Topic: Health and Religion - page 90. (Read 210871 times)

According to the manufacturer, "The atoms and electrons of the aluminum have been altered so that the plates are in resonance, or in tune, with the basic energy of the Universe." So what this means is that you can use the plate's special energy to bring balance and better attunement for yourself and even such things as plants or your pets.

Of course there is no absolute proof for this except for someone using this product and actually benefiting from it. Then you've got the proof from first hand experience.

You are saying that prayer without action is pointless, and I agree.

Let me ask you this: why would you go to a doctor when you can learn the Wim Hof method and dramatically improve your immune system, even to the point of being able to fight terminal cancer--AND LIVE?

And what would be the point of going to a doctor if you (like most people) cannot afford one? You can try an experiment: try to get treatment without having any money or insurance, and make sure you get treatment from an atheist (then you can say that GOD did not help you with your health and that your health is not compatible with religion).

I did an experiment like this once; I trusted GOD and my intuition and my faith allowed me to find the treatment I needed, now I have been treating myself every day for 2 YEARS, and completely drug-free and no need for surgery even though EVERYONE said that "surgery" was "UNAVOIDABLE". No need for doctors, all I needed was the knowledge of how to use the device. I HAVE done a lot of experiments with health products and devices that are not mainstream, I got some astonishing results. Yes, miraculous results and healing at a distance is possible, but you have to get off of your ass. Since GOD is basically an energy that deals with information, this is how prayers can be answered.

Now how about skeptics? What kind of experiments are you trying out?

Health and religion are not compatible. Religion offers to pray to God which is not. Perhaps it will help recovery. I do suggest the believers to conduct an experiment. Do not go to the doctors and pray to God. Or scared?

Religious beliefs are a form of delusion.  

So yes, it is a health issue.

Health and religion are not compatible. Religion offers to pray to God which is not. Perhaps it will help recovery. I do suggest the believers to conduct an experiment. Do not go to the doctors and pray to God. Or scared?

The work of Menelaos Apostolou, a young Assistant Professor from Nicosia University in Cyprus - collected and explored in this recent book, turns-out to be the most significant 'paradigm shift' in the evolutionary psychology of sex since the modern field began in 1979 with Don Symons The evolution of human sexuality.

Apostolou's work means that this whole area of work - many thousands of papers and scores of best-selling books (not to mention the theoretical basis of the online Manosphere and PUA movement) - now need to be reframed within a new explanatory context.

In a nutshell, and with exhaustive documentation and rigorous argument, Apostolou establishes that parental choice is primary in human evolutionary history: for many hundreds of generations of our ancestors it was primarily parents who chose and controlled who their children would marry and reproduce-with; and the individual sexual preferences of both men and women were relegated to a secondary role.

This means that it was mainly parent choice that shaped human mating preferences - and personal choice would have been relegated to a subordinate role within and after marriage (e.g. infidelity choices; and the choice to end marriage - e.g. when to divorce).

Most of this book is taken up by the collection and discussion of a mass of empirical data - hundreds of references, and the detailed working-through of the implications; but the take home message is relatively simple and clear.

Apostolou shows that in most societies in human history, and continuing in most modern societies outside of The West, individual men and women had very little choice of their mates - and that this choice was nearly always made by their parents. In other words, marriages were arranged by the parents of the husband and wife - especially the daughter's marriage, and usually by their fathers more than their mothers.

Parents preferences for a marriage partner differ from those of their offspring. In general, parents (relatively to their children, especially daughter) prefer delaying sexual relationships until an early marriage with early onset of child-bearing and little or no extra-marital sex. And parents have been generally hostile to divorce.

The characteristics parents prefer (compared with individual preferences) include good character, ability to provide resources (especially men), coming from a 'good family' - with high status and wealth, and pre-marital chastity (especially in women).

The characteristics individuals prefer (compared with their parents) include beauty and good looks (hair, face, figure etc. in a woman; muscular physique in a man), a charming and entertaining personality, the ability to provide sexual excitement and so on.

The system of parental sexual choice seems to be unique to humans - which makes it a matter of exceptional biological interest: we may be the only species that has not evolved to choose our own mates.

More exactly, the ancestral system was probably (to simplify) that two sets of parents controlled who thier children married - the individual preferences of the prospective husband and wife may or may not have been consulted. Individual choice was probably important mostly after marriage - since there was the possibility of extra-marital liaisons (although Apostolou documents that these were extremely risky, and generally very harshly punished, up to and including death - especially for women).

