked not only by renewed fellowship with God, but also by renewed harmony and justice between people, and by renewed harmony and justice between people and the rest of the created world. "You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands" (Isa. 55:12).

We believe that in Christ there is hope, not only for men, women and children, but also for the rest of creation which is suffering from the consequences of human sin.

Therefore we call upon all Christians to reaffirm that all creation is God's; that God created it good; and that God is renewing it in Christ.

We encourage deeper reflection on the substantial biblical and theological teaching which speaks of God's work of redemption in terms of the renewal and completion of God's purpose in creation.

We seek a deeper reflection on the wonders of God's creation and the principles by which creation works. We also urge a careful consideration of how our corporate and individual actions respect and comply with God's ordinances for creation.

We encourage Christians to incorporate the extravagant creativity of God into their lives by increasing the nurturing role of beauty and the arts in their personal, ecclesiastical, and social patterns.

We urge individual Christians and churches to be centers of creation's care and renewal, both delighting in creation as God's gift, and enjoying it as God's provision, in ways which sustain and heal the damaged fabric of the creation which God has entrusted to us.

We recall Jesus' words that our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions, and therefore we urge followers of Jesus to resist the allure of wastefulness and overconsumption by making personal lifestyle choices that express humility, forbearance, self restraint and frugality.

We call on all Christians to work for godly, just, and sustainable economies which reflect God's sovereign economy and enable men, women and children to flourish along with all the diversity of creation. We recognize that poverty forces people to degrade creation in order to survive; therefore we support the development of just, free economies which empower the poor and create abundance without diminishing creation's bounty.

We commit ourselves to work for responsible public policies which embody the principles of biblical stewardship of creation.

We invite Christians--individuals, congregations and organizations--to join with us in this evangelical declaration on the environment, becoming a covenant people in an ever-widening circle of biblical care for creation.

We call upon Christians to listen to and work with all those who are concerned about the healing of creation, with an eagerness both to learn from them and also to share with them our conviction that the God whom all people sense in creation (Acts 17:27) is known fully only in the Word made flesh in Christ the living God who made and sustains all things.

We make this declaration knowing that until Christ returns to reconcile all things, we are called to be faithful stewards of God's good garden, our earthly home.

Democrat, Republican and a Bond of Addiction

Jamie Rose for The New York Times

Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, center, leaving court in June with Representative Jim Ramstad after pleading guilty to impaired driving.

By MARK LEIBOVICH

Published: September 19, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — Scenes from an uncommon political marriage:

Representative Jim Ramstad, a Republican from Minnesota, and Patrick J. Kennedy, a Democrat from Rhode Island, are deep in conversation on the House floor, Mr. Ramstad’s hand draped over his colleague’s shoulder.

Later that day, Mr. Ramstad receives a note in the Republican cloakroom from Mr. Kennedy, who needs a ride to a support group they attend in Georgetown. “Patrick’s not driving currently, so I’m sort of his chauffeur,” Mr. Ramstad says.

After the meeting, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Ramstad sit with friends in their regular booth at Morton’s Steakhouse. The gathering resembles any Washington power table, except the men are sipping Diet Coke and mineral water, have just come from “group” and are occasionally crying. “We love each other for our imperfections and for our common humanity,” Mr. Kennedy says.

The dinner last Tuesday celebrated Mr. Kennedy’s fourth month of sobriety, a process jolted into motion by an early morning car accident on Capitol Hill in May and a subsequent rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he was treated for an addiction to painkillers.

In the precarious course of his recovery, Mr. Kennedy, the 39-year-old son of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, has come to rely heavily on Mr. Ramstad, 60. He has served as Patrick Kennedy’s sponsor, his primary source of advice and support in what he calls “the daily fight for my life” against addiction.

The day after the accident, Mr. Kennedy received a phone call from Mr. Ramstad, a recovering alcoholic who has been an evangelist in Congress for addiction treatment and 12-step recovery programs. The men did not know each other well.

But in battling their addictions, the two built a fast kinship that flouts the partisan divisions of Congress, their own divergent politics and the conditional nature of so many friendships in Washington. They speak daily, often several times. Mr. Ramstad visited Mr. Kennedy during his 28-day rehabilitation, driving two hours each Saturday from his Minnetonka home. When the Rhode Island Republican Party chairman called for Mr. Kennedy’s resignation after his crash, Mr. Ramstad called it “a slap in the face” to all recovering addicts.

Former Senator Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat who frequently attends the Tuesday dinners, said, “This is a story of a shared and common humanity and overcoming political differences in a town known for its inhumanity.” Mr. Cleland, who lost both legs and part of an arm in Vietnam, says he is in recovery from “the trauma of war.”

