Health and Religion

[CoinCube]

EPIC singing Flash Mob at a Library!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwLlFKaX-ms

[1714128221]

1714128221

[sergeyzol]

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.

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.

What science proved the existence of God? You are confusing something! There is no God! Believers live in their own virtual world which can exist, and God and dinosaurs. You live in the matrix.

[CoinCube]

The Beginning of Wisdom

Maximizing cooperation is a coordination problem. Cooperation involves a mutually beneficial exchange that improves the well-being of both participants. Defection is an interaction that benefits one party at the expense of another. Defection always implies violence, the threat of violence, ignorance, or forced interaction.

Top-down control fulfills its mandate when it maximizes cooperation and minimizes defection. Top-down control also uses fear, violence, and forced interaction. Top-down control is thus only morally justified if the use of those things results in an overall increase in cooperation and a reduction in defection.

The amount of top-down control required to maximize cooperation is proportional to the amount of defection prevalent in the population as well as the capability of individual defectors to do harm. Humans are morally flawed resulting in recurrent excessive concentrations of power and a general refusal to cede power. The recent human condition has been notable for the gradual progression of moral progress with either no accompanying change in top-down control or a counter intuitive increase in top-down control. When this happens the top-down control itself limits cooperation and becomes a form of defection. The situation is like a pressure cooker that eventually explodes in a rebellion resetting the top-down control to more appropriate levels.  

Defection and rebellion are thus entirely separate phenomenon. The first is evil and always morally unjustifiable. The second is not only just but a moral obligation once a superior solution to top-down failure becomes available.

Decentralization paradigms are useful and necessary when resetting top-down control to more appropriate levels. However, decentralization paradigms must always be accompanied by a top-down control that maximizes cooperation alongside the decentralization paradigm.

The reality is we will always need top-down control. This may be a bitter pill to swallow for an anarchist. The need for top-down control does not go away just because we don't like it or don't want to think about it.

Religion is also top-down control, but that statement is meaningless without context. We both need top-down control and will always need top-down control. Thus ultimately the relevant question is what kind of top-down control is religion.

That answer of course varies depending on the religion we are talking about. The primitive idols worshiping pagans had horrific gods. These religions were tools of extreme top-down oppression and their extinction is welcome. See: Pagans and Human Sacrifice.

However, belief in God especially individual belief in God coupled with a fear of God is something else entirely. A society where all individuals genuinely believed in and feared God would have very little defection. What defection did occur would be the result of ignorance not malice and even that would decline with time as knowledge progressed. An individual restrained only by a genuine belief and fear of God has complete operational autonomy he would willing choose only cooperation and never defection limited only by his knowledge of what actions constituted genuine cooperation.

Belief in God is top-down control. It is the purest manifestation of such control enabling a maximization of freedom. Rejecting God leads ultimately to higher levels of defection and consequentially less freedom.

Proverbs 9:10
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom"

See: Faith and Future for more.

[CoinCube]

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.

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.

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
Faith and Future

[ekaterina77]

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.

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.

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

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?

[CoinCube]

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?

No actually I don't but I understand why you might think that on cursory review. Please read my three posts linked above where I answered your question.

If after doing so you still believe I contradict myself please point out where and how and I will be happy to explore the topic further.

[CoinCube]

Sexual Selection Under Parental Choice: The Evolution of Human Mating Behaviour
By Bruce Charlton
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-science-of-sex-most-important.html?m=1

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.

[daiyuba1971]

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?

[af_newbie]

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.

[ekaterina77]

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.

I wonder why believers are silent? Pray? I think that none of the faithful will not agree to such an experiment. When it comes to life and death if they're willing to trust your God? Maybe once they get out.

[qwik2learn]

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?

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?

[ekaterina77]

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?

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?

Why do you think that people should not have health insurance. If a person wants to have good medical care he needs to pay for it. May not have insurance, but then you to God.

[qwik2learn]

In my experiments I was able to accelerate healing with a non-invasive device and without drugs; I used only this aluminum plate that has been "tuned to the frequency of the GOD vibration":
https://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Purple-Energy-Plates-Small/dp/B0015HBKJ2

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.

"When an extremely improbable situation arises, we are entitled to draw large conclusions from it."

You need GOD more than you need money or insurance. GOD is the source of all protection.

"Power is a quality which enables one to reach one’s goals. … Yet a preoccupation with power distracts us from paying attention to what is at the foundation of the world … ."

"A large part is not to prove but to call attention to certain immediately given but not provable facts. It is futile to try to prove what is given."
"To be overcritical and reluctant to use what is given hampers success. To reach the highest degree of clarity and general philosophy, empirical concepts are also important."

"Every error is caused by emotions and education (implicit and explicit); intellect by itself (not disturbed by anything outside) could not err."
"The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit."
"Life force is a primitive element of the universe and it obeys certain laws of action. These laws are not simple, and they are not mechanical. "
http://kevincarmody.com/math/goedel.html

[Karloff]

I can't understand why the Bible is considered to be correct doctrine? I think it's rather primitive philosophical reflections on the theme of the universe of ancient uneducated people. That's so great?