But all the ancestral societies permitted divorce (while strongly discouraging it - since this undermined parental decisions) - although mainly in a context where one of the spouses turned out to be unsatisfactory from the point of view of providing grandchildren (eg. men who did not provide sufficient resources - due to their behaviour or from illness or injury, or women who were barren). Probably since women are more controlled in arranging marriage, it is mainly women who initiate divorces.

Apostolou summarizes this as: Parents decide who gets married, children decide whether they stay married.

Another way of describing this is that parents screen or filter prospective spouses - and individual preferences only work within this pre-screened and filtered population. Consequently, modern men and women are not adapted to select a partner from an unscreened population - and not equipped with the proper instincts to assist their choice; so they are vulnerable to deception and exploitation.

Therefore human evolutionary history has left modern individuals, in a world where parental choice and control has been all-but eliminated from mainstream life, woefully ill-equipped to manage their sexual lives.

This affects both men and women adversely - but in partly different ways. men and women share a common problem of not being worried-enoughabout the problem of finding suitable long-term mates, marrying and having children - precisely because this whole business was managed for them by parents through hundreds of preceding human generations.

Women delay and delay marriage and child-bearing, and seem unconcerned about their genetic extinction - because their deep inbuilt expectation is that these matters will be arranged for-them. men worry too much about attaining high status among men, and becoming a good provider - when these were selected for in a world where prospective in-laws wanted these attributes from men; but in the modern world they are an ineffectual strategy for getting a mate.
In sum (and in terms of their biological fitness) modern men are too worried about working hard, and not worried enough about meeting and impressing individual women.

So men and women who are apparently, in biological and historical terms, extremely well-qualified as potential husbands and wives, remain unmarried and childless in large and increasing numbers.

Modern single people therefore are much too happy about their living in a state of unattached childlessness, than is good for their reproductive success. And this (biologically) foolish happiness is at least partly a consequence of evolutionary history: people are behaving as if mating and marriage will be sorted-out by parents - but it isn't.

However, as is usual in works of evolutionary psychology - in a subject where the professionals are almost 100 percent atheists (and militant atheists at that!), in this book there is a too brief and conceptually inadequate consideration of the role of religion.

The subject gets about three pages, and religion is treated as merely a trumped-up rationalization for enforcing biological imperatives. However, it is not mentioned that in modern societies it is only among the religious that we can find biologically viable patterns of mating, marriage and family - and indeed only among some particular religions that are traditionalist in ethics and patriarchal in structure: which fits exactly with the evolutionary predictions.

My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.

Another omission is the role of intoxication by alcohol and drugs. Much of modern sexual behaviour is initiated in parties, bars and nightclubs; and occurs more-or-less under the influence of intoxicants - and this in itself deranges delicate brain functioning and destroys the benefits of behavioural adaptations that may have taken centuries or millennia to evolve.

An intoxicated person is maladaptive.

So, from a biological perspective, I would contend that there is no reason to suppose we can solve the biological problems of modernity outwith religion (especially since the social system of religion has in practice been replaced by... the mass media - see my book Addicted to Distraction). Biological knowledge can diagnose the problem - but science cannot provide a solution nor the motivation to implement it; since humans are not evolved to structure their sexuality according to biological principles.

We are 'set-up' to seek our own gratification and try to avoid suffering with reproductive success as a by-product - we do not seek directly to achieve optimal personal/ or tribal/ or national/ or species-level reproductive fitness.

Such omissions and other imperfections do not detract from the exceptional originality and importance of this book and the empirical research and theoretical discussion which it summarizes.

In a world where actual scientific achievement was the primary determinant of professional success; Menelaos Apostolou would be among the most prestigious, most cited, and most intellectually influential people in evolutionary psychology.

I hope that this deserved outcome will, sooner or later, come to pass.

You contradict yourself. Those who believe in God refuse many blessings in your life in order to live forever in a mythical Paradise. If a person does not believe in the existence of life after death, why would he believe in God?

Rejecting the afterlife and believing the soul is extinguished upon death does not in any way relieve you of the necessity of a belief in God.

See:
Religion and Progress
The Nature of Freedom
The Beginning of Wisdom

Yes, there is me.  A sane person who sees the world the way it is.

Trust me, I understand plenty.  

You have built yourself a delusion because you are afraid of death.  
You cannot accept the fact that your life did not have a 'meaningful' purpose.  So you created a delusion to
'continue' your life after death and to have a 'meaningful' purpose in this life.  To validate your existence,
you have created an imaginary friend to help you cope with death and give you a reason to live.  Very pathetic.  

It is real to you because it helps you deal with the struggles in your life.

