If you say so then I believe that you recognize the lack of assistance from prayer. How then can you say that God is? And in a few water shut-off valves and if God was he would have closed the other valve.

The question may be asked, Why do we have to pray to our Father in Heaven for our daily needs? Does God not know our needs even better than we our-selves? Is God not by His very nature, good and kind, and always willing to do us good? After all, children do not "pray" to their loving parents to feed them, and clothe them, and protect them; why should we pray to our Heavenly Father for these things?

...

Like all other commandments which God has commanded us to do, not for His sake but for ours, He has commanded us to pray to Him for our sake. God does not need our prayer; He can do without our prayers, but we cannot do without our prayers. It is good for us to acknowledge our dependence on God for our very life, our health, our daily bread, and our general welfare. And we should do so every day, and many times a day. We must often remind ourselves that our life and happiness are a gift from our Merciful Creator, for we should then try to be worthy of God's kindnesses and favors to us. God does not owe us anything; yet He gives us everything. We should try to be the same way towards our fellow-men and grant favors freely. We should express our gratitude to God not merely in words, but in deeds: by obeying His commands and living our daily life the way God wants us to do, especially as it is all for our own good.

...

Thus, what we said about prayer in answer to the question: "Why do we pray?" is but the first step on the "ladder" of prayer. On a higher level prayer has to do with things that are higher than the daily material needs, namely spiritual things.

...

Thus, the time of prayer is the time of self-judgment and self-evaluation. When a person addresses himself to God and prays for His blessings, he must inevitably search his heart and examine himself whether he measures up to the standards of daily conduct which God had prescribed for man to follow. If he is not one who fools himself, he will be filled with humility, realizing that he hardly merits the blessings and favors for which he is asking. This is why we stress in our prayers God's infinite goodness and mercies, and pray to God to grant us our heart's desires not because we merit them, but even though we do not deserve them. This is also why our prayers, on week-days, contain a confession of sins which we may have committed knowingly or unknowingly. We pray for God's forgiveness, and resolve to better ourselves. Prayers help us to lead a better life in every respect, by living more fully the way which God commanded us.

...

On a still higher level, prayer becomes service... prayer is meant to purify our hearts and our nature.

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The earth is full of treasures, but the treasures are often buried deep. It is necessary to dig for them; and when you discover them, you still have to clear away the impurities, refine them or polish them, as in the case of gold, or a diamond, and the like. So is every (human) is full of wonderful treasures of character—modesty, kindness and other natural traits, but sometimes they are buried deep and covered up by "soil" and "dust," which have to be cleared away.

We speak of a person of good character as a "refined" person, or a person of "refined" character. It entails an effort, and very often a hard effort, to overcome such things as pride, anger, jealousy and similar bad traits, which may be quite "natural" but still unbecoming for a human being.

These bad character traits stem from the "animal" in man, and are "natural" to it. But we are endowed with a "Divine" soul, which is a spark of Godliness itself, and the treasury of all the wonderful qualities which make a man superior to an animal. During prayer, our Divine soul speaks to God, and even the animal soul is filled with holiness. We realize that we stand before the Holy One, blessed be He, and the whole material world with all its pains and pleasures seems to melt away. We become aware of the real things that really matter and are truly important, and even as we pray for life, health and sustenance, we think of these things in their deeper sense: a life that is worthy to be called "living"; health not only physical, but above all spiritual; sustenance—the things that truly sustain us in this world and in the world to come.

We feel cleansed and purified by such "service," and when we return to our daily routine, the feeling of purity and holiness lingers on and raises our daily conduct to a level which is fitting

...

Prayer is like a "ladder" of many rungs. To get to the top of it, we must start at the bottom and steadily rise upwards... We must, therefore, become familiar with our prayers: first of all their plain meaning, then their deeper meaning, and finally, with the whole "order" of our service.