[qwik2learn]

Truth-tellers are fighting the demonic corruption of our civilization.

Empowering Christians and Jews to Remember God's Promise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah3w_GJJOJ0

[qwik2learn]

Listening Heals

Listening is also attention. Attention is energy. Many of our maladies are just because of the lack of attention or listening we provide to ourselves. Listening closely to our body’s pain signals and completing with them works miracles with healing them. Similarly people often find solutions to their problems just when provided the space of true Listening.

[CoinCube]

Religious Men Live Longer
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1380514/pdf/amjph00514-0055.pdf

Study Design and Population:
We undertook a historical prospective study of mortality in secular and religious kibbutzim over a 16-year period (January 1, 1970, through December 31, 1985). Eleven religious kibbutzim established before 1965 were pair matched with 11 secular kibbutzim from the labor movement according to the following criteria: same geographic locale, use of the same regional hospital, similar numbers of members 40 years of age and older, and dates of establishment as close as possible.

Results:
There was a distinctly lower mortality rate in religious kibbutzim than in secular kibbutzim that was evident in both sexes, evident at all ages, and consistent throughout the 16-year period of observation. The lower mortality persisted, with remarkable overall consistency, across the major categories of underlying cause of death. The magnitude of the protective effect associated with membership in a religious kibbutz is exemplified by ablation of the usual female mortality advantage: secular women did not live longer than religious men.

Conclusions:
The breadth of the protective effect, encompassing all major causes of death, and its strength, reflected in the elimination of the sex difference in mortality between religious men and secular women, are remarkable.

Our study suggests that even when the increasingly recognized and powerful effects of socioeconomic differences on the health of populations are removed and a high level of health is attained profound influences of the social environment on health may remain. Understanding how this embracing protective effect of religious observance is actually mediated could provide valuable etiologic insights.

Average Longevity Advantage of Women 4-5 Years
http://www.health.com/mind-body/why-do-women-live-longer-than-men

Life expectancy in the U.S. is at an all-time high, according to a report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And while the news that we’re living, on average, to the ripe old age of 78 years and 9 ½ months isn’t that surprising, there is one stat that is: A girl born in 2012 can expect to live to 81.2 years—almost 5 years longer than a boy baby born the same year, who's likely live to age 76.4.

[qwik2learn]

How is the effect is actually mediated? I suggest that it is primarily through human WILL POWER.

Both the optimistic and negative mindset on health can impact our willpower. Those with a negative mindset will believe less in their own health and wellness than people who are overly optimistic that something like a smart drug or meditation can help them.

Having an optimistic mindset will help you find something that works for you, but a negative  mindset can hinder your progress to look for something that can help you.

Optimists tend to be stronger responders to placebos. The Placebo Effect is when we put thoughts into our mind that we do something or there will be a positive outcome.

"The ability to WILL integrates all your abilities. The ability to WILL is the spiritual umbilical cord (connection) with GOD."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtqH1A11Sys
Fluoride detox using tumeric and its extracts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkeFxQnou-c

The elites are going to destroy human WILL POWER and LIFE via their toxins (fluoride, aluminum, BPA, GMOs, pesticides, etc); this process is WELL UNDER WAY IN AMERICA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH06dVbi6es

Easy aluminum detox:
http://www.realfarmacy.com/mineral-waters-remove-aluminum-from-brain/

[qwik2learn]

The work of academic and independent researchers, practitioners, and science journalists reveals scientific evidence that energy and information fields -- not genetics -- control health and well being.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1499960/

[qwik2learn]

Music that illuminates the human condition:

Baba Yetu (The Lord's Prayer in Swahili) - Christopher Tin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6qi393Z7L8

荒城の月 (Moon Over Ruined Castle in Japaneese) - Jackie Evancho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xCu-KB0vmI

Hallelujah (Hallelujah in English) - Leonard Cohen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q

Жypaвли́ (The Cranes in Russian) - Mark Bernes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THeGsS_Skew

Shalom Aleichem (Peace Be Upon You in Hebrew) - Susana Allen & Hector David
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xAgLtjMrW4

I would like to share this precious gem; the style is kirtan:

Kirtan is the calling, the crying, the reaching across infinite space — digging into the heart's deepest well to touch and be touched by the Divine Presence.
If you’ve ever chanted responses in Latin or Hebrew in your religious tradition, then you know how powerful singing in an ancient, holy language can be.  You can be completely immersed in the sound, with no words to distract the mind.  The magic of the chants can then carry you within. The ancient chants contain powerful renewing & transformative energy that helps us reconnect with the Divinity that resides within all of us.

Kirtan is singing over and over the many names of God and the Goddess, the multi-colored rainbow manifestations of the One. It is said that there is no difference between the name and that which is being named, and as the words roll off our lips in song, the Infinite is invoked, invited, made manifest in our hearts.

Pancha-Tattvit - Jaya Lakshmi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9_PzQZqIW0&list=PL5Q9_5_gZzumQ7cpxcuJ694bVw0ux6IvO&index=8