Topic: Health and Religion - page 70. (Read 211012 times)

Here are two different arguments from two of my favorite writers that will challenge your view halych. I recommend reading them if only to understand that logical basis of the opposing view.

Is it true that Man is a primarily religious being?
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2017/06/is-it-true-that-man-is-primarily.html

The More Rational Model
http://www.scifiwright.com/2017/05/the-more-rational-model/#more-18419

It most likely looks like a self-suggestion. I do not believe that human health depends on his religious beliefs

The literal insanity of mainstream public discourse, and the lack of insight of this fact, suggests that Man without religion is non-viable.

To put matters another way - religion is the most important thing in the human world.  

Of course, a few individuals, in the short term, can survive atheism mentally intact; but there is no evidence at all that this is a possibility for human societies over more than a few decades - then the signs of insanity (incoherence, exitinction) become more-and-more obvious... or they would do so if loss of insight was not itself a prime sign of insanity.

So insanity shields us from knowledge of our own insanity, because insanity destroys insight as much as it destroys judgement - it affects the whole mode of thinking.

How, then, do we know we, as a society, are insane?

1. By applying older judgements, from the time before Men became insane - reading old books, talking to non-modern people...

2. By looking at the basic biological viability of atheist societies in terms of reproduction, demographics, response to direct and immediate threats, scale of priorities ... Compare societies and groups that are biologically viable, with the modern atheist societies that are not...

3. By reflecting on how we feel about Life. Insane people are almost always miserable - dysphoric, despairing, desperate... almost all of the time. Even the euphoric frenzy of mania is brittle, and crashes into suicidal self-destruction with a high frequency. Is there hope?

In conclusion - religion is the most important thing.

Religion is necessary for long term motivation, for social coherence, for purpose, and to enable the individual to be a part of the whole.

Since religion is necessary, if or when humans either dispense with religion or else place it anything lower than first in priority; then they as individuals and their societies will begin to fall apart and spiral towards alienation, purposelessness, inability to perceive or reason what is important, cowardice (i.e. short-term selfishness), desperation and all the rest of it.

Modernity is the experiment of Man living without Religion. The experiment has been running for several generations.

But the experiment of modernity has deprived modern people of the motivation, honesty and ability to evaluate the results of the experiment - by the always changing criteria of modernity, modernity sees no alternative to itself...

Conclusion: Religion is objectively necessary; and, by one kind of reasoning, therefore true. If you are not religious you are living in error. If you are not religious then you need to become religious. The question you must settle is not whether you should be religious, but which religion you will adopt.

A comment on my publisher’s website asks:



My suggestion: Pray.

Also, consider that the Christian worldview is more coherent, robust, and rational than any secular worldview.
Our model explains things such as why stars look fair and beautiful to our eyes when it serves no credible Darwinian purpose to do so.

Our model explains the naturalistic fallacy, that is, the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ which secular philosophy cannot explain, and some cannot even address.

Our model explains how free will can exist inside a deterministic universe. A materialist cannot even formulate the question in a rational way.

Our model explains why humans seek beauty. Social-evolutionary explanations for this are less convincing than astrology.

Our model explains how creatures with free will capable of grasping intellectual abstractions can arise in a universe which contains no such thing as intellectual abstractions.

Our model allows investigation of final causes in nature, without which nature cannot properly be understood.

Our model explains the prevalence of so many theists throughout history. The theory that over nine tenths of mankind, including some of the most brilliant thinkers in their age, were raving lunatics who hallucinate about imaginary sky beings is not credible and not supported by evidence.

Our model explains the various miracles and supernatural wonders that are in the older history books, and which, for no scientific reason, were excised from being reported.

Our model explains both why there is a plurality of religions and why there are striking similarities between them.

Our model explains the origin of the universe. By definition, if the universe were all that existed, exists and ever will exist, than a material cause for it is impossible.

Our model explains the current hegemony of the West and makes clear the meaning and purpose of what otherwise seems like insane and suicidal attempts by the apparently sober and sane men on Left to undermine and destroy it.

