BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 30 Mar 06 - 07:40 PM

>>You seem to think of God as a separate BIG being of some kind that intervenes in human affairs. I Don't. I think of God as a natural, intelligent, coherent process that is involved with everything at all times, right down to the molecular level. Not just with people, with everything, animate and inanimate.<<

I don't believe in god at all--anthropomorphic or otherwise and it is this very difference of interpretation that I find so problematic.

>>I understand your meaning, but I don't agree. I would have agreed when I was 25. Not any more. The reason I don't agree is because I have been studying meditation and Eastern disciplines, which are all about calming the mind, quieting the mind. It is an overly busy mind, constantly cluttered with thoughts, that leads to every form of mental illness and distress. It leads me to wasting hours on this forum! ;-) I kid you not.<<

First of all, very few people can completely still their minds and that's assuming there is anyone who can do it at all. You'd have to let go of your self-awareness and I question whether that would even be beneficial. I have read case histories of cultists who suffered psychological problems due to mind control achieved through intense meditation techniques. Emptying your mind is, I think, a very dangerous thing to do. Anything could just walk in.

>>The tragedy of modern people is that their minds are absolutely cluttered all the time with an avalanche of disordered thoughts. This eventually leads to breakdown in some cases. Ever seen a person on the street talking furiously to no one at all, as angry or anxious thoughts spill from their lips. A lot of people are like that, but they don't express the thoughts vocally, they just think them. Their minds are never calm.<<

That comes from watching TV while zoning out reality. The thoughts pile up but aren't being put anywhere until the last second when they're haphazardly thrown wherever they'll hopefully fit. I organize my thoughts through writing. I write and write and write. And I read and read and read so that I have more things to write and write and write about. I have these stored on my computer so that I can peruse them at my leisure. It's interesting to go back and read things I wrote years ago to see how far I've come since then. Oftimes, I'm embarrassed, thinking I knew a thing or two and didn't know shit. Sometimes I write something that strikes me years later as having a particularly good thought and I wonder why I had not followed up on that and how I let it get away from me.

>>Ascetic individuals like Buddha, Jesus, Zoroaster, Gandhi, Ramakrishna, those are the people who brought forth most spiritual teachings. They were usually people who lived a very simple life, materially speaking, spent a lot of time alone in nature, spent time among the poor people, and avoided the sort of high profile roles taken on in life by monarchs. Buddha, for example, walked away from life in the palace and became a penniless beggar for years. He never returned to worldly power. It was the inspired followers of such people who "invented" religion....simply because they hung around and listened to whatever their teachers said, noted it all down, memorized it, then got together in groups and discussed it, then formed those groups into religious organizations and kept things going. Some of those organizations got much larger and became mainstream religions...it was THEN that the kings latched onto them and used them for all they could get.<<

Most of these figures were personages--mythical. Buddha never was. Zoroaster (with a life story very similar to Jesus) never was. All of them variations of Horus. As for Ghandi, his family became a ruling dynasty and none too friendly either. It's all about power. Ghandi may have had good intentions but power is what it always comes down to and it corrupts. Religion justifies it all and allows it to continue. God save the king!

>>Jesus is reputed to have said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He wasn't after material things at all. He wasn't after worldly power. His earliest followers don't appear to have been after anything much like that either...but that all changed when big churches were founded and became rich. THEN it became mostly about money, land, and power. It takes some time for the social system to corrupt a great religious teaching...but usually not too long. Maybe a generation. Maybe less than that.<<

Jesus was an invention. He never existed. Royals made him up out of bit and pieces of stuff they learned from their own superior educations and foisted him off on a dull, uneducated, illiterate populace. Bear your suffering and be like Jesus. Live in poverty like Jesus. Pay your exorbitant taxes--remember, render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's. Give your money to him because god doesn't need it.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Mar 06 - 07:49 PM

You realize that if we keep this up we will both have no time left for other things, and will finally be found collapsed in front of our respective keyboards...starved to death...bony hands stretching out to hit "submit" one last time...so we can get the last word in and "win".

;-P

Is that really worthwile? Whaddya think?

What say I just say, "Fine. Don't believe there was a real Jesus. I don't mind." You say, "Fine. Go ahead and believe there was a real Jesus. I don't mind." Both shake hands and get on with life.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 30 Mar 06 - 07:53 PM

As you wish.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Mar 06 - 07:54 PM

And I'll even forgive you for bringing up a ton of new stuff before I finished answering the old stuff you posted.... ;-D

Seriously, man, if there was a big human-like God out there somewhere...she'd be laughing at us! We are idiots, blathering our fool heads off at each other on a trivial mental stage of our own creation, just because we just have to for some reason.

All of us. I except no one.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: bobad
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 09:49 AM

For all who may be inclined to offer prayers for the salvation of atheists a recent study suggests you may be wasting your time.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-prayer31mar31,1,3169049.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 12:52 PM

That site requires registration, bobad.....got a condensed version to offer?

(I always DID wonder if I was being surruptitiously prayed for....)

