Topic: Health and Religion - page 87. (Read 210900 times)

Don't mind stats. He is simply an emotional character. I pulled the rug of his religion/cult out from under him, and because of this, despite what he believes and knows now, he is simply angry at me for disrupting his little, peaceful, head-in-the-sand, ostrich world.

My answer to this can be found in the links immediately above  especially the second and third link. For an alternative perspective miscreanity also provided a nice argument essentially along similar lines.

Really, in order to believe in something, you need some kind of proof. For example, I just believe and this faith gives me and what kind of confidence and belief in a better life in the future. Therefore, what proof of the existence of God is needed, if it is not material.

The growth of Christianity in China has been astonishing. At this point, it's no longer a question of if China will become a Christian nation, but when. The ramifications of this religious shift are massive, and will shake China's culture and economy to their cores.

Since 1979, Protestant Christianity has been growing in China at a compound annual growth rate of more than 10 percent. There were 3 million Christians in China in 1980, compared to 58 million in 2010, according to Fenggyang Yang, director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. By 2025, that number could swell to 250 to 300 million.

Surprised? That makes sense. The Chinese Communist Party has done all it can to downplay this phenomenon and keep a tight media lid on it. Meanwhile, Western media outlets are so taken with the idea that religion is an irrelevant (and declining) facet of modern life that they don't pay attention to its growth in most places outside calcified Western Europe.

But this shift is happening, and it is astonishing, especially considering that China is officially an atheist country. From Chairman Mao's accession to power until his death, China officially banned all religion, the only country in history besides Albania to do so. Then, in 1979, in keeping with its liberalization program, China cautiously allowed a few places of worship to open. But the government's policy is still that religious expression must obey the party. Religion that is not officially sanctioned is still oppressed.

While it might seem surprising that Christianity could grow in the face of such repression, it is repression that prompted the growth of Christianity in the first place. In the third century, the church father Tertullian famously boasted that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church."

To better understand what's going on in China, let's look back at the Roman Empire. There, both government and society had values that were at odds with Christianity. The religion was so foreign, the reaction was an incoherent mix of savage oppression, benign neglect, and attempts at cooptation.

Still, Christians eventually became the dominant group in the Roman Empire by compounding with a respectable yearly growth rate. But there was more to it than that. Christians were often over-represented among the intelligentsia, which gave them a strong cultural cachet, even as their innovative welfare work made them attractive to the poor. (Bone fragments show Christians were healthier and lived longer than pagans, almost certainly thanks to the church's welfare system.) And of course, the church's heroic work was great PR. After a plague, while most people fled to the countryside, Christians rushed in to help the people, like they did in China in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has stepped up its oppression of Christianity. As the Chinese writer and dissident Yu Jie writes in the magazine

An internal government document obtained by The New York Times in May 2014 shows that the church demolitions are part of a larger campaign to curb Christianity's influence on the public. According to the nine-page provincial policy statement, the Xi administration wants to put an end to "excessive" religious sites and "overly popular" religious activities, but it names one religion in particular, Christianity, and one symbol, the cross.

If history is any guide, this will only increase the popularity of Christianity. As Yu writes: "One of the phrases I have heard most often among [Chinese Christians] is: 'The greater the persecution, the greater the revival.'" Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, when oppression was at its fiercest, Christianity actually grew in China.

Interestingly, Protestant Christianity is growing much faster in China than Catholic Christianity, almost certainly because the Roman Catholic Church has practiced a doctrine of appeasement to the Chinese government. Given that Protestantism is a do-it-yourself religion, where anyone is empowered to decide doctrine based on their interpretation of the Bible, we could see the emergence of new and seemingly strange versions of Christianity, acculturated to China, and perhaps mixed in with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism.

Today, China is pursuing a nationalistic foreign policy, combined with a domestic policy focused almost exclusively on economic growth and productivity. This comes at the expense of families, social welfare, and the environment. To say that these are not exactly Christian values is an understatement. It is not hard to understand why the Chinese leadership is not a fan of Christianity.

But Christianity could be China's only chance to survive. Because of its one-child policy, and sex-selective abortion and infanticide, China is a fast-aging country with a massive gender imbalance. If you add to that the tensions wrought by breakneck crony capitalism and consumerism and inequality and pollution, the country is a powder keg. Most Westerners see China as a strong rival, but China's actual leaders see the country as always teetering on the brink of collapse, which is why their grip on power is so white-knuckled. More deeply, decades of Communism have stripped China of so much of its cultural heritage and left its society and culture aimless.