Our model explains why you should not let your daughter whore around. She is immortal, and will outlast any nation, and language, any institution and human work on Earth.

Our model explains why you should not, once you have truly and deeply contemplated the vastness of the universe and the oppressive span of time to follow the death of everything you know, fall into despair, and end your meaningless life.

Our model gives something to live for nobler than one’s own pleasure seeking.

Our model avoids the logical paradox of asserting man can create meaning in life out of a vacuum. That would require an ability to create meaning out of meaninglessness, which is absurd.

Our model explains why men and women are different, and how we must arrange the dangerous mystery of the mating dance between the sexes to improve our chances to achieve joy rather than misery.

Our model gives rational hope of seeking the departed dead again.

Our model explains human psychology better than perverted old Freud dressing up old Greek myths in make believe, and far better than cranky old Thomas Hobbes and his cynicism.

Our model makes sense. Others are either incorrect, incomplete, or paradoxical, or lead ultimately to wrath or despair. Our model is the sole one which sees life as not futile and death as not bitter.

And, on an intellectual level, our model is the one to which to turn once your mind has become wearied with the reductionist, absurdist and postmodern models, which are in fact no models at all, but rather, are excuses why one should not make a model of the universe, nor seek any answers to deep questions.

It is the model to which to turn once you are heartily sick of hearing “It Just Happened” as the explanation for the origin of man, the universe, and all things.

Naturally, I do not expect any reader to take any of these conclusions as if they were persuasive arguments. Each would require a separate and in depth conversation. This is just a list, and a partial list at that, of the intellectually satisfying fullness of Christian thought. It is the scent and savor of the feast of Christian philosophy, not the meat and potatoes.

This list is not meant to argue the point. It is meant to whet the appetite of intellects starved and desiccated after vain attempt to feast on the shadows, dust and ashes of modern thought, and show the contrast.

There are additional reasons beyond this. All human reason can do is clear away false objections to faith. Faith itself is a supernatural gift bestowed by God to protect his own from the sudden, irrational loss of confidence in the self evident to which our foolish race is prone.

Though entirely different between the two, Their are some religions who are able to cure so many ailments in the human body, I have seen crippled people walk, the blind see, cancer being cured and a whole lot of diseases being cured by the name of Jesus.

Though entirely different between the two, Their are some religions who are able to cure so many ailments in the human body, I have seen crippled people walk, the blind see, cancer being cured and a whole lot of diseases being cured by the name of Jesus.

Health and religions are two different things. Health depends on your food habits and how you are living your life on daily basis. Whereas religion is something which got associated with you from birth. Depending on the religion some food habits are being defined - Veg or Non Veg.

Health and religions are two different things. Health depends on your food habits and how you are living your life on daily basis. Whereas religion is something which got associated with you from birth. Depending on the religion some food habits are being defined - Veg or Non Veg.

If deity is denied - or, nowadays, not so much 'denied' as ruled-out a priori on the basis of unexamined and unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature of reality...

Without deity then Life devolves to how we feel about life, currently; and therefore all possible problems devolve to therapy - because the solution to all possible problems is to change how we feel about them. Full stop - nothing more to be said.

And, changing how we feel about things is not innocuous; because it includes the possibility of Not-feeling. IN other worlds any and all problems can be solved temporarily by obliterating feelings; perhaps by obliterating awareness, obliterating The Self; maybe with drugs, surgery or some other technology...

Or we abolish feelings by death. Because without deity - death is the end of consciousness.

So all possible problems can permanently be solved by death...

Further, all problems can be prevented - by never being alive in the first place. Prevention of life.

So the therapeutic society is continually sliding down a slippery slope towards the idea of universal and permanent extinction of Life, as the one sure way of preventing suffering.

Death is the ultimate therapy for everything!

OR - if that sounds... wrong to you; then you might discover and reconsider your metaphysical assumptions which lead to that conclusion; then re-examine the possibility of deity?...

