Excuse me, Nick, but when you assert that "Jesus has turned poeple's lives around" I think you are beibng arbitrary in your selection of interpretations. For example, an equally viable proposition, based on the same data, would be "People have turned their own lives around after deciding that they could let go of confusions and.or regrets and/or guilt using JEsus as an icon to represent paternal forgiveness or other emotional needs."

In other words, you elect to take an interpretation that seems to me, at least, to be much more complex than they need to be.

It is pretty well-established that finding some stable point of reference, or some basis for confidence will generate all kinds of recuperation in people. Cf. placebo effects, the magical power for self-healing once the right "suggestion" has been made.

Be that as it may, my point is that postulating the cause to be a metaphysical intervention from a higher power whose name is really Jesus, in contrast, is a terribly complex, arbitrary hypothesis, and one which does not open the door to new data or make things easier to test, understand or see.


A