Religion is a hoax, not health. Health is serious, yes i certainly believe there is a certainty of degree where the gov. may be lying about certain things. By religions is the biggest hoax ever. You really gonna believe a man by the name of jesus who lived 400 years ago and dedicate your money and sundays to him? Seems like Jesus is a dead pimp and you guys who believe in religions are the prostitute.
Religion absolutely is NOT a hoax. Rather, it is the thing by which everybody lives. Check the definition from
Dictionary.com at http://www.dictionary.com/browse/religion?s=t, particularly item 6: "something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience:
to make a religion of fighting prejudice."Some formal religions are hoaxes. But your informal religion is your way of life.
Yet numerous studies and logic have proven that prayer, for example, doesn't work.
Prayer, all by itself, doesn't do much of anything. If it has positive thinking involved, the positive thinking might do something... like placebo action.
If the prayer is a prayer of faith, prayed to God, then God works. It isn't really the prayer working. Any studies that suggest that prayer doesn't work are looking at the wrong thing. Prayer is about relationship with God. Prayer as a mechanical thing won't work except if it has positive thinking attached to it. And even then it is not as powerful as faith prayer, prayed to God.
It doesn't work, it's proven, get over it.
''Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him''
According to these verses, prayer is an opportunity to approach the greatest father of all time and openly express our needs and desires and directly ask for help yet prayer doesn't work, no one has seen a dead person revive or a amputee grow back an arm.
The Youtube video that
Coincube suggests in the above post is very relevant... at least where the link starts the video.
1. Faith in God is what causes God to allow things to be activated for people. All people have a basic faith in God to some extent, just to live, even though they don't realize it. But when you try to test God by suggesting that something like the passage you quoted doesn't work for you, you are actually using your faith in God against the thing that you are formally asking. This means that you are getting the answer you asked for... precisely nothing.
2. Many people receive what they ask for. Why? They ask in simple and honest faith, not trying to test God, but truly asking.
3. You receive many things you ask for, even though you do not ask for them by or through some words. For example. When you get a cup of coffee, or a plate of food, you are asking for a multitude of things that you are given. You are asking that your muscles work to take you to the spot where the coffee or food is located. You are asking that the cup or plate that you see there, is there for you. You are asking that the food will be healthy or pleasurable for you. By your actions you are asking for many things regarding this coffee or food.
How are you asking? By not knowing for a fact that stuff will work for you this time. After all, only if you never made a mistake in your life... only if there was never something that happened to you that you weren't expecting... only you never had a surprise in your life... only then might you be able to predict with absolute certainty that the things that you were doing would result in the response you were looking for.
Since God controls all things through cause and effect (and, really, a host of other controls, as well), He has given you the answer to your request for coffee or food, long before you asked for them by your actions, and even in the face of your lack of direct God-faith.
"Ask and it will be given to you..." is working for you constantly, and for everyone else, as well. After all, when you doubt God, the thing you are asking for is failure in the "Ask and it will be given to you... ." And that is what God gives you some of the time... failure.
It's all a big balance that God works for you, in precise and perfect detail. God balances all of your thinking requests, with all of your action requests, and gives you the things that you request. After all, you are not generally requesting bad things to happen to yourself. So, they don't... at least not until the "bad thing" request overcomes the good that you are requesting for yourself.
Wake up and see, before it is too late for you, that you are going to request yourself right out of Eternal life if you keep on fighting God like you are doing.
I believed in god 100% when I was a kid, when I grew older I started to have my doubts so I asked him, honestly, for a little proof of his existence, guess what, he didn't send me anything. God is fictional. As an example of the absurdity of heaven:
I'm walking with my girlfriend and a robber tries to rob us and shoots her. I was a believer but she wasn't.
50 years later, the robber and I both die, the robber a few years before dying accepts jesus christ and repents his sins.
We are now both in heaven and I'm supposed to be happy knowing that not only my girlfriend is going to be eternally tortured but also that I'm going to spend all eternity living with the man who actually killed her.
Furthermore if she lived maybe she would have accepted jesus christ just like the robber did yet she didn't have the chance to do so.