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?...

Religions are already slowly dying and they do not live long. Now there are a lot of atheists who show that you can live for your own pleasure, and not be a slave to religion.

Hey guys,

Religion (a belief in imaginary all powerful supernatural deities) has been the cause of more death and suffering than any one disease ever to inflict the human race. Wouldn't it be nice if we could start working on a cure for that.

Religion and Progress

The greatest obstacle to human progress is not a technological hurdle but the evil inherent in ourselves. Humans have knowledge of good and evil and with this knowledge we often choose evil.

Collectivism exists because it employs aggregated force to limit evil especially the forms of evil linked to physical violence. Collectivism is expensive and inefficient but these inefficiencies are less than the cost of unrestrained individualism. Collectivism aggregates capital for the common good and we are far from outgrowing our need for this.

1.   Prehistory required the aggregation of human capital in the form of young warriors willing to fight to protect the tribe.
2.   The Agricultural Age required physical capital in the form of land ownership and a State to protect the land.
3.   The Industrial Age required the aggregation of monetary capital to fund large fixed capital investments and factories.

A farmer in the agricultural age could achieve some protection from theft and violence by arming himself. He could protect himself against a small hostile groups by forming defensive pacts with neighboring farmers. To defend against large scale organized violence, however, requires an army and thus a state.

In 1651 Thomas Hobbes argued for the merits of centralized monarchy. He believed that only absolute monarchy was capable of suppressing the evils of an unrestrained humanity. He described in graphic wording the consequences of a world without monarchy a condition he called the state of nature.


There may well have been a time in human history when the absolute monarchy of Hobbes was the best available government but Hobbes was writing at the end of that era. England had been transformed from a nation almost completely conquered by the Odin worshiping Great Heathen Army of 865 to a country that protected the legal rights of nobles in the Magna Carta of 1215 to a devoutly Christian nation that formalized the rights of judicial review for common citizens in the 1679 Habeas Corpus act. Hobbes had failed to appreciate the growth of moral capital that allowed for superior forms of government with increased freedom.

Our forefathers understood that it is morality and virtue that allows for freedom a lesson many today have forgotten.


In human interactions we often face a choice between cooperation (reaching a mutually beneficial exchange) and defection (advancement of ourselves to the detriment of our fellow man). The nation state, police, and laws suppress physical violence but do nothing to maintain the morality and virtue that sustain freedom. Collectivism limits some avenues of defection while opening entire new possibilities. New opportunities for defection arise along the entire economic spectrum. Everything from special interest lobbying, to disability scammers, and on a larger scale our entire fiat monetary system are essentially forms of defection allowing the few to profit at the expense of the many. Nation state collectivism has allowed for the creation of great civilizations and yet is entirely unsustainable in its current form.


The perishing of Western civilization, however, does not mean fragmentation and collapse. Indeed in this instance the opposite appears to be true and collapse looks set to drive us via economic fundamentals and debt into a single world government paradigm for reasons discussed at length elsewhere.

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. It is likely that in the near future republics will be consumed by world government, and perhaps someday world government will evolve into decentralized government.

Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. Each iteration increases the sustainable degrees of freedom the system can support. Moral capital is the foundation that allows this progress to occur. For this reason ethical monotheism is the single greatest contributor to human progress from any source since human culture emerged from the stone ages.


The utopia of limited to no government would only be possible for a population constantly striving at all times to be moral. Such a utopia would require all individuals to always act cooperatively, honesty, and transparently. We lack the required moral fiber for anything like this to work at our current juncture in history.

See: Freedom and God for more.

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.

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.

You speak as if you had seen God and knew where exactly God is.

Has many years and to this day does not have at least a single person who says that he saw and talked with God

How do you expect people to believe in God?

Why is it so difficult for God to show Himself that God really exists?

No reason for god, angels and heaven remain hidden

Question

I have often wondered, and still wonder, when did G‑d stop talking to us or interacting with us, and why? I think of this often, but especially in relation to the destruction of the temples which He wanted us to build as a home for Him on earth. They were not just structures. We built them because He commanded us to build them, not as just another structure, but as a home for Him on earth!

Why then, while many times before He intervened powerfully in many seemingly less important aspects of our lives, yet when the temples were being destroyed, He remained silent. And He still remains silent. Can you tell me why?

Answer

The question is one that has bothered Jews since the time we were exiled in Egypt. Even Moses then agonized over the hidden face of G‑d, asking, "Why have you done evil to this people? Why have you sent me?"

Concerning the destruction of the first Temple, here is the passage from the Talmud(Yoma 69b):

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Why were they called Men of the Great Assembly? Because they returned the crown to its original place.

For Moshe declared, "the great, mighty and awesome G‑d."

Along came Jeremiah and said, "Foreigners are dancing in His Temple! Where is His awesomeness?" So he would not call G‑d awesome.

Along came Daniel and said, "Foreigners are oppressing His children! Where is His might?" So he would not call G‑d mighty.

