With the human mind, all things are possible. Belief is, by definition, a restricting factor in the realm of possibilities.
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Some spiritual observations
- Thread starter eanassir
- Start date
I tell you this whether you believe or not:
When I posted about comets, according to the late interpreter Mohammed-Ali Hassan Al-Hilly, that comets are fireballs coming out of the sun, so many of people in this forum denied this thing; and they said: no the comet is a mass of dirty ice!
Then I prayed God to let them see the comet as the fireball without hurting them, and The fireball of Canada came and was captured by thier mobile cameras; and so praise be to God Who showed it to them, although they even then they denied it.
This is in reply to those who say the prayer is a placebo, or as you beleive you will be cured without God's intervention or without God's work.
When I posted about comets, according to the late interpreter Mohammed-Ali Hassan Al-Hilly, that comets are fireballs coming out of the sun, so many of people in this forum denied this thing; and they said: no the comet is a mass of dirty ice!
Then I prayed God to let them see the comet as the fireball without hurting them, and The fireball of Canada came and was captured by thier mobile cameras; and so praise be to God Who showed it to them, although they even then they denied it.
This is in reply to those who say the prayer is a placebo, or as you beleive you will be cured without God's intervention or without God's work.
It is a matter of guidance
Most people will not believe because of wrangling and arguing with them; but they will believe by themselves according to God's guidance: If He please, He will guide anyone if he deserves the guidance, and He will misguide anyone He likes to misguide if the man (or woman) deserves the misguidance.
As God said in the Quran 10: 100
وَمَا كَانَ لِنَفْسٍ أَن تُؤْمِنَ إِلاَّ بِإِذْنِ اللّهِ وَيَجْعَلُ الرِّجْسَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ لاَ يَعْقِلُونَ
The explanation:
(It is not for any soul to believe save by God's leave;
and He lays [psychological] illness on those who do not think [or reason].)
quran-ayat.co
Most people will not believe because of wrangling and arguing with them; but they will believe by themselves according to God's guidance: If He please, He will guide anyone if he deserves the guidance, and He will misguide anyone He likes to misguide if the man (or woman) deserves the misguidance.
As God said in the Quran 10: 100
وَمَا كَانَ لِنَفْسٍ أَن تُؤْمِنَ إِلاَّ بِإِذْنِ اللّهِ وَيَجْعَلُ الرِّجْسَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ لاَ يَعْقِلُونَ
The explanation:
(It is not for any soul to believe save by God's leave;
and He lays [psychological] illness on those who do not think [or reason].)
quran-ayat.co
And what is that in reference to? It is promised: "Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall receive." If you seek and you are misguided or you ask and you are lied to by god, then you are not dealing with god at all, you are dealing with an impostor.
Jedi have a similar belief. The Force has two sides. The Dark Side deceptive and enticing and it will lead you down the path of hatred and suffering. It's amazing just how similar the two religions are. Of course, Islam is the wrong one and probably a product of the Dark Side.
If you want to look at it that way. I personally don't feel that God is discounted by a single scientific thing I've ever heard. But, I'm also not 'religious' as much as I am spiritual. God is in that wiring in the human mind that gives us the faith He's there... 
The evidence is sufficient to justify provisionally accepting the claims as true. Nice try though.
The "placebo effect" is medical sciences answer when they really don't have a fu cking clue why something worked when it really shouldn't have. Suddenly "faith" in something becomes a viable answer. A scientific fact. :roll:
When I was in my teens and I had fallen away from the Church, I had a "born again" inform me that he felt I had to have more faith to believe in everything science "peddled" then he needed to believe in God.
At this point in time, I would agree with him, even though I didn't at the time.
Science is primarily a method for testing the truth content of claims, not a body of facts and claims it peddles, though they are among its products, often peddled by people who have no understanding of what they're trying to sell. I can readily see how a knowledge of science could be pretty corrosive to religious belief, but from reading all the currently popular books on the subject from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Victor Stenger, and a few lesser known people whose books didn't become best sellers, it's evident that it's mainly philosophical considerations, not science, that the arguments for atheism come from.