I searched and found many testimonials of healing by way of scalar energy, some tell of healing infections and other serious problems. I tested the free scalar energy treatments from selfhealgo and I agree that the infection is evidently being suppressed from a distance. This is a healing energy that GOD has made available for humans to use. One big cause of suffering is lack of awareness of the healing technologies that are already available.

 I do NOT think that prayer and faith will cure an infection, nor has it ever done so to my knowledge. An infection can be managed by YOUR actions. Well-being is the result of one's thinking, this is a non-religious truism often expressed by secular thinkers and influencers.

The latest in a long line of studies, now numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands, shows that church attendance is good for your health.

Published in May by researchers from Vanderbilt University, the study found that middle-aged adults who attended religious services at least once in the past year were half as likely to die prematurely as those who didn’t.

Using data from a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study’s researchers examined 10 biological stress markers among 5,449 men and women aged 46 to 65. They then compared those markers with respondents’ self-reported religious service attendance and found a correlation between religious service attendance, lower stress and longevity.

The study adds to mounting scientific findings on the subject. A far larger study, of 74,534 women, published last year found that attending a religious service more than once per week was associated with 33 percent lower mortality compared with women who never attended religious services.

A documentary probing recent findings similar to these airs on on many PBS stations Friday and Saturday (July 7 and 8 ) — another sign of growing awareness of these studies’ significance, especially for older adults.

But even as the studies pile up and the literature appears close to conclusive, many questions about the association between religious service attendance and health have yet to be answered.

For one, people attend religious services for all kinds of reasons. What is it about services that might impart better health? The prayers? The social connections? The coffee and cookies?

And does religious attendance account for longevity, or something else? Could it be that people who attend church, synagogue or mosque happen to lead healthier lifestyles? Maybe they are on the whole predisposed to eat well, exercise regularly, engage in safe sex and drink alcohol in moderation?

How about people who bond over shared interests — say, knitting or poker, or devoted volunteers in literacy centers, or animal rescues? Has anyone studied whether these group members have lower mortality rates?

And finally, if, as so much evidence suggests, religious attendance is correlated with positive health outcomes, does that mean doctors should prescribe a weekly service to their patients?

“Religion is incredibly complex,” said Neal Krause, a retired professor of public health at the University of Michigan who is the lead investigator in a Landmark Spirituality and Health Survey. “To say ‘Church attendance is good for your health’ does everything and nothing at the same time. The question is, ‘What exactly is going on here?’”

Krause points out that not all religion is good. Religious devotion can also lead to negative health outcomes if people are motivated to attend church out of guilt, for example, or feel God is punishing them through their illness.  Indeed, studies have shown that negative religious coping can cause spiritual distress that may lead to depression or early death.

But overall, researchers say the field of spirituality and health — spanning numerous academic disciplines, including public health, nursing, social work, sociology, psychology and medicine — is improving as investigators dig deeper and try to ferret out causal relationships and eliminate other factors that may account for improved health outcomes.

One thing many researchers agree on: Studies analyzing whether prayer can heal illness have been shown to be methodologically, ethically and theologically flawed. Besides the question of whether prayer is an appropriate subject for scientific study and the fact that it’s impossible to quantify the amount of prayer offered at a set time, there were a host of ethical considerations (Is it ethical not to pray for someone, and does God heal some but not others?).

The best of these studies showed that prayers offered by strangers — sometimes called intercessory prayer — had no effect on the recovery of people undergoing surgery.

Religious attendance, however, is a subject researchers keep returning to. The question remains: What practical implications can be gleaned from these studies?

Many researchers agree that even if religious attendance does promote better health, it’s not appropriate for a physician to tell patients to go to church if they want to live longer — just as it wouldn’t be appropriate to tell patients they should get married because research shows married couples live longer.

But that doesn’t mean doctors shouldn’t inquire about patients’ spiritual needs.

“Physicians should know everything that has the potential to impact a patient’s well-being, whether it’s diet, social engagement, gun ownership or texting while driving,” said Richard Sloan, a biomedical researcher at Columbia University Medical Center. “My objection is when physicians try to persuade patients to engage in religious practices that are potentially coercive.”