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 12:59 PM

I never thought atheists needed to be "saved". ;-P I figure that "God" (meaning life itself) is far less demanding than human beings when it comes to that sort of thing, and lays down no requirements whatsoever on what people should believe or not believe. Life allows everyone and everything to be exactly as they choose to be...the only thing one has to worry about is cause and effect. Life does not judge people. People judge people.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: bobad
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:21 PM

That's funny Bill, I can get in no problem, I always wonder why some people can access sites and others can't.

Registration can be bypassed for most sites by using this tool:
http://www.bugmenot.com/
even though I didn't need it here.

Here's the article:

Largest Study of Prayer to Date Finds It Has No Power to Heal
By Denise Gellene and Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writers
March 31, 2006

The largest study yet on the therapeutic power of prayer by strangers has found that it provided no benefit to the recovery of patients who had undergone cardiac bypass surgery.

In an unexpected twist, patients who knew prayers were being said for them had more complications after surgery than those who did not know, researchers reported Thursday.

The complications were minor, and doctors surmised that they could have been caused by the increased stress on patients worried that their conditions were so bad they needed prayers.

Father Dean Marek, a Catholic priest who was involved in the research, said he wasn't surprised by the results.

"I am always a little leery about intercessory prayer," said Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "What we have in mind for someone else may not be what they have in mind for themselves…. It is clearly manipulative of divine action and personal choice."

Dr. Herbert Benson, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the study's lead researchers, added: "Nothing this study has produced should interfere with people praying for each other."

Some scientists hoped the results of the $2.5-million study, conducted at six U.S. medical centers, would bring an end to the long controversy over therapeutic prayer.

"There have now been two big studies, with hundreds and hundreds of patients, that show no effect," said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. "Let's move on now and direct our money somewhere else."

Some believers in prayer concurred.

Sister Carol Rennie, prioress of St. Paul's Monastery in St. Paul, Minn., whose prayer group participated in the study, said faith couldn't be scientifically analyzed. "God must be smiling broadly," she said. "It tells me, frankly, that God's way of working with people is a mystery and that technology really can't determine the effects of prayer."

Scientists have been trying for at least a decade to determine whether organized prayer on the behalf of others can influence the outcome of medical treatment.

Previous attempts, however, were flawed by experimental and methodological errors that led critics to dismiss findings, both pro and con.

Thursday's study was intended to settle the matter in the most scientific manner possible. It was funded primarily by the John Templeton Foundation, a group based in Pennsylvania that encourages the study of spirituality and science. Results will be published next week in American Heart Journal.

The study was designed as a randomized and blinded trial, meaning that most patients did not know whether someone was praying for them or not. Such trials are considered the gold standard for scientific proof.

More than 1,800 patients were divided into three groups: those who were told someone was praying for them; those who were told only that someone might pray for them and got prayers; and those who were told someone might pray for them but received no prayers. About 65% of the patients said they strongly believed in the power of prayer.

Two Catholic monasteries and one Protestant group offered the prayers. They were given patients' first names and the first initial of their last names. The groups started praying the night before surgery and continued for two weeks.

All members of the prayer groups recited the same intercession, asking for "a successful surgery and a quick, healthy recovery and no complications."

Researchers said they didn't ask family members of the sick people to stop praying because it would have been unethical to do so, meaning some people received more prayers than others.

The results showed that prayers had no beneficial effect on patients' recovery 30 days after surgery. Overall, 59% of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51% of the patients who did not receive prayers. The difference was not considered statistically significant.

Atrial fibrillation, a fluttering of the heart that can be related to stress, was the most common complication in all groups but was more likely to occur among patients who knew others were praying for them.

All groups were just as likely to develop infections or die.

"We conclude that telling people introduces the stress response," said Dr. Charles Bethea of Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and a study researcher.

He surmised that patients thought, "Am I so sick that they had to call in the prayer team?"

Dr. Richard P. Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research, said the study underscored the futility of trying to measure the power of prayer.

One problem in the study, he said, was that in addition to the organized prayer, some patients prayed for themselves and received prayers from families, friends, people they work with or their congregations.

"They have absolutely no idea how much prayer individuals in any of the groups received," Sloan said. "If we can't know that, we can't draw any conclusions whatsoever about the intervention."

Bob Barth of Silent Unity, the prayer organization in Lee's Summit, Mo., that was the Protestant group involved in the study, said the results didn't shake his confidence in prayer. "People of faith don't need a prayer study to know that prayer works," he said.

But Koenig said clinical trials would never answer that question. "Science is powerful and wonderful in determining the orbit of the Earth, the speed of a bullet, the power of a new drug. But now we've asked science to study something that occurs outside of space and time.

"This shows you shouldn't try to prove the power of the supernatural," he said.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:41 PM

Largest Study on Statistical Studies to Date Finds They Have No Effect on the Power of Prayer to Heal
By Desmond Calliope and Bruce LeFrance, New World Staff Writers
March 31, 2006

The largest study yet on the effect of statistical studies on the therapeutic power of prayer by strangers has found that the studies produced no discernable effect whatsoever upon the efficacy of prayers to produce healing.............and blah, blah, blah for another 180,000 words...

(joke)

Yeah???? Ask me if I friggin' CARE? Go ahead. Ask me.

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Purple Foxx
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 01:44 PM

Oh alright then.
Do you care LH?

Subject: RE: BS: America's Most Distrusted Minority
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Mar 06 - 02:29 PM

No. (grin)