To solve the problem of religious disputes, I suggest let the atheists are treated in medical institutions, and the believers may be treated with prayers. And we will see who is right.

A new study shows that children with the most common type of childhood cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have a 5 year survival rate of more than 90%. ALL accounts for about 3 out of 4 cases of childhood leukemia.

...

In the 1960s, the 5-year survival rate was less than 10%

More than 48,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year,
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The five year survival for stage 4 pancreatic cancer is 1%

You are worse than ISIS. At least they acknowledge God, even though they have many mistakes about Him and what He wants. If you happen to catch up to ISIS, perhaps you can do it right.

Some sins are more heinous in the sight of God than others; more heinous in their own nature, or by reason of aggravating circumstances. The distinction is familiar to all. Murder is a sin more heinous in the sight of God and man than petty theft. Armed rebellion against just authority is a greater sin than heedless omission to pay due honour and courtesy to a superior in office...

1. Some sins are described as sins of ignorance. The reference is to faults that are due to error or inadvertence. We all know, to our cost, how liable we are to these. Never a day passes but we omit duty and commit faults, either because we knew no better, or because we were "off our guard" and stumbled before we were aware. These are sins of infirmity, such as cleave to the best of men in the present life.

2. Other sins are done presumptuously.(Literally, "with a high hand.") The matter is one about which there is no dubiety; the person knows well what is right and what is wrong; knowing this, he deliberately and purposely does the wrong. He offends against light, conviction, conscience. This is presumptuous sin.

Sins between people are considered much more severe in than sins between man and God. Yom Kippur, the main day of repentance in Judaism can atones for sins between man and God, but not for sins between man and his fellow...he does not atone until he appeases his fellow.

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Don't try to make this bigot use his brain, he has replaced it with a collection of fairy tales.
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1. An angry outburst puts your heart at great risk. Most physically damaging is anger's effect on your cardiac health. “In the two hours after an angry outburst, the chance of having a heart attack doubles,” says Chris Aiken, MD, an instructor in clinical psychiatry at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and director of the Mood Treatment Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“Repressed anger — where you express it indirectly or go to great lengths to control it, is associated with heart disease,” says Dr. Aiken. In fact, one study found that people with anger proneness as a personality trait were at twice the risk of coronary disease than their less angry peers.

2. Anger ups your stroke risk. If you’re prone to lashing out, beware. One study found there was a three times higher risk of having a stroke from a blood clot to the brain or bleeding within the brain during the two hours after an angry outburst. For people with an aneurysm in one of the brain’s arteries, there was a six times higher risk of rupturing this aneurysm following an angry outburst.

Some good news: You can learn to control those angry explosions. “To move into positive coping, you need to first identify what your triggers, and then figure out how to change your response,” says Mary Fristad, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the Ohio State University. Instead of losing your temper, “Do some deep breathing. Use assertive communication skills. You might even need to change your environment by getting up and walking away,” says Dr. Fristad.

3. It weakens your immune system. If you're mad all the time, you just might find yourself feeling sick more often. In one study, Harvard University scientists found that in healthy people, simply recalling an angry experience from their past caused a six-hour dip in levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, the cells’ first line of defense against infection.

If you're someone who's habitually angry, protect your immune system by turning to a few effective coping strategies. “Assertive communication, effective problem solving, using humor, or restructuring your thoughts to get away from that black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking — those are all good ways to cope,” says Fristad. “But you've got to start by calming down.”

4. Anger problems can make your anxiety worse. If you’re a worrier, it’s important to note that anxiety and anger can go hand-in-hand. In a 2012 study published in the journal Cognitive Behavior Therapy, researchers found that anger can exacerbate symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition characterized by an excessive and uncontrollable worry that interferes with a person’s daily life. Not only were higher levels of anger found in people with GAD, but hostility — along with internalized, unexpressed anger in particular — contributed greatly to the severity of GAD symptoms.