Religions were created around the same time when humans developed skills of storytelling.

Religions were are vital to the survival of our species.  It united unites strangers with common beliefs, hopes and dreams.

Then there's you... someone who can't even understand that God exists when the science that proves Him is explained directly to you. Since you might understand anything or not, anything you might post should be taken with dozens of grains of salt.

Again, the ghosts, spirits, afterlife is not observable.  An average person does not experience any of the paranormal activities.  That is why I say it is not obvious to me and most people.

People who experience paranormal activity, people who talk to ghosts or spirits are not well.  It is plain and simple.

Ask yourself this question, do you personally experienced any of the paranormal activity?  Do you personally know anyone who did?

There are 1% of people worldwide suffering from schizophrenia.  The percentage of people suffering only from the 'paranormal perception disorder' is probably much smaller.

I suspect some schizophrenics can talk to ghosts and spirits.  That is the nature of their illness.

You think that the brain is playing tricks upon those who scribe inspired writings, but I think the whole of these writings are more consistent with the existence of a discarnate personality communicating with the incarnated. I have pointed to the paper "The Problem of Seth's Origin" as an example of analyzing evidence of this nature. This is an important paper in parapsychology literature and I also recommend "A Field Guide to Critical Thinking" for an introduction.

I can actually say that the answer is obvious because of the wealth of evidence that I have linked to over and over again, particularly in discussions with you. Taking the evidence as a whole is important because many different fields of study unite in supporting what is now called the "survival hypothesis"; you can start with understanding strong cases (AECES top 40) or understanding modern theoretical physics or biology; NDE is only the start but you have ignored all evidence presented so far. There are even some banned TED talks that relate to the true relationship between mind and brain; it is obvious that mainstream atheism does not want the cat out of the bag.

Everything in the universe is cyclical, and everything depends on awareness to be observed, so from this I observe that awareness is cyclical. That is how obvious we are talking about.

If you conduct an Internet search of Pseudoscience, you will find page after page of skeptical articles condemning paranormal subjects and those who study them. They have been effective because today, several countries, including the USA, considers pseudoscience a clear and present danger to scientific progress. The result has been virtually no funding for research and rapid condemnation of academics who are brave enough to study anything paranormal unless they are seeking to understand the nature of the “paranormalist mental illness.”

This growing suppression can be countered by a well-organized and paranormalist community speaking well-considered arguments for why the skeptics are wrong and why knowing about things paranormal is important to society.

In fact parapsychological researchers are always working to overcome Unthinking and/or Unfounded Criticism on the part of others; this is probably the main issue faced by the people who are interested in things paranormal and people who are actively involved in the study of parapsychology, psychical research, hauntings investigations, survival and transcommunication.
http://ethericstudies.org/trojan-horse/
http://ethericstudies.org/introduction-to-community/

Did anyone who died in YOUR family came back? If the answer is no, how can you say the answer is obvious?
If the answer is yes, I think you are suffering from some sort of the post dramatic disorder.  Your brain is playing tricks on you.

The human brain is an extremely complicated organ.  But it needs energy to stay alive, it cannot function without it. 
Dying is a process, it takes time. Once complete, the outcome is irreversible.

Yet you are dying anyways with or without belief.

In your world nothing is more valuable than an ever diminishing pile of seconds.

Your fear must necessarily grow with each passing day.

CoinCube,

Monotheism (or Polytheism) is lagging our social progress.  Progress happens because people use reason and logic to learn more about the nature not because of monotheism.  
Most religions change BECAUSE of social and technological progress; religions change to avoid losing their membership.  

Religions HINDER progress. Always did, always will be.  
Do not forget Giordano Bruno and many other progressive thinkers!!!!

Richard Fenyman puts it nicely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajV2h6bZB3Y

Progress happens because we learn more about the world around us (without ANY perceived notions of how it all happened and why we are here).

World we see might be here for no reason, or for reasons unrelated to 1000s of religious explanations.  

Assuming the answer is known is not getting you any closer to the truth.  Such position stops you from investigating further.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Richard Feynman

Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not.

The Sadducees were a sect or group of Jews that was active in Judea during the Second Temple period, starting from the second century BCE through the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The sect was identified by Josephus with the upper social and economic echelon of Judean society.

The Sadducees rejected the Oral Law as proposed by the Pharisees. Rather, they saw the Torah as the sole source of divine authority.
...
According to Josephus, the Sadducees believed that:

There is no fate
God does not commit evil
Man has free will; “man has the free choice of good or evil”
The soul is not immortal; there is no afterlife, and
There are no rewards or penalties after death