Round 2. Kenshiro2012 vs. Grimreaper797: Private Faith, Public Dole

The topic for this debate is "If faith based initiatives work, then they should be supported by tax dollars".

Kenshiro2012 will be arguing the pro position and will open the debate.
Grimreaper797 will argue the con position.

Each debater will have one opening statement each. This will be followed by 3 alternating replies each. There will then be one closing statement each and no rebuttal.

No post will be longer than 800 words and in the case of the closing statement no longer than 500 words.

Credits or references at the bottom do not count towards the word total.

Editing is Strictly forbidden. This means any editing, for any reason. Any edited posts will be completely deleted.

Opening and closing statements must not contain any images, and must have no more than 3 references. Excluding both the opening and closing statements, only one image and no more than 5 references can be included for each post.

Responses should be made within 24 hours, if people are late with their replies, they run the risk of forfeiting their reply and possibly the debate.

Judging will be done by a panel of anonymous judges. After each debate is completed it will be locked and the judges will begin making their decision. One of the debate forum moderators will then make a final post announcing the winner.

This debate is now open, good luck to both of you.

Kenshiro2012 has missed the deadline and forfeits his opening statement.

I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of this debate, the moderators and judges who participate, and all others who have made this debate possible. in saying that its time for the opening statement

Opening Statement:

The topic at hand is a straight foward one. If faith based initiatives work, then we should put tax dollars toward it. This simply cannot work, and should not be allowed. The weak attempt to reword religion into "faith based" will not work, nor should it. In my arguement you will find why anything "faith based" cannot be supported by tax dollars. You will also hear why religious establishments differ from science establishments, even though you may have thought otherwise. This will be to show why one is rightfully being funded while the other cannot. (95 count)

A major part of my arguement though will, of course, deal with Separation between church and state. This is the single most obvious reason why "faith based" initiatives cannot be supported with tax dollars. A freedom of religion will still be, just not a freedom to drain money out of taxes for your own personal religion. (56 count)

This is not a topic about whether science and religion should be judged equally, or whether or not the church is getting equal rights. It is about why something based on solely faith, which divides much of the world at its roots, should be supported by a government which at the base was formed to not have ANY government estalished religion. Such use of tax dollars will unofficially do this. (70 count)

(word count 221)

Today’s modern medicine has identified that there is indeed a relationship between a person’s health / recovery rate and their mental, emotional and psychological health. We now design and build our hospital rooms with this in mind. Hospital rooms today are even painted with differing colors as it has been found that at least temporarily, certain colors effect our emotions. An example is blue which will have a claming effect on a person for a period of time. Modern medicine has also linked found that sounds as well as scents will also perform the same effects.
Psychologists now acknowledge that a person’s mental health is key to overall physical health. They now are working in Chronic Disease Management, Diabetes, Cardiac Care as well as Cancer centers. They have recognized that ignoring a patient’s mental health leads to longer hospital stays; and patients are more likely to suffer complications etc.

Now you may ask why would, I bring psychology into this discussion. The answer is simple. A person’s faith in whatever religion has a strong bearing on their mental and emotional health. Psychologically speaking, a person who has a strong faith in whatever religion has a sense of control over themselves as well as their environment. Strong faith, can give a person a sense of well-being. This of course in turn will affect the state of their mental health, which as I have shown directly affects their physical health.
The belief in prayer and its effects give the patient a better sense of control over their medical condition as well as the other aspects in their life. Studies have shown that when a person deeply believes in the power of prayer and its effects on their health / recovery, they tend to shorten their hospital stays and in that case of Cardiac surgery, people who prayed, suffered less post-operative trauma up to a year after the operation.