Christianity's enormous cultural and spiritual heritage, its emphasis on the rule of law, and its traditional focus on fertility are just what China may need to manage the next few decades without collapsing into civil war, revolution, or something equally terrible.

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

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

Besides, it is up to you to prove your god, not me to disprove. But when you say it is real, I will ask for proof.

I don't understand how someone can be (even partially) mind-controlled by a belief which is not falsifiable, and simultaneously claim they are free and are not centrally controlled to some extent.
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This is the point I disagree with. I think we both agree that the optimal way to increase degrees of freedom for individuals is to allow and enable instead of controlling. A universal strategy is an essential foundation that enables freedom. Without that, we have the situation that is developing now with varying viewpoints where some sets are progressing toward destruction and others are being dragged into declining entropy. Competition can take place when there is room for growth but on a globally saturated scale, nobody wins.

Reproductive strategy is likely to become essentially irrelevant for humanity, possibly within our lifetimes. It seems inevitable that our existing biological bodies will give way to different forms that will carry us off-planet. At that point, allowing and enabling all individuals to thrive in a constructive environment becomes paramount. What then is the protocol that keeps that freedom from becoming destructive? Of course, my thinking is that the protocol is outlined in the Christian bible.

The following two (relatively) short videos may be of interest regarding previous discussion:
The moral argument for God
Why Does God Allow Evil?

If it isn't voluntary, how is it that you can choose your own or even to dismiss it?

The future will be decentralized, free, and religious.

Wrong model. Outdated. So you have plenty of useless noise (i.e. not leaders but followers), industrial (or agrarian) age Chinese jumping from the groupthink Communism wok into the groupthink religion deep fry:

The number of Christians in Communist China is growing so steadily that it by 2030 it could have more churchgoers than America

It is said to be China's biggest church and on Easter Sunday thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for miles around, opened last year with one theologian declaring it a "miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church".

The £8 million building is also one of the most visible symbols of Communist China's breakneck conversion as it evolves into one of the largest Christian congregations on earth.

"It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence," beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi's altar in the lead up to Holy Week.

"If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and therefore no more crime," she added.

Officially, the People's Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao's death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world's number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation.

"By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon," said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.

"It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change."

China's Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.

By 2030, China's total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.

"Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this," Prof Yang said. "It's ironic – they didn't. They actually failed completely."
Like many Chinese churches, the church in the town of Liushi, 200 miles south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, has had a turbulent history.

It was founded in 1886 after William Edward Soothill, a Yorkshire-born missionary and future Oxford University professor, began evangelising local communities.

But by the late 1950s, as the region was engulfed by Mao's violent anti-Christian campaigns, it was forced to close.

Liushi remained shut throughout the decade of the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, as places of worship were destroyed across the country.
Since it reopened in 1978 its congregation has gone from strength to strength as part of China's officially sanctioned Christian church – along with thousands of others that have accepted Communist Party oversight in return for being allowed to worship.

Today it has 2,600 regular churchgoers and holds up to 70 baptisms each year, according to Shi Xiaoli, its 27-year-old preacher. The parish's revival reached a crescendo last year with the opening of its new 1,500ft mega-church, reputedly the biggest in mainland China.

"Our old church was small and hard to find," said Ms Shi. "There wasn't room in the old building for all the followers, especially at Christmas and at Easter. The new one is big and eye-catching."

The Liushi church is not alone. From Yunnan province in China's balmy southwest to Liaoning in its industrial northeast, congregations are booming and more Chinese are thought to attend Sunday services each week than do Christians across the whole of Europe.

A recent study found that online searches for the words "Christian Congregation" and "Jesus" far outnumbered those for "The Communist Party" and "Xi Jinping", China's president.

Like anything else individualism is good and fine when properly subordinated to greater goods; but when it seeks to overturn the throne and monarchy of God, and usurp for itself the position of being the greatest good, like every uppity servant, it turns tyrannical. Like every idol, the moment it is worshiped as above God, it becomes a demon, no matter how good, truthful, and reasonable it once was in its proper sphere.

Individualism when expanded beyond all bounds and beyond all logic turns into subjectivism, polylogism, antinomianism and nihilism. It cuts off the individual from the cosmos.

I have slowly come to the conclusion that Leftism is a religion, a cult, which takes the individual as paramount and denies God, denies the divine.

The individual being free from all restraint, including all self restraint, is one of the dogmas of these credo. The individual is paramount. Thou art God.

