Topic: Health and Religion - page 85. (Read 210903 times)

In hopes of escaping the trappings of urbanization and economic inequality, Chinese citizens are increasingly turning toward Christianity for spiritual fulfillment, an expert said Monday.

Predominantly an atheist state, China in 1980 had 10 million Christians, according to the Catholic News Agency. That number jumped to 60 million in 2007, and in 2014, the Telegraphreported that China was on track to overtake the U.S. by 2030 as the most Christian nation on earth. According to the Pew Research Center, 70.6 percent of Americans, or 223.2 million people, identified as Christian in 2014. Last fall, the Chinese government enacted a new crackdown on churches, warning that spiritual sects need to pledge fidelity to the state first.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Ian Johnson -- who has covered the region extensively since the 1980s for the Baltimore Sun, the Wall Street Journal and various other publications – said Monday at the Woodrow Wilson Center that people living in communist China’s increasingly crowded cities are becoming disillusioned with capitalism and there’s a widespread feeling that China lacks a moral compass.

Johnson discussed apathy that’s evident in Chinese public life and widely cited in social media, internet forums, articles, books and novels. When there’s an accident or someone is injured in public, for example, no one stops to help, he said, noting video evidence of this can be found widely on social media sites like Reddit.

“(People) feel that their society has become extremely harsh and unforgiving. And that it lacks some kind of moral foundation. … They turn to religious communities or faith-based communities as answers. And this is one of the reasons for the fast growth of Christianity in China, because they provide ready-made social groups,” he said.

Johnson’s book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, was released this month and describes why there’s a resurgence of religion in the People’s Republic put into place by communist leader Mao Zedong.

The issue of spiritual emptiness is not exclusive to the Chinese, Johnson said, opining that many in the U.S. probably share this disillusionment with modern capitalistic society. He pointed to populist movements in the west, which are building momentum against a system that many see as rigged, where too much weight is placed on economics.

“Society since the reform era has become defined by economics: to get rich is glorious. And that there aren’t too many other values in society,” Johnson said.

Like in the U.S., there is an increasing suspicion of unfairness in China. Johnson described a scenario that one might witness in Beijing: a Chinese citizen who worked for the government 15 years ago and was awarded 10 apartments in Beijing that are now worth about $1.5 million each. Johnson said this scenario is “perfectly possible.” That person can afford to drive around in sports cars and send their children to expensive schools, flaunting their wealth.

“People are not stupid. They realize this is how a lot of money was made in China, and they feel cheated,” he said.

Johnson admitted that there are plenty of brilliant entrepreneurs in China, as well.

“There are people who really deserve the millions that they make, but there’s a whole lot of people, probably the majority of millionaires in China, I would guess, earned this through what sociologists call rent-seeking efforts,” Johnson said.

According to Johnson, China lacks the mechanisms the U.S. has available for creating social change. In China, the media does not have free editorial discretion, and there are no trade unions – another reason many of the Chinese are turning inward and toward faith-based groups for answers.

Religion specifically monotheism still plays this crucial role in today's society. This is the oversight that blinds today's progressivism aka leftism.

Progressivism is the blossoming of the aloe, the sudden squandering of the vital force which has accumulated in the long years when it was contented to be healthy and did not aspire after a vain display. The aloe is glorious for a single season. It progresses as it never progressed before. It admires its own excellence, looks back with pity on its earlier and humbler condition, which it attributes only to the unjust restraints in which it was held. It conceives that it has discovered the true secret of being ‘beautiful for ever,’ and in the midst of the discovery it dies.

Froude wrote the obituary long ago. Progressivism dies in a riot of song, sex, color, violence and greed. Most of what you wrote above is accurate. The secular world view is the most 'progressive' system. It is not fixed or grounded in any moral superstructure. It is a worldview without a foundation where ultimately anything goes. This worldview is the true poison for it is unsustainable, unhealthy and ultimately self destructive.

Faith is as effective as blood letting.

Wanting to survive is a different story as it helps to flush the system with hormones that help you fight the sickness.