When a person of a faith truly believes that their God or a healer (faith) can favorably affect their medical condition and or recovery, shorten their hospital stays, become less dependent on drug therapies, then we as a society should not only support the use of faith healing we should actually promote it when it is used in conjunction with other medically accepted treatments. (word count 380)

Reference 1
Reference 2
Reference 3

I will not deny the fact physicological behavior greatly effects a persons health and how they react. I will also not deny that religion plays a great part on the effect of their emotions. (34 count)

However, I fail to see a connection between this and using tax payers dollars. A personal belief, is still just a personal belief. For instance, to make any public designs in order to help target one specfic group could unintentionally make another group feel uncomfortable or offended. The problem with faith is that the very belief varies in it structure and basis so greatly. (63 count)

This is because we are a nation built for everyone, so we must keep everyone in mind. This means including the least amount of morals in laws as possible. As hard as this is (and seems to be failing in recent times), it's urgent we keep all religion out of the government. We cannot call ourselves a nation for all, if we make a certain group benefit more then others. To take such actions would change our nation into "A nation for some more then others". (86 count)

All your points are perfectly true, but the connection fails when you try to say we must all encourage and support it. A personal belief doesn't leave past that stage. We must draw a line, and that line is set at the involvement with government a.k.a. the public as a whole. Such faith healing ideas are purely on a basis of personal belief. We cannot cater to every person individually because of how much a variety there is in beliefs.(81 count)

Another point I would like to make, is made in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

In other words, regardless of how your religion may benefit you, it is in the benefit of the whole nation that we do not base laws on religion. He specifically mentions "Legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion." This is a perfect reason why taxes can't be used on religious foundations. Jefferson made it clear that no matter what the reason, we cannot mix religion with government in order to preserve the reasons we founded this nation. (94 count)

Sandra Day O'Conner made an excellent point when she said,

"Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Conner on the Ten Commandments ruling, June 27, 2005

She makes it perfectly clear the boundry must remain because, as other societies have shown, all people cannot be treated equally when religion comes into play. Can you answer this question? Why should we break such boundries, if these boundries have brought us into the worlds most powerful country status in such a short time period? If we have been so sucessful by the way we are living now, why change it to something we have seen doesn't work for everyone? Why fix whats not broken? (96 count)

References:
1. www.usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html
2. www.theocracywatch.org/separation_church_state2.htm

On this second post, I would first like to address some questions that my opponent has presented.

A personal belief, is still just a personal belief. For instance, to make any public designs in order to help target one specfic group could unintentionally make another group feel uncomfortable or offended. The problem with faith is that the very belief varies in it structure and basis so greatly.

You may have misunderstood what I have stated. I never stated that we design public facilities to promote any one group. Please references my earlier post and you will find discover that I have not identified any group. What I have done though is to put forth the stance that faith healing as well as prayers promotes quicker recovery during hospital stays as well as helping in preventing complications that may arise from the initial malady. Since faith healing as well as praying is considered to be personal as well as being private, the use of such methods would not impinge on the sensibilities of any other person or group.
My opponent accepts that the mental health of a patient plays an integral role in their recovery rates. He also accepts that faith as well as prayer is tied into the person’s emotions. Yet he has an issue with the use of government monies to support faith healing and prayer to aid in a person’s recovery. My opponent does not see a connection this and the government spending monies to support these healing techniques.
Let me first present to you the definition of Psychology:

In philosophy, the systematic study of mind, as opposed to physics or the study of matter. Applied in theosophy to the attributes, qualities, and powers of the human intermediate nature, contrasted with physiology. In ancient times psychology was the science of soul; and this science being the causative, and physiology the effective or consequential, no one was considered an informed or expert physiologist who was not previously trained in psychology. In modern days, due to an almost utter ignorance of the inner nature of man, psychology has largely been based on physiology, if indeed not a vague type of physiology itself.

The history of Psychology, shows that it also deals with the metaphysical world
History of Metaphysics:

Ontology is the study of existence; it has been traditionally defined as 'the science of being qua being'.
Theology means, here, the study of God (or the gods) and of questions about the divine.
Universal science is supposed to be the study of so-called first principles, which underlie all other inquiries; an example of such a principle is the law of non-contradiction: A = A, A not = B, Not both A and B. In other words, the elementary laws of logic as Aristotle knew them.