Then they came along and said, "On the contrary, this is the might of His mightiness, that He conquers His desire, for He shows patience to the wicked. And this is His awesomeness, for if not for the awe of the Holy One, blessed be He, how is it possible that a nation is able to endure while absorbed among the nations?"

[And so they instituted that we should say, "the great, mighty and awesome G‑d" in our silent prayer.]

This week, I am teaching my five year old to ride a bike. Right now, she can ride with training wheels, and even then she falls once in a while. I could chase after her and ensure that she would never fall. And I could leave the training wheels on forever. But that is not the purpose. I want her to be able to ride off into the blue, without me. That is what being a father is all about.

G‑d is great because He gives us a world and tells us to fix it. He could have given us a happy, care-bear world and just enjoined us to have fun. But that would not be true kindness and He would not be a father. It would not be our world; it would be nothing more than a playpen we were tossed into. We would have no meaning, and life no value.

So instead, He brought us here, gave us basic directions, held on to us for a while, sending us Moses and the prophets and then the sages, and then eventually, took off the training wheels and let us go.

Nevertheless, in His apparent absence, He is with us more than ever. It's hard to write, because there is so much contradiction, but even in the midst of the most unimaginable horrors, His holy hand could still be seen in miracles. The Rebbe gives as an example the perplexing German loss of the crucial Battle of El Alamein—which saved Palestine from a Nazi purge. There are countless more examples. Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal have just recently published their "Small Miracles of the Holocaust," and the stories are authentic, vivid and haunting. "What a strange G‑d," it makes us think, "that He is there and not there at once."

In our own lives, He remains silent only when we do not know how to listen. If you are waiting for a booming voice from the sky to answer your prayers, you may be like the child who is riding her bike into a wall and waiting for her father to catch and stop her. But if you will look into your own mind and heart which G‑d has given you and the signposts He places all around you, there, if you seek with sincerity, you will surely hear His voice loud and clear—and find the brakes right on time.

In truth, in His absence He and His kindness towards us is found even more than in His presence. That is His greatness and that is His awesomeness.

Yes religion is belief in something without evidence or good reason, science on the other hand presents evidence. Science works, religion doesn't. When you are sick you go to a hospital or do you pray?

The more the effect you're describing escalates, the more incentive there is for the Core developers to take the nuclear option and hard fork to a new proof of work. That would be the definitive move, as users would be very enticed by the CPU mining goldrush that ensued.


It doesn't matter what way you slice or dice it, the expertise behind development is what makes Bitcoin what it is. The smart money will always follow the coding talent, and the coding talent will always follow the smart money. The suits can wail and gnash their teeth as loud and hard as they like they cannot stop decentralised cryptocurrency, it is a fait accomplis. We want it, and we will get it

Bonds are still high despite his bs "big bang" call. Real estate keeps rising, etc, etc....

Japan seems to have found one. While the US government is busy driving up its “sovereign” debt and the interest owed on it, Japan has been canceling its debt at the rate of $720 billion (¥80tn) per year. How? By selling the debt to its own central bank, which returns the interest to the government. While most central banks have ended their quantitative easing programs and are planning to sell their federal securities, the Bank of Japan continues to aggressively buy its government’s debt. An interest-free debt owed to oneself that is rolled over from year to year is effectively void – a debt “jubilee.” As noted by fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article:

The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%). BoJ holdings are part of the consolidated government balance sheet. So its holdings are in fact the accounting equivalent of a debt cancellation. If I buy back my own mortgage, I don’t have a mortgage.

If the Federal Reserve followed the same policy and bought 40% of the US national debt, the Fed would be holding $8 trillion in federal securities, three times its current holdings from its quantitative easing programs.
...
That is not to say that all is idyllic in Japan. Forty percent of Japanese workers lack secure full-time employment, adequate pensions and health insurance.

The guy has done nothing, but re-work the work of others since day one and get away with it.  Must be that "7000 living languages" that you guys are claiming are out there. 

Number of languages

The total number of languages is estimated to be between three thousand and eight thousand. It is difficulty to give a more accurate number, since linguists sometimes disagree what are distinct languages and what are dialects of the same language.
The Ethnologue catalogue of world languages, which is one of the best linguistic resources, currently lists 6909 living languages. About 6% of them have more than a million speakers each, and collectively account for 94% of the world population. On the other hand, about half of the languages are spoken by fewer than ten thousand people, and about quarter have fewer than one thousand speakers.

When certain guidelines about gender are accepted and valued by men and women due to their divine origin, these models can become a source of strength, power and inner calm. Although Radical Feminism (as do most forms of feminism) assumes that challenging traditional gender roles must be part of the liberation and equality of the genders, I had come to believe this is not necessarily so. My experience in a community where people tried to challenge those roles had left me feeling empty and frustrated.

Hi CoinCube,

Thank you again - We can peacefully agree to disagree and respect each others view - I trust that is okay.
I also wish to Thank you for handling this sensitive dialogue with such care - keeping things much civil.

I will agree with you on your statement "single greatest contributor to human progress"  Indeed it is true under the Three Abrahamic - much progress was made  - when the adherents bought into Social solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness and sense of shared purpose, and social cohesion.