Believing in afterlife is lunacy.  All after life cults are just bat shit crazy.

There is not even one case when someone was brain dead for few hours and came back to life. 

BADecker try it, shoot yourself with a .308, don't go to hospital, die and see if you come back to life.

Or better yet, nursing homes are full of dying people, volunteer in one, go and talk to dying people and ask them to come back to life
after they die.  Not one will.

Cell dying is an irreversible process.  You cannot jump start cell operations because the physical damage has been done.

Unless we invent nano technology to reverse cell dying process, when you die, you simply die.  End of story.

Yes, medicine is also unable to cure everything. I think it is necessary to combine faith in God and medicine for a more productive result.

Except, of course, for the many who died from the treatment of the medical. And except, of course, for the many who have lived but the doctor doesn't know why or how.

But Christian missionaries find Japan a tough nut to crack. They always have, ever since the first of them, St. Francis Xavier, landed in Kyushu in 1549. His first impression, based on an initially friendly reception, was, “In my opinion no people superior to the Japanese will be found among the unbelievers.” Two years later, he left disheartened, calling Japanese Buddhism “an invention of the devil.”

Missionaries today use different language but express similar frustration. The Japanese have so eagerly embraced everything Western — from fads to philosophies, baseball to scientific method. Why not Christianity? Even China, officially atheist and repressive of anything outside state control, counts 52 million Christians. In South Korea, 30 percent of a population of 50 million professes Christianity. In Japan? Less than 1 percent.

One explanation comes from Minoru Okuyama, director, as of 2010, of the Missionary Training Center in Japan. That year, he told a global missions conference, “Japanese make much of human relationships more than the truth. Consequently we can say that as for Japanese, one of the most important things is harmony; in Japanese, ‘Wa.'” The Japanese, said Okuyama, “are afraid of disturbing human relationships of their families or neighborhood even though they know Christianity is best.” Chinese and South Koreans, by contrast, “make more of truth or principle than human relationships.”

A shrewd and outspoken samurai character in Shusaku Endo’s historical novel “Samurai” (1980) put a similar thought much more bluntly. His sullen response to a Spanish missionary’s evangelizing, circa 1610, was, “The Japanese don’t care whether God exists or not.”

First time in 100+ years newborn population dips below 1 million
TOKYO - Numbers recently released by the Japanese government show that the newborn population has dipped below 1 million for the first time in more than a hundred years.

Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare released demographic data for 2016 revealing the biggest net decrease in the almost 10 years of population decline. The birthrate has fallen to its lowest level since World War II, with only 981,000 births, while the death rate is estimated at 1.3 million. It's the lowest number of births since the census first began in 1899.

Officials projecting the figures have determined the overall population of Japan to decrease to 99.1 million by 2048 and to 86.7 million — a decrease of nearly one third from today's population of 126 million. Additionally, the people are aging, decreasing the working population by almost half — an estimated 46 percent — over the same time period.

Theological Foundations and Application for Personal and Professional Life
Jama L. White, Psy.D., Amanda M. Blackburn, Psy.D., and Mary K. Plisco, Ph.D. Richmont Graduate University
http://richmont.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Richmont-Rest-as-Virtue-3-27-2015-Final.pdf

the nihilist interpretation, which is at once the denial of all foundations and the negation of all objective truth. Quite apart from the fact that it conflicts with the demands and the content of the word of God, nihilism is a denial of the humanity and of the very identity of the human being. It should never be forgotten that the neglect of being inevitably leads to losing touch with objective truth and therefore with the very ground of human dignity. This in turn makes it possible to erase from the countenance of man and woman the marks of their likeness to God, and thus to lead them little by little either to a destructive will to power or to a solitude without hope. Once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.

If not treated and just wait for help from God, the person will die. I feel sorry for people who believe in miracles, and draw pleas for help to God. Religion and health are incompatible. It will tell you any doctor.

If not treated and just wait for help from God, the person will die. I feel sorry for people who believe in miracles, and draw pleas for help to God. Religion and health are incompatible. It will tell you any doctor.