But if the individual is paramount, than the individual, he alone, says what is beautiful and ugly. Summer stars, wintery mountains, racing stallions, stooping falcons, the ocean at midnight are, with a wave of his all powerful hand, defined as ugly.

Garbage, marred corpses, excrement in tin cans, empty rooms, toilet lids are all, with a second wave, defined as art.
Any objective definition of beauty would offend the Leftist self-worshipper at the core of his black little heart, because that definition would rob him of this godlike power. So the Leftist (if he be true to his false principles) can be expected to deny that there is any objective beauty.

(Not that all of them are true, or any of them. Consistency is not their strong suit.)
Now, if a man calls beautiful only what is really beautiful, there is no glory in that. Anyone can command the sea to rise when the tide is low. Only a god can lower the level of the ocean at low tide, however. So the power can only be used to call trash art, never to call art art. This is subjectivism.

The same argument as applies to beauty applies to virtue, and then to reason, and then to truth.
The godlike power to worship oneself is only used to call evil good and good evil; to dismiss reason as prejudice, and to dismiss truth as person opinion or cultural conditioning.

Denying vice and virtue is called antinomianism. Reducing reason to cultural, racial or personal opinion is called polylogism. Dismissing truth is nihilism.

Ha, ha, HA, Ha, ha. You can't rebut the proof. Ha, ha, HA, Ha, ha.     

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

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

Besides, it is up to you to prove your god, not me to disprove. But when you say it is real, I will ask for proof.

Still waiting for you to show the rebuttal, rather than flimsy words that suggest that there is rebuttal.

I don't follow any religion, but my own way and do not have any medical conditions that are serious. I just hope that you don't deal with problems in life like you said here, not bothering but turning head away.

I follow my religion and health practices and till now i am not worried about anything nor do i have any medical conditions that are serious.  I would rather not bother about these issues and look for a brighter thing that would soothe my brains . 

While excavating a burial tomb near Jerusalem in 1979, Gabriel Barkay uncovered the oldest known copy of Old Testament scripture. The priestly blessing, recorded in Numbers 6:24-26, was discovered on two small silver scrolls dated to the 7th century B.C.
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“The importance of the Ketef Hinnom inscriptions tends to be overlooked among students and pastors,” Ortiz said. “These scrolls are significant for the dating of the Old Testament. They provide evidence of the antiquity of the Bible.”

The two silver scrolls were discovered by Barkay’s team in a rock-hewn burial cave southwest of the ancient city of Jerusalem. The structure of the tomb was of interest to Barkay because it dated to the First Temple period, but it appeared that over centuries looters had taken all the artifacts. The tomb had last been used for storing Turkish army rifles during the Ottoman period.

However, Barkay and his team discovered that some artifacts had been preserved in a bone repository in the tomb. When a family member died, he or she was placed on a burial bench in the tomb along with personal items such as vases and jewelry, Barkay explained. After the dead body decayed, the bones were collected and placed in a bone repository located in a separate area of the tomb. The practice is referred to in the Old Testament as being “gathered unto his fathers.”

At some point a layer of the repository’s ceiling broke lose and covered the collected bones and personal items. Barkay said that the piece of ceiling appeared to be nothing more than the repository floor. An Israeli schoolboy helping clean the repository during excavations accidentally broke through the layer, revealing many bones and artifacts below.

As the team sifted through the items in repository, they discovered the two scrolls. After the initial discovery in 1979, scholars had the daunting task of unrolling and deciphering the text. They had no idea how important the find would be.

“It took us three years to unroll it [the larger scroll],” Barkay said. “When unrolled, it was covered with very delicately scratched characters. The first word we could decipher was the ‘YHWH’ –- sometimes anglicized as ‘Jehovah.’ This is the name of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible.”

Until this time no inscriptions with the name of God had been found in Jerusalem.

The larger of the two scrolls was only about three inches long when it was unrolled. The smaller one was just over two inches long. Barkay said the thin fragile silver of each scroll was etched with 19 lines of tiny, Hebrew script. It was years before researchers realized that the inscription was an almost exact representation of the priestly blessing found in Numbers. Careful study revealed that the Hebrew characters used were distinctive of the 7th century B.C.

In English the verses read: “The LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”
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Has been rebutted but you do not recognise it.

Therefore, to use your exact same logic..... Your links are not proof. Give me proof.

The reality of the situation is that you are blinded by any other reality than what you believe and when it is rebutted, you simply say it isn't rebutted. Well the same principal will now apply and I will call it the "BADecker principle". Your links are not proof so give me proof.