But also - when the above breakdown due to various decaying components...the system also falls just as hard -- we see that today.  The Moral Decay / Corruption / Poverty...lack of unity (complete Divide).

It's not "ethical monotheism" propping up civilization as can be seen by the "Florida effect" where people are far more likely to agree to being taxed to support local schools that share the same genes as them, while they resist being taxed to support what they consider foreign invader gene pools.  It's simply the fact that they view people with the same genes as them as being possible relatives and treat them as such (a selfish gene type scenario) instead of killing or stealing from them.

...
 But I don't plan to go in detail -- too much work.

Thus far your position is firm on TORAH - thus I take you're of Judaist faith - I maybe wrong.  Do you also hold the view that King James Bible or other "CHRISTIAN BIBLE's" remain the same?

Ethical monotheism is probably the single greatest contributor to human progress from any source since human culture emerged from the stone ages. This force which emerged first in Judaism and and spread throughout the world via the mediums of Christianity and Islam continues to shape human destiny even in a time when much of the world foolishly rejects it as irrelevant.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/mono.html


http://old.explorefaith.org/neighbors/beliefs/nature_j.html

Until his retirement, Andrew Sims, former president of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Psychiatrists, was professor of psychiatry at the University of Leeds. Having also served as founding editor of “Advances in Psychiatric Treatment” (1993-2003) and of “Developing Mental Health” (2002-2005), he knows something about psychiatry and mental health.

He is also a committed Christian, and his book “Is Faith Delusion? Why Religion is Good for Your Health” (Continuum, 2009) brings those two facets of his life together to confront a common prejudice.

...

Indeed, one of the major themes of his book is that “religious belief tends to be associated with better health, both physical and mental.”

“The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry, and medicine generally," he writes. "If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land!”

Moreover, Sims contends, “churches are almost the only element in society to have offered considerate, caring, long-lasting and self-sacrificing support to the mentally ill,” which is one of the reasons why “religious involvement results in a better outcome from a range of illnesses, both mental and physical.”

Generally too, he observes, “religion encourages a broadly healthy lifestyle and members of a church or other faith groups are more likely to co-operate with medical treatment.”

“There is no evidence to suggest that seeking religious affiliation for its potential health benefits alone would be advantageous,” he said.

Still, Sims summarizes, in the majority of scientific studies, religious involvement correlates with enhanced well-being, happiness and life-satisfaction; greater hope and optimism, even when facing serious diseases, such as breast cancer; a stronger sense of purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better responses to bereavement; greater social support; less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; reduced rates of suicide; decreased anxiety; better coping with stress; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; and greater marital stability and satisfaction. A strong faith and the positive relationships and thinking associated with church membership fortify the immune system, “thus reducing the risk of cancer, improving general health and protecting the cardiovascular system.”

“When looking at the overall effects of religious belief and practice on whole populations,” he writes, “there is substantial evidence that religion is highly beneficial for all areas of health, and especially mental health.”

Indeed, correlations between religious faith and improved well-being “typically equal or exceed correlations between well-being and other psychosocial variables, such as social support.” And, he adds, this substantial assertion is “comprehensively attested to by a large amount of evidence.”

“In one well-conducted study,” Sims reports, “almost 3,000 women who regularly attended church services were assessed for health status, social support and habits. When they were followed up 28 years later, their mortality over that period was found to be more than a third less than the general population.”

Furthermore, “An inverse relationship has been found between religious involvement and suicidal behaviour in 84 per cent of 68 studies. That is, those with religious belief and practice are less likely to kill themselves. This association is also found for attempted suicide; believers are less likely to take overdose or use other methods of self-harm.”

“The nagging question we are left with is, why is this important information” — “epidemiological medicine’s best-kept secret,” he calls it — “not better known?”

“It is a mystery why … government and other authorities are opposed to seeking help from religious organizations.” Also, “it is extraordinary and tragic that the findings of this large body of research … are not better known. If it were anything other than religious belief or spirituality resulting in such beneficial outcomes for health, the media would trumpet it and governments and health care organizations would be rushing to implement its practice.”

if the Original was present - we wouldn't need 1000 diffferent versions / re-revised materials / editions etc etc

The Masoretic Text is widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent years (since 1943), for some versions of Catholic Bibles. In modern times the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown the Masoretic Text to be nearly identical to some texts of the Tanakh dating from 200 BCE.[4] In a recent finding, the Masoretic Text is discovered to be completely identical with text recovered from an ancient scroll. The approximately 1,700-year-old En-Gedi Scroll was found in 1970 but had not had its content reconstructed until 2016. Researchers were able to recover 35 complete and partial lines of text from the Book of Leviticus and the text deciphered is completely identical with the consonantal framework of the Masoretic Text.[5] The En-Gedi scroll is the first time a biblical scroll has been discovered in an ancient synagogue's holy ark, where it would have been stored for prayers, and not in desert caves like the Dead Sea Scrolls.[6] The Masoretic Text was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries CE.