QED
am I imagining things?
“Q.E.D.” (sometimes written “QED”) is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase “quod erat demonstrandum” (“that which was to be demonstrated”), a notation which is often placed at the end of a mathematical proof to indicate its completion. ~ Wolfram
In a New Yorker review of a book by an anthropologist about belief and prayer in evangelical circles, I came across the notation, “QED,” which I had to look up. The reference to the Latin phrase came with a description of a church pamphlet about why one should trust the Bible. One of the reasons given in the pamphlet for trusting what the Bible says is that Hebrews 6:18 states, “It is impossible for God to lie.”
Hmmm, quod non erat demonstrandum.
What fascinated me in this article was the observation by the anthropologist who authored the book that whether or not the god the believers were believing in was real, such belief had a therapeutic effect on the believers. Not only that, but that their belief resulted in very-real-to-them experiences of interacting with their god.
The anthropologist seems to think that this is enough of a justification for the religious practices her subjects engage in, but the more skeptical New Yorker reviewer asks, “Can the practice of finding God be so easily separated from the crucial question of whether there is a God to find?”