I keep trying to be civil to you Gerry, because I've seen hints that you have a depth and substance you don't generally display here, but evidently there's no point in trying to share any thoughts with you if they don't match yours.
I'm looking at it the way you describe it.
You explained recoveries from faith with the placebo effect. The placebo effect is scientific idea that the body reacts to a positive belief in a cure. It more often applies to sugar pills than faith. And you attributed its proof to science.
So I agree with you, no? Science +1, Religion 0
Neither do I.
That's like the lack of evidence doesn't prove what it is not.
I am sure just the human will it self can be the cure.
Just like alot of illness could be caused the human will turned on its self. Stress being an example.
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Belief has very little to do with how placebos work. Placebos work on people who have been told that the treatment they are receiving is sham. The most likely explanation for this observation is classical conditioning, which occurs in people independent of their thoughts and beliefs. One example of this is the production of hay fever symptoms in people who have allergies by exposing them to plastic flowers. The subjects knew that the flowers were plastic, yet still showed hay fever symptoms.
Here is another interesting study :Surprise Finding About Placebo Performance - CBS News
Often, the interaction with the people giving the placebos and all the ritual surrounding the "treatment" is probably more important than the placebo itself. I think this is why chiropractic, being "born again", reiki and homeopathy can produce testimonials of such profound effects.
I think people often underestimate the extent to which our perceptions can be manipulated.
Here is another interesting study :Surprise Finding About Placebo Performance - CBS News
Often, the interaction with the people giving the placebos and all the ritual surrounding the "treatment" is probably more important than the placebo itself. I think this is why chiropractic, being "born again", reiki and homeopathy can produce testimonials of such profound effects.
I think people often underestimate the extent to which our perceptions can be manipulated.
And i see it the other way around. You are so arrogant in your beliefs that you are unwilling to see things any other way.
Oh make no mistake, they can be manipulated alright. What's truly interesting to me is that we're designed to perceive in the way we do. And I have yet to see an adequate, thorough explanation of why we are geared to subconsciously tap into such things. Why we are geared with essentially a sixth sense of faith that has the ability to actually overcome reality in some instances. Science chalks it up to 'flaw'. *shrug*
karrie, just as there are bad or ignorant people who make claims about religion that are false and misrepresent what most Christians understand is Jesus' message in the Gospels ( e.g. that Jesus values rich people over poor people), many people, even when they think they are speaking for scientists or on behalf of the scientific method, say things that do not represent what science is about. For example, no scientists who studies peoples' affinity for faith, would call it a"flaw", any more than the fact that a spider has 8 legs instead of 6 is a "flaw". Our species' tendency to see agency and Will in the universe is a fact of what we are. It is neither good nor bad. Evolutionary psychologists who study these sorts of questions have many ideas as to why we might be this way. There are a couple of interesting hypotheses, for example, that it was more useful for our survival to attribute rustling in the far-off grass to predators or approaching enemies than just the wind. People who frequently saw false alarms tended to outlive those who tended to dismiss the danger in favour of the more likely explanation. This only becomes a limitation when missing the naturalistic explanation becomes more harmful than assuming that a thinking agent (like a god) is responsible for things.
We may never have a thorough explanation for many aspects of our behaviour, but religious explanations always yield to naturalistic ones. A supernatural explanation has never worked better than a naturalistic one in all of human history, so even when we don'y have a good scientific theory to explain something, experience shows that religion and superstition will have nothing of value to offer.
We may never have a thorough explanation for many aspects of our behaviour, but religious explanations always yield to naturalistic ones. A supernatural explanation has never worked better than a naturalistic one in all of human history, so even when we don'y have a good scientific theory to explain something, experience shows that religion and superstition will have nothing of value to offer.
I have no argument against that sound thinking or its long human employ and I like to think I sometime do it myself. Evidence rules, not consensus.