For example, he said, it would unethical for a doctor to try to convert patients to a particular faith or to initiate prayer with a patient.

Likewise, it’s not clear that going to church to improve the odds of survival is a good idea.

“I wouldn’t want a congregation of people there for health benefits,” said Daniel Sulmasy, a general internist and ethicist at Georgetown University and a former Franciscan friar. “In fact, we don’t know if people did it for that reason, rather than intrinsic reasons, that there would be a correlation.”

But some studies at the intersection of religion and health that might help clinicians do a better job of caring for patients.

For example, studies have shown that chaplain visits in hospital settings are associated with better health outcomes. This stands to reason, say researchers; when patients’ spiritual needs are met, they are more satisfied with their overall care. Another study suggested patients that take advantage of chaplain visits are more peaceful and feel more in control of their health.

More such research examining the efficacy of chaplaincy interventions are needed, said Christina Puchalski, professor of medicine and director of the George Washington University’s Institute for Spirituality and Health.

“What can we do for the person that’s suffering?” Puchalski asked. “What are we doing so they aren’t alone? I try to accompany people in their suffering. That’s where we can all come together.”

And while researchers work to tease out the mediating factors in religious services that may hold the secret ingredient to health, there’s little question that religious groups have a lot going for them.

“Name a human institution that gives you a sense of community, hope, teaches you how to meditate, has all these kinds of disciplines associated with it,” said Sulmasy. “If it’s not a religion, it’s going to be close to a religion.”

In Japan there are many atheists and secular people, one Japanese sage has even said that the Japanese people have no need of the idea of god. Yet Japan is very healthy. The benefits of monoculture are similar to the cooperative function of religion.

Thats valid argument, but good luck trying to build mono-culture in postmodern West. I mean it.

Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade-long study on how multiculturalism affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," writes Putnam. In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that

    [W]e hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.

Ethnologist Frank Salter writes:

    Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism. For example, the degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product as well as the average wealth of citizens. Case studies of the United States, Africa and South-East Asia find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure. Moscow beggars receive more gifts from fellow ethnics than from other ethnies [sic]. A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do the more homogeneous cities.

In Japan there are many atheists and secular people, one Japanese sage has even said that the Japanese people have no need of the idea of god. Yet Japan is very healthy. The benefits of monoculture are similar to the cooperative function of religion.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear

Oh, but you can!!!

Nobody who believes in God does it by himself. The Holy Spirit does the big part of the work.

It's kinda like a transistor. The transistor (your tiny faith) is simply a little switch that says when the electricity is to flow. The Holy Spirit is like the Main Power Coupling, that provides the real power.

It's kinda like the alternator in a car.  You send the tiny, electrical current of your faith through the windings, and the car engine of the Holy Spirit turns it into big electricity.

Let the Holy Spirit work the faith in you. Simply turn it on a little.

And even if we lose sight of the Christian, Muslim and Hindu gods and all the rest, superstitions and spiritualism will almost certainly still prevail. More formal religious systems, meanwhile, would likely only be a natural disaster or two away. “Even the best secular government can’t protect you from everything,” says McCauley. As soon as we found ourselves facing an ecological crisis, a global nuclear war or an impending comet collision, the gods would emerge.

Yeah dude, I point you with a gun and I say, hey give me your money or I will shoot you. I'm giving you a choice Seems perfectly fine to me. And how is it a choice to believe in something anyways. Is not like I can choose to suddenly believe in God. What a pile of horseshit lmao.

Yeah dude, I point you with a gun and I say, hey give me your money or I will shoot you. I'm giving you a choice Seems perfectly fine to me. And how is it a choice to believe in something anyways. Is not like I can choose to suddenly believe in God. What a pile of horseshit lmao.

The fact is that I do not think that religion has anything to do with science. The fact is that Mormons actively use secret scientific means and generate their religion. And it has nothing to do with religion, which people turn to God. In fact, Mormons are a very old sect with which it would be very scary to contact. Here, money and their power dominate.