5. Anger is also linked to depression. Numerous studies have linked depression with aggression and angry outbursts, especially in men. “In depression, passive anger — where you ruminate about it but never take action — is common,” says Aiken. His No. 1 piece of advice for someone struggling with depression mixed with anger is to get busy and stop thinking so much.

“Any activity which fully absorbs you is a good cure for anger, such as golf, needlepoint, biking,” he says. “These tend to fill our minds completely and pull our focus toward the present moment, and there's just no room left for anger to stir when you've got that going.”

6. Hostility can hurt your lungs. Not a smoker? You still could be hurting your lungs if you're a perpetually angry, hostile person. A group of Harvard University scientists studied 670 men over eight years using a hostility scale scoring method to measure anger levels and assessed any changes in the men's lung function. The men with the highest hostility ratings had significantly worse lung capacity, which increased their risk of respiratory problems. The researchers theorized that an uptick in stress hormones, which are associated with feelings of anger, creates inflammation in the airways.

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.

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. - Thomas Hobbes Leviathan

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend upon their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” - James Madison

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” - George Washington

"our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it." - A.W. Tozer

"Nature is amoral. Nature knows nothing of good and evil. In nature there is one rule—survival of the fittest. There is no right, only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel themselves ethically obligated to strangers.
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Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.
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One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have depended in large part on desanctifying nature.
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Civilizations that equated gods with nature—a characteristic of all primitive societies—or that worshipped nature did not evolve.
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Words cannot convey the magnitude of the change wrought by the Bible's introduction into the world of a God who rules the universe morally." - Dennis Prager

Also, if there ever is a greater-than-human A.I. it will likely detest religion thoroughly, because to do so is quite logical:  
  
https://youtu.be/VrCTGfeJvxM  

Interesting videos I watched them both. Creator of the video is worried about transhumanism which is reasonable and probably why he added the disturbing imagery pictures of hell, video of a man cutting up a monkey brain, the images of the poor cat and monkey who got their brains operated on while they were alive etc.

Essentially the videos lay out the reasons homo sapiens are in danger of extinction caused by our own achievements. Overall it is a solid presentation. It makes a strong case that our fate whatever its outcome is entirely beyond our abilities to alter. Further progress is inevitable. Our very essence will relentlessly push us farther down our current path.

The best quote comes at the end of the second video.


Transhumanism as described would radically change everything we know, and yet on a fundamental level it would change nothing.

There are no solutions to social or economic problems with cryptocurrency. 

In economics there are only two real outcomes, rent seeking behavior where the goal is to force others to work for you as beasts of burden, or Hitler style national socialism, which is group evolutionary strategy.

Groups like the Japanese tend to trend towards the second option, while the Jews utilize a hyper-nepotism form of the second option and hypocritically try to demonize regular white people as "nazis" if they utilize the same behavior of operating to promote their own collective self interest.

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Jewish_group_evolutionary_strategy

It's also built into their so called religion that the "goyim" are explicitly stated to be used as beasts of burden in the Talmud.  These type of collective strategies are easily predictable to occur with the family/tribal nature of humans, but the real shocker is that the Jews have been able to con others into not operating for their own collective self interest while letting themselves do it to such an absurd degree.  The Trump election was probably the symbolic end of that con game.  There's still plenty of brainwashed suckers left in California, but their mindless shrilling has no effect on people that know the game.

Reform Jews are likeliest to favor Clinton over Trump, 74 percent to 10 percent; Reconstructionists prefer Clinton 71 percent to 0 percent for Trump and 15 percent for Stein; “just Jewish” chooses Clinton over Trump, 60 to 17 percent; and Conservative Jews favor Clinton over Trump, 57-29 percent.

Among Orthodox respondents, as in recent elections, preferences are flipped, with respondents likelier to favor Trump — to a degree. Trump does not do as well with this subset as Clinton does overall. Orthodox respondents favor Trump at 50 percent, Clinton at 21 percent, Johnson at 6 percent and Stein at 1 percent, with 15 percent saying they will not vote.