Notice something? Theology is an area of metaphysics that Psychology deals with. Psychology has been dealing with the concept of a “soul” (under various names) since it’s very beginning. A look at The Principles of Psychology a book by William James in 1890, that maybe classic but still a cornerstone of modern psychology examines this.
Psychology and Psychoanalysis are acknowledged as valid medical fields. Psychology as well as social work services receive millions of dollars annually from federal monies as well as millions from the local state and cities.
Since our government now openly supports psychology, which by its very definition owes its origins to the “science of the soul” with monetary funds then since studies have shown that faith as well as prayer promotes shorter recovery times (thus opening up bed space in our hospitals) the government should expend a portion of it’s monies in open support of the metaphysical (faith / prayer) curative aspects. By doing this on an individual basis, the government as well as business and insurance companies will save monies. Maybe in a couple of decades, we will rename faith healing and the power of prayer into a more socially as well as scientifically acceptable term. (word count 688)
The History of Psychology
History of metaphysics
Definition and roots of Psychology

The Principles of Psychology

My opponent brings up valid points, but fails to see the core of faith healing. At its core, its nothing more then a "trickery" of the mind. Some peoples mental states create a type of faith, while others don't have such a need. This is why faith healing is nothing more then psychological trickery. Its not as much faith that's healing them, but a twist on the mind to believe something. (71 count)

My opponent made you believe that psychology was science of the soul. May i remind you this is HISTORY of psychology, so we can see that such beliefs about psychology were made way before we had a full understanding of ourselves. Currently science is showing, beyond all else, that our mental states are merely chemical responses to our environment. This is the cause for the emotional effects of faith healing. It is a response to the environment. Their reaction to religion and god, is believed to be a chemical response in the brain which causes this reaction. I will not deny that religion has its effects, but i only do so because of the chemical reaction it causes. (118 count)

Let us take for instance, the big one, depression.

Pure psychoactive drugs and direct routes of administration are evolutionarily novel features of our environment. They are inherently pathogenic because they bypass adaptive information processing systems and act directly on ancient brain mechanisms that control emotion and behavior. Drugs that induce positive emotions give a false signal of a fitness benefit.

Don't get me wrong, I am not promoting these current drugs because of the negative effects they have. These negative effects though, are an outcome of our lacking in fully understanding how to use such drugs. We know that the emotions we feel are caused by a chemical reaction, we just don't yet know how to control it. This is were my proposed idea comes in. (75 count)

Instead of using Faith based initiatives in hospitals like you proposed, we should use this tax money to further investigate how to perfect drugs to induce the same type of reaction. You take a much bigger chance of faith initiatives not working if you cannot successfully produce the chemical reaction they have. Another chance is not inducing the effect desired, because every person varies so much. By using drugs, you bypass that chance of failure, and make the chemical reaction much more certain. When you induce this chemical reaction, you let their mind develop its on reason for positive effect. For instance two people take the drug, one gets in touch with god and because of the drug his/her attitude changes to a positive outlook. The second guy gets in touch with nature and his attitude changes because the drugs gave the same chemical reaction, but let his mind use what worked best. (153 count)

This, in the end, will produce a much greater result. Once we get a better understanding we can make such drugs better, and more useful. This can only be done with research. Research takes money, and that money should be used on the most effective way to produce results. (49 count)

To mention the fact some people would not agree with taking the risk of faith healings possible failures, and overall disagreement with spending money on such, is not really needed. I feel I proved to you, and everyone else reading this that drugs can be way more effective with the proper money put toward it. I don't think we have any money to spare for such a risky program like faith based healing, when we direly need it for research into more effective consistent ways of healing. (87 count)

(total word count- 553)

Reference:
www.sciencemag.org...

Kenshiro2012 forfeits his response and now grimreaper797 will post a response.

im forfeiting my response since i cant post anything due to lack of response from opponent.

(im so behind! i only missed one day and the posts just stacked up...so much catching up to do with everything)

Kenshiro2012 forefeits. Grimreaper797 advances to Round 3!