“It’s a great brotherhood we all share,” he said of the dinner group. “And it has nothing to do with politics except that we’re all in it.”

The political world could learn much from these gatherings, Mr. Ramstad says. “If we could turn Congress into one big A.A. meeting,” he said, referring to Alcoholics Anonymous, “where people would be required to say what they mean and mean what they say, it would be a lot better Congress.”

In a joint interview with Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Ramstad in Mr. Ramstad’s office, each man nods solemnly while the other speaks. Both are mindful of the confidentiality rules involving recovery groups. They say they agreed to be interviewed because their “sponsorship” relationship was revealed in court as a condition of Mr. Kennedy’s probation (he pleaded guilty to impaired driving).

Mr. Kennedy has big expressive eyes, a lanky frame and slightly hunched posture that lends the impression of an overgrown boy. Mr. Ramstad walks chest-out and speaks with the practiced certainty of a man who has counseled numerous addicts over 25 years.

The two men share a keen sense of the twin burdens that being an addict and congressman impose, Mr. Kennedy says. “To some degree, all politicians lead a double life, a public one and a private one,” he said. Mr. Ramstad has emphasized the importance of integrating what he calls “the political game face” with “the real person inside.”

Being a Kennedy carries its own weight, Mr. Kennedy says, given the legacy of drug and alcohol abuse in his family. His mother, Joan Kennedy, has endured a long battle with alcoholism, and his father was involved in a string of alcohol-related episodes earlier in his career. (Senator Kennedy says he will drink a glass of wine at home at night or in social settings. He describes himself as being “well” over the last 15 years, a recovery he attributes to his current wife, Victoria.)

In a phone interview, Senator Kennedy says he shares a meal with Patrick once a week. His son is doing well, he says, thanks in large part to “the incredible generosity of spirit” of Jim Ramstad.

Patrick Kennedy makes frequent references to the pressures and expectations inherent in his name. “When you grow up in my family, being somebody meant having power, having status,” he said. “The compensations you got were all material and superficial. I’ve come to realize, in the last few months, that that life made me feel all alone.”

Both Mr. Ramstad and Mr. Kennedy are active in a House caucus of about 60 representatives that promotes legislation for treatment of addiction and mental illness. Some of the members are addicts themselves, or recovering addicts, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Ramstad say, but neither would estimate how many.

Mr. Ramstad attended support group meetings with former Representative Phil Crane, Republican of Illinois, who battled alcoholism and says his own recovery was nurtured by the late Senator Harold Hughes, Democrat of Iowa, who spoke of his own struggle with drinking.

“There is a very powerful recovering community in this town,” said Capt. Ronald Smith, the former chairman of psychiatry at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and a regular at the Tuesday dinners. A recovering addict, he has treated many senators and congressmen and leads the support group attended by Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Ramstad and Mr. Cleland.

It is unclear, Captain Smith says, whether addiction is more common among politicians, but alcohol does tend to pervade political life, with its cocktail party fund-raisers, endless dinners and constant travel. Ann Richards, the former Texas governor who was buried Monday, used to visit prison inmates and say, “My name’s Ann, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Mr. Ramstad makes repeated mention of “July 31, 1981,” the day he awoke from an alcohol-induced blackout in a Sioux Falls, S.D., jail after creating a disturbance at a hotel coffee shop. He had just finished his first term as a Minnesota state senator. “If I had not wound up in that jail cell, I would not have sought treatment,” Mr. Ramstad said. “I would probably be dead today.”

Mr. Kennedy has endured several public battles with mental illness. He was treated for cocaine addiction as a teenager, suffered from depression as a young adult, was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder after coming to Congress in 1994 and then became addicted to painkillers. He also was prone to binge drinking, which contributed to a scuffle with an airport security guard and a visit from the Coast Guard after a heated argument with a girlfriend aboard a yacht, among other episodes that became public.

The May car crash was the latest embarrassment. The police found Mr. Kennedy disoriented, claiming he was heading to a House vote though Congress was not in session (it was 2:45 a.m.). Mr. Kennedy, who had been driving without headlights before swerving into a police barrier, blamed a mix of prescription medications for the accident.

Both men describe their signature humiliations — Mr. Kennedy’s accident and Mr. Ramstad’s arrest — as “blessings” that spurred them into recovery. “We both totally hit the wall, and it was publicized,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Or the barrier in my case.”

Mr. Ramstad says he has come to “love Patrick like a brother,” although there is more of a paternal tone to his manner when they are together. At one point during the interview, Mr. Ramstad tells him to turn off his hyperactive cellphone. Mr. Kennedy sheepishly obliges. He says he is learning to take instructions from a Republican.