I wasn't questioning the article Coincube. You needn't have tried to add weight by appealing to academic authority. I know that religion has practical (in this instance health) benefits - it almost goes without saying. How else would it survive ?

I was more expressing scepticism over your own claimed academic background and professional qualifications in medicine. This scepticism has in no small way been fortified by :-
          a) your continued deference to the great Anonymint  [who, though he seems to have slain his demons somewhat of late (arguably), has historically shown himself to be not quite the full shilling to anyone with any kind of a sensitivity to these things]

      and  b) your signature - which is a link to Coincubes "highlights".

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.

I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.

When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

Well, as cured someone's prayers? I am sure that there. Religion in General the enemy of progress. She denies all that is necessary for a person.

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.

That is a very good tutorials I believed  some christian prefare prayers to hospital when they are sick also in some countries they prefare traditional way of healing for their health needs

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Have you ever tried removing the god from that picture and just consider the overall life, genetics and lifestyle?

Whatever other factors may be present in an act of wrongdoing, folly is one that is never absent. To do a wrong act a man must for the moment think wrong; he must exercise bad judgment.

Sin, I repeat, in addition to anything else it may be, is always an act of wrong judgment. To commit a sin a man must for the moment believe that things are different from what they really are; he must confound values; he must see the moral universe out of focus; he must accept a lie as truth and see truth as a lie; he must ignore the signs on the highway and drive with his eyes shut; he must act as if he had no soul and was not accountable for his moral choices.

Sin is never a thing to be proud of. No act is wise that ignores remote consequences, and sin always does. Sin sees only today, or at most tomorrow; never the day after tomorrow, next month or next year. Death and judgment are pushed aside as if they did not exist...

Sin is basically an act of moral folly, and the greater the folly the greater the fool.

Please don't be too hard on Coincube. I probably wouldn't have looked if all there was was a link. It was a very interesting article. Benefits to the social animal by socializing in religious atmosphere.

If one could conceive of a single elixir to improve the physical and mental health of millions of Americans — at no personal cost — what value would our society place on it?

Going a step further, if research quite conclusively showed that when consumed just once a week, this concoction would reduce mortality by 20 to 30 percent over a 15-year period, how urgently would we want to make it publicly available?

The good news is that this miracle drug — religion, and more specifically regular church attendance — is already in reach of most Americans. In fact, there’s a good chance it’s just a short drive away.

Indeed, health and religion are very much connected. Professor Tyler J. VanderWeele’s new research with colleagues at Harvard University — building on more than 20 years of prior work in this area — suggests that attending religious services brings about better physical and mental health. Adults who do so at least once a week versus not at all have been shown to have a significantly lower risk of dying over the next decade and a half. The results have been replicated in enough studies and populations to be considered quite reliable.

This science does not endorse one faith over another or suggest what society is to do with such information. But there are two opportunities — one societal and one personal — for good to come from this work. The news media, the academy and the broader public could use this new understanding to weigh religion’s greater societal value. And for individuals, this research provides a not-so-subtle invitation to reconsider what religion can do for them.

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Why might attending services improve one’s health? The Nurses’ Health Study finds that social support is critical, yet this accounts for only about a quarter of the effect. Other mechanisms seem to be important as well, possibly due to behavioral norms at services. For instance, those attending are less likely to smoke, or more likely to quit altogether, producing significant health benefits.

Religious service attendance affects mental health, too. The research at Harvard and elsewhere indicates that, possibly due to a message of faith or hope, those who attend services are more optimistic and have lower rates of depression. The research from Harvard has also shown that attendance protects against suicide. Others have found that churchgoers report having a greater purpose in life and developing more self-control — both mechanisms by which service attendance might affect health.