Over the last few years research has been showing that a belief in a loving and benevolent god has many health benefits. A large proportion of these studies have been done in the USA but now in a large Norwegian longitudinal health study called HUNT, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were able to find a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men.

It was initially thought that the large cultural and religious differences between the US and Norway would make it difficult to apply findings from the US to Norway. However, despite these differences, and the fact that only 4% of Norwegians (as opposed to the 40% of Americans) go to church on a weekly basis, the findings of the health benefits of believing in God were almost identical: those who were religiously active were healthier than those who were not religiously active!

Click here for related article

Other research shows that those who attend church were 30% less likely to suffer depression and those who believe God have a sense of purpose and are 70% less likely to be depressed.

Click here for related article

For many, religious activity changes between childhood and adulthood, and a new study finds this could affect one’s mental health. According to Temple University’s Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active religiously.

Click here for related article

Now a new national study by two Brigham Young University sociologists finds that religious involvement makes teens half as likely to use marijuana. The research showed the protective effect of church and the influence of parents.

Click here for related article

Missouri University health psychology researchers have found that religious and spiritual support improves health outcomes for both men and women who face chronic health conditions. The research showed that both genders may increase their reliance on spiritual and religious resources as they face increased illness or disability.

Click here for related article

Research also shows that religion and spirituality are linked to positive physical and mental health; however, most studies have focused on people with life threatening diseases. A new study from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows that religion helps many individuals with disabilities by enabling them to adjust to their impairments and can give a new meaning to their lives.

Click here for related article

More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea — one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery — for “spiritual atheist” scientists.

Click here for related article

A dose of God will help medicine. Research shows that many patients do not feel the medical system adequately meets their spiritual needs,” said Cadge. “By shedding light on how religion and spirituality connect to the practice of medicine, this study is a first step toward addressing such needs of patients and their families during a profoundly threatening chapter of life.

Click here for related article

More than half of physicians believe that religion and spirituality have a significant influence on patients’ health, according to a report in the April 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Physicians who are most religious are more likely to interpret the influence of religion and spirituality in positive ways.

Click here for related article

In times of economic distress and plenty, ninety percent of Americans pray, more than half of us once a day or more. We pray for big things—to stay healthy, to keep our jobs, and to strengthen our relationships. And we pray for small things—to find parking spaces and missing items. Some of us are sure God exists and others pray simply to cover the bases.

Click here for related article

These are just a few of the studies showing that no matter who we are, what is happening or where we are…we NEED to believe!

No room for a saddle. You must sit on the horn, right?   

These links are not proof. They are your ramblings.

Why is it that only you post links to yourself?

Others who try to argue your point don't use your ramblings.... why is that? I propose it is because even they know you are delusional with your arguments.

BADecker principle rule number 1:
"If a point of discussion does not meet criteria of one's own belief, then ignore the context and claim it is wrong".

Therefore, your proof is wrong, so please give me proof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riCTEhezcYw  Burden of proof lies with those who claim god exists can be found here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC7Ttc9g1u8   Answer to the first cause argument can be found here.


Here is my flying unicorn. I took this photo today. His name is Frank

These links are not proof. They are your ramblings.

Why is it that only you post links to yourself?

Others who try to argue your point don't use your ramblings.... why is that? I propose it is because even they know you are delusional with your arguments.

BADecker principle rule number 1:
"If a point of discussion does not meet criteria of one's own belief, then ignore the context and claim it is wrong".

Therefore, your proof is wrong, so please give me proof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riCTEhezcYw  Burden of proof lies with those who claim god exists can be found here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC7Ttc9g1u8   Answer to the first cause argument can be found here.


Here is my flying unicorn. I took this photo today. His name is Frank

Wow! You are getting closer to babbling idiot mode all the time!

Your unicorn doesn't have proof. God's existence is proven:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10718395
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14047133
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1662153.40
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.16803380.

Why do you not believe me?

My unicorn is as real as your god.

But my unicorn can shoot rainbows from his arse.