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What to make of all this? First, the associations between religion and health should force us to re-evaluate religion’s role in society and public life. Religion is often perceived negatively today, and at times it’s well earned. But the effects of religious participation are often profoundly positive, a point too often neglected or ignored. The health benefits can be added to a long list of virtues found with an active religious life.

Attending religious services has been shown to increase the likelihood of a stable marriage, to elevate one’s sense of meaning, and to expand one’s social network. It leads to greater charitable giving and more robust volunteering and civic engagement. The effects are profound across numerous domains of life. This has important implications for the extent to which society promotes and protects religious institutions, the maintenance of their nonprofit tax-exempt status, and how the contribution of such institutions is portrayed in the media, the academy, and beyond.

On a more personal level, for the roughly half of all Americans who believe in God but do not regularly attend services, the relationship between service attendance and health might constitute an invitation back to church. Something about the communal religious experience and participation matters. Something powerful appears to take place there, and it enhances health. It is something quite different from solitary spirituality.

Where else today do we find a community with a shared moral and spiritual vision, a sense of accountability, wherein the central task of members is to love and care for one another? The combination of the teachings, the relationships and the spiritual practices — over time, week after week, taken together — gradually alters behavior, creates meaning, alleviates loneliness, and shapes a person in ways too numerous to document.

Who could possibly conceive of such an elixir, one that stands to change society in ways small and large, subtle and profound? We’ll leave that question to a higher power.

(Tyler J. VanderWeele is a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. John Siniff , a former USA Today editorial page editor, works at Subject Matter, a communications firm in Washington, D.C.

They blindly believe an enormous amount of bullshits just because "it's written in the holy book so it must be true"... they are mentally sick! Period.  

I don't need religion to tell me what is right or wrong...
religious people are sick people that should be locked up in mental institutions.  

They have a blind Muhammad flying to heaven on a winged horse in the middle of the night!!!!  That should qualify as a miracle, no?

Just like your favorite fellow who walked on water and turned water into wine....

Every religion myth has miracles....

Miracles, no matter how spectacular, are not long lasting. Human nature is such that last week’s miracle, no matter how impressive, does not help this week. That is why the foundation of faith has to be based on more than miracles. Miracles alone will not do it.

People harbor the naïve belief that if God will perform miracles then everyone would become believers and all problems would disappear. All of history tells us that that is not true...

Miracles are great but not the basis of religion. Rather, true religion requires an inner commitment and inner strength not built on miracles. Study, education, loyalty and family are the keys to faith.

According to a new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control, there has been a 19 percent spike in the number of cases of syphilis from the previous year with most cases happening among 15-24 year-olds, the New York Post reported.

The reason for this spike, experts say, is because of the “Tinder effect,” or the idea that casual anonymous sex is easier because of online hookup sites like Tinder.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) in 2015 put up billboards in California encouraging users of dating apps such as Tinder and Grindr to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Tinder wrote a letter in response urging AHF to take down the ads.

“These unprovoked and wholly unsubstantiated accusations are made to irreparably damage Tinder’s reputation in an attempt to encourage others to take an HIV test offered by your organization,” the letter read. “While Tinder strongly supports such testing, the billboard’s statements are not founded upon any scientific evidence and are incapable of withstanding critical analysis.”

Earlier this year, Tinder added an STD testing locator to its app

This is all nonsense. There is no connection between these concepts. Health depends on the way of life and genetics. Religion is not involved in the formation of immunity rights.

Very religious Americans of all major faiths have higher overall wellbeing than do their respective counterparts who are moderately religious or nonreligious. This relationship, based on an analysis of more than 676,000 interviews as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, is statistically significant after controlling for major demographic and regional variable

In a global study on atheism, sociologist Phil Zuckerman noted that countries with higher levels of atheism also had the highest suicide rates compared to countries with lower levels of atheism. He concludes that correlations does not necessarily indicate causation in either case.[24]

A study on depression and suicide suggested that those without a religious affiliation have a higher suicide attempt rates than those with a religious affiliation.[25]